Getting Metaphysical with the BBC

Favourite TV shows. Notice anything?

Sherlock

Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes

Doctor Who

NCIS

Firefly

1. Practically all of them have a mystery element and

2. Most of them are made by the BBC.

I'm actually feeling rather proud that some money that I once had (yeah, we have TV at the moment, but we're staying somewhere that has one rather than actually owning a TV) went towards making such awesome stuff.

OK, I'm informed most of the Who and Sherlock money is actually American. But that's hardly the point. I'm being patriotic. We may be the place that brought the world The Jeremy Kyle Show, the Daily Mail (everything gives you cancer!), and Northern Ireland (I'm allowed to say it) but hey...

Sometimes we do good TV.

And sometimes we do great TV.

And while it's not exactly world peace or a cure for cancer, it does make the world a slightly better place.

And promotes understanding, to boot. No, really. An example:

Jacob is my favourite TWOP reviewer. And even though they stopped reviewing Who for some Utterly Spurious Reason, (BUT NOW THEY'RE BACK!!!!!!!!!! Ahem.) all episodes are better with a Jacob recap (except the rubbish ones, because it stops you from just Going With It and not thinking too hard).

He really doesn't understand the scary episodes, sadly for him. Not mythological enough, I suspect. They're Scary Episodes; they're about making you scream with fear, rather than about plot. (I actually did scream when I first saw Blink. Even though my head was saying 'now they'll look back, there'll be some loud musical punctuation, and there'll be a scary angel face' when it happened I jumped, squealed, and made all my housemates laugh at me.)

Anyway, he did a review of The Parting of the Ways where Rose, having been sent home to not die, is in the chippy with Jackie and Mickey. And she's moping (quite understandably) about being away from the Doctor and how life here is just sucky, "Get up, catch the bus, go to work, eat chips!" and how life with the Doctor was...more than that.

Actually, I'm just going to have to quote the whole thing. Sometimes real faith is like having taken the metaphysical Red Pill. And there's no way back up the rabbit hole. From here:

"And with the Bad Wolf watching over her shoulder, Rose in her Little Red Hoodie tries to explain the central truth of prophets, and how they seem crazy. "But what do I do every day, Mum?" Rose asks. "What do I do? Get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, eat chips and go to bed? Is that it?" Mickey's like, "You mean like everybody else, asshole?" It's the Red Pill conversation all over again -- and why the religious are so fucking insufferable. If you try to talk about feeling special, you're undeniably talking about being better than everybody else. But the thing with the Red Pill conversation is that the "real" shit, the weird shit world, is way worse than the normal world, in most ways, and the addiction to it has less to do with wanting to feel special and more with not wanting to take the easy way out: "But I can't!" Mickey pushes back with more of the superiority complex stuff, and Rose gets frustrated. For the same reason every saint eventually starts drawing weird diagrams. Rose protests and breathes and tries to get it together to tell the truth about her quest in a way where the change and the difference don't come up, and Jackie watches her, because this is the work she already did, in "World War III," that we saw Mickey still hadn't done in "Boom Town." That there's the truth that you have to live, now that you know about it, versus the lie that you didn't know you were living before. These moments always remind me of Delia, or more kindly, Daphne, or more kindly yet, Donna: They're not abandoning you if they're running toward something.

Rose: "It was...a better life. And I don't mean all the travellin' and seein' aliens and spaceships and fings -- that don't matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life." And demanded it of you. So this is alchemy: the only reason she doesn't die (SPOILER!) like the other two is because she already did it last week, so she could be reborn and take the story home. Step whatever in the Hero's Quest: you come back to the village with magic powers, and everybody looks at you funny. She looks up and into their eyes, into Mickey's eyes, with a shadow of that kiss: "You know. He showed you, too." Mickey doesn't answer, and we won't see it for a couple scenes, but: this is where she got him. Right here. Rose somehow managed to make the impossible speech and get to him, and make him understand. And that's beautiful. The rest is just Davies's parsley on it. Rose: "That you don't just give up, you don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away, and I just can't...." She breaks off, stops talking, kicks the table...and runs. Faster than anything."

I would say I'm sorry that I'm like this, but the truth is that I'm not. I am slightly chagrined that I've been writing a whole (different: it had Spiderman in it and everything) post on this, and it's already been said rather better. But this is the beauty of Who. It lets you talk about stuff that you were having trouble expressing.

This insufferable Red Pill attitude which is put across rather well by Rose explains (partially) why I have my newfound Sherlock obsession. The plotting, casting, scripting...all of these would have made me a huge fan whatever, but there's something resonant in the theme that just grabs me by the throat.

Mycroft says to John Watson in A Study in Pink, "When you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield. You've seen it already."

What he doesn't add, because he's Mycroft and not Watson, is this: and you can't NOT do something about it. You are compelled by forces beyond reason, beyond sense, beyond safety, to stick your own neck out and DO SOMETHING.

Less to do with thinking you're special, and more not wanting to take the easy way out. Pity us, if you can't understand us. While the selfish part of me just wants to be a special snowflake, the rest of me just refuses to take the easy way out.

There comes a point in most everyone's life when they see something of the battlefield. AIDS, poverty, war, famine, disaster, crime, hatred... it goes on and on. And with the crisis comes the opportunity, the question: Should I do something? And then depending on the answer, the follow-up, What should I do? What should I do with my life?

This is where you'll find me at the moment, gentle reader. Believing that:

1. God is amazing

2. Jesus and that whole Incarnating/living/dying/coming back from the dead thing is real

3. The world, good, love, hope: these are worth fighting for, and

4. What's more, because of 1. and 2., they're going to win.

Which leads to the question again.

What is it that I can do to (digressing into Christianese for a moment) make the Kingdom come?

Universalism of the Christian variety gets you some very funny looks. Should you express the opinion that Jesus is the Saviour of the world, the whole world, and that at the end of time there will be a restoration of all things and it will be completely freakin' awesome, you can be met with anything from mild surprise to blatant disbelief that all Christians don't actually want to condemn every second person they meet to endless fiery torment. (We're really not that bad, you know. Most of us sadly lack the awesomeness of Shepherd Book or Bishop Octavian from Flesh and Stone though).

In the meantime, I see the battlefield.

And I have this compulsion to Do Something about it.

I just wish I could figure out what that Something is. I thought it was being a priest, but clearly at the moment it is not. So.

In the absence of a Something, I go for doing the smaller, but no less significant, somethings. Give to charity; promote, insofar as I can, peace and love and justice; care for the environment; and generally try to do the right thing.

But I'm going to keep looking for the Something.

I couldn't possibly do anything else.