I’m sorry it took so long to pull this together, but here is my rundown of the Religion and Doctor Who conference in
Manchester on 11/2. It was a really good experience all around, with some
excellent papers and engaging conversation. The cross-section of people was
fascinating, and not just presenters but also the audience-members, some of
whom had come a good distance, and really contributed to the discussion. I
ended up sufficiently engrossed that I didn’t have time to do much blogging.
For the first session, Ann Matsuuchi presented a paper she wrote with Alexander
Lozupone called “Birth, Rebirth and Buddhism in Classic Doctor Who,” which was
a critical look at how the original program used and appropriated Buddhist
themes, especially in the development of Pertwee’s Doctor. It questioned the
common perception of the program during that era as anti-religious by
broadening “religion” beyond Western, Judeo-Christian presuppositions, and
demonstrated a broad influence of Buddhist ideas over the years.
Next up was my paper, “A Whovian Demonology: Daemons, Beasts
and Destroyers,” which looked at the various approached Doctor Who has taken to
the demonic, from the highly rationalistic “ancient astronauts” explanation
seen in “The Daemons” and “Pyramids of
Mars” to the more supernatural and esoteric “Curse of Fenric,” to the Doctor’s
post-modern agnostic reaction in “The Satan Pit.” I argued that “The Impossible
Planet” and “The Satan Pit” were intended to engage in direct dialogue with the
earlier encounters with the demonic, and reflected a conscious effort to
embrace the different epistemic frameworks evident in the different Doctors’
reactions to the supernatural.
The next paper, from Michael Spence, was entitled “Reading
‘The Daemons’,” and turned out to be a wonderful complement to mine, because he
provided two alternate readings of “The Daemons,” one similar to mine,
emphasizing the Doctor’s positivist, materialist denial of the
supernatural as a part of a larger
anti-religion theme; and another reading that showed how the episode subverted
its own rationalism, for instance, by making Jo’s irrational selflessness the
key to defeating the Daemon Azal.
The questions phase turned into a lively dialogue between
Michael, me, and a few audience members, about post-modernism and the
differences between Moffatt and Davies, and more generally on the show’s
ability to play with thematic tensions and provide multi-layered social
critiques.
After a break, there was a session about using Doctor who in
religious education. The first paper, by Owen Edwards, was entitled “As We See,
So We Learn: Doctor Who as Religious Education Broadcasting.” It provided some
interesting context about the historical perception of Doctor Who, and its
rocky relationship with its status as an “educational” program, and the rather
sophisticated approach the show took towards questions of cultural relativism
even in early serials like “The Aztecs.” A solid argument, even if it was far
enough outside my own interests not to really grab me.
Next up was yet another paper dealing with “The Impossible
Planet / The Satan Pit.” Holly Jordan’s “The Impossible Pit: Satan, Hell and
Teaching Doctor Who” specifically dealt with using those episodes to spark
dialogue about Abrahamic conceptions of evil and Hell in introductory religion
courses. It included some fascinating excerpts from students own response
papers, and demonstrated a lot of valuable pedagogical insights that I may have
to adapt.
The last paper of this session was from Matt Rawle, a Methodist
minister from Louisiana, who has used Doctor Who screenings as a way of
providing his congregation with a new vocabulary for approaching theological
questions. But I’ve got enough of a blind spot for liturgical and pastoral
matters that a lot of this one went right past me, I’m afraid. Matt was a heck
of a nice guy, though.
The first paper of the third session, “The Doctor and his
Iconographic Search for an Ecstatic Human Experience,” by Stacey Embert, was
read in absentia, which is a shame, because I would have loved to have engaged
the topic more directly. It was a meditation on the Doctor’s fascination with
human fragility, and his alienation from the experience of real death, both
through his regeneration process and his tendency to abandon his companions
before they fall victim to age. There were some fascinating implications for
Clara’s role, as the always-dying companion, in the Doctor’s self-renewal.
Jasper Peters’s presentation was something of a homily,
using the experience of being the Doctor’s companion as an allegory for
Christian discipleship. This is where I ended up speculating about Donna Noble
and theosis, since she didn’t just follow the Doctor, she became the
Doctor. I also compared her brain burning out if she were to remember the
Doctor to the Talmudic warnings against being consumed by fire as a result of
contemplating the mysteries of the heavenly chariot.
The third paper of the session, from the winsome Leena
Vuolteenaho, was a précis of her wider research into Buddhist and Christian
readings of immortality in Doctor Who. She dealt in particular with the problem
of eternal life, and the show’s recurring presentation of physical immortality
as more of a curse than a blessing. This was a productive foil to Embert’s
paper, especially with respect to “Enlightenment,” in which the immortal
Eternals have no regard for the lives of “ephemerals,” since their death is
inevitable anyway.
The keynote address was, well, a little churchy for me.
Caroline Symcox is an Anglican rector and former writer of Doctor Who audio
dramas. I was hoping for a little more discussion of the creative and
production process, but she was more interested in making some kind of point
about “natural theology,” and criticizing the atheistic stance of the current
show-runners. She seemed to want to argue that the current producers end up
accidentally making pro-religious statements in spite of themselves, which I
found a little insulting, sounding a lot like the common Christian
cliché that assumes all atheists secretly long for God. (She even used the
phrase “honest seeker.” Ugh.) It also seems to assume that atheists aren’t
capable of consciously negotiating the positive elements of religion while
still denying its factuality. I encouraged her to see “The Book of Mormon.”
Another
blogger echoed an attendee’s tweet observing that “the day became more
devout as it went on,” although he seems to have found that a more positive
development than I did. I would have hoped for a little more straight-up
critical scholarship and a little less theology, and there were definitely
moments when I felt I was the sole secular voice in the room (not an unfamiliar
sensation). Still, shared geekdom can be a powerful force uniting people from
different backgrounds, and I had a really wonderful time talking with the other
presenters at the pub and dinner afterwards. It was particularly interesting to
observe the difference between the British (and Irish) presenters (for whom
Doctor
Who is deeply-rooted cultural phenomenon from their childhood) and the
Americans (for whom it is more of a fringe/cult interest, and in some cases, only
known from the revived series). I don’t know what to make of the fact that the one
of us with the most encyclopedic knowledge of the original series was Finnish…
I would like to thank Andy Crome for his work arranging the
conference, and for giving me the chance to speak. (You should all go buy his
and
James McGrath’s
new book,
Time
and Relative Dimensions in Faith.) I only wish I had more time to spend
in Manchester (which reminds me—not unfavorably—of Baltimore). Certainly the
friendliest bunch of guys with shaved heads and neck-tattoos I’ve met in some
time, even if I couldn’t understand a word they said.
(I will post a copy of my presentation on my
academia.edu page once I have a chance to clean it up a little, which may not be until after SBL/AAR.)
