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Christ and the Cybermen (Good News Week 26/5/08: Strange But True)

Church of England leaders are encouraging clergy to study Dr Who and use examples in their sermons. Seems that the old Bible stories don’t have enough lasers. / daleks.

Church leaders say Dr Who is kinda like Christ, the Tardis is kinda like a church, and K-9 is kinda like the robot dog that Jesus had.

According to the new reading of the sci-fi series, the Tardis is just like a church – it’s an “ordinary object that points to something higher”. Yup, an ordinary object that just happens to be able to TRAVEL IN TIME AND SPACE.

Church leaders believe that the Tardis is like a church. Or at least it will be once they get the organ to make that “Woop woop” sound.

Churches are like Tardises. They just pop up out of nowhere.

And Daleks are just really cranky pulpits. / lecturns.

The clergy believe that the daleks represent pure evil, the doctor represents a Christ figure, and the Tardis represents a church. Looks like a few nerds are engaged in a bit of fanciful wish-fulfillment at the ol’ C of E.

“I mean, Jesus was resurrected once, but Dr Who has been resurrected nine times and counting! Now that’s holy!”

And, like Dr Who, Jesus had a scantily-clad female assistant – Mary Magdalene.

And, just like Dr Who, Jesus had a bunch of scantily-clad assistants – although his were all fishermen. / apostles. / bearded men in loincloths.

Turns out that Jesus’ resurrection was just an excuse to get him played by a different actor in the next series.

It’s an attempt to make Christianity more relevant to teenagers. Because they relate far more to a fictional time-travelling middle-aged alien than to God.

And the revised gospel according to Matthew, Jesus rises from the dead and zips off in a TARDIS. / Jesus rises from the dead, offers everyone a jellybaby, and zips off to destroy the Cybermen.

And Jesus is just like a timelord, travelling through time to a place where he has no relevance.

Turns out Jesus wasn’t crucified, he was EXTERMINATEd. By Pontius Dalek. / By the Pilot of the “Pontius”.

Just like Christ, the Doctor is willing to sacrifice himself for humans, because he knows he’s coming straight back. / because it’s not really a sacrifice when you’re coming straight back.

Just like Christ, the Doctor is willing to sacrifice himself for the cause of good, is filled with compassion for all humans, and is an alien freak from another planet.

And after all, Christ would never have got out of that tomb without his sonic screwdriver. / the help of K-9’s lasers.

Apparently, there are “countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who”, which they can use to get across “ideas that are otherwise difficult to explain”. Because, no matter how ridiculous and far-fetched Dr Who is, it still makes more sense than the Bible.

Apparently, there are “countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who”, which they can use to get across “ideas that are otherwise difficult to explain”. Because even a two-hearted time-travelling alien who lives in a dimension-warping phonebox makes more sense than Christianity.

Apparently, there are “countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who”, which they can use to get across “ideas that are otherwise difficult to explain”. Because learning about Daleks, Cybermats and Silurians makes the Holy Trinity so much easier to understand. / Because the Holy Trinity only really makes sense once you fully understand the differences between the Daleks and the Cybermen.

Reverend Andrew Myers says that an episode where the Doctor sacrifices himself for a Pompeii family is “surely a reference to Genesis and Abraham’s bargaining over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah”. And the episode where he is attacked by the robotic minotaurs of Nimon is obviously a reference to the robotic minotaurs in the Bible. / of Bethlehem.

The show’s creators have said that the resurrection of the Doctor was less a symbol of Christ and more a symbol of keeping control over actors’ wages.

Church leaders are being encouraged to use examples from Dr Who to make Christianity more relevant to teenagers. And the makers of Dr Who are hoping to make it more relevant to teenagers, instead of just the same old middle-aged geeks who watched it in the 80s.

Of course, if they want to make the bible more relevant to teenagers, they should put in more references to Facebook. / chroming. / underage sex. / mobile phones.

Christians are also encouraged to look for parallels in other sci-fi. ET, for instance, is actually a parallel with Jesus’ good deeds on earth, and eventual ascension to heaven, after contacting God with a satellite dish made from an umbrella and a Speak n Spell.

They were going to study Star Wars, until they realised the evil Emperor is a dead ringer for the Pope.

In the film “Flash Gordon”, Flash is meant to be Jesus, the Birdpeople are obviously angels, Ming the Merciless is undoubtedly Lucifer, and Ming’s daughter is quite clearly a little hottie.

“Alien” is also obviously a metaphor for the story of Christ. The facehugger ramming its eggshute down John Hurt’s throat is clearly a metaphor for the spreading of the Christian gospel, and the scene where the blood-splattered alien bursts painfully out of his chest, is unmistakably the Virgin Birth. And the scene where the vile monster is shot out into space, is quite clearly the emergence of scientific atheism.

By Wok and Mat

Warwick Holt and Mat Blackwell are long-time writing partners, who created the mega-award winning web series Bruce, and wrote loads of jokes for TV shows including Good News Week, The Sideshow and The Glass House. Several years of their raw material for those shows is posted right here on this blog.

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