It just bugs me
Nov. 9th, 2010 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficI know the biggest goof people have with the last Doctor Who finale is (spoiler alert. Ignore me if you haven't seen it yet. You should be good at that by now) how, exactly, the Doctor managed the paradox of being rescued from a certain situation so he could go back in time and rescue himself from that certain situation. But there are much bigger questions!
Okay, so in the latest season of Doctor Who, various shenanigans lead to all the stars but Earth's sun blowing up. Cut forward to present day (this happened in Roman times), where stars are now a myth. There's a throwaway line about Richard Dawkins being a crackpot who believes there used to be stars. And... I really don't get that.
I guess maybe it's some sort of cheeky "oh ho ho, Dawkins is right about the stars just like he's right about God" thing, but in that case... believing that something exists just because ancient people believed it to be so despite a lack of modern evidence... isn't that kind of the exact opposite of what Dawkins advocates? So I guess it's supposed to be ironic? Maybe it works better if you're an atheist. Wouldn't it be funnier if it were a line about "that crackpot Stephen Hawkings"? Then everyone would get it, because he's really a genius who knows what's what, and we wouldn't have to ask these thorny questions of truth vs. scientific process.
In fact, how did this "mythological stars" view come about in the first place? If every single culture on the planet has historical accounts of there being stars, and then every single culture on the planet has historical accounts of the stars disappearing, isn't it a safer assumption that there used to be stars than that every single person before a certain date decided to make up a whacky story about lights in the sky?
Okay, maybe all the stars blew up at once, but then it took time for their light to stop reaching Earth, so the process was gradual, and over the course of generations the stars dwindled in number. You'd still think people would notice. Just for instance, Genesis 22:17 says "Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies." You'd think someone would say "wait, there are three stars but, like, a billion grains of sand on the seashore. What gives, God!?" But I'm sure people don't take it that seriously. It's just THE BIBLE, after all.
Then again, this is the universe where people apparently forget about a hundred-foot-tall robot rampaging through Victorian London, so maybe folks are just stupid in the DWverse.
This is a world where she's considered some sort of hideous beast, to the point where someone has to be under orders from an alien spider to go out with her. Told you I wouldn't get tired of using this photo.
But then what about the aliens? Were they all wiped out when the stars went? There'd have to be survivors, right? Wouldn't they go to the one remaining star in the universe, if not for answers, then just because they like photosynthesis? Okay, maybe when they went there, they were nice, and decided to let humanity have the Earth and set up their own places on the other planets in the solar system. But what about all the evil aliens? When the stars went out, they were right there, having just imprisoned the Doctor to prevent him from destroying the universe (unless we're going to say the show compressed events a bit and didn't show them leaving before the TARDIS exploded, although they did). When they saw the universe exploded anyway, wouldn't they let the Doctor out? I mean, that's kind of his thing.
Holy shit. That explains it. The monsters let the Doctor out, he said "scram, I'll handle this," but things were still shit, so he set up this massive chain of events to free himself under an entirely different set of circumstances and save not only himself, but all of space and time, plus his companion and her plastic boyfriend (not like that, pervert!).
Pictured: The Doctor in training.
Okay, so in the latest season of Doctor Who, various shenanigans lead to all the stars but Earth's sun blowing up. Cut forward to present day (this happened in Roman times), where stars are now a myth. There's a throwaway line about Richard Dawkins being a crackpot who believes there used to be stars. And... I really don't get that.
I guess maybe it's some sort of cheeky "oh ho ho, Dawkins is right about the stars just like he's right about God" thing, but in that case... believing that something exists just because ancient people believed it to be so despite a lack of modern evidence... isn't that kind of the exact opposite of what Dawkins advocates? So I guess it's supposed to be ironic? Maybe it works better if you're an atheist. Wouldn't it be funnier if it were a line about "that crackpot Stephen Hawkings"? Then everyone would get it, because he's really a genius who knows what's what, and we wouldn't have to ask these thorny questions of truth vs. scientific process.
In fact, how did this "mythological stars" view come about in the first place? If every single culture on the planet has historical accounts of there being stars, and then every single culture on the planet has historical accounts of the stars disappearing, isn't it a safer assumption that there used to be stars than that every single person before a certain date decided to make up a whacky story about lights in the sky?
Okay, maybe all the stars blew up at once, but then it took time for their light to stop reaching Earth, so the process was gradual, and over the course of generations the stars dwindled in number. You'd still think people would notice. Just for instance, Genesis 22:17 says "Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies." You'd think someone would say "wait, there are three stars but, like, a billion grains of sand on the seashore. What gives, God!?" But I'm sure people don't take it that seriously. It's just THE BIBLE, after all.
Then again, this is the universe where people apparently forget about a hundred-foot-tall robot rampaging through Victorian London, so maybe folks are just stupid in the DWverse.
This is a world where she's considered some sort of hideous beast, to the point where someone has to be under orders from an alien spider to go out with her. Told you I wouldn't get tired of using this photo.
But then what about the aliens? Were they all wiped out when the stars went? There'd have to be survivors, right? Wouldn't they go to the one remaining star in the universe, if not for answers, then just because they like photosynthesis? Okay, maybe when they went there, they were nice, and decided to let humanity have the Earth and set up their own places on the other planets in the solar system. But what about all the evil aliens? When the stars went out, they were right there, having just imprisoned the Doctor to prevent him from destroying the universe (unless we're going to say the show compressed events a bit and didn't show them leaving before the TARDIS exploded, although they did). When they saw the universe exploded anyway, wouldn't they let the Doctor out? I mean, that's kind of his thing.
Holy shit. That explains it. The monsters let the Doctor out, he said "scram, I'll handle this," but things were still shit, so he set up this massive chain of events to free himself under an entirely different set of circumstances and save not only himself, but all of space and time, plus his companion and her plastic boyfriend (not like that, pervert!).
Pictured: The Doctor in training.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-09 07:16 pm (UTC)Still, I do think there should have been some "Oh, shit, we just screwed ourselves" from the aliens who destroyed their homes.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-09 07:52 pm (UTC)(Maybe it was the sun just feeding on the TARDIS instead of on a bunch of hydrogen? IDK.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-09 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-09 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-09 10:20 pm (UTC)Apparently, they were destroyed along with the TARDIS, and the entire universe was reset except for Earth.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-09 10:02 pm (UTC)Guess what explosion and subsequent/presequent (argh!) cracks in the universe retconned that event out of people's memories? Go on. Guess.
from an atheist's point of view
Date: 2010-11-10 12:31 am (UTC)It's bad writing.
isn't that kind of the exact opposite of what Dawkins advocates?
yes, it exactly is. Dawkins has never said that gods might have existed back then.
In the context of DW, Dawkins might or might not *believe* that stars used to exist, but as an empiricist he *knows* that stars do not exist right now.
And there is a lot of difference between belief and knowledge.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-10 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 11:42 am (UTC)