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{"id":9358,"date":"2012-09-24T07:41:47","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T11:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=9358"},"modified":"2012-09-24T07:41:47","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T11:41:47","slug":"doctor-who-ghost-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/09\/doctor-who-ghost-light.html","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Who: Ghost Light"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ The Doctor Who episode \u201cGhost Light<\/a> $\"\"$ \u201d is the penultimate episode from the classic series. For those interested in the intersection of religion and Doctor Who, the episode is full of food for thought and discussion. Early in the episode we are treated to a visit to a house by one Rev. Ernest Matthews, Dean of Morthouse College, Oxford. He is there to talk to the master of the house, one Josiah Smith, about his \u201cmumbo jumbo theories,\u201d which unsurprisingly turn out to be a reference to evolution. At various points during the episode, Matthews refers to \u201cDarwinian claptrap\u201d and says that he considers Smith\u2019s views \u201cblasphemous\u201d because they dispute man\u2019s dominance over nature.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Doctor has brought Ace here, and we begin to get the sense that the Doctor is offering a variation on regression therapy to his companion for her psychological well being. He previously took her to a place where she encountered her mother \u2013 whom she hates \u2013 as a baby \u2013 whom she had come to love without realizing who she was. In this episode, the house turns out to be Gabriel Chase, a house that Ace would later burn down in her own time, sensing a lingering evil presence there.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ The house turns out to have an alien spacecraft beneath it, and Smith is but one of several alien beings that were part of the crew, each with a very different role.<\/p>\n

Within that basement there is a place that Nimrod \u2013 Smith\u2019s servant, and a Neanderthal! \u2013 views as a temple, and he worships the light that dwells there. (Ace echoes the Biblical phrase \u201cLet there be light\u201d in connection with this, and later in the episode, when asked where Nimrod is, the Doctor replies by saying<\/a> \u201cHe\u2019s gone to see a man about a god\u201d).<\/p>\n

Rev. Matthews ironically gets turned into an ape by Smith while he is in the process of disputing evolution. But his objection turns out to have a greater significance, one that is explored symbolically throughout the episode. Matthews says that man has been the same ever since he stood in the Garden of Eden. The light-being, simply referred to as \u201cLight,\u201d which Ace considers to obviously be an angel, is also a part of the crew. His role was to catalog all the organisms on the planet. But having been locked away, evolution had occurred and he realized that his work was now obsolete. Rather than try to keep apace with evolutionary change, Light plans to make life cease to change. No more change, no more evolution, no more updates to his catalog \u2013 and obviously no more life. But, as the Doctor points out, \u201cAll is change, all if movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ The episode thus adopts a strict stance against anti-evolutionism. The desire to have all things neatly wrapped up is the attitude of religious fundamentalism \u2013 here represented not only by the Rev. Matthews but also by Light as god\/angel. And that desire is evaluated as being inherently opposed not merely to evolution but to life more generally. Because life is evolution \u2013 life is change by definition.<\/p>\n

And so the relatively subtle symbolism works quite powerfully, I think. If you\u2019ve seen this episode, did you pick up on its symbolism immediately, or only after time and reflection? And how do you compare the treatment of such philosophical matters in the latter days of the classic show with the treatment in the revived series of our time?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"