A technical map of the TARDIS, visualizes just how large it is on the inside . . .
Click through to enlarge.
This could come in handy for a little story I've been writing for the Sixth Doctor...
The title is an obvious reference to the story in the Bible about the Tower of Babel. It was at the building of the tower that the human race was given its different languages.
The word ‘Babel,’ then and now, served as a sort of a pun on what the suddenly new confusion of languages sounded like. The story is found pretty near the beginning of the Bible, in the book Genesis. In fact, it’s used to introduce the basic human problem of language. The human race cannot communicate well – that’s why we crowd behind imaginary lines on the ground and have fought wars and just know what evil things so-and-so was thinking when she looked at me funny in the break room at the office.
It’s hard enough figuring out what’s going on inside our own noggins, how can we express it to others and understand what they’re trying to express to us? Well, we can’t. Not really well, anyway. We are mostly surrounded by people that speak the same language that we do. I imagine our ancestors kind of crowded around the people they could understand as a mass of humans apparently started gibbering gibberish. They stood there, at the base of their dumb temple or whatever it was, not understanding a word that the guy in front of them just said. They just had a dull conversation about the weather on the way in that morning. Now, he’s speaking another language. “That’s weird, we never had another language,” our ancestor thinks. “But – what if he’s speaking the same language and I’ve just suddenly lost the ability to understand and speak it?!”
Obviously, I have no idea about the mechanics of the event. Maybe it was sudden. Maybe it happened over the course of a year. Who knows. I am confident that the majority of our young race was gathered with a purpose and was scattered because of confusion. And their confusion was based on the new variety of languages. Like I said, it’s hard enough figuring our own thoughts out. Then try to share thoughts with others. Then try to do the same with another language. Minor tasks can be done, sure. But you’d have to be pretty patient to work out something at all complex. And that’s why some people walked off in one direction and other folks walked off in another. You go where you’re understood. I think we still walk off in the direction where we think we’ll be understood. Unless they’re a fight cat, you probably won’t see a liberal at a Ted Nugent concert. Or an atheist in church. You go where you’ll be understood.
In this Star Trek story, the crew of the space station contracts a bizarre virus that disrupts their ability to speak – even think – properly. Eventually the whole crew is infected and useless. There’s some story about an explosion that’ll occur if the crew can’t get it together. But that’s not where the drama is. The drama, the tension, the suffering, the only interesting thing in this story is the confusion of languages. To see brilliant men and women struck completely useless to each other. It’s Roddenberry’s vision of a perfect future destroyed in a single stroke. What if they couldn’t understand each other? Complete breakdown.
The explosion story point at the end just provides a feeling of resolution. We need that feeling because we’re not getting any resolution for the real problem. The crew can’t understand each other – what can be done? Well, some scientist finds the cure and then it’s back to normal.
Why doesn’t that satisfy? Because it’s a bigger problem than this show can answer. They can show the effects of the problem and illustrate the need for a solution. But they can’t really get at the deep solution because that’s found in Jesus. People are divided by languages, then by nations. What can reunite the people of the world?
Just them trying to fix it?
Waiting for a great idea to spread among them?
Wait for a charismatic leader to inspire them?
Just really trying hard this time to fix it?
Waiting for a really really great idea and this time making posters and websites to promote it?
All these have come and gone a thousand times already. What really brings the nations together? Look at Babel. Why were they separated in the first place? They were united against their creator.
***
Ack! I really don’t know what to do with that apostrophe!
Anyway, it’s a nice day to remember our mothers. Do something nice for her is she’s around!
I know this has nothing to do with Adam Strange, but it is the title he famously appeared in for years. And with his recent appearances on Young Justice, and the feature-film debut of his predecessor in plot (John Carter), it’s looking like maybe my favorite space hero is at the start of a renaissance.
Or maybe he is so rarely featured anywhere, I jump to conclusions whenever I see anything resembling him or his world.
Catch Adam Strange’s appearances on Young Justice here:
Still, Leonardo DiCaprio does own the rights and is apparently interested in making an Adam Strange feature film someday.
Anyway, here’s the amazing cover to the new Mystery in Space comic. I gather it’s a one-shot anthology packed with stories. I can’t speak to the quality or age-appropriateness as I haven’t read it yet.
This is the one that clinched it.
I was a casual viewer, watching more to join my roommates than for my own pleasure. We started with the revival series. I liked them all okay. Father’s Day was the strongest so far, the Slitheen struck me as pretty weak. Then we watched this episode. For the first time, Doctor Who made me sit up. This wasn’t the cheapo running-down-corridors show I watched a few times as a kid (and have since grown to love). This wasn’t simply some sci-fi comedy like I’d believed the new series to be.
Before this episode, you could have taken Doctor Who away from me and I wouldn’t have even noticed. And now…well now, I write a blog that is 1/3 about the Doctor Who. Now I’m writing after just reading a couple Doctor Who comic books. Reading the spin-off stuff graduates a fan to a whole new level. I just finished watching every TV adventure of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors.
I am a Whovian. And it all started here.
With which episode did you first learn that Doctor Who was something really special?
This is a pretty accessible story too. Doctor Who can be pretty intimidating to new viewers. I would recommend showing this to a friend you’d like to introduce the Doctor to. Treat it like a movie (it runs about an hour and a half altogether). Say something like, “The Doctor is the last survivor of a race of time travelers. His spaceship is a blue box. Rose is his newest friend; she’s from nowadays. And he’s sometimes pretty sour over his world ending. They travel through time and space and have adventures.” Then press play.
This story is just told so well. It’s one of those few sci-fi mysteries that has a solution that actually lives up to the intrigue of the set-up. Captain Jack’s introductory story serves him better than any of his future appearances on this show (I admit to not watching much of his spin-off show Torchwood; though I’ve heard it’s good.)
Part of this story’s enduring charm is its transcendence of the dull old Who/New Who debate. It is firmly planted in both series. The pacing is like the new show, but the exposition is like the old. The situation is world-shattering and deadly like the new show, but the Doctor’s the hero, not the one facing an existential dilemma like he wouldn’t have in the old show.
And it’s funny. From the opening joke (“It’s mauve!”) to the closing scenes with Richard Wilson’s old lady patient (“Well there is a war on. Is it possible you’ve miscounted?”) And the funniest ever resolution to a cliffhanger.
Restoration
The kid is restored by knowing who his ‘mummy’ is. The alien stuff made him and all the others in town sick, with the gas mask stuck on their faces. Once Jamie discovered who his mother was, he was able to be healed correctly. The image of his true parent was brought out in him. The Doctor used the glowy-nano-healing-tech on the rest of the infected people. With a clear vision for what a human is, the glowy stuff covered everyone and restored them – even restored them to better than what they were before!
Just this once
The Beast from the Runaway World
Adam waits and waits but the Zeta-beam doesn’t come.
He finally gives up and flies from Africa to the middle of the South Atlantic to catch the next scheduled Zeta-beam strike, eight days later.
When he finally arrives on Rann shows him Zaradak, a big dumb blue alien monster that’s tearing up Ranagar.
The Zeta-beam is found to have hit the Zaradak’s planet on it way to earth; explaining Adam’s absent beam. Being so huge, the beast just eats and eats whatever is in its path. That’s why it’s been chewing on buildings.
They try firing ray-guns at the thing, with no effect. It appears to absorb the energy. Undeterred, Zaradak just keeps chomping on the city.
Adam suggests forests be uprooted and delivered to the monster to satiate its hunger.
That problem temporarily solved, a warlike alien race has decided to attack Rann. Adam refuses to surrender. He puts the Zaradak in the bombs way, knowing that the monster can absorb the next volley of bombs launched by the warmongering aliens. The Zaradak does his thing and Rann is safe. But…
Remember it was the Zeta-beam that brought Zaradak to Rann and, just like Adam, the radiation wears off, sending whoever it sent back to where they came from.
Their defense is now gone, but Adam can’t let the aliens know. So he plans to take a spaceship up to space himself to intercept the next bomb. If he can stop it, he’ll not only protect Ranagar from this next attack, he’ll also convince the aliens that the Rannian defense is quite operational.
So he hits the bomb and gets the heck outta there before the shockwaves catch his ship!
This is a pretty standard adventure story, in which a lot happens. In eight and a half pages, Adam tries to catch two Zeta-beams, fight off a mysterious monster, learns of and fights off an alien invasion, and still somehow manages to hug Alanna four times.
Adam uses something horrible to save his city. The beast shouldn’t be there, but it is. And Adam uses it to his advantage.
Joseph
Joseph, son of Jacob and great-grandson of Abraham, was beloved by his parents. This meant he was naturally hated by his jealous brothers. They sold him into slavery. Decades had passed and Joseph’s time as a slave led to him being falsely imprisoned and eventually to his unique service to Pharaoh, which allowed him to become vizier. A famine had been ravaging his homeland and his brothers, not expecting to see Joseph anywhere in Egpyt, traveled there to find support during the famine. Joseph eventually revealed his identity to his traitorous brothers and the family was reconciled.
This is an excellent example of God’s use of bad things to bring about His purpose. Adam used the Zaradak; God used the wicked jealousy of Joseph’s brothers. Adam was looking to the higher purpose of defeating the aliens, knowing the threat of the Zaradak was painful but temporary, and the threat of the aliens was much more severe. God used the wickedness of the brothers to facilitate the rescue of Joseph’s family. The higher purpose for God was saving the family, suffering the treachery and cruelty shown to Joseph.
God does this again and again. Humans continually choose evil and God continually forces the effects of that bad human choice into His perfect, correcting, redeeming will. God wanted Joseph’s family to survive. They chose to turn on each other and literally sell their little brother out. God said, “Fine. But this will still turn out the way that I want it to.” And so he arranged for Joseph to become a high-ranking officer in Pharaoh’s court. The brothers didn’t only survive then, but were reconciled and brought closer than they ever would have been.
We notice this all the time in our own lives, usually forgetting to acknowledge God. “I shouldn’t have [dated so-and-so] or [stolen this-and-that] or [reacted that way] but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be who I am today.” OR “If I hadn’t done this or that, I never would have fixed this or that problem in my life.” Maybe you hit rock bottom with the bottle. You hate that it happened, but if it hadn’t, you may never have gotten your life together.
Right?
So. I always go on and on about how every story points back to the story of Christ. I compared Adam Strange’s redemption of a bad situation into a good thing with God’s action in the Joseph story. But what about Jesus? Did he ever do anything like this? Did he ever turn something terrible into something good?
What’s the worst crime ever? The murdering of the innocent Jesus! He was betrayed by his friend and brutally tortured before finally being pinned to the cross, where he died. This is the darkest moment in history and yet we commemorate it as Good Friday. Why? Because God turned it around – He used that evil act to bring about the rescue of His people.
George Carlin used to joke that, had Christ lived in the 20th century, Christian would wear little electric chairs around their necks.
That’s the point, isn’t it? The bad thing is what we remember. Because it was through the bad thing that the greatest thing ever happened.
The Day the Earth Surrendered
A handful of space scientists have been living on a colony outpost for a few years to study the XX element. This scrambles any radio waves, so they receive infrequent news bundles by spaceship, with personal mail and current events. Due to the distance, the news they receive is actually six years old. They learn that earth had surrendered to the Vegans, who are on their way to the colony!
The Vegans beat earth so easily because of their will-killing technology. Landing at the colony, the Vegans found strong resistance though. The scientists of the colony easily defeat the aliens. As the aliens depart, the colonists rest confidently, knowing that the XX element naturally infected the Vegan ship, which will carry it to earth. Once the Vegan ship lands on earth, the XX element will disrupt all radio wave communication on earth, but it will also free the earthmen from the mind control inflicted on them by the Vegans.
This is a little morality play about the dangers of listening to the radio and watching the TV in excess. The colonists were barred from radio and TV because of the XX. And their freedom from media was the source of their freedom of thought. Saturation in media twists our brains around. We think like the TV thinks.
Pick a controversial topic. Abortion, religion, politics. Whatever, just pick one. What are your views on it? Now try to discover the source of that view. Why do you think that way? It’s okay that you do think that way – but where did that viewpoint come from? Chances are, you’re just borrowing it from somewhere else. You’re borrowing it from your favorite comedy news show, or from text pasted over a photo that’s being shared on Facebook.
Now remove Facebook. Forget TV. Go silent.
Think about abortion or homosexuality or religion – whatever controversial topic you picked – and try to find its place in the natural universe. If you come up the same viewpoint you had before, great. You have integrity and are worthy of a debate. If you find that your strongly held beliefs don’t make sense when you can’t quite remember Jon Stewart’s quote from the other night, it is time to reevaluate your beliefs. Are you just borrowing the philosophies of TV, or comedians, or politicians? If you are, you will be open to attacks less fantastical than that of the Vegans, but more deadly.
Behind the Space Curtain
A futuristic showbiz promoter needs a new act and sets his sights on a famous musician who lives on a planet that’s behind the iron curtain of the solar system. He finds a ship that looks like a meteor and uses this to secretly land on the forbidden world. He tracks down the musician and convinces him to escape with him. When they arrive in safe space again, they play concerts all over the free solar system. Their escape has even inspired reform behind the space curtain.
A stranger breaks through oppression to introduce freedom.
***
May 8, 2012
I know I know. You’ve heard enough about it already. But here’s one more good Avengers article.
I admit to still not seeing this.
It’s awful.
This review says everything I would want to say about it though, I think. I did write a brief piece suggesting The Avengers team could be used to illustrate Church.
Here, Mike Cosper put together a very thoughtful review of the film. Geeks of Christ should be this good!
Here it is, from the gospelcoalition.org
I know everyone has better things to do than think about this episode, so I’ll try to be brief.
The first nine seconds of this episode are awesome.
The Enterprise is charged with retrieving a medicine from the planet Ligon II, which is entirely populated by extras from old racist Tarzan movies of the 1930s. Lutan, the main guy there, likes Yar because she’s feisty and kidnaps her. When Picard and co. beam down to get Yar back, they have to sit through a tedious meal with the tedious Lutan while he explains his tedious scheme to marry Yar. His other wife gets ticked and she and Yar have to fight each other to earn Lutan’s affection. Yar wins the fight and the first wife is transported to the Enterprise for treatment. Yar lies to Lutan, saying that the first wife died. This breaks the bond between Lutan and his first wife, which allows her to remarry.
“Gimme some skin, Lutan!” Cut to Riker facepalming…
This stinks for poor old Lutan because he was only spending his wife’s money; he didn’t have anything on his own. Smile smile, blah blah, warp the heck outta there and end this episode!Brush away the hokey performances, the stereotypes, and the terrible story and you’re left with a typical Yar story…which is defined by those things plus some shoehorned sex comments, because Yar loves sex, as she so subtly states in every episode she’s in.
Let’s take a peek at my original Star Trek: The Next Generation journal. I wrote brief synopses and reviews of each episode when I was too old to be wasting time on such things. Thank God I grew out of that! I offered my dad the chance to be immortalized in this journal by writing the review for this one. He wrote:
“Tashabar Yar had to fight that princess woman with the alien weapons on a alien jungle jim thingy.“
He was right. That’s all there is to this episode.
Notice I corrected his intentional misspelling of ‘Tashabar’
Yes. This stinks. But it is a story. And if my assertion that all stories can somehow be a reflection of the story of Jesus Christ. Sometimes it’s intentional (Narnia), sometimes it’s obvious (Superman), and sometimes it’s just really hard to see(poorly told stories).
I’m a sucker for Star Trek matte paintings.
Guess which category this story belongs in.
Let’s see. I think we can imagine Yar in the role of Christ. In this illustration, she is fighting for the right to marry someone. She has to earn the right to enter into this union. But who gets the “prize”? Yar wins, but the other wife gets the reward. Christ does the dirty work of salvation, but we get the reward of it.
Man. I feel really uncertain about this. This is a crummy story and I hate to casually draw my usual comparisons to the story of Christ. But I do believe that stories, even bad ones, reveal our interest in these great themes of the greatest story. Sacrifice, substitution, gods condescending, restoration of broken relationships, joining something bigger than ourselves, etc. These are the great themes of all stories – even crummy ones – and these are the themes at the very center of the Christ story. And we see glimpses of that here. This show reflects the truth like shards of a mirror stuck in your foot might still reflect.
Don’t watch this episode.
***
Pretty big day for geeks of the earth.
First, and maybe less interestingly this year, today is Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you)! But Star Wars is too cute now, with their terrible Lego video games and plush Teddy Vader dolls. So I don’t really care about that.
The big thing though is the American (finally!) opening of The Avengers. Based on the comic book that the other guy plotted and illustrated, and that Stan Lee wrote the dialogue for. Lee’s getting plenty of publicity. Since you won’t see the “other guy” anywhere else, here’s a picture of him.
Now, onto the articles.
Avengers Assemble!
by Daniel at The Sci-Fi Christian
“Tony Stark, Thor, Bruce Banner and even Steve Rogers have all had to overcome their demons, primarily their egos, in order to find success on the battlefield and win the day for the light. Tony Stark is a great example: on his own, the man is self destructive, unlikable and as much of a threat to others as a help. It’s true, boys and girls, Iron Man is not perfect.“
The Best Time Travel Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen
by Jordan Hoffman
“Three of you will be scandalized that Time After Time wasn’t included and four of you will agree with one joker who feels that anyone who hasn’t seen Primer yet has no business reading this site.“
(Don’t) Grow Up
by John Van Sloten
“Children are young enough and still humble enough to realize that what they know isnʼt everything there is to know.“
Fiction & Literature: An Interview with Russell Moore
by Tim Challies
“These authors don’t just present the dark side of human existence; they revel in it in a Nietzschean sense that I find disorienting and deadening. But just as dangerous as darkness-reveling, I think, are novels that are darkness-avoiding.“
And a really neato interactive map of the universe
by Number Sleuth
