orthogeeks

We’re going to give this a good talking down soon enough, but Fr. Chris sent us all an interesting article that I’d like to begin talking about.

When we first thought up Orthogeeks, I had in mind to speak or write about a series of gaming topics in spiritual context – not necessarily as an exercise in ‘applied spirituality’ or ‘praxis’, (which is to say, how you live your day to day life as a Christian) but as re-conceptualizations. My first topic was ‘Plane’ (wandering) and ‘Topos’ (place) in Video Games. Needless to say, my initial essay did not go over well, probably too erudite or verbose or just plain weird. In any case, I was discussing the idea of Freedom against these two ideas (plane and topos) in the context of a particular game, American McGee’s Alice. Now that I think of it, it was a tad bit ambitious, and I think there may be far too much to talk about in the subject to merely be one essay, much less one that talks about a particular game which was notorious for not offering a lot of non-linearity!

The article is here and I’ve asked him to also write a little bit on the topic too before we begin speaking about it.
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I’ve not seen the entire series, but if only for an amazing twist on Snatch!’s opening theme, I present this entertaining and much-to-cool-for-school opening for Baccano!

Candy theft!

I can’t help but be reminded of the opening music to an American sitcom, but I am left scratching my head as to which!

I remember when I was much younger; somewhere between 8 and 10 years old.  I was at church listening in on a conversation between my mother and an older female parishioner.  The woman was saying to my mother, “I think it’s necessary for children to be exposed to evil.”  I suppose her point was that it may do more harm than good to shelter a child from certain realities that he must surely one day face.  I remember that at the time that seemed rather foolish to me.

But of course, it tends to happen anyway.  And what important and interesting happenings those are!

The first time you get picked on by a bully.  The day you realized you would one day die.  The first time you are used by another human being.

How important, in those contexts, are our introductions to terror?  How much did we learn from them; their initial impact, but also the way in which the terror is dealt with by our hero?

So we return to the Doctor, and to the Theme.

We should regard Theme in both senses;  the musical as well as the literary.

I offer this quote from the Wikipedia article on the subject:

“The theme has been often called both memorable and frightening, priming the viewer for what was to follow. During the 1970s, the Radio Times, the BBC’s own listings magazine, announced that a child’s mother said the theme music terrified her son. The Radio Times was apologetic, but the theme music remained.”

Yes it did.

There’s an important segment of the theme music, known as the “bridge” or the “middle eight”, which “is an uplifting interlude in a major key that usually features in the closing credits or the full version of the theme.”

These two elements of the theme combine to create a complete picture of the soul of the show.  At the beginning we have darkness and a fear of the unknown.  The darkness is dispelled by a stab of light: in the music the middle eight; in the show itself, the Doctor.

In answer to the woman who gave that advice to my mom all those years ago: All people will, at one time or another, encounter evil; hatred, fear, injustice.  The important thing is not that we stress the fact that these exist; this will become abundantly clear to them as they grow up.

The important thing is that we discover good ways in which their minds can be excited by the possibility of hope offered by such characters as the Doctor.  That possibility is made manifest for Christians by the Lord Himself, to whom we attribute the title Our Sure Hope.  We’re responsible for tilling the soil, making sure that our offspring become the “good ground”; ready for the Sower.

Say!  That gives me an idea for another essay!  Garth!  Rejoice!

I must have been 4 or 5 years old.  All I remember is a flash: a green tentacle wraps around the throat of an unsuspecting man and tightens.  The man chokes out a terrified scream.  A younger man in odd tan clothing grabs the tentacled creature and throws it to the ground.  He has a gun.  He shoots the creature until it stops moving.

On the strength of this horrible moment, I didn’t watch Doctor Who again for years.  If I even heard the unmistakable strains of the theme music floating through the house, I would demand with tears that my parents turn it off.

And yet, even then, I loved it.  I never admitted my fear to my friend James, who can truly be credited with introducing me to the show.  We went right on playing Doctor Who in the quite awesome cardboard TARDIS his father made for him.

But from that point on, our games had a different taste to them.  When I finally did come back to the show in my early teens, it was with a certain degree of wariness; at any moment something horrifying could occur.

Of course, a rather sad sort of teenage cynicism and jadedness came over me for a few years, and I would only see the cheesiness of the monsters and the cheapness of the effects.  For some reason I kept watching.

It was the theme song.  It lived in my head and my heart, and does up to this day.  What it says is the essence of the show for viewers young and old, fans of 4th, 7th, 10th, or 11th doctors:  prepare for an adventure through time and space, and prepare to be afraid.

It was during this period of viewing (spoilers ahead) that I witnessed one of the most shocking events in Doctor Who history; the death of his companion Adric, in the 5th Doctor Episode “Earthshock”.  A new reality settled in.

Characters that I knew, people that I cared about, could be in serious danger, and their survival was not guaranteed.

Life would later remind me of this lesson, but it was one for which the Doctor had prepared the ground.

Man, do I love Doctor Who.  Just ask anyone, and they’ll tell you, “Man, does Chris go on about Doctor Who.”

It’s true.  There are few subjects that I go on about more often or more interminably than the eponymous Doctor and his mad, glorious, often terrifying and sometimes absurd adventures.

This has been going on since long before the return of the show to television in 2005.  The Doctor and his many companions have been a regular fixture of my life in one form or another since I was about 5 years old (that’s 26 years ago).  It therefore seems meet and right for me to address this most geeky of subjects in my first substantive essay here on Orthogeeks, since it is a cornerstone of my life as a geek, and has to a large extent informed my tastes in the sci-fi genre.

I will begin with a quick description of the show and its main character to provide context.  If you’re in need of a more in-depth description, you should head over to my friend Alan Kistler’s website, where he has written a series of excellent essays on the show.

First, a point of order.  When one is discussing the show, the Doctor is referred to as “the Doctor,” and never as “Doctor Who.”  Moving on.

The Doctor is a time-traveling alien from a society known as the Time Lords.  At press time he is 907 Earth years old.  He is a renegade/exile from his people, for reasons that are never explicitly stated.  It is implied that he disapproves of the stagnation and non-interventionist ways of the Time Lords.  At some point shortly before the beginning of the series, he stole a TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space) and ran, with his granddaughter in tow.  The TARDIS is his time machine, and on the outside it looks like an old police box, akin to a telephone booth; an outdated piece of pop iconography.  With this device he travels to points across all of time and space, battling evil geniuses and malevolent aliens, usually with a young human companion, through whose eyes the viewer is introduced to the show and its concepts.

Coming soon:  An Introduction to Terror