Friday, June 02, 2006

A post of random comments

I'm in a bit of a sci-fi drought at the moment. Earlier in the year my Sunday afternoons consisted of Enterprise and Stargate:SG-1. Now I have to do things like 'go out', and 'enjoy the fresh air'. Then some joker at Channel 5 (sorry, five) thought it would be a good idea to show Voyager re-runs on weekday afternoons. I could have lost my job over that!

Now there's just my weekly dose of Doctor Who in the way of sf TV, and last week's episode stretched its science fiction credibility to breaking point (TVs that suck your face off, anybody?). That said, it was great as 'scary but fun family entertainment', which is a large part of the show, but I'm hoping for more from the Ood this week.

Maybe all this is exacerbated by the fact that I've just come through the fertile pastures of Firefly, that rare entity: a TV science fiction show which dares to entertain the existence of God - and, indeed, Christianity - even in the outlying regions of a galactic human civilisation. All at the same time as being top notch telly. This was the first time I had seen of most of the episodes, and most of the time I was too busy being swept along by the action, the humour, and the fact that Joss Whedon was trying to do something new with the sf genre, to pay that much attention to Shepherd Book and what (if any) kind of Christian he was. Serenity, naturally, waits patiently on the DVD shelf for a free evening.

Even my reading has taken a dive towards fantasy lately, but James Blish is calling, just as soon as I've done with Volume 6 of Stephen King's Dark Tower opus.

3 comments:

Elliot said...

Whedon's described himself as an 'angry atheist.' When asked 'Does God exist,' he said something along the lines of "Absolutely not. That's one of the most important things for a person to know."

There's an episode of Angel in which the title character gives a speech about nihilism and atheism that seems to reflect Whedon's view. "Nothing we do ultimately matters, so ultimately all that matters is what we do!" [rolls eyes]

So if he's setting up a preacher, it's probably only to knock him down again.

Then again, it's often the militants who can't quit gnawing on a non-existent God that end up falling head-over-heels for Him. Maybe Anne Rice should give Whedon a call...

Valerie Comer said...

Interesting. We're working our way through the Firefly series at our house too. Gotta love the western twang and flavoring.

UKSteve said...

Interesting about Whedon, Elliot. Sounds a little like my favourite 'radical atheist', Douglas Adams, who admits to being fascinated by religion, and poked fun at it quite a lot through the Hitchhikers trilogy. Maybe I'll allow myself to get sidetracked into a discussion of his work sometime soon.