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rabid1stSeriously, don't read this if you would prefer a pony...or suffer from any depressive illness or have people depending on you for hope and joy and life. It is all a matter of perspective again...you USA fans...and that's all I'm saying to you here...this is a different look at things.
I suppose it is a matter of what you believe in. And that is the problem I had with Joss Whedon's ultimate plan and the one I could have with RTD's. RTD could well be casting the Doctor as a God figure. And giving us his view of God...and what he feels is the purpose of "belief in God" in our lives.
He could be saying, THIS is what God is good for...in our ordinary lives. Elton Pope tells us that even if he touches you for a second...you pay a terrible price. Davros calls him "the Destroyer of Worlds"...and I think of Oppenheimer and his forged weapons...and I think about John Smith's Journal and how he describes what the Doctor does as "I set fire to them and they are up the chimney and away." That is what the Doctor does in ordinary people's lives...he forges them in fire. God as the spark, but not the purpose. And we see all his children filled with that spark as the flutter away on the wind at the almost end. It's not the end for them...for the companions...they have busy ordinary lives to get back to after all. And if they fail to get back to those lives...the Doctor forces the issue.
He did for Susan, exactly what he does for Rose. He says..."Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine." Here's a man for you to take my place...I've got to go help other people feel special now.
So...in the Unicorn and the Wasp...there is this terrible moment of foreshadowing. And I mentioned it when the show aired...this moment when Donna is sitting there with Agatha Christie and she's suddenly saying how much she loves the Doctor...how just being near him makes her think she's special. She wants to stay with him forever...but she can't. We know Donna is doomed at that moment, but she's more than doomed...she's duped...because the show will go on with another companion...so as she's talking...we know she's not special. Oh, but she will be remembered...just like all of us are remembered by our loved ones. That's what we get.
Many of us have groaned over the ceaseless and overblown devotion that the New Who companions have in the Doctor...they all fall desparately in love with him...and that's very distracting...and possibly to point. It is a religous fervor, taking them, distorting their view for a time. Just like Elton Pope's fandom in the Doctor kept him from enjoying his one room flat. I've said it's what allows ordinary people to trust him. And we can compare that to Martha, Jack, Mickey, Sarah Jane and even Rose...and we can take that view of the Old School people who I thought just didn't get it...and turn it around and see that they got it, but maybe weren't seeing the beauty that RTD saw in that idea. Bascially, that it wasn't being with the Doctor that made these people special...they were intrinsically special...because an ordinary person is the most important thing in the universe.
The reason I have trouble with this worldview...is that it isn't mine. Oh, I do think ordinary people are special. And I think it well could be true that Susan and David had a long happy life...that Rose learned to love a man who was almost but not quite the man she loved first...because THAT man couldn't tell her he loved her and maybe didn't love her at all but was just offering her a happy surge of being near him and was caught up in her parallel surge of god sparks. I mean, he was just as happy to just be with her and was given his small taste of Rose's divinity.
I think it could well be true that Donna Noble...like Agatha Christie...has a great mind and her adventures might bleed through in some form and make her feel better about her life now that the people in her life know that they really love her. And I think it is one of the uses of belief in God...to make ordinary people aware of their lives and be better people.
And yes...I am aware that hope for transformation...is often false hope and we should all just look at the simple things we have and appreciate them. And certainly ONE path to doing that is to accept that THIS is all there is. We can't look forward to a union with god but we could have a better job in Chiswick. And if God is an illusion and there is just nothing to him really but the spark he puts into people...then it doesn't matter if God is lonely. He should be lonely...he can't really be with people.
And I think the problem I have with all of this...lies within me. You all might have noticed that I believe in transformation. I have actually experienced it in my life, so I know transformation happens. And I have experienced tragedy and I know that happens too. And I have had lots and lots of plain old ordinary days that were worth treasuring.
But I think that fiction is the place to really show transformation to people...and how it comes about...which sorry to say...to JW (and possibly to RTD) isn't by magic. It isn't by the touch of God from beyond us...setting a spark to us...but from the spark inside connecting us all. And yes, I would have made the Lonely God one of us...because I think that's what a Lonely God needs. I think we all need to be a little closer to the divine...we should be lifted up...and the divine should step down.
I feel that atheist and fundamentalist views are much the same...in that they both make the divine something separate from us. So, of course, it makes sense that RTD would keep the Doctor separate from us, too. And try to turn things so that the people who almost touch the stars...come back to earth. And maybe it's not only that he doesn't SEE how to make the Doctor one of us...but that he truly believes the Doctor can't be one of us...because he's God.
I am not content with the idea that the Doctor goes on and on...through the cosmos...touching people...making them feel special...only to set them back down on the side of the road in Scotland and tell them to get a life. Because then he is still...the hand from above...ever the same, never changing. And we must put all of our trust in him knowing best...even though he is not one of us at all. How can he know, I wonder...how Donna, River, Susan, Elton's Girlfriend, Elton, 10.2, Rose, Jack and Sarah Jane should live...if he's never lived himself? Oh, well..he did live once...and he lost that and can never have it back...not now...because now he must act like the most lonely person in the universe. He must turn his back on what he needs...because the universe just can't get on without him...or the BBC can't.
There is a brief exchange on the beach...when Rose says that 10.2 isn't him and 10 says..."He needs you and in that he is very like me."
So, yeah...I would close the distance between the human and the spark of the divine...but that's just me. And I can see how RTD might think that it is better to have God offer you lies...let you believe you are special for a time and when you see that you are not able to walk with him...not quite THAT special...because he is always beyond you...you look around at what you have and accept it. This is what happened here...even to Rose who could capture the Time Vortex in her head and stride across dimensions and bring the spark of hope and life to others. The Doctor said once that if he believed in anything...he believed in her. And Old School people said that was an abstract belief...in all his companions. Of course, God believes in us, right?
We are all brilliant, right? In our own small way...oh, but not so wonderful that we can be him...or help him. At the almost end of JE...we almost see that he could maybe believe these people could heal him.
But no...he's still above us...still able to decide where we get off the merry-go-round...he still knows better...even Rose, who he needs, is still not able to touch him...because he's just not real.
I suppose it is a matter of what you believe in. And that is the problem I had with Joss Whedon's ultimate plan and the one I could have with RTD's. RTD could well be casting the Doctor as a God figure. And giving us his view of God...and what he feels is the purpose of "belief in God" in our lives.
He could be saying, THIS is what God is good for...in our ordinary lives. Elton Pope tells us that even if he touches you for a second...you pay a terrible price. Davros calls him "the Destroyer of Worlds"...and I think of Oppenheimer and his forged weapons...and I think about John Smith's Journal and how he describes what the Doctor does as "I set fire to them and they are up the chimney and away." That is what the Doctor does in ordinary people's lives...he forges them in fire. God as the spark, but not the purpose. And we see all his children filled with that spark as the flutter away on the wind at the almost end. It's not the end for them...for the companions...they have busy ordinary lives to get back to after all. And if they fail to get back to those lives...the Doctor forces the issue.
He did for Susan, exactly what he does for Rose. He says..."Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine." Here's a man for you to take my place...I've got to go help other people feel special now.
So...in the Unicorn and the Wasp...there is this terrible moment of foreshadowing. And I mentioned it when the show aired...this moment when Donna is sitting there with Agatha Christie and she's suddenly saying how much she loves the Doctor...how just being near him makes her think she's special. She wants to stay with him forever...but she can't. We know Donna is doomed at that moment, but she's more than doomed...she's duped...because the show will go on with another companion...so as she's talking...we know she's not special. Oh, but she will be remembered...just like all of us are remembered by our loved ones. That's what we get.
Many of us have groaned over the ceaseless and overblown devotion that the New Who companions have in the Doctor...they all fall desparately in love with him...and that's very distracting...and possibly to point. It is a religous fervor, taking them, distorting their view for a time. Just like Elton Pope's fandom in the Doctor kept him from enjoying his one room flat. I've said it's what allows ordinary people to trust him. And we can compare that to Martha, Jack, Mickey, Sarah Jane and even Rose...and we can take that view of the Old School people who I thought just didn't get it...and turn it around and see that they got it, but maybe weren't seeing the beauty that RTD saw in that idea. Bascially, that it wasn't being with the Doctor that made these people special...they were intrinsically special...because an ordinary person is the most important thing in the universe.
The reason I have trouble with this worldview...is that it isn't mine. Oh, I do think ordinary people are special. And I think it well could be true that Susan and David had a long happy life...that Rose learned to love a man who was almost but not quite the man she loved first...because THAT man couldn't tell her he loved her and maybe didn't love her at all but was just offering her a happy surge of being near him and was caught up in her parallel surge of god sparks. I mean, he was just as happy to just be with her and was given his small taste of Rose's divinity.
I think it could well be true that Donna Noble...like Agatha Christie...has a great mind and her adventures might bleed through in some form and make her feel better about her life now that the people in her life know that they really love her. And I think it is one of the uses of belief in God...to make ordinary people aware of their lives and be better people.
And yes...I am aware that hope for transformation...is often false hope and we should all just look at the simple things we have and appreciate them. And certainly ONE path to doing that is to accept that THIS is all there is. We can't look forward to a union with god but we could have a better job in Chiswick. And if God is an illusion and there is just nothing to him really but the spark he puts into people...then it doesn't matter if God is lonely. He should be lonely...he can't really be with people.
And I think the problem I have with all of this...lies within me. You all might have noticed that I believe in transformation. I have actually experienced it in my life, so I know transformation happens. And I have experienced tragedy and I know that happens too. And I have had lots and lots of plain old ordinary days that were worth treasuring.
But I think that fiction is the place to really show transformation to people...and how it comes about...which sorry to say...to JW (and possibly to RTD) isn't by magic. It isn't by the touch of God from beyond us...setting a spark to us...but from the spark inside connecting us all. And yes, I would have made the Lonely God one of us...because I think that's what a Lonely God needs. I think we all need to be a little closer to the divine...we should be lifted up...and the divine should step down.
I feel that atheist and fundamentalist views are much the same...in that they both make the divine something separate from us. So, of course, it makes sense that RTD would keep the Doctor separate from us, too. And try to turn things so that the people who almost touch the stars...come back to earth. And maybe it's not only that he doesn't SEE how to make the Doctor one of us...but that he truly believes the Doctor can't be one of us...because he's God.
I am not content with the idea that the Doctor goes on and on...through the cosmos...touching people...making them feel special...only to set them back down on the side of the road in Scotland and tell them to get a life. Because then he is still...the hand from above...ever the same, never changing. And we must put all of our trust in him knowing best...even though he is not one of us at all. How can he know, I wonder...how Donna, River, Susan, Elton's Girlfriend, Elton, 10.2, Rose, Jack and Sarah Jane should live...if he's never lived himself? Oh, well..he did live once...and he lost that and can never have it back...not now...because now he must act like the most lonely person in the universe. He must turn his back on what he needs...because the universe just can't get on without him...or the BBC can't.
There is a brief exchange on the beach...when Rose says that 10.2 isn't him and 10 says..."He needs you and in that he is very like me."
So, yeah...I would close the distance between the human and the spark of the divine...but that's just me. And I can see how RTD might think that it is better to have God offer you lies...let you believe you are special for a time and when you see that you are not able to walk with him...not quite THAT special...because he is always beyond you...you look around at what you have and accept it. This is what happened here...even to Rose who could capture the Time Vortex in her head and stride across dimensions and bring the spark of hope and life to others. The Doctor said once that if he believed in anything...he believed in her. And Old School people said that was an abstract belief...in all his companions. Of course, God believes in us, right?
We are all brilliant, right? In our own small way...oh, but not so wonderful that we can be him...or help him. At the almost end of JE...we almost see that he could maybe believe these people could heal him.
But no...he's still above us...still able to decide where we get off the merry-go-round...he still knows better...even Rose, who he needs, is still not able to touch him...because he's just not real.