by VorJack
Ian over at Irreducible Complexity gives a great summary of half the plots from Science Fiction shows:
“Oh no, there’s a blurflurgh!â€
“What’s a blurflurgh?â€
“A blurflurgh is the only thing that can destroy the universe, we can’t let the blurflurgh flemmoxate.”
“It’s flemmoxating.â€
“Its okay, I have a praxindoodle, which prevents the flemmoxate of the blurflurgh destroying the universe.”
“But the praxindoodle only works in the presents of gamma-umithrons.â€
“We can desedrify the ship’s jimgraxle to generate a stream of gamma umithrons to power the praxindoodle that will prevent the flemmoxate of the blurflurgh from destroying the universe. But only if I hold down the button from inside the jimgraxle room.â€
“But that will kill you.â€
“Yes, but its a sacrifice I must make. Goodbye everyoneâ€â€¦5 minute FX shot…
“Wait, you’re alive? How?â€
“I realised that the only way to survive the desedrification field is to finally understand the meaning of love.â€
“Cool – what’s next?â€
Arbitrary peril, arbitrary solution, all tied to some saccharine sentimentality. But it’s the underlying structure behind a great many of our televised stories and, as Ian points out, behind Christian cross theology as well.
Which, now that I think of it, ties in to a quote over at Exploring our Matrix from Philip Gulley’s If the Church Were Christian:
“Isn’t it odd? Christians created a theological scenario that placed the soul of every person at risk of eternal damnation. To counter that threat, we interpreted the life and death of Jesus in a particular way, then spent billions of dollars battling the threat we created. Wouldn’t it just be easier to stop perpetuating the scenario?
Perhaps the day might come when Christianity will reconsider its priorities, when preparing souls for an afterlife we have no proof exists fades in importance, and we can use the church’s energies to improve this life.”
I really like that sentence.
I believe there’s a straight forward explanation of why that is the underlying structure of so many stories: because lazy (or over worked) writers take the Christian story and retell it by substituting the parts. It is standard story telling.
I think this basic story-telling is, on the one hand, why people read into a lot of stories as Christian allegories — I guess that’s in a “good” way — and on the other hand, read into a lot of stories as Satanic representations because they substitute people and events for the “true” Christian telling of Jesus. I just woke up, I hope that makes sense. People recognize the structure and give it more meaning than it really warrants, from a perspective of good or evil. They think that Jesus-time is the original and everyone uses it for inspiration or for the purposes of leading people away from god.
I think this was a basic storytelling structure long before religion was around. We aren’t reusing the Jesus story so much as early Christians used the same story structure that we still use today.
Revisionism!
I’m sure I read somewhere that Star Trek (TNG I think) just had the word “TECH” in draft scripts and someone who wasn’t an arts major would come thru and add something vaguely believable.
You read right. Finally understanding the meaning of love, Spock would synthesize the chemicals that produce it.
Thanks for sharing this, and making a sci-fi connection!
Wait a minute, I write science fiction!!!
…and, yeah, that does look a little familiar…..
Yeah? I did not know that.
Anything I would know?
A nice couple finds and a nice synthesis of them, VorJack. Well done.
I loved the story, but imagine if it had been told in “spoonerisms”, it would be even more cool! Has anybody ever heard the story of “Rindercalla”?….great fun. In fact we should hear the entire biblical story treated to spoonerisms…….it would make it more believable!
Christianity will never reconsider it’s priorities as jesus is going to beam them up…..and it can’t be soon enough!
You mean Rindercella, the Mugly Other, and the Three Sad Blisters? Never heard of them.
;)
Any chance you have heard the tale of the “Pee Thrittle Ligs”? It’s even better! Now imagine the ten commandments done with spoonerisms, it’d be a scream: “Ko not Dill”! I do believe it makes more sense this way!
Wait a minute. I just saw a ST:TNG episode with this in it. Isn’t that copyright infringement?