Highly evocative Dr Who end
September 23rd 2007 06:30
Dr Who's Tardis
Last night's ABC showing of the final in the present series of Dr Who was highly evocative emotionally and even spiritually. No wonder it has a cult-like following of avid supporters. Even older, mildly avid viewers like me get excited enough to want to write about it.
It's interesting to see how biblically similar the plots of Dr Who have become. Last night we glimpsed a foretelling of the end of the world, a furnace for all Earth's poor souls trapped in their individual spheres.
Dr Who stands for the good time lord. The other time lord stood for evil. He enslaved the people, called himself the master and made broadcasts obliging the people to rejoice in him.
Had the plot followed the biblical way, his ending might have been in the furnace too. But no, the scriptwriters decided on another ending. After loosing his powers then receiving a life- threatening shot to the chest, the master preferred to suicide. Faced with the alternative of prison locked in the Tardis (Dr Who's time machine), he refused to use his time lord's capability to regenerate.
"I win", the master uttered just before dying in the arms of Dr Who, who pleaded with him to regenerate.
Earlier the evil master heard the word's from Dr Who that he most dreaded and definitely did not want to hear. "I forgive you", said Dr Who. More highly evocative script.
So what is it in us that gets evoked when we see something like this? Why do we get so excited that we seek out others with whom to share the experience? Some in these groups get so enamoured that they organise international travel to places where these fictitious events were said to have taken place. Adherents to the story of The Da Vinci Code do this, and travel tour operators to Europe are happy to oblige.
Does anyone remember the kid's film "Never Ending Story", especially the part where the boy reading the book is confronted when the book seems to speak to him something like this: "Children's disbelief in fairy tales is the reason that the heaven for kids is disintegrating - and your own disbelief in this story at this moment."
An adult in the cinema audience of about age 35 at the time, I was no kid. But at that moment in the film, the book seemed to be talking to adults too. I had the sense that my disbelief had dire consequences far beyond just me.
That is why I write the kind of thing for Orble readers that I do now, observing things like this: How interesting that the Dr Who scriptwriters picked prison in the Tardis time machine as Dr Who's penalty intended for the master. Because in the bible the devil faces a thousand years prison from the time of Christ's second coming until the very end of the Millennium period. Then he gets a release like Napoleon got from the Island of Elba, to cause even more torment and misery in a final battle.
Dr Who is fiction. Never Ending Story is fiction. But Napoleon was real. Which is most exciting, fiction or truth? Which is most evocative? And what is it in us that gets evoked?
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Comment by Nina
I loved the finale of Doctor Who, although I prefer to look at the three final episodes as one whole, since they are a continuation of one another.
The rejuvenation of the Doctor was a great reflection of Rose's absorption of the time vortex in 'The Parting of the Ways' - Rose was a human empowered by the power of time itself; the Doctor is a Time Lord empowered by the power of the human spirit.
I think part of the message of this episode is that things must ultimately end. At the end of the universe, humanity tried to live on, tried to find utopia. Instead, they only found darkness, regressed, and lost their humanity. The Doctor too has to face that the Time Lords will come to an end with him - despite the terrible actions of the Master, the Doctor wanted him to survive, so that he wasn't the only one left.
As for why these shows evoke emotions, it is because we recognise the people and the stories (that is, if they are written well). We sympathise and empathise with the battles that the characters are facing. It's the same reason that similar tales of folklore are found through countries and culture - something about these tales speaks to people, be it redemption and salvation, or what lurks in the darkness.
Comment by Big Cat
Chatterpillar
Great to have your comment. Thanks for commenting so precisely. Unfortunately I missed out on the 2nd last and 3rd last episodes. So thanks for the wider view.
One question. How does a time lord come to possess the power of a human spirit? Was there a past episode to tell us something about this?
Your mention about what lurks, the redemptive and salvation is intriguing. I'm very interested in views about the human spirit as distinct from soul. A glance at my keywords page in my home site ACknowledge will tell you why.
As an intrepid reporter I'm excitedly on the track of the biggest story ever - about what happens after this life is over. (Right now I'm researching the purest strain of Christian writing that I have ever seen.)
Comment by Nina
The Master had used satellites to create a network around the Earth, which gave of sort of a telepathic signal, in order to keep the people under control. Over the year that the Master had him captive, the Doctor managed to tune his own telepathic ability into this network - thus, when all the people on Earth thought of the Doctor at once, as an act of both desperation and hope, it rejuvenated him. I hope that makes sense...
I find the themes of redemption and salvation very interesting, and they are ones that are frequently visited in Doctor Who and Torchwood. The distinction between the human spirit and the soul is not one I had really considered before - do you consider the latter eternal, while the former is not?
Comment by Big Cat
Chatterpillar
Thanks for the answer about telepathic satellites to my question about how did Dr Who come by the power of the human spirit.
Is the soul immortal? Not if there's a second death, the one after death of the body. Is spirit immortal - yes, if it's a regenerated spirit by the same process that Apostle Paul wrote about after his Damascus Road experience.
Your question about the distinction spirit versus soul comes naturally. That's the problem - it's natural but the spirit is about supernatural. According to what I've researched, spiritual things can only be discerned by the Spirit and passed on Spirit-to-spirit.
Please don't think of me preaching, even teaching - just reporting the news based on what I'm currently researching. I'm finding "the truth" in this research to be stranger even than Dr Who fiction. I know you check for consistency in plots. So far I have had all the religious inconsistencies ironed out, since I started this discerning kind of research.
Thanks for being interested.
Cheers, Alan