Dr Who?

Is there some subversive Christian working behind the scenes at Dr Who?

Friends have been emailing me about the messianic overtones to the latest Dr Who two-parter. It is also being blogged about. As a child, this programme terrified me with its realistic monsters. I now realise the most frightening episode, where Dr Who was about to be engulfed by a bubble life form, was probably created with washing up liquid. I've never really liked doing the washing up since. The series now has moved into another dimension. Television script writers seem to have cottoned on at last to the power of religion, of the eternal themes of darkness and light. The same thing is happening in Power Rangers with its "mystic force". Or maybe it is just that all the illiberally liberal hippies from the 1960s have taken early but overdue retirement and moved on at last.

This is what one friend wrote to me this morning about the second part which saw the Doctor confronting his ultimate enemy, The Master, played by John Simm.

'At the end of the first part, it looks like it's all up for the Doctor. The Master has him in his power, and has taken over the world. In capturing the Doctor he has taken away (some of) his powers of regeneration, and so the Doctor now looks like an ancient man. Martha, his companion, escapes -- we know not where.

'So now it's a year later, and the whole world is under the Master's dominion and about to be completely destroyed. The Master further attacks the Doctor, removing all his powers of regeneration in an attempt to kill him -- though he doesn't, and the Doctor becomes a tiny, ancient, powerless creature kept in a cage. But after a year of walking the Earth and becoming a legend for doing so -- Martha returns. The legend is that she has gone in search of the only weapon that can kill the Master, which the Doctor had told her about (The Master is, like the Doctor, a Timelord, the only other surviving one).

'And indeed she has weapon -- which the Master is able to destroy, laughing gleefully and about to execute Martha in front of the Doctor, his wee wizened caged self. But then Martha laughs -- Master discomfited -- and she explains that of course! the Doctor would never ask her to kill anyone or anything! She was not searching for a weapon -- that was the decoy story. She was walking the Earth telling everyone she met, the whole human race, about the Doctor, about how he had saved them over and over again and they had never known it... and he wanted no thanks, not ever. (You see flashbacks of her, spreading the gospel of the Doctor to the downtrodden human race.) But only now, they could save him -- if they all at the same moment (there's a countdown to the end of the world going on) think "the Doctor" he will regain his strength.

'And lo, it comes to pass, he is reborn as all the world believes in him at the same moment, and in a cloud of light he approaches the cowering Master and says, I think you know what I am going to do. The Master does not, and is afraid, you betcha. And so the Doctor... takes him in his arms as he kneels before him and says, "I forgive you."

'I mean... it's not just me, right? Our Nanny, who is a Who fan like us and also, as it happens, an evengelical Christian, was completely thrilled and bowled over. I just thought it was incredibly striking.'

Was this subtle evangelisation or simply plagiarism of a good 2,000-year-old storyline? Just what is happening at the Beeb? Anyone out there have a clue?

Caitlin Moran has written a nice review of the series for The Times. Meanwhile, Rick Lyons has written this useful factfile, running now on PA:

The Timelord will have two assistants in the new series on Doctor Who, it has been announced.
:: The first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast on BBC 1 on November 23, 1963.
:: Ten actors have played Doctor Who, beginning with William Hartnell and ending with the current Doctor, David Tennant.
:: The longest serving Doctor was Tom Baker who played the part from June 1974 to March 1981.
:: The series was axed December 1989 and was not revived until 2005 when Christopher Ecclestone was unveiled as the new Doctor.
:: In 1996 a one-off Doctor Who film was broadcast on television. Starring Paul McGann, it was intended as a pilot for a new American-produced Doctor Who series. Although a ratings winner in the UK, it flopped in the US so no new series was made until the revival in 2005.
:: The Doctor Who theme tune, composed by Ron Grainer, was the first television theme tune in the world to be realised entirely through electronic means.
:: The original theme served, with minor edits, as the theme tune up to 1980.
:: The programme is listed by the Guinness World Records as the longest-running science fiction television series in the world.
:: The Daleks - mutated organisms integrated with a tank-like mechanical casing made of “dalekanium” - were created by writer Terry Nation and BBC designer Raymond Cusick and introduced in December 1963.
:: Other notable adversaries of the Doctor include the Autons, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Zygons, the Sea Devils, the Silurians, the Ice Warriors, the Wirrn, the Yeti, the Slitheen, and a Time Lord with a thirst for universal conquest known as the Master.
:: John Cleese, Martin Clunes, Leslie Grantham, Alexei Sayle, Windsor Davies, Peter Sallis and Richard Briers have all appeared in Doctor Who.
:: The show won a BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series in 2006.
:: TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

Comments

[Tom]

Yes, definitely - even I as a fully paid up atheist got the references...

[Peter O]

Forget the theology, it's the song and dance number that should be under discussion...

http://www.peter-ould.net/2007/07/02/i-cant-decide/

[Chris Gillibrand]

Interestingly, the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry used the storylines to propagate his own unabashed but not that militant humanism, and eschewed any cross-references to Christian salvation history. The "trek" was a reference to American pioneers not a pilgrimage in any sense.

Perhaps, this was responsible for the long run, not so much of Star Trek, the classic series having relatively few episodes but the spin-offs. I seem to remember that this was Roddenberry's own view.

For those that wish to know more detail, I found a this analysis after a few minutes searching on the internet.

[John]

Nah, we reckoned that it was a Peter Pan reference - the scene where everyone has to believe in Tinkerbell and she comes back to life. I mean, the Doctor even looked like a fairy while he was all glowy and floating!

Terrible episode - classic RT Davies. "Triumph of the Human Spirit" and all that. The climax of a series that requires a gimmick that came completely out of the blue, no foreshadowing at all? Sad, really, because John Simm could have been an excellent Master (Derek Jacobi was excellent, really creepy). It was just a shame that, instead of being truly evil, he was demoted to being merely mad and misguided. The Master always stood for the conscious choice to do evil. Of all the Doctor's enemies, he was the one who was evil simply because he chose to be. The Daleks were made the way they were, the cyberman had lost all humanity, most others were alien. But the Master could have been as good as the Doctor but chose not to be.

There's your "good and evil"!

pax et bonum

[Doug Chaplin]

Ruth, on an earlier episode (where the Doctor becomes human) Mark Goodacre (on the NTGateway commented that it looked awfully like the ideas were borrowed from christology. The screenwriter left a comment on the blog saying he wondered if anyone would spot it, and that it was indeed part of his thinking. That's all very interesting because Russell Davies has proclaimed his atheism on a number of occasions

(rg writes: do you have a link to that by any chance? ruth)

[Chris Davies]

Not wishing to be too much of a fact-floozy, but it was actually a three-parter, not two.

[Bartholomew]

I thought the messianic overtones were clunky, rather than subtle - especially as we'd had exactly the same thing during the finale of Torchwood.

Also of interest: this essay on the connections between the original Battlestar Galactica and Mormonism.

[Roger Pearse]

I think this is all a bit excitable. All of us know about the struggle between good and evil, and it takes most of these sorts of forms.

What is remarkable is that the BBC hasn't decided that the Master is a victimised minority and that the Doctor is the real baddie.

[Bodmass]

For me It was merely a tinkerbell moment for the kids.

I suppose you can see whatever you want to see.

The only god I noticed was the Deus ex machina floating Dr (so like the god flying in a machine of ancient Greek theatre that it had to be a deliberate two fingers to those who complained about the previous D.E.M. type series endings)

[Steve G]

Er, sorry to disappoint you, but Russell T Davies - the writer of the episode and the executive producer of the series - is, by his own admission, "deeply atheist." He wrote The Second Coming, saying that, "I got The Second Coming on to ITV, about the return of the son of God, at the end of which God was killed and atheism conquered the world." So the notion that he might be engaging in "subtle evangelisation" is laughable. The Doctor's a secular Messiah - sorry!

[Ben]

Surely the point was the power of humans, a central part of the programme? God wasn't mentioned and as he never died it was not what Jesus 'did' either.

[Ide Cyan]

"The Doctor Who theme tune, composed by Ron Grainer, was the first television theme tune in the world to be realised entirely through electronic means."

And this was done by Delia Derbyshire.

[Conor Lavelle]

As Star Trek was brought up.

http://www.friesian.com/trek.htm

[Chuck]

Let's see, actual Islamic terrorists have vowed to destroy western civilization, are attempting to kill innocent Londoners, and people are worrying about Christian overtones in Dr. Who?

The rest of the battle should be a cakewalk for the terrorists.

[saint]

Ruth- the link to Mark Goodacre's item about Dr Who (with the writer's comment) is here.

The writer of that episonde (Paul Cornell who blogs here) said he had an expert on hand: his wife is a theologian!