Doctor Who and Prayer

Over at Theology for Nerds (which is my name for the Promised Land prophesied of old, incidentally), they have some great thoughts on the good Doctor and how it functions as a very usable metaphor for the Christian life. I especially like how they remind us to think of Christ as a person, an endlessly interesting human being, and not just an abstract God-beyond-the-veil. The transcendent deity of Christ must of course not be forgotten, but we on the more traditional side of Christianity do tend to collapse the human into the divine and thus actually do harm to our vision of Christ. He became a human so that we could see the Word manifest in the flesh, as a person, with all that involves excepting sin. To think of Jesus as a stern and implacable judge gets one side of His nature, but misses the wonderful tenderness, humor, companionship, and joy that is communicated through His perfect humanity.

Enough commentary, go read their post, it's an interesting one. And while we're at it, let us know how the humanity of Christ has impacted you or your understanding of redemption and the Christian life. It would be wonderful to get other's thoughts into this discussion.

It's Almost Here...

     We have been talking about the intersection of Christianity and Doctor Who for several months now, partly as a larger project, but centrally to promote the book "Bigger On the Inside: Christianity and Doctor Who." Well, the time is nigh. In a weeks time, the official book release party is hitting Lancaster, PA, at The Trust Performing Arts Center. This is sure to be a fantastic event, complete with a book giveaway, and centrally, a lecture by senior editor Dr. Greg Thornbury.

     Come down on Thursday, March 26th, at 7:30, and meet fellow Whovians, several of the authors, and our esteemed editors. Make sure to put on your best Doctor Who threads, as the best costume will win that free book copy. Don't worry; you will not be the only one dressed up, and even if you are, you'll look smashing.

Buy tickets here: http://www.lancastertrust.com/event/trust-conversation-greg-thornbury/ Hope you can make it!

     This has been a great project, and I know our editors and various authors have enjoyed making these connections between this wonderful and remarkably popular TV show and our shared Christian faith. We hope you will buy the book, and continue to visit this site, as we will be continuing the wibbly-wobbly conversation here as long as Doctor Who keeps delivering the grand adventures we all enjoy.

Lenten Link

     Having been pointed to this blog, I have been perusing it and taking in many of the wonderful theological interactions with Doctor Who. I recently read this post: "Flatline: a Reflection on Identity." We are in Lent on the Church calendar, which is a time of repentance and self-evaluation, as well as a time to more consciously practice our virtues. I thought this post gave a wonderful exposition of self-examination, and of the necessity of thoughtful reflection on our actions.

     What sets us apart from the animals and machines is our ability to examine ourselves, to consider what we have done and why we have done it, and to grapple with the consequences. As we lose that ability we become less human. This post examines that, and the blog as a whole is quite excellent. I commend it to our readers as a great example of what we are trying to do, with our forthcoming book (March 26th!) and with this blog.

Childhood's End

     This post will be a bit of a "cross-over episode," as Leonard Nimoy died today at 83. I was saddened by this. Growing up, Star Trek was a companion, a show that formed my imagination, taught me certain values, and gave me some of my first fictional role models. Nimoy, in the television series and the feature films, was always the highlight for me. Spock was a character who was supposed to be alien, but always conveyed a certain wonderful humanity. And so a childhood hero died today.

     Death occupies my thoughts frequently, not just today. Not, I hope, in a morbid way, but because I think it is important for a person to consider their mortality, and let that shape how they live their lives day-to-day. I will die someday, so I ought to live in a particular way right now, keeping that before my eyes. But my senses tend to be dull, as many do, and so I usually forget, and place death in my pocket. When someone dies, someone whose death will affect me in some way, it is always a moment where death stands before me again, and it refreshes my memory: ah, I will die someday.

     So, to tie this in to the hero of this blog, the good Doctor. This is a series that gets to cheat a bit. The protagonist changes actors every few years, "regenerating" into the next incarnation. The obvious reason is that it allows the show to continue on for as long as the ratings are good, because it is not tied to the willingness of an actor to play the character for years upon years. Different people have different Doctor's as their favorites, but when the consistency of the actors remains good (as it has in the reboot series, I think), it is hard not to be attached to all of them. It is sad to see your favorite go (let's here it for the Tenth Doctor!), but it's okay, because it also gives a feeling of expectation, the joyful anticipation of seeing what this next actor will bring to the role. The resurrection of the Doctor is a wonderful thing, as well as sad.

     Spock got to come back from the dead once (Star III: The Search for Spock). Leonard Nimoy will not. He was, for my money, a fabulous actor who played a role well. He's also played other roles well, but none like Spock. Sadness over the loss of a person, whether known personally, or who influenced our lives through their vocations, is normal. Doctor Who gives us another way to think of death, though, one that is filled with more hope. With death comes sadness, but a sadness that then becomes something new, adventurous, a mystery to unravel, an expectation to fill. After death, there is new life.


     As we face our deaths, which will come to each one of us, we don't have to stop with sadness. It doesn't have to be an experience of total fear, or resigned desperation. Our death, as Christians, as ones who will receive a resurrection of our own, is a future of anticipation and mystery, of joy and discovery, of something inexpressibly wonderful. So while the visage of death, having taken Mr. Nimoy, reminds me that I have reached my childhood's end and can no longer ignore my mortality, the fear of death gives way to the hope of eternal life, and sadness gives way to something new. Maybe the question to ask when we approach our deaths ought to be, with hopeful expectation and curious expressions, "What's next?"

Rest in Peace, Leonard Nimoy. And to all the rest, Live Long and Prosper.

Time as Memory

"What then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled." -St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, XI.14

     Only one post in January...let's blame the intricacies of time, or Daleks, or something. Anyway, some ideas have been brewing on a Christian view of time in my insufficient mind. Rather than start describing time abstractly, I thought I would begin by discussion how we perceive time, or experience time. Often a subject is best approached starting with what we know, so here goes.

     I thought I would start with one of the first truly timey-wimey episodes, "Father's Day."This episode falls right in Series 1 of the reboot, starring the inimitable and underrated Christopher Eccleston, whose only crime was to be followed by David Tennant. I digress. The premise of the episode revolves around his Companion, Rose, who never met her father, as he was hit and killed by a car in 1987. Rose, wanting to see her father, convinces the Doctor to take her back to the day he was killed (why that day I have not been able to wrap my head around, however!). No doubt overwhelmed by the sight of her father, whom she never knew, Rose prevents his death. This of course creates problems of the timey-wimey variety, as the timeline has now been changed. It opens a rift of some kind, and creatures (fairly cheesy ones, but they aren't really the point) terrorize those in the area.

     What I would like to reflect on in regards to this episode is the desire for Rose to see her father. It isn't the logical paradox or physical possibilities of this episode that interest me, thought they are interesting, but the simple desire for memory. In Saint Augustine's Confessions, later in the book he talks about time from human perspective. He points out that time consists of three different aspects: past, present, and future. They have a very complex relationship to one another, which gives us some interesting grist for the mill. The present, as we know it, immediately turns into the past. The present also exists looking towards our potentialities, our future. So far, so good. The way St. Augustine puts it, "...the mind...performs three functions, those of expectation, attention, and memory." The present requires our attention, the past is brought back by memory, and the future exists in our expectation.

     Well, lots there to think about. But what I find interesting in relation to this episode is the importance of our memory. Our present has been formed by our past, and our present also looks forward to our future. Both present and future are, then, driven by the past. What should immediately stop us in our tracks, however, is recognizing how little of our past we actually were in control of. Our birth, our childhood, our parents, all out of our control. Even the death of loved ones, out of our control. The death of Rose's father, out of her control. She has no real memory of him, only a picture. She cannot use her memory to experience her father in the present, as I can with my grandfather who died some ten years ago. There is no voice, no face, no shared experiences to make the loss a bit more bearable. Only a void, filled by a photograph.

     So that's the point of the episode. Filling the void, creating a memory, however fleeting and superficial. Because our past makes us who we are. Rose has an opportunity here to fill that void, and establish a memory that can place her father always in her present. But of course, she goes too far. She tries to change it, so that her entire past can be rewritten. At the end of the episode, she ultimately gets what she is looking for. Her mother Jackie says, "People say there was this girl, and she sat with Pete while he was dying. She held his hand. Then she was gone. Never found out who she was." Rose creates a better past, and now has a memory. "Peter Alan Tyler, my dad. The most wonderful man in the world. Died the 7th of November, 1987." For you and I, there is no way to go back and create a memory, once the past is gone. Or is there?

     As we approach Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Easter following, I consider: what are we doing on feast days such as this? We are remembering. Somehow, we are to recreate the past, re-experience the acts of God in the world. It is a form of sacred memory, a past that forms us even though it lies far beyond our experience. Somehow, perhaps there is a way that we get to cheat time, to be formed that which we never knew? Maybe we aren't quite so different from Rose after all.

Questions & Answers: What Hath Christianity to do with Science Fiction?

     I have had conversations with friends about the sort of project we are doing here, connecting science-fiction to Christian ideas, that have gotten the raised-eyebrow response. Science-fiction, they point out, is largely a secular and religion-free genre, wanting little to nothing to do with ideas about God or religion. So why, then, are we trying to get these two things to talk to each other? What do we expect to achieve? There are two ways in which this conversation is, I think, productive; in the questions and in the answers.

     First, we have to consider the questions they are asking. Science-fiction is, I think it is uncontroversial to say, primarily concerned with asking what it means to be human. In almost every example I can think of, the genre asks what happens to us in our future and what does that tell us about ourselves now? The Christian faith is of course also concerned with these questions. Who we are, where we are going, and how we get there are questions that concern every human being. Science-fiction has been called one of the last places where we can find the "novel of ideas," the story that engages with large, difficult questions, that we all as a race continue to struggle with.

     This I think is very important. As a Christian, I am interested in the answers to these questions. But I am not only concerned with how the Christian faith has attempted to answer them. It is instructive and important to recognize how others have done so as well. It isn't just in novels that we find interesting science-fiction asking interesting ideas, but also in film. Doctor Who wonders at what it means to be a human being, despite the Doctor's alien origin. To choose just one example, consider what happens when the Doctor regenerates. We get someone who is at once the same person, yet in disposition and personality distinct. Of course this began merely as a function of the show in order to keep it running past the actors who play the role, but in the reboot series they have begun exploring what it would mean to the human person to be changed in this way. What is it that makes me, me? What is the essence of the Doctor that transcends the bodies he inhabits? What is it that makes a person an unique individual? I hope to explore this question in later posts, but for now, I merely want to point out the question, and hopefully it should be obvious how the question of an individual's essential attributes or characteristics is an important one.

     While the questions are the same, the answers are quite often different, if they are given at all. Usually the metaphysical or truth of a religion are kept mysterious at best, irrelevant or deniable at worst, in science-fiction. But they still desire to give us answers to significant questions about personhood, time, the end of creation, or human advancement and evolution. Engaging these philosophical ideas from the perspective of a somewhat believable future is very helpful to anyone. Science-fiction has the advantage (or sometimes disadvantage) over mere fantasy of trying its best to root its ideas in plausible or at least imaginable futures. The question of personhood, for example, can be explored in reference to androids or holograms. Can artificial beings like this be considered human? What is essential to personhood? As we enter a brave new world of technologies most of us cannot begin to understand, these will quickly start to become less theoretical and more real ethical questions. By "jumping ahead," science-fiction gives us a place to start answering even theological questions. Doctor Who is, again, no exception, exploring many fascinating questions of human nature, time, social issues, and yes even religion.

     The medieval age saw western Europe creating massive stone churches, the Gothic cathedral, magnificent monuments or architectural genius, aesthetic beauty, and human imagination. Some theologians of the time, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, were said to have created cathedrals of the mind, systems of philosophical thought that sought to answer with clarity, power, and even beauty the most pressing questions that faced humanity. I would argue that Doctor Who is one room in the monolith of science and science-fiction that seeks to do the same sort of thing, though perhaps cathedral is not the right word for their building. The buildings may end up being different, and we may know at the end of the day that one is a much better choice to live in, but that does not mean that we can't appreciate the other for its beauty. Who knows, by listening to science-fiction, maybe we'll actually learn how to ask better questions ourselves.

Old English and New English: The Doctor and The Wanderer

Often the solitary one
finds grace for himself
the mercy of the Lord,

©Doctor Who/BBC

Although he sorry-hearted,
must for a long time
move by hand [row]
along the waterways,
(along) the ice-cold sea,
tread the path of exile.
Events always go as they must!
 …Often I had alone
to speak of my trouble
each morning before dawn.
There is none now living
to whom I dare
clearly speak
of my innermost thoughts… 

So begins the Old English poem, The Wanderer. The poem captures in just over a hundred lines a deep sense of regret, loss, loneliness, and longing. It is spoken in first person by a warrior who has lost his lord and all of his companions, all defeated in battle and slain. He now plies his oars on the seas, seemingly without goal or purpose. He is rootless, alone, with no one to whom he can speak of his "innermost thoughts."

     To those familiar with "Doctor Who," this is a familiar story. We find out right away in the reboot series that the Doctor has recently survived the ravages of the Time War, a conflict between his fellow Time Lords of Gallifrey and the ever-present Daleks. This has set him on a course of wandering himself, navigating the seas of the sun in the TARDIS, treading "the path of exile." What happened to the Wanderer has also happened to the Doctor: he is "mindful of hardships, of fierce slaughters, and the downfall of kinsmen." Both can say, "bereft of my homeland, far from my noble kinsmen." Both of these are tragic stories, and in the case of the Doctor, perhaps more so. It is revealed that he had a key part in ending the war, but one that required that he sacrifice his own home planet as well.

     This is a compelling connection, to my mind. Both the poem and the television show reflect on what it means to be a survivor, to be exiled into the world without kin or homeland. But it wasn't always this way: the sense of the Doctor we get from the original series is a being who is more elevated above his human companions. He is their guide, the teacher with his disciples, leading them into higher knowledge. But this Doctor has far less confidence in the reboot. This is a Doctor who has survived a great war, but who is now alone. He knows "how cruel is sorrow as a companion to the one who has few beloved friends." The Doctor has been shaken by his loss, and is cut off from his moorings. He wandered before, but not it is now not voluntary, but an enforced exile. Without his people, without a home, who is he?

     The Doctor, of course, has his Companions. But they are only ever temporary friends. Like us, some move on, and some die, but nothing ever remains the same. This is all due to one irreducible fact of life: fate. In the Wanderer, he recognizes that "Events always go as they must!" He is subject to that Old English concept of "wyrd." Most closely akin to fate, this is much like the sea, an unpredictable, uncontrollable, and seemingly impersonal entity. In "Doctor Who," this is very close to how Time is presented. It is an impersonal force, that allows for freedom of choice, but only within the limits of fixed points that even the great Doctor can't change. The feature-length special "The Waters of Mars" illustrates this powerfully, where the Doctor attempts to change what is a fixed point. The Doctor does change the way events play out by his interference, but is ultimately unable to change the end result. Fate, or Time, has cast the Doctor and the Wanderer out into the world, and unmercifully leaves them there.

     The similarities are fascinating, and more importantly, applicable to the Christian. The Wanderer ends on a hopeful note, however sorrow-tinged: "Good is he who keeps his faith, And a warrior must never speak his grief of his breast too quickly...It is better for the one who seeks mercy, consolation from the father in the heavens. where, for us, all permanence rests." Like the Wanderer, we as Christians live in wandering, never quite feeling as if we are at home. Despite even the closest friends we may meet along the way, human beings never can quite shake the feeling of loneliness. We are not home, and we often feel terribly alone. The Doctor hopes that he might someday see his people again; in the final Christmas special with Matt Smith, "The Time of the Doctor," we find out that Gallifrey still exists, but outside our universe. His promised land exists. So does ours, and we share it with the Wanderer. All permanence rests in that place, with our Father in heaven. But there is an important difference: for the Doctor and the Wanderer, they are subject to fate, an impersonal force to whose whims they fall victim. In contrast, the Christian faith teaches the providence of a personal God, who seeks our ultimate good and provides for our need. Ultimately, our identity is wrapped up in our destination, and until we get there, here we wander, but we can trust that as we do a good and powerful God lights our way and guides our feet.