On Jesus And Doctor Who

It’s no accident that the first episode of the new Doctor Who aired the day before Easter, i.e. yesterday. I wonder if American fans like myself would have been slightly less eager to download it right away (instead of waiting for it to be broadcast on BBC America, which won’t happen until April 17) without a vague idea that the two events were related at a deeper level.

Doctor Who is based on the same archetype as Jesus, i.e. the regenerating martyr. The Doctor is now in his eleventh incarnation (the program, in some form or another, has been going on for thirty-two seasons). Each time the current actor leaves the show, the character dies and then comes back to life in a new body (made from his old one). He has a new personality, but the combined knowledge and experience of all previous versions.

And his new personality isn’t completely new… more like refreshed. It’s as if a terminal patient, ready for death, is suddenly told that he has another fifty years to live. He goes out into the world, and what does he do? He’s the same person, but something has changed.

The eleventh doctor, played for the first time by an actor in his twenties, is a bit arrogant, brash, and impatient. But despite my disappointment at the loss of David Tenant, who was great as the courteous and upbeat tenth doctor, I found myself liking Dr. 11. His arrogance has been earned; his impatience with having to explain himself and his motives is understandable; his new disregard for common courtesy (unapologetically commandeering food, clothing, and vehicles) is refreshing. In one of Dr. 10′s last soliloquies, he refers to himself as Time Lord Victorious and boasts of his ability to choose between saving the life of an important scientist and the lives of countless “little people.” (The important scientist, disgusted, commits suicide in order to prove him wrong.)

The Jesus story is appropriately celebrated in the spring, the time of rebirth. It’s popular this time of year for atheists to gleefully start arguments by insisting that Easter is just a mask for even older pagan rites of spring. This is only half true.

The thing about the Jesus story that makes it hard to accept is not its obvious fabrication, but the fact that, canonically, it only took place once, at a fixed point in the past that gets farther away from us with each passing year. In other words, the story of rebirth is trapped forever in death. Jesus does promise the possibility of rebirth for everyone else, of course. But the myths of heaven and the rapture take place at fixed points as well, this time in the future. As individuals, we will die and come back to life (or not) but it will only happen once. As a race, we will be swept up in a rapture (or not), but that will only happen once as well.

The Easter story is a problematic analog for the natural process of birth and death because it’s insistence on a fixed and particular sequence of events is increasingly counterintuitive. To believe in it, you have to believe that you are going to be reborn, personally. But the rebirth story isn’t about individual beings coming back to life; it’s about life itself continuing in spite of the unavoidable presence of death. The aspect of Easter that best reflects the truth of eternal life is simply the fact that it shows up again every year. Like many great myths based on a core true idea, the story of the resurrection resonates much more deeply if you can find a way to convince yourself that it’s okay to simultaneously enjoy it, and believe that it didn’t really happen.

Fiction provides us with a convenient way out of this problem. If it’s good, then we believe it, but not really. I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who condemn religion across the board, but nearly weep every time they hear Obi Wan Kenobi say “Strike me down, and I shall only grow stronger,” just before his body is destroyed and he dissipates into The Force. In the words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (speaking through a fictional character disillusioned with fictions) it’s the same damn thing.

The Doctor is an optimistic representation of the human character (specifically, the white male occidental character). Ashamed of his past but hopeful about his future; vanquishing the same enemies over and over (for the last time, every time); indirectly (but inevitably) ruining the lives of almost everyone he encounters, but feeling really bad about it; understanding the universe better all the time, and increasingly scared that he may be the most dangerous thing in it.

The phrase “doctor who” is a running joke, because it’s what people say when they meet the hero for the first time.  People from his planet pick their public names after undergoing a coming-of-age ritual in which they choose an archetype that they want to represent. The Doctor loves life, and he loves people. He does what doctors do; he fights death, even though he knows better than anyone that he can’t win.

And in order to keep his fresh perspective, in order to keep loving life, he dies once in a while. He has to. We all have to.