Fresh Expressions of Being Church: rural 1970s edition

[tree_and_leaf]

I was going to catch up on Torchwood: CoE yesterday night, but ended up going for the intersection of Doctor Who and the other CoE instead, i.e. watching eps 1 and 2 of the Daemons, which inexplicably I had never seen, despite having written fic set just pre-episode (in which the Master finds himself having to attempt to conduct a wedding, and it all goes horribly wrong).

Anyway, I enjoyed what I've seen so far very much, though I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about it other than I do not consider the Rev'd Magister's attempts to refresh the liturgy and worship of his new parish to be particularly well considered, and the churchwardens are going to have an embarrassing time explaining the missing gargoyle at the next Visitation. Assuming the world hasn't been eaten by the demons they've been conjuring up in the meantime, of course.

The parody of television archaeology was good fun, too - I couldn't help mentally trying to re-write the scene with the Time Team crew, though I wouldn't want to kill off Mick or Phil), and the major guest character, the village witch, Miss Hawthorne, is engaging and well-written, a nice blend of the wise and the scatty. I was interested to note that she is obviously on good terms with the real Vicar, the mysteriously disappeared Canon Smallwood, and expected him to be able to Do Something about the demons. I also loved her conversation with the Master, whose inept attempts at pastoral care suggest that the only research he'd done was to flick through Honest to God in an idle moment, since he started babbling about rationalism and existentialism. Miss Hawthorne's response "Why should I believe you, a rationalist existentialist priest?" was unanswerable, at least by the Master, who was perturbed to discover that his mind-whammy didn't work... There's possibly a lesson for the clergy there, although I don't see that existentialism is necessarily a bad thing: but the Master clearly hasn't read Rahner.

Thanks to the magic of Twitter I ended up discussing the Daemons with a tweeting lay member of Synod (who are meeting at the moment); his verdict was "can teach you lots about how to manage a PCC." Web 2.0 is really quite an odd thing at times (I can't imagine what previous generations of Anglicans would have made of that, except they'd probably have been unwillingly jealous, sessions of synod being what they are). There are probably quite a few members of Synod who secretly feel that things would be improved in the Church if they had mind-control powers a la the Master, but despite everything, I'm glad ++ Rowan doesn't. Let alone certain other members of the House of Bishops (or, to be fair, the Clergy or the Laity).

I regret to note that the Master, while looking good in a cassock, has lamentably poor taste in tat (it wasn't a particularly nice cassock, and as for the cope he was wearing during the Summoning scene... One expects the Master to be evil, but one would have hoped for better style while doing it!)

I have no internet at home; this is making me more productive there, but infinitely less so during the day....

Comments

[rembrandtswife]

We are just starting to get Time Team America episodes on our local public television station! They were digging around on Roanoke Island, looking for signs of the lost English colony, and got tremendously excited over some teeny bits of pottery and some discolored dirt that they thought must be the remains of post-holes.

I imagine the British version is more colorful. Colonial habitation here doesn't go very far back, and much of it destroyed physical remnants of the Native peoples.

[tree_and_leaf]

Time Team is brilliant - of course, there are some digs where they don't find very much, or only at the last moment, but the team are such fun to watch (they're obviously mostly good friends and enjoy working with each other) that it doesn't matter so much. Tony Robinson is very good at doing the Enthusiastic Layman bit, too (and pointing out things like "archaeologists always say it's ritual if they don't understand it....")

But there are some episodes where it involves desperate attempts to make post-holes exciting.