I am a sometimes Dr. Who fan, and recently I’ve been catching up with the newer series (2005-on). At times I can go overboard – here’s the Tardis bookcase I built for my daughter and son-in-law.
Tardis Bookcase. It’s bigger on the inside because it opens up.
I hope what follows makes sense – I’m not sure I’ve thought it through fully yet.
A few days ago I watched the last episode of the 2005 season, The Parting of Ways. The Daleks, the exterminating scourge of the universe, have come back to life from extinction after being re-created by their Emperor. The irony in the episode is the extent to which the writers adapted Biblical themes of creation using the concepts of Genesis 1 to explore, God the creator and how false gods are destroyers.
The doctor questioned the Dalek Emperor about where all the Daleks came from. The Emperor started from Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” But the emperor twisted the passage and the meaning in his reply,”Harvesting the waste of humanity, the prisoners, the refugees, the dispossed, they all came to us. The bodies were filleted, pulped, sifted…only one cell in a billion…Everything human has been purged. I cultivated pure and blessed Dalek.”
Now look at Genesis 1:2, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The Emperor tells the doctor, “I reached into the dark and made new life. I am the God of all Daleks”
The Daleks plan to destroy the earth and make a new creation, “Purify the earth with fire. The planet will become my temple and we shall rise. This will be our paradise.” Sounds like the Garden of Eden – if you go around holding a plumber’s plunger in front of you!
Again we see the Genesis language “And God saw that it was good” in the Emperor’s comments after half the earth is wiped clean, “This is perfection, I have created heaven on earth.”
Meanwhile Rose (the doctor’s travel companion) returns to rescue him. She has looked into the living vortex and soul of the Tardis and becomes consumed almost to the point of death. The writers suggest that soul has characteristics in common with the creator God, the one true God of the universe. Rose says she must “protect from the false god – (the Emporer)…Everything must come to dust – all things, everything must die.” But because she has absorbed the vortex she becomes God-like. “How can this be wrong – I bring life.” The doctor responds, “This is wrong – you can’t control life and death.” Then Rose replies, “But I can – the sun and the moon, the day and the night. Why do they hurt – I can see everything -all that was all that is, all that ever will be.”
In the end everything works out OK (it’s a TV show, after all). The doctor pulls Rose away from the vortex by taking it himself.
The episode captures several ideas which are Biblically based and deeply ironic:
- The ultimate power of creation (which also includes destruction) will be corrupted if it’s in anyone hands but God’s.
- Paradise (the Garden) becomes a wasteland unless God creates it. Any other attempt gives rise to corruption and destruction.
- False gods look similar to the true God but have some inherent flaw that leads to their own destruction.
- False gods and movements downplay our own humanity – We have commonality with God yet there is still an uncrossable gap. Even if we approached the “heart” of God, we still could not withstand the knowledge across time and space.