Via Taptastic Read more
Via Taptastic Read more
As some fans of Doctor Who have already noted, the inclusion of mention of companions of the Eight Doctor's from audiobooks in the prequel minisode “The Night of the Doctor” seems to give the stamp of canonicity to those stories. Of course, that conclusion perhaps needs to be tempered by the fact that even the TV movie featuring the Eight Doctor is not always treated as genuinely canonical – the whole notion of the Doctor being half human on his... Read more
Benjamin Corey has written two posts, one about how reading the Bible makes you more liberal, the other about how reading the Bible makes you more progressive. (See the Patheos Progressive Christian Digest for this and more!) In related news, Bob Cargill drew attention to the fact that, if you missed last night’s episode of “Bible Secrets Revealed,” you can now watch it online for free. And for an example of backfiring prooftexting, I came across this quote from the... Read more
This prequel to the 50th anniversary special is itself something special. It brings back to the show the Doctor who had the least time on the screen, Paul McGann’s Eight Doctor. And it gives us a glimpse of the impact of the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks, the extent to which the former had become no better than the latter in seeking to defeat them, and how the Doctor moved from refusing to get entangled in... Read more
L. P. Hartley wrote that “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The photo below, taken roughly a century ago in Persia, of a Nestorian bishop and his secretary and servants, is so different from what most Christians in the English speaking world could ever imagine a bishop and his entourage looking like, that I think it helps make the point. Read more
Recently in my religion and science fiction class we discussed the attributes of God or a god, and what makes a being worthy of worship, using Star Trek and the Twilight Zone as points of reference, as well as traditional theology. I made a reference to The Princess Bride, asking whether we could ever know that a God is not the “Dread God Roberts.” In that movie, the role of the Dread Pirate Roberts became a franchise, passed from one person... Read more
Peter Chattaway shared this sneak peek of the upcoming Noah movie starring Russell Crowe: Compare what you see in the Answers in Genesis ark park and its anachronistic depiction of Noah’s workshop, about which Fred Clark recently posted: Of course, talking about “realism” in different types of depictions of a story that is not realistic is itself problematic. But when you are dealing with the text through creative storytelling, and you still manage to get more historical realism for the time... Read more
Joel Hoffmann announced that he is in the first episode of Bible Secrets Revealed, a new documentary series that airs starting tonight at 10 pm on the History Channel. Since I don’t know if or when I am in any episodes, that may mean that I ended up entirely on the cutting room floor, or whatever its digital equivalent is. We’ll soon see! Dan McClellan will be live-blogging the series. And Bob Cargill will be answering questions about it on... Read more
Jack Collins has shared a round-up of the recent conference about religion and Doctor Who. He has said that he’ll be sharing the paper he read at the conference soon. Read more
I mentioned my decision not to go to the 7:30 pm showing of “Day of the Doctor” in the Baltimore area while I’m there for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. I’m now going to the 10 pm showing. Anyone else who will be there and interested in going should get in touch with me – it makes sense to share transportation, and the more the merrier! I also have a... Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In