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tree_and_leafIf RTD thinks that we're better off without God, does that explain some of the problems with his Lonely God conception of the Doctor?
Last night's sermon, anyway, was on the Second Coming (which I've also more or less got to preach on in two weeks, unless I can think of something theologically interesting and pastorally appropriate to say about the whore of Babylon, which frankly I doubt), and the chaplain talked about two treatments of the theme in fiction, one of which was Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor", and the other was RTD's The Second Coming. I haven't yet seen the latter - I'm going to try to track it down over the weekend - but the way he described the latter, rather strengthened by what I've found on the net, made me wonder if there isn't a connection between RTD's tendency to associate (slightly odd) Christological imagery with the Doctor; the devastation Nu Who's Doctor tends to leave in his wake; and the treatment of religion and God in The Second Coming?
Davies' Second Coming is intended as a critique of religion; in the story, this is played out by having Christ be born again as a fairly ordinary Mancunian bloke called Steve*, who doesn't realise that he is in fact the Son of God until he gets lost for forty days on Saddleworth Moor (I know the Pennines can be a bit hard to navigate your way around, but all the same, forty days is a minor miracle in itself). He performs various miracles, and gathers a following, but eventually his girlfriend Jude convinces him that he - being God - needs to die, and not return, so that the earth can be freed from religion, the source of conflict and evil in the world, and get on with loving each other here and now (ironically, Christ's message, 'repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand' carries exactly the same moral imperative, though - as the parable of the Grand Inquisitor shows - the radical consequences of that tends to make the church as an institution scared and queasy). Steve realises that this is God's will, and that he has come back so that God can really die.
God, then, says The Second Coming, has to die if we are going to be properly human.
Now, like a lot of fans, I've been a bit bothered about the way RTD and co portray the Doctor - particularly the way that he is shown as, on the one hand, irresistible, and on the other hand, as wrecking the lives of everyone he touches more than superficially - Donna had to totally forget him to survive; Davros accuses the Doctor of turning his friends into soldiers, and the show seems to accept the allegation. The Doctor turns people into things he disapproves of - either needy and dependent on him, or 'soldiers' who fail to live up to his moral code (let's pass over the ambiguities of the Doctor's attitude to violence over the course of the whole series for now and accept the reading we're presented with). On the other hand, people adore him, and want to spend their lives with him.
RTD's doctor has near god-like powers (some of which are quite dark); he's a charming, charismatic figure; he's capable of great love, but often doesn't quite get how humans relate, and while in some senses he changes people for the better and liberates them into a bigger, more mysterious and beautiful world than they can imagine - we're repeatedly told that the Doctor is 'worth the monsters', and Tim's 'storm in the heart of the sun' speech in "Family of Blood" could perfectly well be about Jesus,† he also seems to create a high degree of damage. John Smith, a decent if limited sort of man is appalled by the Doctor, and I'm quite sure that he wouldn't have gone back to being him if it weren't for the fact that that would have meant letting the Family destroy a lot of innocent people. And when you look at what happens to the New Who companions, you begin to wonder if the Doctor really was good for them.
Add to this that Ten is given a lot of Christ imagery, and I begin to wonder if this isn't at least partly - and I think subconsciously - to do with the fact that Rusty is at once fascinated by Christ and convinced that religion is a bad thing. The more he makes the Doctor into a secular Jesus, the Lonely God, the worse he seems to get for his companions. He isn't Jesus, he can't promise his friends that they will be with him forever,ª and he can't redeem the world. But people keep responding to him as if he could - determined never to leave him, confident that he'll make everything all right - until it's made painfully clear that he can't, and they can't, and he may have almost the power of a god, but he's as screwed up as anyone else, and while he can cheat death himself, he can't resurrect the deadº (except in a deeply problematic form, and yes, I'm thinking about Love and Monsters here) or heal the hurts of the world. Which ought to be OK, because the Doctor has always been a secular champion who helps people break their chains so that they can get on with living themselves - except the New Doctor seems to leave people frozen and unable to get past him. Which is a little like RTD's criticism of religion in "The Second Coming".
Now, Steve/ God decided he had to die, but the Doctor, by definition, keeps coming back - which means that the Lonely God leads inexorably into a corner, and I'm not sure you can get out of it except by abandoning it - or by killing off the Doctor permanently, which isn't going to happen, at least for a bit. Personally, I liked the Doctor better when he was an eccentric scholar gypsy with a slightly murky past, and I hope that after Moffat takes over, we'll see more of that side and less of the 'MAI GOD ISHUES, LET ME SHOW U THEM'. Of course, I know that the Lonely God stuff is to an extent feeding off the tendencies within the novels, and even in Seven's day ('more than just a Timelord'). But an awful lot of it seems to come down to RTD's preoccupations.
*I'm going to pass over the fact that Steve/ Christ and the Ninth Doctor are both played by the same actor, because I don't think it's that relevant, particularly as - as far as I recall, and it's a long time since I've seen any Nine bar The Empty Child - there wasn't any Christological imagery associated with Nine, except the 'standing up with arms splayed out as if crucified' regeneration sequence, which I didn't notice at the time, but now seems to fit a wider pattern. It mostly seems to centre on Ten and the Lonely God schtick. Incidentally, why Steve and not Josh?
† Tim: He's fire and ice and rage, he's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun, he's ancient and forever, he burns at the centre of time, and he can see the universe turn...
John Smith: Stop it! I said, stop it!
Tim: And he's wonderful.
Yes, I know this is Paul Cornell, rather than RTD, but it fits beautifully into the pattern. (I can't remember this from the book, but that may just be my memory playing tricks) It's also a rather better description of what it might actually be like to meet an incarnate God than much of the stuff that gets passed off under the name of Christian art, but that's a whole different rant.
ª And, in any case, the Christian life as we experience it does involve an awful lot of groping about trying to discern God, and it's stated in the Gospels that it is necessary for Christ to return to the Father, that the disciples can't just cling on to Him.
º Oddly enough, Steve can't heal the sick either, which is weird, as it's so characteristic of Christ's miracles in the NT.
In more random news, I note that it's S. Erkenwald of London's day. He was bishop of London in the seventh century and founded the abbey of Chertsey, and is otherwise a blank slate - but isn't it an utterly brilliant name?
... and drat, I really didn't mean to spend most of the morning writing Who meta.
Last night's sermon, anyway, was on the Second Coming (which I've also more or less got to preach on in two weeks, unless I can think of something theologically interesting and pastorally appropriate to say about the whore of Babylon, which frankly I doubt), and the chaplain talked about two treatments of the theme in fiction, one of which was Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor", and the other was RTD's The Second Coming. I haven't yet seen the latter - I'm going to try to track it down over the weekend - but the way he described the latter, rather strengthened by what I've found on the net, made me wonder if there isn't a connection between RTD's tendency to associate (slightly odd) Christological imagery with the Doctor; the devastation Nu Who's Doctor tends to leave in his wake; and the treatment of religion and God in The Second Coming?
Davies' Second Coming is intended as a critique of religion; in the story, this is played out by having Christ be born again as a fairly ordinary Mancunian bloke called Steve*, who doesn't realise that he is in fact the Son of God until he gets lost for forty days on Saddleworth Moor (I know the Pennines can be a bit hard to navigate your way around, but all the same, forty days is a minor miracle in itself). He performs various miracles, and gathers a following, but eventually his girlfriend Jude convinces him that he - being God - needs to die, and not return, so that the earth can be freed from religion, the source of conflict and evil in the world, and get on with loving each other here and now (ironically, Christ's message, 'repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand' carries exactly the same moral imperative, though - as the parable of the Grand Inquisitor shows - the radical consequences of that tends to make the church as an institution scared and queasy). Steve realises that this is God's will, and that he has come back so that God can really die.
God, then, says The Second Coming, has to die if we are going to be properly human.
Now, like a lot of fans, I've been a bit bothered about the way RTD and co portray the Doctor - particularly the way that he is shown as, on the one hand, irresistible, and on the other hand, as wrecking the lives of everyone he touches more than superficially - Donna had to totally forget him to survive; Davros accuses the Doctor of turning his friends into soldiers, and the show seems to accept the allegation. The Doctor turns people into things he disapproves of - either needy and dependent on him, or 'soldiers' who fail to live up to his moral code (let's pass over the ambiguities of the Doctor's attitude to violence over the course of the whole series for now and accept the reading we're presented with). On the other hand, people adore him, and want to spend their lives with him.
RTD's doctor has near god-like powers (some of which are quite dark); he's a charming, charismatic figure; he's capable of great love, but often doesn't quite get how humans relate, and while in some senses he changes people for the better and liberates them into a bigger, more mysterious and beautiful world than they can imagine - we're repeatedly told that the Doctor is 'worth the monsters', and Tim's 'storm in the heart of the sun' speech in "Family of Blood" could perfectly well be about Jesus,† he also seems to create a high degree of damage. John Smith, a decent if limited sort of man is appalled by the Doctor, and I'm quite sure that he wouldn't have gone back to being him if it weren't for the fact that that would have meant letting the Family destroy a lot of innocent people. And when you look at what happens to the New Who companions, you begin to wonder if the Doctor really was good for them.
Add to this that Ten is given a lot of Christ imagery, and I begin to wonder if this isn't at least partly - and I think subconsciously - to do with the fact that Rusty is at once fascinated by Christ and convinced that religion is a bad thing. The more he makes the Doctor into a secular Jesus, the Lonely God, the worse he seems to get for his companions. He isn't Jesus, he can't promise his friends that they will be with him forever,ª and he can't redeem the world. But people keep responding to him as if he could - determined never to leave him, confident that he'll make everything all right - until it's made painfully clear that he can't, and they can't, and he may have almost the power of a god, but he's as screwed up as anyone else, and while he can cheat death himself, he can't resurrect the deadº (except in a deeply problematic form, and yes, I'm thinking about Love and Monsters here) or heal the hurts of the world. Which ought to be OK, because the Doctor has always been a secular champion who helps people break their chains so that they can get on with living themselves - except the New Doctor seems to leave people frozen and unable to get past him. Which is a little like RTD's criticism of religion in "The Second Coming".
Now, Steve/ God decided he had to die, but the Doctor, by definition, keeps coming back - which means that the Lonely God leads inexorably into a corner, and I'm not sure you can get out of it except by abandoning it - or by killing off the Doctor permanently, which isn't going to happen, at least for a bit. Personally, I liked the Doctor better when he was an eccentric scholar gypsy with a slightly murky past, and I hope that after Moffat takes over, we'll see more of that side and less of the 'MAI GOD ISHUES, LET ME SHOW U THEM'. Of course, I know that the Lonely God stuff is to an extent feeding off the tendencies within the novels, and even in Seven's day ('more than just a Timelord'). But an awful lot of it seems to come down to RTD's preoccupations.
*I'm going to pass over the fact that Steve/ Christ and the Ninth Doctor are both played by the same actor, because I don't think it's that relevant, particularly as - as far as I recall, and it's a long time since I've seen any Nine bar The Empty Child - there wasn't any Christological imagery associated with Nine, except the 'standing up with arms splayed out as if crucified' regeneration sequence, which I didn't notice at the time, but now seems to fit a wider pattern. It mostly seems to centre on Ten and the Lonely God schtick. Incidentally, why Steve and not Josh?
† Tim: He's fire and ice and rage, he's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun, he's ancient and forever, he burns at the centre of time, and he can see the universe turn...
John Smith: Stop it! I said, stop it!
Tim: And he's wonderful.
Yes, I know this is Paul Cornell, rather than RTD, but it fits beautifully into the pattern. (I can't remember this from the book, but that may just be my memory playing tricks) It's also a rather better description of what it might actually be like to meet an incarnate God than much of the stuff that gets passed off under the name of Christian art, but that's a whole different rant.
ª And, in any case, the Christian life as we experience it does involve an awful lot of groping about trying to discern God, and it's stated in the Gospels that it is necessary for Christ to return to the Father, that the disciples can't just cling on to Him.
º Oddly enough, Steve can't heal the sick either, which is weird, as it's so characteristic of Christ's miracles in the NT.
In more random news, I note that it's S. Erkenwald of London's day. He was bishop of London in the seventh century and founded the abbey of Chertsey, and is otherwise a blank slate - but isn't it an utterly brilliant name?
... and drat, I really didn't mean to spend most of the morning writing Who meta.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-14 12:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-14 03:32 pm (UTC)I've noted before that the scene where Rose looks into the vortex really resonates with some of my own spiritual experiences.
I'm resisting the temptation to ask if you've blown up any Dalek fleets lately.... oh dear, too late ;) . But I liked the heart of the Tardis scene a lot. And, as I say, I liked Tim's speech very much, although again, part of me keeps trying to apply it to earlier Doctors, and failing.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-14 04:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-14 06:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-15 09:47 pm (UTC)