Those bastards — the Anglicans are trying to appropriate Dr Who.
A conference of Church of England vicars watched a handful of episodes from the sci-fi series to study its religious parallels, particularly its themes of evil, resurrection and redemption.
Similarities between the Doctor and Christ, as well as whether the evil Daleks are capable of changing, were also examined.
“There are countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who, which we can use to get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to explain,” The Sunday Telegraph in Britain quoted Andrew Wooding, a spokesman for conference organising group Church Army, as saying.
Grrr. Be done with it and simply declare that Jesus was a Time Lord, OK?
They’re just jealous. The Doctor has come back from the dead 9 times. Their guy sorta managed it once, but he hasn’t really done anything since.
Poor Lalla.
I’d think that almost any sci-fi could be found to have appropriated a large number of religious themes, not just Xian ones.
In fact, it’s one of the things that sort of annoys me about sci-fi. I’ll take my myths straight, thank you, and weight them heavily toward the Greek.
I don’t really know what these religionists want to do with Dr. Who. But just about any literary analyst would note the religious themes snuck into sci-fi. The writers typically are not all that imaginative, after all, and couldn’t escape Western mythology if they even wanted to avoid using it.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
DO NOT BLASPHEME! EXTERMINATE!
Yup, Davies clearly wants it to be a religious program, which is why he’s going to have Dawkins on. Yup yup.
Several of Tennant’s lines this past season have actually been way anti-Christian in nature (unfortunately, I don’t remember any of them), which made me wonder a bit, since Tennant is a Christian himself.
I suggest that the Borg offer more appropriate symbolism.
that’s absurd. what do they hope to gain from that?
All of the bible miracles were performed by Time Lords. We’ve already discussed how the Ark used TARDIS technology. Well, so is everything else in there. Prophecy? Hello, time travelers? Plagues in Egypt? Holograms, for the most part, with some biotech mixed in here and there. The darkness was an orbital shield.
The reason no-one has found archaeological evidence of the wandering in Sinai is because they’re looking in the wrong strata. They escaped from Egypt in one era, and wandered in a very different one, perhaps the Eocene.
The thing is, both the Master and the Doctor performed actions that were mistaken by the ancient peoples as divine. Hence the strange inconsistencies and contradictions in God’s nature. The Master really does threaten people with unending torment; the Doctor says everyone will be OK as long as everyone is nice to one another.
And here I was, thinking that Jesus was a Highlander. Silly me.
So, these guys have made watching and discussing a nerd show part of their work description?
They rule.
I used to watch Stargate SG-1 before it completely jumped the shark, and I was always waiting for the “Jesus was an Ancient” storyline, which I thought was inevitable but unfortunately never happened. The technology of the Ancients (which was sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic) fit nearly every aspect of Jesus mythology perfectly.
I strongly suspect that the Stargate writers based the Ancients on the Jesus myths, and may have gone so far as to consciously think that Jesus was an Ancient within the Stargate universe, even if they never came right out and said it.
Or could it be that most of Christian mythology is plagiarized from earlier pagan and pantheistic tales? :)
Well, a lot of recent Who has been awfully religiousy. On TWOP a term often used is ‘SparklyJesusTen’ for those moments. I mean, come on – think of that triumphant scene on the Valiant, with the Doctor rising from the almost-dead, light shooting out from all around him, arms stretched straight out to his sides as he floats upward – that’s some serious appropriation of Christian symbols, there. Then there’s this season, where he appears in the smoke and destruction, gleaming with a big halo of light, swooping down to save a Pompeiian family from certain death, thereby causing them to build a shrine to the god of the TARDIS. And I’m not talking about the episode where he goes to meet Satan, because in my mind THAT EPISODE NEVER HAPPENED and no one can convince me otherwise.
And if you switch to the spin-offs, the Abbaddon thing in Torchwood was pretty Bibleicious in nature. Heck, Jack has been Jesus more times than anyone can count, what with the temporarily killed trick he can do and how he keeps dying to save humanity and all.
If the church is noticing Christian symbolism in the Whoniverse, it ain’t because they’re making things up.
Yes, folks, Christianity is the unforeseen result of a late night incident at a British Research Council lab which involved a particle accelerator, a tired post-doc and a hot cup of tea and which resulted in a portable DVD player, with the Season 3 Dr Who disk inside, being sent back in time to year 4 BC. The reputed appearance and disappearance of a Police Box outside the lab is wholly unrelated. The confused-looking gentleman wearing a bathrobe, holding a towel and asking if anyone had any tea is a totally different matter, of course.
I thought it had been previously established that Jesus was a vampire.
The actress in Doctor Who, Catherine Tate, is also a comedian. I highly recommend this YouTube video. The Doctor Who actor is an English teacher and Catherine Tate is his student. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxB1gB6K-2A
Jesus was a Highlander
They do say that there can only be one…
Well the current Archbishop of Canterbury did come out, before he was even the ABC but just the Archbishop of Wales, to say that the Simpsons was a religious parable. It was not, as some might expect, the Flanders family he held up as a model of Christian values but instead the Simpson family itself. He argued that despite Homer’s apparent lack of concern, his liking for beer and his lazy attitude he was at heart a decent man who cared for his family. He indicated he found Ned Flanders to be something of a prick.
I always rather like Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light, which neatly incorporated hindu legends/supernaturals into a story of sufficiently advanced magic… His Victorian England cthulhu-like story in A Night in the Lonesome October is also brilliant.
Tom Holt’s first(?) SF story, Expecting Someone Taller, had a fairly neat corruption of Norse mythology. He then recycled the basic plot numerous times, using different mythologies, but fortunately even he eventually got tired of the same old story and invented a new set of stories not built on mythologies.
I’m sure there are many other examples of non-abrahamic myths and legends “borrowed” for good (and bad) SF.
Two interesting attempts I vaguely recall which do use abrahamic stories was a novelisation of St Brendon’s voyage (I cannot recall the authour or title, and I didn’t particular like it (in fact, I don’t recall even finishing it!)); and another one built around Columbus’ first voyage—something along the lines of a magically-powered(?) ship carrying an assortment of characters including (for reasons I now cannot recall) some nuns from a Spanish(?) nunnery, sailing ahead of Columbus to save(? hide?) the last source of magic in the world. (Again, my memory on the author’s name and novel’s title fails me.) As I recall, it was quite well-written, and since the story was told from the viewpoint of one of the nuns, everything was viewed/told through the prism of her beliefs (and 15th century Spain).
The Turtle Moves!
Frickin’ morons. The thing they can’t figure out is that ALL of the values and symbols of Christianity are deeper in human history and human nature than their silly late-comer religion.
Those aren’t Christian symbols. They’re archetypes from stories that were probably shared around campfires since the first stirrings of language — a hundred times or more longer than that weenie Jesus Christ has been imagined.
But unfortunately, when your own little tribal stories are all you can be bothered to notice, EVERYTHING seems to be about YOU.
I’m under the impression, though, that Russel T. Davies is an atheist. Ah yes:
“[R]eligion is banned on Platform One. Yes, I’m deeply atheist. If they haven’t reached that point by the Year Five Billion, then I give up! When did the Doctor do that speech about believing in things that are invisible? It’s Episode 5, isn’t it? That’s another bit of atheism chucked in. That’s what I believe, so that’s what you’re going to get. Tough, really. To get rid of those so-called agendas, you’ve got to get rid of me.”
If you notice in fantasy literature, there aren’t many different themes. It all comes back to “the hero carries a heavy burden, supported by friends,” etc. That covers a lot of what’s out there, from the Odessy to the Wizard of Oz to Lord of the Rings to Star Wars to Harry Potter. Sometimes the friends place less of a role, like in the story of Jesus or Alice in Wonderland, but there are still enough similarities.
It’s no coincidence that Dr. Who or Harry Potter seem to have “christian themes.” It’s a common story.
Why does it matter if the Daleks can change? As we learned in PZ’s last blog post, God hates all sin, no matter how little. As long as they accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and go to confession after exterminating, they should have no problem getting to heaven.
Get behind me, Turlough!
“And if you switch to the spin-offs, the Abbaddon thing in Torchwood was pretty Bibleicious in nature.”
True, but they were also banging around the point in several episodes that there was practically nothing in the afterlife. I think Hank Fox hit the nail on the head. There’s nothing in Christianity that hasn’t been kicking around in other mythologies for millennia.
A Time Lord? No one reported hearing a whirr-whirrr sound at the crucifiction. Jesus is clearly an incarnation of Micheal Moorcock’s Eternal Champion.
If I take a dump and stare at it long enough, I too can draw parallels from of my poop.
Is it shaped like a question mark? Clearly it’s addressing the existential nature of good and evil!
Full circle? Hey, too easy. That’s the circle of life expressed through birth, death and re-birth.
Chunky bits? The Earth at Rapture +20 minutes.
Mellifluous diarrhea? An analogy of Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho.
Blows up the toilet? Sodom & Gomorrah.
Semi-digested corn? Clearly addressing the “leaders of the Seven Churches” from Revelations.
Why, I could probably go on for another foot…
This is the Church of England we’re talking about here. They’re wet as wet can be. They’re the sort of church that when faced with a challenging view, goes ‘oh, er, um’ like a geriatric Hugh Grant and opens a village fete.
Anyway, I’m not sure David Tennant is a Christian. His dad was a Presbyterian minister, but DT seems to be quite coy about the matter when asked: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/dec/11/bbc.broadcasting
It reads like someone who doesn’t want to offend his dad to me, and his roles don’t suggest someone with a strong religious faith. Presbyterians are not exactly down with homeosexuality; they’re like US fundies, minus the ‘fun’.
Moreover, he’s pretty skeptical too. There’s a radio show in the UK called chain reaction where the interviewee in one show becomes the interviewer in the next,. DT chose to interview Catherine Tate and royally ripped the piss out of the fact that she’s into astrology.
For all of the Christian touchpoints, it’s been explicitly stated the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and evolution is regularly cited positively. And let’s not forget Russell T Davies, the man ultimately responsible for Doctor Who’s current incarnation is very openly an atheist and likes playing with another man’s dangly bits.
Mind you, that’s precisely the sort of person they let in the Church of England these days.
I can’t believe no-one posted this link:
Home on the Strange
(and the next comic on continues the scene)
Well, darlings, this is a dastardly act indeed, but take heart. Listen to what it’s telling us: Christianity is so much on the ropes in Britain that they’re having to filch from Doctor Who in a sad attempt to lure younger believers in. Christianity, in fact, is less relevant in people’s lives than a science fiction show.
That actually just made my day. Oh, if I can only live long enough to see such times in America!
Dana, it is so in the UK, I am glad to report.
One Bishop has even had to resort to saying if too many people in the UK stop being Christian that means the Muslim fundamentalist will kill us all. Or something like that.
Heh, Joseph Campbell would have something to say about this.
One could say that the only difference between the writers of the Christian New Testament and the writers of Dr. Who is that for the former, we don’t know who they are but we know they had a political agenda, and for the latter, we DO know who they are, and their political agenda (if any) is a little less blunt. Ok, considerably less blunt.
Don’t forget that the previous Doctor, Christopher Ecclestone, played the second-come Jesus in a play by Russell T. Davies.
And anyway, Doctor Who is God – that’s a given (the final two-parter of series 3 proved that).
And anyway anyway, the Anglicans are always appropriating popular culture in an attempt to pretend they aren’t just the result of King Henry the Eighth’s lascivious proclivities….
Von Däniken approves!
/me goes clean his keyboard
Yeah, well. Honestly, RTD is to blame a little bit. Take “the satan pit”. Of all the representations of evil they could have chosen, they picked the judeo-christian one. Lame. (It did happen, Carlie. And I’ll never forget it). Not to mention the heavenly host on the Titanic. All that stuff.
On the other hand, people did complain about the heavenly host too. So, as long as they can’t decide whether it’s blasphemy or a witnessing tool, they’re not going anywhere…
Thing is, many of these allusions work only because people are vaguely familiar with christianity thanks to that religion’s influence in Europe’s history. I’m pretty sure that if the major religion had been something else in the past few centuries, that’s what Doctor Who writers would be alluding to. It’s literature. Influential literature. If you don’t know how to rip off old literature, you’ll have a hard time writing good fantasy (Tolkien did it right, and look what happened).
Attempting to turn Doctor Who into a witnessing tool, though, is a feeble attempt at best. If they cling to minor stuff like this, they might as well try to use half of all books written in Europe, ever. In the end, they’ll have to stick to the poorly-written crapola churned out by C.S. Lewis.
Although I am convinced that Rose Tyler is the Antichrist and the character’s banishment should be permanent. So there.
It’s of course a given that Xianity (and Judaism) mostly reworked inherited mythic material–for the same reasons that sci-fi does.
Most of all, if Xianity didn’t recapitulate Hellenistic myths (notably, the Dionysian ones), while at least echoing Jewish expectations, it would never have succeeded in converting many people. One simply has to play to one’s audience, thus one writes of familiar themes.
Xianity had one advantage over the Dionysian mythos, however, which was that Jesus was supposed to have been witnessed being alive, after having been dead. Oddly for a purported empirical affair, the resurrection myth is rather confused and contradictory–but at least it was supposed to be true, not just a pretty story.
Reworking known myths is always an important component to the success of a popular tale. The ones that really make a lot of money at it are the religions, though, Xianity, Islam, and Mormonism, to pick some of the prominent ones.
Reinterpreting science as ritual and dictate worked pretty well for L. Ron Hubbard, to consider an inventive inversion of the traditional sci-fi reinterpretation of religion as hoped-for science.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Jesus is clearly an incarnation of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion.
With the initials JC that makes him, like Jhary-a-Conel, the Eternal Sidekick.
I don’t watch Dr. Who any more, I can’t stomach it. All he is is a glorified tour guide anymore. There is no real science either, just magical science. The stories themselves are horribly grasping, pleading things, poorly written and poorly produced.
I suspect that there is a hidden agenda, it’s an attempt to prop up mysticism, magical thinking, through a popular show. Torchwood is just as bad.
Here’s a thought, how about a scientifically accurate character driven drama set sometime in the future? One that teaches a healthy skepticism towards received beliefs. It’ll never happen.
No.
NOnonononononono!
Dr. Who helped me become an atheist! There was always a scientific reason for bizarre phenomena and the Doctor ALWAYS encouraged questions.
They cannot have the Doctor. He stands for everything they despise: inquiry, independence and exploration. Not to mention humor and compassion.
But the two things the Doctor (at least the early ones) *hates* are superstition and close-mindedness.
I’ve considered Jesus might be a vampire, a schizophrenic, a meglamaniacal demigogue, an earnest social reformer, a terrorist, a myth, a clerical error, but I’ve never considered him a timelord. Neat idea.
Hmm, I won’t hold my breath waiting for the episode but if the Doctor ever regenerates after being cruxified along with two thieves in Judea, that’d be a *heck* of an episode. Tennant should have insisted on that in his contract.
Presbyterians are not exactly down with homeosexuality; they’re like US fundies, minus the ‘fun’.
That’s amusing to me, because in my little sect we used to think of Presbyterians as wanton heathen sinners in comparison to how you were supposed to act. Man, were we sheltered.
I suspect that there is a hidden agenda, it’s an attempt to prop up mysticism, magical thinking, through a popular show.
Whaa? Are we watching the same show? I see it as a paean to humanism most of the time, since the superwonderfulness of human spirit is usually what saves the day. Otherwise, all of the weird things turn out to have totally natural explanations within the context of the show. Sure, aliens, but nothing mystical. Aliens are just another life form, so explanations involving them are, well, natural. Torchwood skirts closer to the supernatural line with the ‘something’s coming in the dark’ business, but after the close of last season I’m not inclined to spend any energy on its defense anyway. (Damn you Torchwood for killing my Tosh!)
PaulJ, for the Eccleston thing were you thinking of The Second Coming? I didn’t see it, but I read an extensive recap and it sounded really interesting.
The thing about Christianity really being deep themes of humanity that have come up over and over – Christians don’t realize that. Most of them really have no clue that there are other, older myths and legends that have the exact same storylines, even the ones that have been through seminary and such who you would expect to know better.
Chuckle. More evidence of the desperation seeping in to the British religious establishment. When you co-opt some lightweight sci-fi in the hope of hooking a few more gullible bums for the benches, you know times are tough.
I sometimes feel a twinge of sympathy for the poor old duffers. That soon passes.
I always thought this was a stupid argument, especially since Russell T. Davies is not only an atheist, but openly gay as well. Pretty much any time you see a priest on screen in the new series, you know they’re going to turn out evil, look at the last episode with Agatha Christie. Instantly… I knew the priest done it. :)
Are you a lungfish, or is your skeleton altogether cartilaginous? Or have I just once again way underestimated individual variation?
~:-|
So it looks like being an Archbishop in England is no longer the career path it once was. What are they going to do when the shepherds in the pulpits (employees) outnumber the sheep in the pews (employers)?
Maybe they can put in some housing on their properties and get rent income. If they go with hereditary titles, it’ll be just like the old days. If they are really lucky, they’ll get to keep the tax free status.
You know, maybe atheism would now be more common in the US if there hadn’t been that separation of church and state idea.
That’s funny, I picked up on some pretty explicit religious references, symbolism, and imagery in the show as well. I actually found it kind of off-putting. There were several times in the new series (before I stopped watching the show, at any rate), where the Doctor specifically alluded to vaguely supernatural higher powers, and there was that whole episode predicated on the existence of a demonesque creature that was very classically devilish-looking. And let’s not forget the Doctor’s nearly constant references to the universe as “Creation,” which damn near drove me out of my skull.
The funny thing is, between the insistence on correct action and the emphasis on fixing things and making them right, I had interpreted the religious references as being aimed toward Judaism.
Alex, Dana made the point best. “Doctor Who” is a show that now never leaves the Top 20. They’re looking for a hook into the viewers of today. They’ll appropriate anything they bloody well can, if it’s more popular than their own stuff.
Remember, this is NOT the first time a UK church has tried this. Hit [ http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=65823&in_page_id=34 ], they tried to make the same crap fly in Cardiff.
[clip]
Fr Dean Atkins, youth officer with the Diocese of Llandaff and one of the organisers of the service, said: “The figure of Doctor Who is somebody who comes to save the world, almost a Messiah figure.
“In the series there are lots of references to salvation and the doctor being almost immortal. We are using the figure of Doctor Who as a parable of Christ.
“The language used in the series lends itself to exploring the Christian faith.”
He added: “Christ is a kind of cosmic figure as well if you like, somebody who does not travel through time but all eternity is found in him.
“He is a kind of encapsulation of the beginning and the end, in fact he existed before time began and he will exist when time ends.”
Parish priest Fr Ben Andrews said: “I love the series, and it has such a great following that we couldn’t resist doing something for young people on a Doctor Who theme.
“Lots of people think that young people are the future of the Church.
“This kind of event will show they are part of the church of the present and have an important part to play in its future. We are building on the past but always looking forward.”
[/clip]
Catta@35: Bad news, she’s coming back.
Woozy, Amy, Brenda: remember that Who is written by many, many people. That’s why the Third Doctor kept saying “there’s no such thing as magic” and then somebody wrote the Seventh Doctor as advising Ace to draw a chalk circle for protection (to be fair, it WAS a Merlin/Arthur story and he was supposed to become Merlin).
Cephus and everybody else who referred to Russell T. Davies – remember that Davies is LEAVING soon, to be replaced by Steven Moffat (the guy who wrote the acclaimed “Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”, “Blink”, “Girl In The Fireplace” and “Silence In The Library”). Anybody know what Moffatt’s theological leanings are? Looked, found nothing yet.
and there was that whole episode predicated on the existence of a demonesque creature that was very classically devilish-looking.
La la la la I CAN’T HEAR YOU IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.
Cripes. This reminds me of an interview I heard the other day where a theologist was saying that the “search for ultimate truth” as seen in Battlestar Galactica was a *Christian* value. Sure, nobody valued truth until Jesus came along.
#9
Mena, that would go against the doctrine of the Trinity. After all, there can be only one.
The angels in the Titanic episode had a good reason to be there – it was a Christmas special, so there had to be some Christmas imagery, and they’d already done Santa and Christmas trees in previous years.
There were also the weeping angels in Blink, which behaved even less like traditional angels. I’m not sure if Steven Moffat* was trying to put kids off angels for life, but that episode could well have had that effect.
Anyway, you’ve got to bear in mind that all the Who writers are products of the British education system, and Christianity is definitely not excluded from schools here. I expect they can’t help it seeping in.
* Who is a god, by the way. I’ve just been watching part one of his latest two-parter and I have not been as effectively creeped out, nor my mind as thoroughly screwed, since … oh, since Blink was on.
Aside from religion, Doctor Who (the new series, that is) has always struck me as having an underlying left-wing political bias. Not surprising really, given that Russell T Davies (the series creator) is an outspoken anti-war leftist, and David Tennant is an active member of the Labour Party.
If you’re interested in religious references in sci-fi, look at Battlestar Galactica. It’s packed with references to Greco-Roman mythology and also to Mormonism (“Kobol” is the home of the gods in Battlestar Galactica; “Kolob” is “the star nearest to the celestial residence of God” in Mormon cosmology derived from the Book of Abraham).
To Amy at #39: They cannot have the Doctor. He stands for everything they despise: inquiry, independence and exploration. Not to mention humor and compassion. – Believe me, we theists (at least the sane kind) don’t despise inquiry, independence and exploration, nor indeed humour and compassion. Indeed, compassion (in the form of charity etc) is a core value of most religions, to my knowledge. And just because Pat Robertson or Andrew Schlafly may not have much of a sense of humour doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t. :-) (As you can tell, I’m no more keen on fundamentalists than you are.)
Oh, and Doctor Who’s been ruined by the presence of Catherine Tate. :-(
I wonder if there were discussions like this all those years ago?:
“Those crazy Christians! Scheduling their prophet’s feast day at the same time as our Winter Solstice festival – who’s going to fall for that idea!?….”
@11-
Actually, there was an early-season ep in Stargate that put forth the implication that Jesus was a Goa’uld. There was another mention somewhere in season five, but I can’t place the reference…
At any rate, I don’t think they were ever brave enough to really follow up on it.
What they seem to be saying is on par with claiming that because Monty Python made Life of Brian they were obviously all Xians as well.
I’m not as familiar with the new Dr Who (I’ve seen a few episodes, including Blink, which is arguably one of the best episodes of any show, ever) but the old Dr Who had a number of stories that point out that whenever people (or non-human creatures) that were worshipping something as a god they were usually wrong – it was either aliens or the effect of a device of some kind which turned out to be either alien or advanced-human built.
Basically, a lot of it was pointing out that there wasn’t anything in the universe that wasn’t able to be explained via science – albeit some pretty wacky science. Kind of the exact opposite of what many Xians (esp. the US fundy kind) think.
Oh, and someone mentioned Lalla (Mrs Dawkins) Ward; don’t forget Douglas Adams (Dawkins’ good friend and ‘only convert’) was a writer and script editor. They aren’t many who could be described as ‘more’ atheist than DNA. I’d be tempted to punch anyone who dishonoured his name by claiming he held any religious beliefs.
>A conference of Church of England vicars watched a handful of episodes from the sci-fi series to study its religious parallels, particularly its themes of evil, resurrection and redemption.
because we ALL know those themes NEVER occur in any other religions at all and xianity certainly never cribbed from other religions- especially Judaism.
If you bugged out before the Ori arc, you missed them coming as close as they ever would to criticizing Jebus. Basically the Ori religion is evangelical Christianity on a crusade from another galaxy.
And Seasons 9 and 10 weren’t bad. It helps if you think of it as its own spinoff.
Works of fiction often share the same archetypes. Indeed, if I were to believe in a god, it would have to be quite a bit like the Doctor. However, the Doctor is always saying to use your mind, and not take anything at face value, and not to revere him. So even he says he’s not a god.
Am I the only one here who’s never seen Dr. Who, and who isn’t all that interested in SciFi?
Well I like SciFi but I find Dr. Who too convoluted. 10 different Doctors and all, they just won’t let it die.
Am I the only one here who’s never seen Dr. Who, and who isn’t all that interested in SciFi? – Posted by: MAJeff, OM
SciFi? Sir, your denegrate the medium with that label! You sicken me. ;)
Re:#15
“Beware the Vampire Jesus! He gave his blood for you — now he wants it back!”
Yep.
Sir, your denegrate the medium with that label!
Not label, abbreviation.
If it ain’t the Simpsons, it don’t matter :)
Grrr. Be done with it and simply declare that Jesus was a Time Lord, OK?
(cheerfully)
OK. Jesus was a Time Lord. And is a Time Lord. Or will be. That is the standard party line, after all. Though, I find that, right now, I often will be confused in the future about things that were, are and will be. Or so I seem to recall.
More directly, if Dr. Dawkins is married to a Time Lord’s former ‘companion’, how can he be sure she isn’t cheating on him, RIGHT NOW?
Zarquon @37:
Not necessarily. You also have Jeremiah Cornelius from the Cornelius Chronicles.
Of course Jesus was a Time Lord. He could multiply fishies, throw people into eternal torture, tell people they could move mountains and resist not evil and “anoint” their heads, and fly up in the cloudies like a birdie. Sounds like a Time Lord to me!
Christians have been appropriating other cultures’ mythologies since they started their racket. Nuttin’ new here.
But as a former Anglican, I do have certain fondness for the cult, so I don’t mind an injection or two of sci-fi into their thinking.
Memo to Anglican Church:
STOP TEABAGGING MY CHILDHOOD.
My apologies for the obscenity. Oh yeah. Tom Baker’s an atheist, too.
Moses @27…
One time my poop came out like an ampersand with an umlaut.
Should I stop eating that home cookin’, or just get a checkup?
@#56 Wowbagger —
This was also a fairly common theme in the original Star Trek series (Return of the Archons, The Apple, Who Mourns for Adonais, etc). Moral of the story: if you think it’s a God, chances are it’s really an alien/computer — and Prime Directive be damned, we should kill it!
Etha Williams (#71):
The same thing also happened in Star Trek: TNG now and again. “Devil’s Due”, the episode where a con woman claims to be an ancient supernatural being come to collect on the contract a whole planet effectively signed in blood, springs to mind. And, of course, Q was basically Puck writ large.
@#72 Blake Stacey —
I’d forgotten about Devil’s Due! There was also “Who Watches the Watchers,” in which that whole planet, which had been under discreet (and later not-so-discreet) anthropological observation, starts worshipping “The Picard” just because the Federation is so much more technologically advanced. Picard went on a rather good polemic against religion in that one, IIRC.
Walton@52:
IO9 did a quick study of the Doctor’s political activities: http://io9.com/338332/doctor-who-revolutionary-or-tool-of-the-man .
Turns out he’s arch-conservative in “the Present”. Anywhere outside “the Present” and on Earth, he’s much better at overthrowing governments.
[clip]
Also, the Doctor acted out way more during the Thatcher era than any other period. During the Blair/Gordon Brown eras, he’s been quite well-behaved.
[/clip]
Etha@71: Gene Roddenberry was an atheist too, if I recall correctly.
MAJeff: … I’m stunned, that’s so sad.
Dennis N: Wrong end of the stick. Other people want it dead, and they still fail to kill it.
Etha #71
I’m not very familiar with Star Trek, but the more I think about it the more I remember how common this theme is in Dr Who.
What I also recall is that quite often there beings who are posing as the agents of the ‘gods’, and they are eventually revealed as frauds and punished – or accidentally killed when it all goes wrong in some huge explosion.
Maybe there’s something in that for the church to consider…
@#74 Troff —
Yes, Gene Roddenberry was rather harsh on the subject of religion:
Also, GR on Judeo-Xian belief from a story-teller’s POV:
Aren’t we all forgetting there’s already a religion started by a sci-fi writer? A hack sci-fi writer, but a sci-fi writer nonetheless.
Stop trying to muscle in, Xians! If you’d started off claiming Jesus was an alien then perhaps Tom Cruise and co. would be pushing bibles and not e-meters.
Hmmm. And perhaps it’s just that Christianity/Gilgamesh/Harry Potter/etc. reflect some basic HUMAN mythos. You think?
Some folks here like to block it out, but I thought the ‘Satan Pit’ deliciously blasphemous. It’s one of my favourite stories (after all of Moffat’s scripts, of course). There was some interesting religious chat in there between the Doctor and Ida Scott. And the ‘Devil’ was portrayed as some ancient entity from before the creation of our universe (from the remnant of a previous universe?). The Doctor was quite agitated as he rationalized the physical existence of the beast while denying that it was supernatural. The episode suggested the creature’s malevolence psychically echoes across the universe and lives on in the race memories of many species. So long as you buy the notion of psychic power–an old SF trope–this is a great way of denying the Devil’s supernaturalism.
More offensive was the Messianic renewal of the Doctor at the end of last season, which was explained away with some psychic mumbo-jumbo, but still came down to people believing in Him.
The current Moffat story is superb, by the way. Lots of great ideas, and it has Talulah Riley (yum) and a Zombie called ‘Proper Dave’.
The person who dissed Cat Tate should take another look. I love her to bits. It’s nice to have a companion who can (a) act and (b) does not look cow-eyed at Tennant.
Oh, and my claim to fame is that David Tennant once played me in a Doctor Who audio play. No, really. Check out ‘Sympathy For the Devil’ at the Big Finish website.
http://www.bigfinish.com/2-Doctor-Who-Unbound-Sympathy-for-the-Devil
@ Carlie (#13)
Jack was buried at around the time of Jesus’s death (27 AD). WHY RUSSEL, WHYY. Stop hammering Jesus-Jack/Jesus-Doctor into our heads every season!
For an atheist, he’s too fond of incorporating Christian mythology even where it seems sorta pointless. Not that there aren’t places where such a thing can have very good points. That reminds me, I still haven’t seen his The Second Coming mini-drama.
@ Walton (#53)
Hey! No. She’s awesome. We FINALLY get a new-series companion who DOESN’T fancy the Doctor, and it’s long overdue!
Viva la non-romantic Friendship!
Rose – Loved the Doctor to bits, who also loved her.
(Reinette – Loved the doctor, who also loved her)
Jack – Loved the Doctor, who loved him only as a good friend (as far as we know, though there are plenty of slashers who claim I’m terribly wrong).
Martha – Loved the Doctor, who loved her only as a good friend.
(Kylie = Rose/Reinette #2. It’s official, Ten has a huge thing for blondes. God riddance, Kylie, alas. Never thought I’d be glad to get rid of her. Damn you, Russel!)
Whatshername in the latest episode – Obviously loves the doctor, who is clearly loved by the future doctor, however not conclusive whether the Doctor loves her in a romantic way or not (though seems pretty likely).
@ MAJeff (#60)
Technically, Dr Who is Sci-Fantasy. Like H2G2, only more schizo (ironically enough).
BTW – in the recent episode where the Doctor has a “daughter”, how many other people picked up on the reference that the world where it all happened was only seven days old?
Bit late to this thread but to blf #19: That story you describe sounds to me like the short story Sail on! Sail On! by Philip Jose Farmer.
#28. David Tennant’s dad wasn’t a Presbyterian (Wee Free) minister, he was Church of Scotland. His dad attends my mothers church and apparently DT has went along to a service with him (IIRC it was one of the Christmas ones). The CoS is a pretty liberal institution. The minister at my mothers church is a woman, who has been the minister there since 1979. She also seems to be vice-convener, which it appears means she is one of the top 4 people in the entire church organisation. While the Wee Frees are a joyless, illiberal kind of wrong, the CoS is a warm cuddly kind of wrong.
#28 & #83 Well the CoS ARE Presbyterians – Calvinist, run by Elders and the like. They just aren’t Paisleyite, hate spewing Presbyterians.
“And here I was, thinking that Jesus was a Highlander. Silly me”
Yes, but was he a Canadian Highlander?!
#21 (quoting Russell T.Davies talking about the attitude to religion on Doctor Who):
… which is what they’re doing:
I don’t believe the Beeb are getting rid of Rusty because of his agenda. Everything I have read indicates that this is a time-to-move-on thing. RTD has other projects he wants to do.
I’m also pleased that the Doctor finally has a companion that doesn’t fancy him, hooray for male/female friendships!
BUT I can’t abide Catherine Tate. Whoever said she can act needs their head examined. She constantly over acts and gurns her way through every screen, either shrieking her lines or using a stage whisper.
She is not funny. She cannot act. I am pleased she has left the library, let’s hope she stays left.
I, of course, meant scene.
The preview is my friend!
If it were really an agenda thing, then the BBC (or the relevant factions inside it) would have had to be ignorant of that agenda (or the extent of it) in advance of allowing Russell T.Davies to take over Doctor Who in the first place. Finding out the Steven Moffat “agenda” might clarify that.
Regardless, the religionists are lame in trying to suborn Doctor Who as a witness for their faith – as if that would make them look hip and trendy or less fantasy-based or something.
Of course Jesus was a timelord, was there ever any real doubt in anyones mind? He died, was ressurected, and the people who had known him had trouble recognizing him because of his ‘transfiguration’. The only question really is what timelord he was, obviously he was a rogue to interfere with events to such an extent, which narrows down the list of suspects substantially. I have found irrefutable evidence in the bible to back me up on my hypothesis.
Jesus is referred to by another name quite regularly by his desciples, albeit mostly behind his back.
John 11:28 And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.
If it were really an agenda thing, then the BBC (or the relevant factions inside it) would have had to be ignorant of that agenda (or the extent of it) in advance of allowing Russell T.Davies to take over Doctor Who in the first place.
Given that he was the creator of Queer As Folk, it would have been hard for them NOT to have known it. FWIW Who fandom has been run by a gay mafia for decades.
Not new, this appropriation of popular imagry. I believe that Harry Potter was condemned by the evangelical movement for witchcraft. obviously, (when Warner bros. used the cloisters at Durham (?) Cathedral). However, recently the Church of England published a pamphlet talking about the ‘Christian message’ of the boy wizard. I thought that the Potter books were just a good read about ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Pretty much the same message as Dr Who really?
or more ancient moral achetypes based on human nature?
Morality does not come from religion; religion enforces an already existing moral code with threat of eternal punishment.
I’d try more fiber first. Worked for me.
I think Tate is the best companion they’ve had yet in the new series. Love her.
Homosexual is one thing (and highly traditional in the theatre-based media). Mockery of religion is quite another.
The Anglican parish nearest my office actually has a Tardis on their billboard, with the opposite side declaring “Jesus: The Original Time Lord!”
Surely someone can sue the church over this ripoff?
I thought Jesus was ‘Lord of the Dance Settee’..?*
(* copyright Richard Herring)
This is old news. I can’t find the link right now, but a church in the U.K. tried to do the same thing a couple of years ago.
EXCOMMUNICATE! EXCOMMUNICATE! EXCOMMUNICATE!
Noting that there might be some echoes of Christian symbolism in a TV show produced in the Western world is about as remarkable as noting the similarities between the Lincoln Memorial and the Parthenon. Even if you explicitly reject Christianity, its cultural influence is pervasive.
Thank you Pope Davros, you have made me spit chocolate biscuit crumbs all over the PC.
Thank you VERY, VERY much. Git!
While reasonable people can disagree on whether or not Jesus was a Time Lord, I think no one will dispute the biblical account of Judas Maccabeus and his righteous smiting of the Silurians.
There was this one less than a year ago.
#27: An ampersand with an umlaut – that just sounds so wrong. Sort of like some kind of gross literary perversion, or perhaps a new kind of masochistic avant-garde poetry. Now you’ve got me wondering how to pronounce it…
Oops, #70, not #27.
Oh, Maxi #88: At last someone who agrees with me about Tate! She’s just another reason for me NOT to watch Dr. Who. I gave up on it back when they introduced that ridiculous toaster-on-wheels called K9. Sounds like it has gone from bad to worse.
Elwood@82: No, it’s not Sail On! Sail On!
As I recall, the authour was a woman. And the story did not have wireless and the Earth was not flat. It’s not Farmer’s story.
As far as I can recall, except for the addition of some magic (including something in a basket I recall as being a djini), it was very much 15th century and a quite plausible portrait of the world as seen through the eyes of an educated nun of the time. She could write, and the book was basically the “logbook” of the journey, as kept (mostly) by the nun. And it was, as far as I can recall, extremely well written (albeit short), far better than anything I can recall of Farmer’s.
Are you kidding me? Because the Doctor held his arms out at a particular angle, that’s a symbolic reference to Christianity?
For crying out loud, they did it that way because that’s how the director wanted it to look. It’s not some reference to something that had nothing to do with trying to rid the world of post-apocalyptic zombie robots.
Even when it’s referred to religion Dr. Who has done it in a way that implies that the religion’s myths sprang from some weird but real phenomenon, not that this was somehow proof the religion was right.
Douglas Adams, another moderately famous atheist, was a writer for Dr. Who for a while. Wonder what he’d have to say about all this?
Are you kidding me? Because the Doctor held his arms out at a particular angle, that’s a symbolic reference to Christianity?
Can you honestly, with a straight face, say there’s no ghosts of Christian symbolism in a man rising from the almost-dead, arms outstretched, light glowing off of his newly-resurrected body, coming back to save the entire planet because everyone is believing in him and chanting his name at the same time with their eyes closed and faces upturned to the sky where he currently resides? It’s the crucifiction, resurrection, and ascent into Heaven in one fell swoop.
I gotta side with Carlie on that one. I saw that episode too, and once the “chanting” started, I sure got that ye-olde-tyme religion feeling.
OTOH, it also reminded me of Peter Pan.
er, not that I’m sure one couldn’t make religious analogies of that story line too.
There’s a fantastic Philip K. Dick story about a time traveler who is dispatched back in time to kill a Christ-like figure before this person becomes the Christ-like figure. The assassin ends up arriving three days after the Christ-like figure is “crucified,” much to the amazement of the local populace, who cannot believe his presence. Correcting his error, he travels back further in time, landing several months before the assassination, and in the course of the story ends up becoming the very Christ-like figure he was sent to assassinate. He is himself crucified, and his past self turns up three days later, appearing to the populace to have “risen.”
I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the story (somebody help me…I looked for it everywhere!). In any case, it proves that Jesus was a Time Lord.
Oh yeah. Tom Baker’s an atheist, too.
Yes, but he’s a former monk. I once directed him for a voice session in a Warhammer 40K video game that I was making. Hero that he is of mine, that was a VERY long hour in the studio. And amidst all the sturm und drang of dealing with Tom when he’s bored and out for some fun at someone else’s expense, he made some comments that indicated his Catholicism hadn’t completely left him…
defectiverobot @#112:
I haven’t read the story in question, but the title “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch” comes to mind.
And of course Jesus was a Time Lord. Because Haruhi Suzumiya is Jesus and Haruhi Suzumiya is a Time Lord (see transitive property). Or maybe it’s Kyon. In any case, they just don’t know it.
Hey, if you’re gonna look for insane interpretations of fiction, that site’s the perfect place to go. :P
No.
Except that Protestants don’t accept 1 and 2 Maccabees as parts of the Bible. (Let alone 3 and 4, which hardly anyone accepts as canonical.)