On The Sofa (6)
This topic contains 1,013 replies, has 103 voices, and was last updated by 
Craig 8 years, 7 months ago.
-
AuthorPosts
-
19 March 2015 at 09:30 #38964
@mudlark and @purofilion – thanks for the welcome. I am a Pratchett fan (I will use the present tense goddammit) but the Summersmith name came before Wintersmith was published. There may have been some Discworld type magic going on – I’ll ask Ponder Stibbons the next time I see him.
@ichabod – I think there’s a similarity between The Doctor and the Jesus story: both from “heaven”; both teachers / healers / moralists rather than warriors; both work miracles although the Doctor’s are more to do with him being a very clever boy than divine intervention; and of course both of them “die” only to pop up again. And RTD did use a lot of religious imagery (Tenth Doctor lifted up to heaven by angels in Voyage of the Damned) even if it was often tongue firmly lodged in cheek. Like many atheists he seems quite fascinated by theology.
Of course the Jesus story has been engrained in Western culture for a very long time and has shaped a lot of the stories we tell. In fact the story of a god who dies and comes back to life to heal the world goes back even further.
19 March 2015 at 12:14 #38966Anonymous @
an interesting discussion: I tend to think we each see in the Doctor what we’d like him to exhibit?
Yes, he’s a doctor, a healer, but a moralist -that seems to have a pejorative connotation which I find a bit suspect, imho, but yeah carried away by the angels -of death and fighting the ‘weeping’ angels as well.
He won’t use a weapon and yet he’s not a pacifist: he does allow others to fight for him -which can be problematic and unlike JC, he questions himself, am I a good man? Although the Gethsemane dialogue also showed a prophet, debased with doubt and fear. Is the Master his own Judas?
There are lovely allusions everywhere -the myths of the Flood, the Satan Pit of Kroptor, the Legion of Many and the Daemons -well, go no further, although the doctor, at that point, put his faith observably in science: as the 3rd Doctor’s tendencies were strictly inclined .
Problem with analogies is that they go only so far before a brick wall pops up!
Still, it’s “in the campaign, it’s in the experience” as the episode from The West Wing espouses. Not sure if it was Lindsay Crouse who played that particular part -I think it may have been someone else.
Any Buffy fans, it’s the Mayor! (Harry Groener) in West Wing who receives the temporary ticket to the White House during the State of the Union in “From time to Time.” A short but delicious scene -I’m surprised I recognised it so late in life.
19 March 2015 at 12:19 #38967I tend to get carried away about both Buffy and The West Wing -in fact it was this forum and its members who introduced me to Buffy. I hadn’t heard of Whedon at all -it’s an ongoing ride for me. Richly cast and dominated by allusion and imagery with metaphors abounding. Marvellous stuff -as is Who.
19 March 2015 at 13:44 #38971@purofilion – over fifty years, 13 different versions – there’s a lot of different sides to his character.
Moralist might be slightly the wrong word. I was thinking “you are a good person if you do good deeds” rather than “you are a good person if you follow this set of rules set down in the holy book.”. Jesus vs the Pharisees (or how the Pharisees as depicted in the Bible). The Doctor not destroying the Daleks in “Genesis…” even though he’s been ordered by the Time Lords, who presumably thing of themselves as Good People.
You’re right, it is all about the allusions – these stories in our culture that are used and reforged by writers. I think RTD used a lot of the religious allusions to examine religion – by getting rid of the Time Lords he creates the Lonely God – and in his pre-Who show “The Second Coming” he actually has Christopher Eccleston cast as Jesus. But as I said it’s an examination of rather than a defence of.
On the other hand Moffat uses different stories – fairy tales. I always feel his two Doctors are Tricksters.
P.S. When I said The Doctor wasn’t a warrior, I forgot the one time he actually had a choice about his next regeneration in “Night of the Doctor” he did chose Warrior. To be fair, he did seem to hate himself for it afterwards.
19 March 2015 at 13:49 #38972@purofilion – I was lucky enough to watch Buffy from the start when it was broadcast on BBC 2. I only missed one episode – thanks to my sister getting married. I’ll probably put some thoughts up on the blogs at some point.
19 March 2015 at 13:54 #38973@purofilion and @summersmith —
I think it’s possible to overstate the religious symbolism in Who. Yes, RTD plays with it a lot but as has been said above, I think there’s an element of playfulness, of irony, about it. Plus it’s riffing on the McGann regeneration in the TV movie slightly.
As @purofilion says, the Doctor tended to define himself as a scientist/man of reason until the fourth Doctor when Tom Baker jettisoned that for something a little more quixotic, a little more offbeat and once again veering into fairy tale rather than out-and-out religious. Again, trickster might be about right. Always felt there was something slightly Brer Rabbit about the fourth Doc.
19 March 2015 at 14:59 #38975I’m thinking, the Doctor as a character out of (and participating in the ongoing formation of) the Folklore of — TV? Fiction media? — of “our time”, however defined. He is a “work” of imagination — the imagination that produces folklore, an imagination that currently operates on a multi-media worldwide, macro, as well as on a national, regional, neighborhood, family scale, I guess. Newer examples might prove to be, for example, female “superheroes” like the ones being produced in comic book format in India and — damn; a muslim country, forgot which — who fight against misogynist mania in Hindu and muslim cultures (they’ll have to persist long enough to take root to join the folklore). The Roadrunner? Wiley Coyote? Maybe the basic qualification is, the figure has to persist in the imagination of a significant portion of “the population” (defined depending on where you are on the macro/micro scale) beyond a couple of generations and a maybe the turn of a century (as a landmark, not meaning they must “live” for a hundred years”), and new stories have to continue to be created about it.
To return to the Doctor, everyone who wants to can take a hand in making up “Doctor Who” stories, via amateur arts of all kinds — fanfic, primarily. Stories are retold (re-read, re-watched), and there are even folkloric festivals put on (irregularly) all over the world, and academic studies (“anthropology”?) being shared and published (see, Studies in Popular Culture conventions, SF and Dr. Who conventions) . . . Trickster, yes; hero; a visiting Angel who drives away demons . . .
It’s early here, I’m just doodling, no breakfast yet, brain on sleep rations . . . I’ll just add, as a convinced atheist (who is also SBNR around ideas of reincarnation), that for some sectors of the world population, that’s pretty much what the Jesus myth, with all its accouterments, is — a particularly indelible-seeming figure of folklore, although made from what was once a real living human (probably? Perhaps? Depends on who you talk to), as the Doctor never was. But with enough time, that distinction tends to blur (and there’s always enough time, although things may not follow the expected course).
Noodle, doodle . . . Goin’ out for breakfast before you guys start laughing . . .
19 March 2015 at 18:55 #3897719 March 2015 at 20:11 #38979Always felt there was something slightly Brer Rabbit about the fourth Doc.
It’s the grin. A very Brer Rabbity grin.
20 March 2015 at 02:43 #38982Urgh @lisa you have done it to me again. I can waste hours on that FBDr Who Hub page. I have done so and concluded that there are infinite images.
In a way those images reflect something of what @ichabod was saying about the generating of the Doctor as a mythic figure. I think that status was established by the old series but has come to maturity, along with many of the original fans, with AGWho. The story utilised some of the basis elements of myths, the larger than life hero, set apart from us, mere mortals who returns, time and time again to save us. He is a mix of King Arthur and Robin Hood. He will pull the sword from the stone to save us, though it will be an allegorical sword, but he will never be an authority figure. He will be the outlaw, chaotic good. (The family have been playing D&D of late.) Just as the King Arthur myth and Robin Hood myth resonated because they expressed an imaginative need for the time so Dr Who now fills that need. Perhaps it is because in ages of uncertainty we need a mythic hero to give us hope.
Cheers
Janette
20 March 2015 at 03:43 #38984@Janette The Hub is brilliant! 🙂 It’s 1 of the reasons I will look at
FB (and the gardening pages and science and sci fi pages and there are the
pages called ‘Printcave’ or ‘Book Shelf Porn” that are full of incredible images
and so on but I also have my favorite cheeseburger restaurant on my ‘likes’!)
Well just a few friends but they are really not the point 😉It’s also nice to check the Hub during the hiatus – Its a lot like this forum in
that it shares many little treats for the Who-ster community.20 March 2015 at 17:25 #39002Here’s a bit of fun — below the announcement of a DW convention upcoming in Baltimore is a 20 minute radio segment about the show by an announcer who’s never watched it (refused to indulge in something that seemed so silly, when he caught his dad watching it back in the day). Now he sets about asking fans what DW is about. Some of the answers are a bit surprising.
http://wypr.org/post/doctor-who-kill-other-and-bmore-en-espa-ol
20 March 2015 at 22:29 #39008@janetteb I like the ida of a “chaotic good” — yes, that’s the Doctor, to me; an agent of chaotic good, out of whose actions results both good and terrible can emerge, depending. More like one of the “old” gods, really, the ones who never made much sense but if was a bad idea to get on the wrong side of them even if you didn’t know how you got there. Bascially, of course, he makes no sense at all, because he’s also a time traveler. He could pick action B instead of all the others, then travel forward in the time line of that action to see how it worked out, and then travel back before his initial choice and try C, and follow that up the same way, etc., until he hit on whatever action proved out as desired, at least at whatever point in future time he chose to stop checking.
NOT workable as a TV series for many reasons, so instead you just make him energetic and impatient and rushing about trying to put out fires on the immediate horizon or outside his door, and then let the chips fall where they may. That’s human behavior, though, so far anyway. From very long-lived aliens, I’d expect a more patient, or maybe even more casual approach. In fact it could be argued that the Time Lords have a non-interference rule *because* they’ve already tried the check-up solution, and even a sort of gambling game solution (what do you bet *this* happens if I do *that*?), and none of it has been less trouble (in the longer run, which they can’t avoid since they live so long) than anything you might get out of it at the moment of action.
On the other hand, we know he’s a “rogue” Time Lord, which also can be read as “imperfect” or “poorly qualified” Time Lord, who just *can’t* maintain a distant, hands-off perspective but has to try to make things better by interfering in what he hopes is a positive way. IOW, if he hadn’t stolen a Tardis to travel in, he would have been grounded anyway, for being too much of a compulsive meddler.
But then why would the TL’s keep handing him regen cycles, since he ignores their rules and aggravates the hell out of them when he *does* come home for a visit? Is a puzzlement.
20 March 2015 at 22:42 #39009@janetteb Robin Hood, maybe, but he can’t be King Arthur: he either does horribly with heavy-duty authority (“The Doctor Victorious”) or he does nothing with it (President of the World) and renounces or refuses it as quickly as he can (DiH). His authority, when he has it and is using it properly (as in, temporarily), is strictly provisional, not an attribute of rank (what’s a Time Lord on Jupiter, after all? A tourist) or badge of office (although psychic paper often plays the role of such a badge, at need). It depends on — ah, the eyebrows, as he himself has claimed? That eagle beak of CapDoc’s?
Come to think of it, you could say that his arrogance and authoritarian tone are absolutely necessary character traits, because without them, how could he just muscle his way into being the boss when he needs to, as per MotOE, for example? The Lone Ranger did it with a six-gun; your chances with just a sonic screwdriver, not so much (though a Tardis is pretty convincing). And, to do the character justice, all that ordering people about is tempered by the generous use of the phrase seldom heard from Earth authorities (unless they are in a courtroom), “I don’t know”, or “no idea”. It’s an intriguing combination: authority and honesty! When he’s not lying, that is . . .
21 March 2015 at 01:45 #39010@ichabod I was thinking that the Doctor has an element of King Arthur and that is the undying hero who returns in the hour of need. I probably expressed that poorly. Like Robin Hood though he is an anti authority figure. The characterisation takes elements of both mythic archetypes but is something generated out of the twentieth century reflecting more modern anxieties and ideals.
Cheers
Janette
21 March 2015 at 03:28 #39011@janetteb Oh, got it — not sure about Arthur, myself, long time since I read anything in that realm of story. Maybe — for me, maybe it’s more like Merlin, as he appears in “The Sword in the Stone” — magical (sonic screwdriver! Tardis!), ancient, alien and a bit of an innocent, with a whole different grip on time (in the book, Merlin lives time backwards, and gets imprisoned in a tree due to succumbing to the wiles of a nymph or some such)? I think of Arthur more as an authority figure and a warrior, I guess, so I have to work it a bit to fit the Doctor with that, but the Eternal Return, that part works fine: regeneration on the one hand, arriving in the nick of time (“hour of need”) because the Tardis takes him where he needs to be — yep!
21 March 2015 at 05:31 #39012Ha, found it — wasn’t looking but here it is, and I hope the link works. This is what was under the blanket in “Listen” (I did ask about that someplace here, didn’t I?):
21 March 2015 at 07:24 #39013This is an interesting conversation, indeed -a doorway, perhaps to labelling the Doctor. Perhaps label is not a good word, exactly, but our late friend Drone (owner of muscle cars and kick boxer extraordinaire!) was quite insistent that he knew “that nobody else had noticed” the Doctor was a healer, a man tending to the sick and therefore had earned the title Messiah: writers and programmers influenced by Christianity (but not theology, apparently) had eased the Doctor quite firmly into this messianic attribution. And I canunderstand the willingness to place the Doctor in a strict religious position where he earnestly declaims upon the moral obligations of humans to show love (9th Dr); kindness (10th Doctor) and compassion (11th and our current Doctor). And shouldn’t all protagonists possessing a strong authorial voice do this?
Some years ago, Boy Ilion, intrigued by labels, wanted to know how the Doctor ‘fitted in’. He had been attending compulsory religious classes at school (of a non denominational kind) and when asked his beliefs, had cited “Doctor Who, of course: as the man most willing to save us and the earth”. Interestingly, the pair running these courses saw this as tantamount to heresy for “no man or woman must ever take the title of messiah unless it’s written in scripture and nor would there ever be sanctified life on other planets”.
Now, whilst I thoroughly respect the attitude which underwrites this, I was somewhat perplexed at the anger accompanying their delivery: perhaps social media and other devices have captured the eye of children thus turning them away from traditional means of interpreting the role of ‘saviour’, as it were. And it was getting on their nerves.
What I find joyful and a real delight is that the Doctor is difficult to quantity or qualify: there was a time, perhaps in the Certain Seventies, that Pertwee symbolised a Doctor far more quasi-scientific and impatient with inexplicable metaphoric associations and yet later in that decade, Tom’s Doctor is, as @jimthefish so eloquently put it (as also suggested by @summersmith):
“quixotic, a little more offbeat and once again veering into fairy tale rather than out-and-out religious. Again, trickster might be about right….”
I conversed with the Boy about this recently and was reminded of the class teacher who had accompanied the children and spoken sternly with the elderly members of that particular sect regarding methods of questioning: in other words, ‘don’t ask eight year olds if the answers you receive aren’t the ones coinciding with your explicit faith’.
It transpired that this teacher also loved Doctor Who, and, at a similar age to my own, had indulged in fantasies of Doctor Baker saving the world -and indeed saving herself, when as a child, she was orphaned as a result of a tragic car accident which claimed the lives of at least nine others.
The Doctor was a blizzard in her dreams: laughing gently, distracting her with magic tricks, a wild grin and even reading her bed-time stories. Unwilling to remove such a safety net, her grand parents played along when, the child (like young Amy) drew pictures of a big rectangular machine controlled by Brother Jesus with a long scarf, sporting the disordered hair of that generation!
This made quite some impression on the Boy who had a personal conversation with this incredible teacher, strong in her convictions and thoroughly glad to hear that another generation was transfixed with this “allegorical” god. She is now agnostic and watches the programme with her teenage sons who believe it’s impossible to totally ‘label the dude’ as he’s “everything that is intriguing and different to everybody else”: a trickster, “an idiot”, the Oncoming Storm, a nuisance, defender and protector, mischievous magician; historian and friend of famous villains, artists and chefs, Merlinesque, a combination of King Arthur and Robin Hood – a storyteller and hero of stories; a dynamo; a Sherlock Holmes contingent upon his own doctor; a blight to the totalitarian evils of the Ghosts of Doomsday; a father, grandfather and son; a friend and husband….everything good everywhere and everywhen, blowin’ in on a brilliant blue box in fez, or top hat leaning on cane and holding aloft the sonic screwdriver; glancing at the pocket watch and taking a nostalgic peek at his diary in the company of River Song (or Rover to Boy Ilion).
The descriptions of this man help us to label him – as an exercise. It’s tying him to your wrist like a wayward balloon on a day rabid with gusty winds, and struggling to do it, for like River, you’ll end with a broken wrist -and too nervous to admit it because you don’t want to, and can’t change it even for a second.
His enduring power’s a testament to the cluster of elements we find within his multiplicities of character – I might have missed ‘thoroughly mad’ in my summary – isn’t a touch of madness great? Anyone like Donna, the Impossible Girl and particularly Rose, immediately find they fit in -awed by the dissonance of other races, places and times, they discover where they themselves fit -perhaps they acknowledge they don’t need to ‘fit’ anywhere or anymore in particular, for, like the Doctor, they might be craving company and a reason to ‘be’.
But watching the Doctor solving a problem so that just once “everybody lives!” is a very heady thing -no wonder they fall in love; with him, the lifestyle, the people they meet and so no longer onlookers in their own world, their path is fabulously illuminated whereupon they scramble to delight in every minute, pushing away treacherous barriers and excuses until they become leaders who solve dilemmas or take that first step to a decision prodded by the Doctor -such as Craig asking his dear friend on a date which leads to marriage and Stormageddon.
Had he been able to see everyone of his companions he might have noticed their significant contributions to his own vast self-whatever his title and status, these companions, perhaps simple figures, have gently shaped his personality and needs like warm clay by a master roofer (leads me to think of roofies which leads to Bad Dreams and Bad Crabs …of all kinds and not really my point: “and there are many points sir, I choose not to make them all.” And thank God for that, you rambling (lunatic) puro -and this is what the Doctor allows – a simple prescription of thought and its quick unravelling like a mad scarf full of dropped stiches in time: “ssh, ssh, shud up, shud up. Fingers on lips!”)
Whoopee!
21 March 2015 at 07:43 #39014This is not a Forum it is an attack site, being used by many small people to attack others… What a shame.
@purofilion, @ichabod, @jimthefish @DroneX1 and others:
Like any good Dalek, perhaps DroneX1 is still around, you should be careful. Attacking him behind his back could lead to trouble.Perhaps the poster known as DroneX1 was trying to make a comment about the origins and name of Dr. Who- as it might have
come from the influences churning in the writers mind . It maybe was not meant to start a discussion on God, Jesus,
gods, religion or morality etc. But instead delve into the writer’s mind.See below. The 2 Original 1963 Creators of Dr. Who were Jewish. Jewish is also a race, not just a religion. Jewish people are
educated on the New Testament and even Christianity. They know Jesus by the name “Yeshua.” . As David Letterman once said, It is difficult to describe what will influence a writer to write and create a thing. Consider Raiders of the Lost Ark – about the sacred lost
ARK of the Covenant of the Old Testament and some guy named Indiana. A far out story created by Jewish people such
as Steven Speilberg.
What goes in a writers mind will come out in very creative adaptations that the writer himself may not even be aware
of at the time.The 2 Original Creators of 1963 “Dr. Who” are Sydney Cecil Newman and Verity Lambert:
Sydney Cecil Newman:
Born in Toronto, Newman was the son of a JEWISH Russian immigrant father who ran a shoe shop.
it was Newman who created the idea of a time machine larger on the inside than the outside, and the character of the
mysterious “Doctor”, which remain at the heart of the programme. He is also believed to have come up with the title
Doctor Who….
source: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Sydney_NewmanAfter the series had been conceptualised, Newman initially approached Don Taylor and then Shaun Sutton to produce
it, although both declined. He then decided on his former production assistant at ABC, Verity Lambert, who had never
produced, written or directed but readily accepted his offer.
source: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Sydney_NewmanVerity Lambert:
Lambert was born in London, the daughter of a JEWISH accountant, and educated at Roedean School
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verity_LambertNewman and Lambert worked together prior to Dr. Who. So, the original writers and creators of Dr. Who were Jewish, just
as DroneX1 suspected. And we can only guess where and how came the creation of “Dr. Who” from their minds. But a biblical influence is not that far fetched.
Let’s travel back in time and ask them……..21 March 2015 at 10:06 #39015@johnathan Hi there and welcome back as the old @Dronex1? 🙂 I think? If not, then you may wish to read this is “friend of Dronex!).
Thank you for your feed back. I will take on board what you have said.
But I’d like you to provide evidence for your accusations that this is an attack site? Certainly I was not attacking him. Certainly, if you say this could “lead to trouble”, then I should be wary and careful of stating such things. If I were you!
Saying people are “small” is done to create a stir? From them you may nary get a peep and as to me, you may accuse me all you will. I shall not take the bait. I know where I stand and what I wrote. Firstly, I referred to you as “friend” and “kick boxer extraordinaire” – creating an impression of ‘hey, that’s great’. I also said these things in this order:
“And I can understand the willingness to place the Doctor in a strict religious position where he earnestly declaims upon the moral obligations of humans to show love (9th Dr); kindness (10th Doctor) and compassion (11th and our current Doctor). “
“Now, whilst I thoroughly respect the attitude which underwrites this”
“This made quite some impression on the Boy who had a personal conversation with this incredible teacher, strong in her convictions and thoroughly glad to hear that another generation was transfixed with this “allegorical” god”
In no way was this designed as an attack on Christianity or upon the religious group, the Jews. I wrote “that I thoroughly respect the attitude [associated with how people may see the Doctor as influenced by religious traditions]” So I am glad you completely agree with me regarding the provenance of Lambert and Newman! Also, I am in agreement with you regarding the many ways in which creative minds are influenced by prevailing traditions. For instance, in the Daemons (which we are watching on another thread at the mo -so please join us) we see The Magister, the reverend, calling up what appears to be dark forces of evil whilst the good witch in the episode is clear that this is a bad thing. As you explained, there are religious influences and cultural influences. We agree !
I said in a discussion on another thread to a new member @tenthdoctorftw that this show began with unusual producers and directors. This is also to what you are referring! So we agree.
And that’s great.
I stated also, in this same thread, to @jimthefish that I have had some religious and theological convictions which caused me to teach seminary. My own discussions with @summersmith (who has received a warm welcome just two days ago and probably wouldn’t agree that this is an “attack site”) have discussed the religious imagery you yourself have discussed. I have claimed that the Doctor was seen as a healer. I agree with you that Christ was also seen in the same light. I suppose whether as prophet or saviour, depends on whether you are of the Christian or the Jewish belief.
I also noticed, that Aaron Sorkin has produced and written possibly the greatest drama ever written -The West Wing. I wrote about this just two days ago. It is obvious the man is Jewish. So we agree. Also, I don’t think that young Spielberg would be unaware of his production of the terrific Indiana Jones trilogy (I don’t like to refer to the 4th!) without realising it refers to both Christian and Jewish culture. He wrote Schindler’s List and so I can’t imagine he’d be unaware as you suggest:
“what goes in a writers mind will come out in very creative adaptations that the writer himself may not even be aware of at the time.”
I think that the Bible Bingo in which you were first associated certainly did place you in the frame of associating Christ with the Doctor: and that, my friend, is theology. It is something to which I referred and can see the similarities within. So, we agree!
In fact it was @jimthefish who said to me this very phrase (above): “I think it’s possible to overstate the religious symbolism in Who”
And in fact he might be right. Who are we to believe that the one thing is the ‘right’ thing?
I then went on to cite “Doctor Who, of course: as the man most willing to save us and the earth”.
This was Boy Ilion’s description in a religious class and in a way he was totally right. How we perceive Doctor Who and how others write about him -exist because of prevailing cultural morays. We should be aware that in Listen (a fav of many) the Doctor is meditating -an Eastern, marvellous tradition taken up by Christians as a method of focus and relaxation.
So I think we agree but I do feel a little concerned that you claim people such @ichabod and myself are “small”.
The former is one of the most warm, kind and open people ever to wander into this site. And she is most welcome. As are you.
I hope you find what you’re looking for here and that you enjoy the discussions. Welcome.
Kindest, puro.
21 March 2015 at 10:25 #39016@johnathan Just in case you didn’t wish to read the comments I made above, here are the statements I said and which state, roughly, the things you have referred to as well:
“Yes, he’s a doctor, a healer”
“He won’t use a weapon and yet he’s not a pacifist: he does allow others to fight for him -which can be problematic and unlike JC, he questions himself, am I a good man? Although the Gethsemane dialogue also showed a prophet, debased with doubt and fear. Is the Master his own Judas? [actually, Christ, on the cross, disputed with himself as he did in this prayers at Gethsemane].
There are lovely allusions everywhere -the myths of the Flood, the Satan Pit of Kroptor, the Legion of Many and the Daemons -“
In the above statements I’ve also discussed the same things you’ve stated; “The Doctor is a healer and the concept of Master as Judas” Now that’s interesting. Because we know the Master/Missy (I called her the Mixmaster) is a wonderful creation who both adores and seems to hate or is envious of the Doctor.
He/she betrays the Doctor. For instance she claims to tell him where Gallifrey’s coordinates are. He goes there and discovers she’s lied! So much like Judas -a friend, a disciple, a betrayer. An interesting discussion or parallel. But in the end, all allegories remain that. They are stories. In fact, the Doctor says much the same: “we are all stories in the end.”
Perhaps I’m a story too. Perhaps we all are?
The Flood Myths, The Satan Pit -these thing are directly connected to the creation and anti-God Myths which appear in all telly shows -Buffy is a prime example. @jimthefish has written fab blogs on those series and the companion show, Angel -the name alone is redolent of Christian mythology to which you refer. So, shall we discuss? But only if you apologise for calling me ‘small’. No, I don’t mind, as in the heat of the moment it’s easy to say something you don’t mean and I think I’ve given you plenty of opportunities to see where we actually agree!
Kindest, puro.
21 March 2015 at 11:34 #39019@johnathan (or dronexi) —
No one’s attacking anyone. What has happened is that dronexi has put forward a claim that several other contributors have found completely unconvincing and have gone on to dismantle through cogent argument backed up by proof and example. Which is what we do here.
Similarly, I just don’t find this whole ‘hey, Newman and Lambert were Jewish, so Doctor Who must clearly have some religious subtexts even if they didn’t know they were writing them’ argument convincing. First of all, neither Newman nor Lambert wrote a single word of any episode of Who — they weren’t showrunners in the modern sense of the word. Who in those days was made in a much more regimented, bureaucratic fashion than shows are made today. Their role was much more managerial, overseeing a department, as it were. (Which is not to downplay Lambert’s especially creative role. She guided the early years of the show, vetted scripts, but in real terms of the themes and tropes of those early years, you’d be as well citing script editor David Whittaker as a more formative influence as her.)
Which is by the by, because up until recently most writers/producers etc had a religious background of some kind or another. Does that mean at the heart of every show created until, say, 2000 when creatives with a more agnostic/atheist/humanist/ background begin to emerge more prominently, that every TV show, every film, has a religious message, whether the creator intended it to be there or not? Lambert also went on to be involved in the creation of both Budgie and Minder. Care to interpolate a religious subtext into those, rather than them just being about dodgy geezerdom?
Add to that the fact that Who is not an auteur show in the way you seem to want to suggest. It’s creative team changed every few years, bringing new ideas, new influences. It’s more like that game you used to play as a kid, where someone draws a head, fold the paper, someone else draws a body, fold the paper etc. Aside from the TARDIS and the Doctor, there’s really not that much remaining of the ethos of the early years of Who in the current programme. If you wanted to talk about there being a Who auteur, then it makes as much sense to talk about Terrance Dicks and Bob Holmes being them as much as Newman/Lambert/Webber. It’s they who brought in Time Lords, Gallifrey and so on.
Basically it comes down to the old ‘if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage’. The Moffatt fairytale aspect can be quite clearly identified because it’s clear from much of what’s in the script ‘imaginary friends/raggedy man etc’ but also in the mise-en-scene and in interviews and commentaries by SM himself. RTD clearly plays with religious imagery but it’s open to debate to just what kind of level he’s being playful with it. (My own feeling is that RTD is, like Larry in Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, actually ‘a deeply religious man who can’t bring himself to believe in God’.)
But prior to that, there’s absolutely nothing solid in the show’s scripts or how it’s presented to support a religious subtext to any great degree. You might want to interpret it like that but that to me smacks of trying to appropriate the show to prop up your own world view. And on the most spurious of evidence. Don’t be surprised when people come up with their own evidence to shoot it down.
Actually the current rewatch of the Daemons is a good one to discuss in this context but I think I’ll save my thoughts on that for when I finally get around to watching it.
21 March 2015 at 11:45 #39020So much here…
@johnathan – this is one of the friendliest sites around, thanks to the people who post here.
@purofilion – That class teacher sounds wonderful. I think good teaching is about the facts – the length of the Amazon, how to calculate the angle of a triangle – but great teaching is about something more – how to find comfort in the world.
And the image of “a wayward balloon” that might, quite unintentionally, break your wrist is a lovely description of the Doctor.
21 March 2015 at 12:34 #39021@johnathan As @jimthefish points out, this is a site for discussion. If someone states something and other people disagree then that is an interesting point for us to consider and ruminate on, not one to run away from and wail about being attacked. Or delete an account.
My personal opinion is that the whole religious argument is ridiculous, but I can see why someone would think that. My belief is that these stories were being told thousands of years before Christianity. Christianity just took all these stories, repackaged them, and sold them as new. And, boy, were they a success.
There’s an old adage that there are only seven stories in the world. Joseph Campbell took that further with his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” which is really worth a read. In it he basically argues that there really is only one story (at least only one story that really resonates with us as human beings) and it existed long before Jesus Christ was written about.
In its basic form it’s a story of someone in immaturity who receives a call to action to change their life – that can be to fall in love, kill the bad guy, or anything in between. They are scared or wary, but they eventually make the dramatic choice to leave their reasonably comfortable but dull world and enter a new one. They go out into a new world, make new friends, gather a group, and conquer many obstacles on the way to achieving their goal.
During their journey they have a moment in which they “die”. This moment can be literally or figuratively – usually all hope is gone and the goal seems impossible. But, miraculously, they come back to life and finally, using lessons they have learned during the journey, they achieve their goal. They can return home mature.
This story is told around the world in many forms and is still enacted for real in places such as Africa and South America where young tribesmen have to leave their villages as boys, achieve some task, such as kill an animal, and then return as men. It appeals to us all because it is part of our initial development and yet still seems relevant today, and it’s universal.
So Jesus set out on a mission, gathered a gang, was seemingly killed then rose from the dead and conquered all. It’s great story telling but it’s part of a tradition that dates back many thousands of years. And it still works today.
Luke Skywalker is given a mission, doesn’t want to leave, but when his Uncle and Aunt are killed he goes out into the world. He recruits new friends and they help him on his mission. In the trash compactor he “dies” – he’s under for a long time – but then he is reborn an adult, and eventually saves the day.
So I could say Luke Skywalker is based on Jesus. Or I could say that both Luke Skywalker and Jesus are based on something more fundamental to our experience of being human beings.
They’re definitely both great story telling, as is Doctor Who, as are all the stories that resonate with us.
21 March 2015 at 12:51 #39022@summersmith -thank you sir!
Yes, she was wonderful. I am a teacher myself and when I went to meet her, I was incredibly nervous! I’m short, she’s tall, I teach music and my voice is a high tenor and her’s, a baritone. In any case, my boy was smitten with her- her kindness was legendary & for anyone like her to speak to kindly religious folk in the way she did, meant she was quite upset with their ‘scary’ delivery.
Later, we became friends and I found out more about how Dr Who became a central space for her to find courage. I found it too -mum died when I was 7 and somehow the Doctor became a trickster/magician to distract me from the fear of being motherless. But this doesn’t make me at all unusual, we all experience difficulties in our lives and I was pretty lucky in the end.
Yes “great teaching is about something more – how to find comfort in the world”.
Beautiful: it is, and I’m going to try to bring that back. It’s easy to be cynical and world-weary as a teacher: together those things can break hearts. It’s important to remain optimistic and to seek something within every student that is unique and that can create a professional space of warmth and understanding that helps that learning process (yep, that’s me the teacher: lecturing! oops!)
Too often is the bureaucracy of teaching taking over -the paperwork, the comparison marking…in the end, it must do justice to the students and act as an adjunct to teaching, not its point.
To refer to Aaron Sorkin, and perhaps @johnathan would appreciate this: I would add a paraphrased line about how “teaching is the silver bullet. Teachers should be paid much more, schools should be palaces.”
Certainly in America schools need to improve -class sizes are large; college costs enormous. Thankfully that isn’t the case in Oz -yet.
I’m glad you feel happy here. It really has become a ‘retreat’ for me. There is so much to read and many individuals who are connected by strong feelings for this and other similar programme and for great writers such as Pratchett and Somerset Maugham as mentioned by @jimthefish.
On Jim’s point the idea of RTD is possibly that he’d claim to be a spiritual man rather than religious? I’m sure that I read it, or equally, I’ve made it up! Perhaps in my own head I find distinctions of spirituality and religiosity to be exactly the same and yet am intrigued when others claim they’re different -and I’m happy to be persuaded either way. Never too old to have my mind completely changed/in a timey whimey way, of course.
On that score @johnathan I’ve had my mind changed there too. I assumed that Lambert (but not Newman) were engaged in the writing but Jim is stating that it was more of a line manager’s point of view or position in the department. A vision or creative arc was up to the writer, and Lambert’s role was getting the thing ready on time and enduring and easing some of Hartnell’s earliest concerns and propping him up during the crises of those 12 hour days. An Adventure in Space and Time really shows the difficulties of those early days in ’63. Have you seen that special? Beautifully made.
On the fairy tale aspect of Who, I’d say, yeah, that’s there, clear as day: particularly in Series 5 where there are books of Romans, a man in a Blue Box with the Doctor re-telling his story of that “beautiful blue box, new and old, big and small” to the sleeping Amelia as the Doctor himself is fast disappearing. One of the most poignant of all mythologies in the series to date, for me, and played astonishingly, astonishingly by Smith -all of 28!
The story of Christmas -Trenzalore is a gorgeous fairy tale where the beautifully dressed people are near a truth field and cannot lie. The last Christmas Special was also about the fairy tale -or not -of Father Christmas. Judging by the critics this was considered one of the best ever specials: it hit those flying notes like a wafting soprano, cold, clear, warm and alert, all at once. A perfect consonance of peace during a year of turmoil, publicly, and it served to bring many of us together. There is limitless capacity in the joy of connectedness and this television programme does that -providing we are open to the minds of others. Whether we believe angels walk in heaven, or walk the earth in a more pedestrian capacity, I think we can say that we are one, about a few things, at least?
Any moment I’m going to slip into The Christmas Invasion (2005): “there are more things that can ever be seen, oh no, sorry, sorry… that’s The Lion King.”
A sterling moment by Tennant and kind of the point: we ‘re all stories: Who, the Lion King, The West Wing, Buffy and even, even things written by the late and dear, Pratchett.
Kindest, puro.
21 March 2015 at 12:55 #39023@craig. As soon as you mentioned Joseph Campbell I thought of Star Wars. From what I have been told the resounding success of those first three films was down to their repackaging of that original story as defined by Joseph Campbell. Apparently he and Lucas were friends.
The abiding popularity of those films really confirms Campbell’s theory. Hero with a Thousand Faces is unfortunately another of those on my “must read” list; a list I am going to need at least two more regenerations to get through. Ah the benefits of being time lord. One assumes that the Doctor might actually be able to read all those books that now line the console room walls, whereas the rest of us poor humans would probably get through one shelf in a lifetime.
Cheers
Janette.
21 March 2015 at 13:12 #39025Campbell -you bet. What a writer and analyser of myths. Despite my urges to purchase no more books -I rebought some of his works as I’d lent them out (as we do) and promptly lost them to the bus-stop library.
The other point could be that it’s all nonsense: happy nonsense as Edward Lear’s biographers would suggest. A lyrical time mixed with the salutary lesson of needing to earn a living. With Lear, the fantasy is tinged with melancholy and nostalgia. How often the characters “danced by the light of the moon but never came back, never came back.”
A story of Doctor Who, or Star Wars or pretty much anything by Edward Bawden as well: “I love my adventure”.
As I said before, all the stories appear to mean something in particular to everyone. Stories must do that: they resonate and conflate. If not, and if we don’t like the characters much, then they pretty much stall like a 1930s aeroplane; droning and disappearing into rubble.
We keep them alive by re-charging them: a new take, an idiot, not a lonely god, not a hero, a man in a box, wandering about. They change, and so do we.
21 March 2015 at 13:16 #39026@janetteb I’ve spoiled the plot for you now!
It really is a great book. And one that can improve your reading of other stories, be they books or film or TV. I often watch things now and think “Ah, they added that because of Campbell”.
It’s about how, all over the world, we are one people with shared experience. We may have completely different lives but there are still many elements that are universal. The things that divide us are nowhere near as great as the things that unite us.
That really is something that should be plastered on every billboard.
21 March 2015 at 13:31 #39030@craig and @janetteb cannot resist this as a billboard. Much cheese to be had:
“we are one but we are many;
and from all the lands on earth we come…
we share a dream and sing with one voice ;
I am; you are, we are, Australian.”
I know, it scans very badly! Cheese allergy igniting. But the sentiment is at least nice.
21 March 2015 at 14:05 #39031Ha ha 🙂 @purofilion The sentiment is indeed nice. Unfortunately I have issues with how the Aboriginal Australians have been treated. They would be better served in deeds not in words. But… the world is a complex place.
Could you get rid of Tony Abbott though, please? The rest of the world laughs at him. You should see the coverage he gets. That would be a good start.
21 March 2015 at 15:20 #39032@craig, @Purofilion, @janetteb
Joseph Campbell took that further with his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” which is really worth a read.
Yeah, Campbell and The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Ground breaking, definitely worth reading, very important for story writers. Originally written in 1949.
And there has been one heck of a lot of research done since 1949 (all those Comparative Religions departments are full of people who have to do something to get tenure). For example, we now know that the Jesus-story is told (mostly) according to the conventions of Graeco-Roman biography. Very few modern scholars would agree that there is a dying-and-rising god pattern that genuinely goes across several belief systems. There are definitely some other areas where we’ve moved on since 1949, or even since the 2nd edition in 1968, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Personally, I’d cite Campbell on story any day of the week; I wouldn’t dare cite him on comparative religion.
Even in story, I think you’d find there’s been developments. There’s been a ton of scholarly work on narrative since the 1980’s, and there’s a lot of current research on whether our self-understanding is basically ‘narrative’ – because of the way we perceive time and remember the past, do we understand our lives and our society as ‘story’?
Has anyone read Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots? I rate that one quite highly, especially since it allows you to develop The Hero’s Journey away from the ‘Save the Cat’ mode of writing. 😉
21 March 2015 at 16:12 #39033@craig, @bluesqueakpip, @purofilion et al–
I’d also give a shout-out to the Booker tome, although it is a serious doorstop of a book. I think there’s a danger that the Campbell approach gets overstated, particularly in Hollywood circles, and, like everything, it doesn’t apply to every single story. But it’s still ground-breaking, massively important work. I’d also recommend Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, which breaks down Campbell’s book and applies it directly to writing narrative, particularly screenplays.
But it’s definitely true these tropes seriously pre-date Christian myths, so it’s not really on trying to appropriate them in that way. You could equally argue that the Doctor is a Ulysses figure as he is a Jesus one — leaves his home land, accrues companions along the way, fighting strange beasts and hideous evil as he does so. As the key motivator for the Doc now is finding Gallifrey, it surely has that bit extra potency too.
As an aside, I also remember reading a few years back a theory (by Steve Pinker I think) that this myth of the outsider coming into a community to help/heal the populace has such continued relevance to us because it has an evolutionary advantage, subliminally reinforcing the need/desirability for regular influxes of fresh genetic material to freshen up the gene pool, fend off in-breeding, maintain diversity and so on. The argument being, I suppose, that we’re hardwired to find these stories appealing. They’re part of our software, regardless of the way their dressed up with Classical/Biblical/SF window dressing….
21 March 2015 at 16:54 #39034@craig , @purofilion , @bluesqueakpip
‘We are all stories in the end’. And yes, @bluesqueakpip , I think we do shape our understanding of the world and ourselves in narrative terms, though if you can point me in the direction of arguments to the contrary I would be interested to learn more. One definition of homo sapiens could be ‘the species that creates/tells stories’, although it does depend on how broadly you define the term ‘story’.
We shape our own lives in story, sometimes confabulating to create a more satisfactory narrative, and we make sense of our world in stories. Some people constantly rework the stories to incorporate new information; others seem to cling doggedly to the story formed early in their lives and are resistant to any information which challenges it.
History and story have the same root, and history as a narrative may be coloured and distorted in many ways as people shape the verifiable facts to their own ends, good or bad. And sometimes history can become legend. So Arthur who, if he existed, was probably the exceptionally successful leader of a war band fighting the Saxons in the late fifth or early sixth century, became eventually the hero at the centre of ‘The Matter of Britain’ featuring in stories endlessly reworked for the needs of successive generations down to the present day.
On a more universal level, myths and archetypes have always been the vehicles of one kind of truth, as people have perceived it throughout the ages. And in the field of the sciences, the way in which observed phenomena are ordered and classified seems to me to be a form of story telling, and even our understanding of the physical universe can be seen as a narrative told in the language of mathematics.
Or maybe this is all just the story I am telling myself 🙂
21 March 2015 at 17:25 #39036Joseph Campbell did a series of interview with Bill Moyers where he elaborates
on his writings and these are absolutely lovely and filled with extensive
visual treats. Its a very excellent series21 March 2015 at 17:58 #39038if you can point me in the direction of arguments to the contrary I would be interested to learn more.
Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and his Emissary has a very interesting take on the two hemispheres of the brain. He’d argue that we have two main modes of understanding the world (which is why we have two hemispheres, or possibly vice-versa), one being rational, logical, detailed, quite happy to consider a theoretical system valid if it’s internally consistent and not worried about whether the system ‘works’ in the real world. The other is more holistic, more relational, essentially concerned with dealing with the real world and probably equivalent to the ‘narrative’ mode.
He’d argue that the holistic/narrative mode (the ‘master’) is indeed the more important (though we need both) – because it’s the one that we use to relate to the real world. The ’emissary’ detailed/logical/theoretical mode, however, is the one currently being prioritised by Western culture.
However, it’s another doorstop (WITH SCIENCE!) To be precise, lots of neurobiology. And it’s not an uncontested view. But it is a very interesting read.
21 March 2015 at 18:30 #39040@bluesqueakpip Many thanks; I’ll add it to my ‘to read’ list.
21 March 2015 at 19:28 #39041I saw and episode of Dr Who about a year ago. I remember a character (human) with a helmet that had a hatchet on it and he had to open it if he wanted to speak?
Does anyone know what character i am thinking of?
21 March 2015 at 20:07 #39043hi all,
apologies for not being active lately, but I have been constantly lurking (though not in the creepy way that suggests!). ‘Lurking’ in the “enjoying everyone’s comments without time or anything to add” kind of way.Its been a funny couple of weeks with troll-like questions etc. Whether from people who are actually ‘trolling’ (knowingly baiting people, asking for people to do-the-work-for-them pretending to nota speeka eeenglissh) or simply being rude or naive.
The thing I hate about ‘trolling’ is that it destroys trust. It makes anyone asking an innocent question, or writing in a language that is not their first, look like a piss-taker simply because these attributes are typical of trolling activities.
As someone who works everyday with people whose first language isn’t English, this annoys me particularly.
And as someone who enjoys reading people who are genuinely sharing their thoughts and experiences and knowledge of writing and Life, it is also distracting.What does amuse me is that one of the tropes of trolling (I assume its a trope after reading the thoughts of people here who have run sites and forums etc in the past) is that they want people to get people to write stuff and score a ‘win’ for making them do so.
However the quality of the writing here on this forum is so high that its actually a ‘win’ for the readers not the trollers.As I say, I’ve nothing really to add, just wanted to mention.
Especially for those who’ve never posted and thought “ooh, is this a nasty place? that person said it was and that person was rude about that person…”. Yes, people sometimes are rude (eg I’ve said @pedant was rude sometimes) but if you’re even vaguely compassionate or intelligent then your insight is massively appreciated.
Personally I think the ‘friendliness’ of the place here is shown by the fact that imo some trollers have ended up having more fun simply talking with people here – its a nice place to discuss and chat.
21 March 2015 at 20:52 #39046@whisht Thank you. [applause] Not on my behalf, but on behalf of all of those who have contributed to make this such a lovely place.
Its a nice place to discuss and chat
I really want it to stay that way. And I really appreciate your post. Thank you, again.
21 March 2015 at 21:20 #39047@Jonathan I’m baffled by the idea that Jewish creatives (whether culturally, ethnically, observantly, agnostically, orthodoxically, ultra, or other) coming up with a time-and-space traveling outlaw-cum-busybody/meddler/fixer (or, for that matter, any other fictional protagonist) must somehow be operating on the level of Christian allegory. Why? Because to know Christian mythology is to necessarily subscribe to it? AFAIK, most Jews (except the Orthodox and ultra) aren’t waiting around for a Messiah; they’re trying to preserve a world outlook and a set of rituals meaningful to them, just as non-observants like myself may be trying to uphold the basic ethical framework of Judaism, as opposed to the religious mythology, as an important part of our heritage.
If the Doctor is a Jesus figure, he’s got a whole bunch of (Wiley) Coyote mixed in there, and Raven, and an occasional splash of Buddhism, plus John Buchan’s adventure stories and several decades of modern SF space tales, etc., to the degree that finding the “Jesus” in there is a very iffy proposition. By all means try if you’re so inclined, but don’t expect others to rush to follow you just because you say, “It is so.”
@bluesqueakpip Yup, exactly. At a scholarly conference I attend, there’s one academic who instantly relates almost anything to Campbell, and is fondly heckled for it by others because it seems as if he just can’t help it. Kind of like people deep into this or that religious ideology (or other academic one, for that matter). There’s also been a good bit of discussion in Feminist circles about how Campbell’s theories pretty much exclude female heroes (but then, Pratchett (Tiffany Aching, Susan Sto Helit, Granny Weatherwax?). I don’t recall Campbell even addressing this omission of half the human species, but, well, 1949 . . . by the time of the Moyers interviews, Campbell was a Grand Old Man. I don’t think he was expected to move on to in-depth consideration of a the new wave of cultural thought that feminist thinking forcefully introduced into our cultural discourse in a forceful way later in the same century, although Moyers, being Moyers, might have raised the question (sorry, I just don’t remember). See the recent uproar over MissMaster and the possibility of regeneration into female form for the Doctor at some point for an good example; insisting on the full humanity of women does tend to up-end masculinist cosmologies all over the place these days, with resulting hyperbole, emotion, and (predictably) backlash.
How do we perceive our own stories, other than as stories? We are pattern-recognition specialists, after all, and past stories ingrain patterns to recognize. Thanks for the book titles; I kinda favor Corey Doctorow’s summary of story (although he may have found it elsewhere), which is more or less, “Someone leaves town; someone comes to town”. After one (or both) of those events, yer on yer own, baby. @Mudlark, as you said; story is a basic method of classifying and making sense of our experience, whether the story is just a construction we put onto events or intrinsic in them.
Is the Doctor a healer? I think he aspires to be and sometimes succeeds, but I suspect he’s also much more complex than *just* that (which is why he persists in his hold on the public imagination). I suppose the Ood would go for calling him a “prince of peace”, although his general history is loaded with warfare and strife, isn’t it? And it doesn’t always end in peace . . . as for Gallifrey, for example, frozen in a pocket universe (“You make a desert and call it peace” . . . said of the Romans Empire I think, but by whom?).
Does “Messiah” mean “healer”? I’ve been under the impression that its meaning is “messenger”. “Doctor”, now, that’s a term that has meant both “learned person” and “healer”.
@whisht Glad to find you here again! Trolling has become more sophisticated than it used to be, IMO, with more insidious entry strategies followed by the usual deliberately draconian and provocative statements and judgments. But a person who really is sophisticated has of necessity developed a mind susceptible to interesting conversation, so such a troll is more likely to become the catch, to the benefit of all concerned.
@purofilion Thanks for the kind words; I do appreciate them.
21 March 2015 at 21:57 #39050There have been some absolutely wonderful ideas, eloquently expressed, about the nature of the Doctor over the past few days!
@craig I’m pretty sure that Campbell’s writing has come up before in discussion here. I would agree that I find the mythic hero at the root of all the stories a more convincing connection between the Doctor and Christianity, than the notion of a direct connection from one to the other. (As my husband likes to remind people, we are not descended from apes; we and the apes are both descended from something else!)
@lisa That Bill Moyers series had a huge impact on me back in the day. I have since come to agree that the “Hero” motif as laid down by Campbell is not quite as pervasive as Campbell would have it, but it is still a common enough theme with a lot of pretty familiar tropes.
@bluesqueakpip I’d say that uncontested views often make much less interesting reading on the whole. 🙂
@purofilion Speaking as one who comes from a part of the world where according to surveys, many more people lay claim to “spiritual” beliefs rather than “religious” ones, I think that the difference may have a doctrinal connection? In other words, they see religion as following doctrine laid down by others, whereas spirituality allows one to invent one’s own doctrine.
I also loved the “Doctor as a balloon” metaphor.
@whisht However the quality of the writing here on this forum is so high that its actually a ‘win’ for the readers not the trollers. Hear, hear!
@ichabod I forget whether it was you or someone else who originally mentioned “Trickster” in the nature of the Doctor discussion, but I wholeheartedly agree. Raven, certainly, and I love the Wile E. Coyote mention. What about Anansi? West African trickster and God of Stories?
21 March 2015 at 22:05 #39051“They make a desert and call it peace” . . . said of the Romans Empire I think, but by whom?).
According to Tacitus it was said by Calgacus, a leader of the Caledonian confederacy, in a speech before the battle of Mons Graupius. This reference in The Agricola is, I think, the only known mention of a leader of that name, and the speech is probably invented out of the whole cloth.
21 March 2015 at 22:10 #39052@arbutus Oh yes, by all means, Anansi! All the tricksters occasionally bring gifts, as I recall — great, powerful gifts, sometimes, in folklore. I wonder if there’s some sort of dragon-character in Chinese mythology who might serve, too? I wonder, though — are there any Trickster goddesses, or is it always guys? I think there’s a distinction to be made between Tricksters (who are often aggressively sexual from time to time but serve as clowns and too-smart-for-your-own-good characters as well) and beings like the fox-women or the selkies who are shape-changers whose primary purpose is — what a surprise — about their sexuality rather than other qualities + sexuality.
The one difference I see that makes the Doctor stand out, though, is the foundation-level melancholy of the Doctor, as exile, eternal wanderer (even when he “settles down”, he outlives that stage by regenerating to end it), watcher of the deaths of others. The Trickster/clowns are maybe more like MissMaster, actually — taking pleasure in deceptions and getting away with s**t.
21 March 2015 at 23:02 #39054Does “Messiah” mean “healer”?
Nope. ‘Messiah’, or ‘Christos’ in Koine Greek, means ‘Anointed One’, basically ‘Anointed King’. Even with the rather multiple meanings of ‘messiah’ in First Century Judaism, you can’t make it mean healer. Warrior, yes. Somebody who cleanses and/or rebuilds the Temple, yes. The king, fine. But not healer.
First Century (and onwards) Christianity developed a rather different understanding of ‘Messiah’, because by then they were utterly convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. So the term shifted a bit – but it still basically applies to ‘king’, ‘high priest’ and maybe to ushering in the era of the new creation.
‘Messenger’ – you’re thinking ‘malak’ (Hebrew) or ‘angelos’, (Greek). Don’t ask me to go into any more detail – my Greek’s crap. 😉 But I do know that one.
I really don’t see the Doctor as Jesus. RTD certainly tried to map David Tennant’s Doctor onto Jesus, because he has this theory that we create our own Gods (hence the entire ‘Lonely God’ thing). But it always did feel (to me) a bit like it had been forced onto the character rather than something arising naturally. What TV tropes would call a ‘Crystal Dragon Jesus'(IN SPACE!).
I’d say The Doctor’s more a Victorian Scientific Explorer/Adventurer in the Professor Challenger mode, crossed with Odysseus.
21 March 2015 at 23:37 #39055Actually, the Chinese have the Monkey King as a trickster hero. I’m not familiar with his stories, but he is definitely their guy.
I agree that while there are definitely trickster elements in the Doctor, it’s not the whole story. I like @bluesqueakpip‘s Odysseus notion, and someone awhile back mentioned Robin Hood. @jimthefish added the theme of the outsider, which is the trope of so many westerns. He definitely has a history of walking into situations and being drawn into them, resolving them, and riding off into the sunset!
22 March 2015 at 00:07 #39057@ Ichabod in hindsight your correct in pointing out that Campbell was a bit
chauvinistic and narrow minded in how his translation of the old stories. But
his tales were great story telling non the less. I remember like @arbutus following
the entire series and how popular it was with folks. I also think I follow you
on your point about having faith and/or having as a cultural back round.
They are two different things. We have many more cultures on planet Earth than
we have faiths. People don’t try to deny other peoples culture heritage generally speaking.
That’s a good thing too.
On the imaginary friend idea and stuffed animals. That’s interesting but what shall
I tell my imaginary friend that doesn’t live in a stuffed animal? I hope this knowledge
will not be a great disappointment for ‘it’.
Apoligies I cant find who said the Doctor reminded them of a Victorian explorer scientist
He also reminded me of Professor Quartermass too. I loved that old series.22 March 2015 at 00:29 #39058@ichabod I don’t see the Doctor as a Jesus figure at all. Not in any incarnation
of him. I think we shouldn’t try to conflate regeneration with resurrection. I
also don’t like the notion of making him God like. I rather stick with super hero.[Btw – the post before this 1 was for you.]
22 March 2015 at 00:30 #39059People don’t try to deny other peoples culture heritage generally speaking.
Errr… I think most countries could provide you with cultural groups who’d disagree with that statement. Often quite strongly.
22 March 2015 at 00:45 #39060The rest of the world laughs at him. You should see the coverage he gets. That would be a good start.
Oh we know the coverage our great idiot gets world wide, or as I sometime refer to him, “our great embarrassment”. Don’t get us started though please. This is one of the places I come when I need to forget that I live in a country ruled by idiots. Where is the Doctor to whisper those three words when he is really desperately needed.
All the interesting conversation happen when I am asleep. @mudlark, On thinking recently of “the matter of Britain” it struck me that the Arthur stories were taken up by the Normans to legitimise their rule over the Saxons. They portray themselves as the true successors to Arthur justifying their conquest and displacement of the Saxons, window dressing a shameless land grab.
Stories are our way of making sense of everything, they are the threads by which we connect random experience.
@ichabod and @arbutus when talking of the Trickster hero Monkey came to mind. There was a long running, Japanese I think, animation of Monkey which was dubbed into English, which was shown immediately before Dr Who when I was a teen. I think the dubbing might have been done in Australia. I have a great fondness for the Monkey stories and Monkey as a character.
@lisa watching the Deamons reminds me of just how much Dr Who drew on the earlier Quartermass series. We did have a Quatermass discussion some time ago way way back in the archives somewhere, no doubt very dusty now.
Cheers
Janette
22 March 2015 at 00:51 #39061@bluesqueakpip – I get the political conflicts aspects. I meant more
as individuals than I meant as groups. Unfortunately the mentality does
change radically once we form ‘units’. It leans towards conflicts and
differences rather then that which brings people together.
I guess the opposite would be a one world order situation? I don’t see that either.
Still no one can deny where their ancestors come from and most people don’t
try to do that. So even though the Sunnis and Shiites don’t deny the cultural
heritages are different they just strongly disagree with what they stand for.
I dunno, in my mind there is a subtle difference. -
AuthorPosts
The topic ‘On The Sofa (6)’ is closed to new replies.
