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Basira Hussain is a police officer who has signed a Section 31 form as she stated in episode 43, which means that she has investigated cases with supernatural elements in the past, and will be called upon when other cases turn weird.[1]
Personality[]
Basira initially presents herself in season 2 as isolated and fairly powerless, avoided by other police officers due to the stigma of the section 31 status and left without adequate support to properly investigate the murder of Gertrude Robinson (lacking even basic resources like a tape recorder to listen to the tapes found around her body).[1] While this is a ruse to a degree, as Basira was using the tapes as to encourage her main suspect not to flee, by the end of the season she has witnessed the Metropolitan Police covering up two other officers being killed by avatars, quitting because of this.[2] She demonstrates an ability to conceal her feelings about people, as John is surprised to learn that he was her prime suspect, but she does also come to genuinely like John despite suspecting him of murder. [3]
She wants to avoid the paranormal after her traumatic experiences, but her personal connection to Daisy drags her back in. Her initial reaction to Elias's threat is passivity: she reads, and sometimes justifies this as theoretically finding clues for escape. But she does genuinely seem comfortable in her information gathering state, infodumping about the results of her reading to Martin's confusion.[4][5] She bonds quickly with Melanie, and reaches out to Martin somewhat, but has no significant interactions with Tim. Like Martin, she is not moved to seriously strategize against Elias until Melanie is threatened.[6]
This marks an important development in her journey, as she has so far been mostly falling on the "accept it and adapt" side of her father's dichotomy, and is now trying to "fight and change it".[7] She carries this into the gap between season 3 and 4, during which the extreme multifaceted stress she is under causes a significant hardening of her affect.[8]
In her final season, Basira fully confronts the systemic failings of policing and her own contribution to them. She comes to grip with the fact that she stood by and supported ordinary miscarriages of justice, and unravels the idea both that if someone is guilty then it is just to hurt them and whether anyone can reliably judge who counts as guilty.[9][10] Reflecting on the same time period that in season 2 she describes feelings of powerlessness, she now perceives herself as having had power and enjoying it.[11] Her final conclusion is ambiguity,[12] and wanting to make important decisions by involving more of the people directly affected, with no bright lines short of genocide being definitely wrong.[13]
In general, Basira tries to approach the world through a logical, rational point of view, in contrast to the dream logic of the fears. Sometimes this is beneficial to her, especially in facing the Stranger,[14][15] but it also leads her to misread situations[16] and misjudge the costs of certain actions.[17] She is also simultaneously impulsive, as a way of seizing control in the face of repeated traumas[18]; she doesn't really want to make a plan.[19][20][21]
Similar to her reading material, Basira was a fan of Georgie Barker's nonfiction podcast What The Ghost (or at least the early seasons), while she wasn't particularly interested in The Archers.[22] She took a welding class once, on a whim, and burned herself by touching the metal while it was still hot. Her home was less nice than a run down apartment block in Kensington.[1]
She had a similar dry sense of humour to John,[23] with a slight tendency to puns.[24] She describes paranormal phenomena through impromptu onomatopoeia.[25][26]
History[]
Season Two[]
Basira is in charge of the case of Gertrude Robinson's murder but does not get much assistance from the rest of the police force, lest they be branded with Section 31 as well. As part of this, she has been providing Jonathan Sims with some of the tapes recovered from the room where Gertrude's body was found.
Tim believes that Basira and Jonathan are in a relationship, a lie that they agree to uphold to explain her infrequent visits.[27] Basira's partner Daisy later explains that John was under investigation for Gertrude's death and that the tapes were initially being delivered in order to explain away Basira's investigation. CCTV later exonerates John, and according to Daisy, Basira was still delivering tapes out of sympathy.[28]
John later goes to visit Basira to ask for more tapes, where she tells him that she is now under scrutiny for assisting him and that they both suck at spy-craft.[29]
She later phones John asking him for advice before they move in to assault a compound where Maxwell Rayner is located.[30] Following the raid, she gives a statement to him about the raid, where Rayner and some other cult members were killed. The events badly shake Basira, and she resigns from the police force, and advises John to leave his job as well.[31]
Season Three[]
Following John leaving the Archives and being under suspicion for murder, Basira shows up to interrogate Martin as to his whereabouts. She admits that she liked John as a friend, but is not as convinced that he could not be a murderer. When she hears that Daisy was using full "operational discretion" to hunt him down, she quickly leaves, telling Martin to contact her if he learns about John's whereabouts.[32]
Basira waits for Daisy at the place where Daisy "kills monsters", and rescues John before Daisy can execute him.[33] She is present at the confrontation with Elias Bouchard where she signs an employment contract with the Magnus Institute in order to avoid the current police officers killing her and Daisy to cover up Daisy's murders.[34]
She is essentially a hostage but finds the role surprisingly comfortable. She investigates statements but also researches the paranormal on her own. She eventually starts plotting against Elias and planning for The Unknowing with the others.
She accompanies Tim, Daisy and John to the House of Wax in Great Yarmouth but the Unknowing starts before they can blow it up. She knows that she is in a place but everything is too much and there are things that want to hurt her. She decides to leave by simply picking a where and moving. Bit by bit, she reasons her way out of The Unknowing and she is the only one who leaves the waxworks mostly unharmed.
Season Four[]
After the Unknowing, John is in a coma while both Tim and Daisy are presumed dead. Basira is left working in the Archives with Melanie and Martin. The other powers have started paying more attention to the Institute due to their role in stopping the Unknowing and the fact that, to their knowledge, the Beholding has not attempted a ritual yet.
In December 2017, Jared Hopworth and his allies launch an assault on the Institute.[35][36] Melanie is instrumental in fending them off and saves Basira’s life.
She helps John perform improvised surgery on Melanie to remove the Slaughter bullet and looks after her in the aftermath. Feeling the pressure of protecting the Archives on her own, she agrees to meet with Elias and to hear him out.[37]
She is present when Breekon delivers the coffin to the Institute. Even though Daisy is in it, she agrees with John's assessment that they cannot open it.[38] She leaves for 3 weeks to pursue some leads given to her by Elias and in the meantime, John enters the coffin. He emerges after 3 days with Daisy and while Basira is relieved to have her back, she is also dismayed by how she has changed. She needs help protecting the Institute and in her current state, Daisy is just another person that needs to be protected.[39]
She confronts Elias about the false leads he gave her but Elias points out that her absence leads to the rescue of Daisy. He also warns her of a recent surge of activity in Ny-Ålesund which seems to imply The People's Church of the Divine Host is preparing to do a ritual.[40]
Without revealing her source, Basira heads to Ny-Ålesund with John. They find no ritual there but encounter Manuela Dominguez who is guarding the Black Sun, a powerful artefact of The Dark. John destroys the Black Sun by looking at it and Manuela is captured by Helen when she attempts to escape.
She finds out about John feeding on innocent peoples’ trauma from a tape left for her by Martin and confronts John alongside the others. John raises the possibility that he is being controlled by The Web and she jumps on it, immediately deciding to go to Hill Top Road. The others all follow. They find a statement which reveals that John is not being controlled, which he presumably tells Basira about.
Basira visits Elias in prison again. She beats him up and confronts him about the false leads that sent them to Ny-Ålesund, Annabelle Cane, and John's eating habits. She threatens to have his privileges revoked but he points out that she does not have that power with the police anymore.
As John struggles to abstain from eating trauma, she gives him an ultimatum; Either he stops, or she kills him.
After Daisy and John tell her about their confrontation with Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert, she tries to convince Daisy to hunt them so she that will not starve to death.
Basira gets word that Elias has escaped and heads over to check it out with Daisy. They return to find a statement on John's desk which reveals the panopticon under the Institute and that Elias is actually Jonah Magnus. They decide to head into the tunnels when Not-Sasha, Julia, and Trevor all show up. Basira and Daisy stay behind to slow them down as John heads for the panopticon. In a last-ditch effort, Daisy gives in to The Hunt, but not before making Basira promise to find and kill her once it is all over.
Basira survives the assault on the Institute but Daisy is missing. She keeps in touch with John and Martin while they are in Scotland and says that she will send some statements once the Archives are no longer a crime scene.
Season Five[]
After the apocalypse, Basira is not trapped in a static nightmare like most but is pursuing Daisy, who is bestial and carving her way through the domains of other powers. John and Martin catch up with Basira in a domain of The Hunt, where she kills Trevor Herbert.
They pursue Daisy together and eventually find her in a domain of The Desolation. She attacks and injures John but recognises Basira, who is able to talk her down. Daisy asks her to join her in The Hunt but Basira shoots and kills her, fulfiling her promise. John and Martin continue on toward London, but Basira decides to stay behind to mourn and burn the body.
John and Martin discuss Basira's struggles through the apocalypse, noting she's in a hungry void and a labyrinth of masks. John reveals that she was in fact a sufferer in Daisy’s domain. Eventually she gets stuck on an island. John picks her up in his boat, and the two head to Hill Top Road, before jumping off a cliff to return to London.
Episode Appearances[]
Bold marks episodes where Basira has given a statement. Underline marks where Basira has read a statement.
Trivia[]
- Basira is voiced by Frank Voss who was in the band The Mechanisms with writer Jonny Sims and fellow voice actors Tim Ledsam (Jordan Kennedy) and Jessica Law (Nikola Orsinov).
- Basira once took a welding class.[1]
- Basira's D&D class would be paladin.[41]
- Basira used to listen to Georgie Barker's podcast "What the Ghost?". She loved the first two seasons but thinks it took a weird turn in season three.[42]
- Basira is shown repeatedly to have the ability to reason or brute force her way out of supernatural situations. This is shown when she chooses a direction and goes during The Unknowing or how she travels unaffected during The Change. This also shows a degree of separation from The Eye, as The Eye is unable to understand information given to it.
- In development, Basira's last name was Khan but it was changed to Hussain before recording started. A leftover from this can be heard in the credits of MAG 80 which refer to her as "PC Basira Khan".[43]
- Basira's first name, as well as her surname "Hussain", are of Arabic and Persian origin.
- Basira can mean wise or all-seeing in Arabic.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 MAG 43: Section 31
- ↑ MAG 73: Police Lights
- ↑ MAG 61: Hard Shoulder
- ↑ MAG 95: Absent Without Leave
- ↑ MAG 108: Monologue
- ↑ MAG 110: Creature Feature
- ↑ MAG 117: Testament
- ↑ MAG 128: Heavy Goods
- ↑ MAG 177: Wonderland
- ↑ MAG 179: Accomplice
- ↑ MAG 178: The Processing Line
- ↑ MAG 195: Adrift
- ↑ MAG 199: Seeing it Through
- ↑ MAG 119: Stranger and Stranger
- ↑ MAG 188: Centre of Attention
- ↑ MAG 195: Adrift
- ↑ MAG 148: Extended Surveillance
- ↑ MAG 142: Scrutiny
- ↑ MAG 116: The Show Must Go On
- ↑ MAG 140: The Movement of the Heavens
- ↑ MAG 195: Adrift
- ↑ MAG 106: A Matter Of Perspective
- ↑ MAG 88: Dig
- ↑ MAG 143: Heart of Darkness
- ↑ MAG 108: Monologue Was he… woOoOo?
- ↑ MAG 123: Web Development Rumor is a couple of researchers up on the third floor decided to ignore some of his new directives, and… whoosh.
- ↑ MAG 52: Exceptional Risk
- ↑ MAG 61: Hard Shoulder
- ↑ MAG 64: Burial Rites
- ↑ MAG 72: Takeaway
- ↑ MAG 73: Police Lights
- ↑ MAG 88: Dig
- ↑ MAG 91: The Coming Storm
- ↑ MAG 92: Nothing Beside Remains
- ↑ MAG 123: Web Development
- ↑ MAG 131: Flesh
- ↑ MAG 127: Remains to be Seen
- ↑ MAG 128: Heavy Goods
- ↑ MAG 133: Dead Horse
- ↑ MAG 135: Dark Matter
- ↑ Season 4 Q&A Part 2
- ↑ MAG 106: A Matter Of Perspective
- ↑ File: Basira Khan comment from Anil.jpeg
