Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks and the Supremacy of Love

I had mixed feelings about this week's Doctor Who episode, Victory of the Daleks:

Firstly, on the plus side I feel it has to be said that Matt Smith continues to hold his own as the last of the Time Lords. He echoes multiple Doctors of the past and channels his own unique energy into each performance.

There were brief glimpses of genius in the script: The Doctor using a jammy dodger biscuit as a fake TARDIS destruct button, Spitfires in space, and of course the creepy apparently subservient Daleks (which of course were nothing of the sort). There's just something a little darkly kinky about a Dalek drifting around proclaiming "I am your sooooooooooldier!"

"Would you care for a cup of teeeeeeaaaaaa?!???"

Most... hilariously surreal Dalek line... EVER!

All this is the kind of stuff that makes Doctor Who unique... that the amazing, fantastic, wonderful and terrifying things can all be found or suggested in the everyday mundane.

On the negative side it has to be said that the newly reincarnated Daleks look foul. The angles are all wrong and they look like they have been made out of cheap vacuum sealed plastic. It's almost as if they've been cross bred with a cheap Nissan Micra or Smart Car. I suspect they've been bulked up for the comfort of the operators. The mixed paint jobs are probably a nod back to the 60's film versions, but I don't think a variety of bright colours really work on Daleks. They are supposed to be a totalitarian supremacist race bent on destruction of all non-Dalek life, it seems fitting to me that their colour scheme should be restricted and repressed. Still... at least they didn't have fire extinguishers for extermination beams.

When they emerged in formation and confronted the Doctor, I wondered what they reminded me of... and then somebody hit the nail on the head on Twitter:

No wonder the poor Doctor looked so bemused!

I also felt the pacing was a bit off. When the Power Rangers new Daleks were revealed, it felt like there should have been a "To Be Continued" after the Doctor's reaction. It really could have benefited from being a two parter as some important elements were left rushed or unexplained. You could really tell the difference in quality between Moffat's episodes and this one.

In the climax of the story we discover that Bracewell - the Daleks' sleeper android, is a walking Oblivion Continuum bomb capable of destroying the Earth. The Daleks trigger his countdown mechanism as part of their exit strategy, and the Doctor has to abandon his plans to thwart them in a desperate bid to diffuse Bracewell as he builds up to critical mass.

The Doctor quickly realises that  the way to disarm Bracewell is to break the Daleks control over him... and to do that he has to help Bracewell reassert his sense of humanity. In trying to elicit an emotional response, The Doctor appeals to Bracewell's sense of sadness, despair, hurt and loss... all of which have no effect whatsoever.

Once again it is Amy who has an epiphany about how to resolve the situation. She copies the Doctor's strategy of appealing to Bracewell's emotions but instead appeals to his positive emotions... principally love.

Although perhaps not the most scientific of resolutions, I liked it. To quote William Hurt's character in The Village: "The world moves for love, it kneels before it in awe."

When she was still alive, my grandmother's favourite Bible verse which she knew from memory was this:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

1 Corinthians 13

As powerful as negative emotions are, love (in it's many forms), is supreme. Perhaps that's why we prize the emotion so greatly when we are enthralled by it, covet it when we are deprived of it... and grieved so deeply when we are robbed of it. That is why when, like the Doctor we are at the end of our resourcefulness, love in its supremacy will have the final word.... especially God's love.

In a dark world it's often very easy to lose sight of this truth and so I'd like to finish by quoting another doctor... namely Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr:

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

Doctor Who: The Beast Below, and Musing Over Responsibilty & Love vs Fear

Another cracking episode which helps to further cement Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor, and brings Amy Pond more into the limelight as a character in her own right.

I'm glad that one thing Moffat has retained from previous "New Who", is the practice of tipping the hat to other science fiction creations. Amongst the more obvious nods were a tribute to the garbage compactor/space slug scenes in Star Wars from A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Arthur Dent/Amy Pond travelling the universe in nightclothes), and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (the featured starship is a self contained world travelling on the back of a star whale... in a manner not unlike Pratchett's Great A'Tuin).

Amy's first adventure with the Doctor lands her in the far future onboard the Starship UK, a vast vessel that carries all the citizens of Britain onwards towards a new home among the stars (well, apart from Scotland which demanded its own starship... *sigh*).

However all is not as it seems.

There is a dark secret concerning the ship's existence. The Doctor realises this when noting that a ship the size of Starship UK should have engines so big, that the decks vibrate. He's not alone in this realisation... the mysterious Liz 10, who turns out to be no less than Queen Elizabeth X of Great Britain also has suspicions that something is amiss. In actual fact the dark truth behind Starship UK is available to everyone above voting age, it's just that when they decide to learn the truth... they find the knowledge so disturbing that instead of protesting (or in the case of the Queen, abdicating), they choose to have their memory of being educated, erased. Those few who do protest are cast into a pit of food waste and digested as The Doctor and Amy discover, when after having her memory erased... they decide to investigate the booth again (although as the booth doesn't recognise the Doctor as human he can only trigger the protest/forget mechanism).

It is at this point that they realise that far from being in a conventional rubbish dump... they are actually inside the maw of the titular "Beast Below".

Ever inventive, The Doctor forms an undignified exit strategy (stimulating the creature to vomit and hence flushing him and Amy out through another orifice). Upon their escape, they are met by Liz 10 and the whole party find themselves taken into custody and escorted to The Tower of London.

It's at this point that we as the viewers learn the truth behind Starship UK. It was built upon the back of the last Star Whale which was thought to be drifting aimlessly around the Earth as it entered its last days. The Government of the day captured the beast, built a self contained world on its back and attached pain giving implants that tortured it into being subservient. The Doctor is incensed and angry at humanity for putting him in the position of making a terrible choice of his own. Even Amy doesn't escape his anger because even though she is not involved, she still decided to conveniently lose her knowledge and left herself a message to try and dissuade the Doctor from learning the truth.

"Nobody human has anything to say to me today!"

Believing that if he frees the star whale the migrating Britons will die and if he doesn't, the beast will continue to suffer in agony; The Doctor reasons that the only choice left open to him, is to overload the pain giving equipment and send the star whale into a persistent vegetative state... where it will continue in slavery but be unable to feel its pain.

However as he is about to carry out his plan, Amy has a sudden epiphany. She realises that the star whale is like the Doctor... being the last of its kind, it cannot bear to see the children of another species suffer, and so far from drifting into the vicinity of Earth by chance... had actually chosen to come to offer itself freely. She grabs the Queen's hand and slams it down on the "Abdicate" button. The clamps and implants are retracted from the star whale... but it does not fight free, instead it chooses to continue on its journey as willing saviour of the British people.

For me, the two most important themes explored by the episode were responsibility (the importance of the choices we make when we can no longer claim innocence from the truth), and the contrast between fear and love as motivational forces.

When I think on the subject of responsibility, it is clear to me that the human race has an amazing knack for going into denial... by either shifting responsibility, or simply finding new and ever more elaborate ways of perfecting the *shrug* gesture.

Biblically you can see this trait from the outset... it starts with Adam "What fruit? Oh this fruit? Oh... I didn't know... it's the woman's fault!" and then Eve "Me? Oh I only ate it because I was tricked so even though you told me not to eat it in the first place... it's not my fault".

Historically we've been the same ever since. One might argue that the current troubles engulfing the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, stem from this very same attitude... but although that's a rather extreme example, let's not forget we are all capable in our own way of covering up things we should not have done in the first place..

I guess we find it easier to get on with something if we bury our heads in the sand and hope that it will go away. None of us likes to admit to our own fallibility.

I think that's because when we are confronted with our fallibility, we are equally confronted with the truth that we are not safe drivers when it comes to life... and there is a fundamental problem when we put ourselves at the centre of our universe (it's a place we as human individuals are not meant to occupy).

As for fear and love, I'm always reminded of the following passage written by the apostle John:

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."

1 John 4:18

It's a favourite passage of mine admittedly, and I'm sure I've quoted it here before... but it seems relevant here. The Government of Starship UK were so governed by fear that it didn't once enter their mind to consider that the star whale had come to Earth to help... they just saw it as something to take advantage of. They substituted their fear of death for a fear of consequence.

What would happen if they ever did the right thing by the star whale? It would save itself and destroy them wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it?

However... the star whale was not ruled or motivated by fear. The star whale was motivated by love. It came to Earth because it heard the cries of children... and it came to lend whatever help it could to aid them in their plight. It didn't expect to my enslaved and tortured... but do you know what the wonderful thing was? It never stopped loving. Sure, it lashed out at its persecutors...  but in the end when they let go of the fear that motivated them... it continued to bear them across the stars.

For me, the love of Jesus goes beyond even that. He didn't even lash out at the people who conspired to kill him. His love extended even to those who punished him... "Father forgive them".

One of the major difficulties I have with various religious institutions is that they can become so wrapped up in their own fear that they don't give God's love, breathing room. For some it's a fear of looking stupid if asked to step out and do something radical for God - like praying for healing and "what if nothing happens?" For others it's a fear that the mistakes/sins of individuals will reflect badly on the Church as a whole, and so a conspiracy of silence is embraced. For still others there is a fear of losing the traditions and patterns of worship they are most comfortable with, and so a rod of iron and inflexibility is embraced in services.

But God is not like us, not in that respect. He is not bound by fear (even though in Jesus he experienced our fears).

So what would happen if we took the courage to let go of our fear... and embrace his love? What if we took the courage to stand up and take healing to the people despite our fear? Or if we stood up and said... "PR isn't as important as doing the right thing by God and his people"? Or if we allowed worship to be directed by God instead of our timetable/sense of order?

Maybe some of our fears might be realised temporarily... but we have this reassurance:

"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Matthew 11:29-30

Even in the midst of our fears, God's love is working. Even when things go wrong... especially when they go wrong. We have a greater power, a greater force to cling to in the midst of our fears... God's immeasurable grace and boundless love.

And just as the star whale continued to carry the people of Britain to a new home... Jesus Christ will bear us through our journey... both now and into eternity.