Pandeism and the World of Doctor Who

The Universe of Doctor Who is an odd one to consider within the context of the theological theory of Pandeism -- after all, Pandeism is logic-based, whereas the Whovian realm is perhaps somewhat more.... whimsical. A bit silly, even, not only in the behavior of its denizens, but in the operations of time and space and physics.

For the uninitiated, the world of Doctor Who centers on the adventures of the Doctor -- a Time Lord from the once-great (and now sadly destroyed) planet Gallifrey. The Doctor inhabits a time-and-space ship of sorts called the TARDIS, which externally looks like a 1960's British police box, but is enormous on the inside, and which enables him to travel to any point in time and space. This he does, fighting a variety of enemies, old recurring ones as often as new ones, and generally (though not always entirely) saving the day. In so doing, the Doctor has racked up several dozen (human) lifetimes worth of positively undreamt of experiences. The theological theory of Pandeism, on the other hand, centers on the idea of a Creator which, instead of setting forth a Universe separate from itself, wholly becomes our Universe (or, perhaps, the Doctor's Universe) so as to learn from the myriad combination of experiences of those beings which come about in such a Universe.

As with all fictional worlds, there are several directions from which the particulars of this world allow for the pandeistic enquiry. One is in terms of what the occupants of this world believe. But belief is actually not so important (although, perhaps what the Doctor believes is more important, as we shall consider). Another is the actuality of that Universe, its physics and governing dynamics, including the actual presence (or absence) of supernatural phenomena.

What is believed

Like many science fiction universes, that of Doctor Who is well-stocked with religiosity. And, like many science fiction universes, religious belief is often shown to be errant and manipulable. Things deemed by common folk as supernatural are routinely shown by the Doctor as having a proper scientific explanation -- typically in the form of aliens pretending to be gods (or being mistaken for them; or, indeed, the Doctor himself being mistaken for one). Except that those scientific explanations are themselves quite often things which defy scientific reason. A very recent example is the episode, "The Rings of Akhaten." Here, the Doctor and his companion, Clara, visit a planetary system where instead of money, things are bartered for with items having 'psychometric' value, being the source of some emotional attachment. The denizens of this world are sending a young girl to join in an eternal chorus being sung to an especially demanding god--one which might awaken and destroy the girl if it is not placated with her singing. But something goes wrong with the song and the god awakens and threatens to devour the entire system, and then others beyond it. Fortunately, after the Doctor fails to placate it with his own life story, Clara is able to overcome this god by feeding it "the most important leaf in human history," one which allowed her parents to meet, but which now represents the infinite possibilities lost with her mother's untimely death.

And so, instead of an actual 'god,' we find in this episode that the culprit was simply a run-of-the-mill unfathomably powerful living planet which eats sentimental attachments, and can be stopped by a single leaf which happens to be imbued with infinite possibilities. Does that not sound like magic? Beneath the veneer of this being a commonsense scientific explanation, does that not smack of a wholly supernatural account springing straight from ancient mythology? But in the world or the Doctor, it is indeed routine -- one supernatural explanation explained away by another one framed as scientific. But in a pandeistic world the explanation would more likely actually be unequivocally and testably scientific, and not an equally implausible device simply dressed in scientific language.

What the Doctor believes

The Doctor's own views would be of especially remarkable weight in the Doctor's Universe because he clearly possess vastly more knowledge then the typical human can even grasp (even if he does often act as if he were confused by human romantic and sexual relationships). In "The Parting of the Ways," companion Rose Tyler has looked into the heart of the Tardis and so was being overwhelmed by having obtained the ability to see "everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be." The Doctor sympathetically responds, "That's what I see. All the time. Doesn't it drive you mad?"

With all of this knowledge and centuries of wisdom, it is notable that the Doctor never prays to any deity. He never endorses the truth of any scripture or doctrine, invariably immediately doubting any reliance upon supernatural explanations (and for good reason, based on his experience in the matter). But neither does the Doctor ever clearly express outright atheism.

Such is the case even when the Doctor confronts a creature claiming to be the Devil itself, in "The Satan Pit." Here, the Doctor is visiting an expedition to an 'impossible planet' orbiting a black hole. The planet turns out to be a prison for a powerful evil, one which awakens and claims to be that universal bogeyman of badness, Satan. The Doctor asks, "If you are the Beast, then answer me this: Which one, hmm? Because the universe has been busy since you’ve been gone. There's more religions than there are planets in the sky. There's the Arkaphets, Christianity, Pash-Pash, New Judaism, San Claar, Church of the Tin Vagabond. Which devil are you?" Naturally, the creature claims to be "All of them," and when the Doctor asks when was it imprisoned here, it answers "Before time and light and space and matter. Before the cataclysm. Before this universe was created." This, the Doctor doubts: "You can't have come from before the universe. That's impossible." "Is that your religion?" the creature asks. "It's a belief," the Doctor replies.

Later, the Doctor explains, "If that thing had said it was from beyond the universe, I'd have believed it. But before? Impossible." On closer examination, the creature's claim is indeed impractical -- it's confinement seems to hinge on technology and principles of physics which necessarily postdate the creation of our Universe. And naturally, it could not have engaged in the evils attributed to supernatural bogeymen had it been incapacitated for all those billions of years. But as to the Doctor's belief that nothing could come from before our Universe, perhaps this extends from the understanding in modern physics of time itself as a function of our Universe, with "before the Universe" itself being akin to "North of the North Pole." But if time is a function of our Universe, it would seem to follow that "beyond our Universe" is the same as "beyond time," and so the Doctor's understanding would not preclude an entity from existing outside the bounds of time itself.

What people believe about the Doctor

One theory popular amongst some fans (though derided by most) is that the Doctor is "God." (PBS even dares ask, Is Doctor Who a Religion?, though not on this point especially). Examples abound of the sort of thing which fuels this Doctor-as-deity sort of thinking. One can be found in the episode, New Earth, when the Doctor makes a life-or-death call an anthropomorphic cat nun asks, "And who are you to make this decision?" The Doctor responds, "I'm the Doctor. And if you don't like it, if you want to take it to a higher authority, then there isn't one. It stops with me."

At the end of "The Wedding of River Song," it is revealed that the Silence, a religious order, have been seeking to prevent the Doctor from answering the question "Doctor who?", believing that "silence will fall when the question is asked". According to Dorium Maldovar, the question was told in this manner: "On the Fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked — a question that must never be answered. The first question, the question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight, the question that you've been running from all your life. Doctor who?" And why would this be "the first question"? Well, it may mean that the Doctor is God, or it may mean that there is no God, in which case the Doctor is surely about the closest thing to one. Or it may mean that whatever god might exist is not one to which an appeal can be taken, and one for which that would be an appropriate "first question"-- which Pandeism would be an example of, such deity having become the unanswering Universe itself.

And what is

More important than what is simply believed is what we can see of how this Universe functions. After all, people will believe all sorts of wrong things for all sorts of reasons (and, even, will come to believe right things for wrong reasons); but are there clues to its workings which coincide with a the operation of a pandeistic theological model? The Universe of Doctor Who is quite a curious place. Physics seems to function more or less coherently -- gravity and electromagnetic reactions in all the right places. But it is, naturally, a place where time travel is possible. And, interferences with the time stream seem to have varying effects on reality -- pasts and futures change, but the same people seem to show up regardless. The degree to which change occurs is inconstant, and this inconstancy is handwaved away with references to temporal polarities or the like. This is a place where things like teleportation and telepathic communication and mind-occupation can be found (in The Lodger, the Doctor demonstrates the ability to convey his own memories and experiences to another person through a head bonk).

The Universe with which the Doctor is familiar teems with alien species of most every imaginable configuration, from many different hues of humanoids to the country-sized Space Whale of "The Beast Below." These aliens equally range in disposition from friendly to murderous, with species such as the Sontarans who are dedicated to warmaking, and the dreaded Daleks, which worship hate and yearn to wipe out all life in the Universe. These beings differ from life on Earth not simply in appearance, but in a host of more arcane capacities. The Akhaten planet-being is one example. Some beings do indeed exist as nothing more than clouds of energy. Another, closer to home, is the Weeping Angels, creatures which look like old-timey grotesque statues of people, but which eat temporal energy (forcing their victims back in time by a few decades when feeding, and which are incapable of moving when anybody is looking at them). Oddly, the Doctor himself describes the Weeping Angels as a product of evolution, though what sort of evolutionary path could produce such things is well nigh unfathomable. The Daleks and another regular foe, the Cybermen, seem to be examples of transhumanism gone wrong, with efforts to augment living things technologically yielding monsters instead of marvels.

And then there is that quite strange creature, the Doctor. Like all Time Lords, he is effectively immortal -- at least up until he gets killed by temporal radiation or alien spiders or the like enough times to use up all of his "regenerations," and so is no longer able to return with a new actor- er- face. If the exploits of other Time Lords are instructive, he has superhuman physical strength. Despite his immense arsenal of abilities, the Doctor is certainly not, by appearances, infallible or omniscient or omnipotent. In "The Waters of Mars" he attempts to prevent a fixed point in history from occurring, and fails tragically, and with great lamentation of this failure. In "The Angels Take Manhattan," he grieves for his inability to ever see companions Amy and Rory again, because his paradoxical doings with New York's time stream have made it too delicate to withstand any further intervention.

Additionally, as noted before, the Doctor is not the only Time Lord to have graced the Universe (though it seems he is now, having destroyed the rest to save the Universe from a fate worse than death). Once, there was a whole planet of them, presumably all at least possessed of the relative immortality which the Doctor enjoys. True, the Doctor seems special even amongst his fellow Time Lords -- on his trips to Gallifrey in earlier incarnations, he usually got the better of them in when they were at cross purposes. Even the Doctor's most able foe, the Master, was ultimately always defeated, even though his apparent final destruction, in "The End of Time," was essentially a self-sacrificing suicide. The event which this suicidal sacrifice prevented was the attempt of the time-locked Gallifreyans to end the Universe itself, and become beings of pure thought. This is interesting on a number of levels firstly because it unquestioningly assumes that the Gallifreyans do indeed have the ability to end the entire Universe, as well as the ability to initiate and then persist in an existence as beings of pure thought. One must wonder if this is a one-way transition -- if material beings can become thought-beings, does it not follow that thought-beings (or, perhaps' one great thought-being) can become material?

And, if the Doctor is God, then aren't those amongst his fellow Time Lords who can from time to time defeat him?

But, naturally, if Pandeism is true then, well, so are we all. And herein arises a uniquely pandeistic possibility, for perhaps the Doctor knows this (or the possibility of it), and so is simply somebody who happens to have a better handle on the power which accompanies such status (or, indeed, comes from a race of beings so empowered). Time Lords apparently gain some of their depth of knowledge, and perhaps other abilities, from a childhood ritual in which they are made to stare into an untempered schism in the time vortex, which would be a handy metaphor for looking straight into the power of a Universe-creating entity underlying all things. And, interestingly, in the episode, "The Pandorica Opens," River Song laments "I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him." Would it be any surprise whatsoever if, in this reality, Jesus turned out to be the Doctor in an earlier adventure? Or indeed if Moses or Arjuna or Odysseus or Lao Tze or any other mythohistoric figure turned out to be the selfsame sojourner?

Pandeism and the world of Star Wars

A long, long time ago....

in a galaxy far, far away....

The Star Wars Universe is characterized by the central role of the Jedi, an essentially religious order which corresponds to a metaphysical characteristic of that world -- The Force. And what is The Force? Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker of it being "an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together." But in practice it appears that The Force is not restricted to living things even, at least insofar as Force-user seem undiminished in their application of its power in deep space and on planets lifeless but for their own presence (such as the volcanic world of Mustafar where a younger Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker duel amidst torrents of lava).

And what is it that The Force enables for those able to access it? Well, a series of relatively minor miracles, to be sure. Most prominently shown are the levitation of objects of varying size (up to an entire spacecraft as done by the venerable Yoda), and comparable telekinetic acts including choking from a distance, especially enjoyed by Darth Vader; feats of augmented strength, endurance, and dexterity; the emission (by those on 'the dark side' of 'Force lightning' -- bolts of energy that electrify their target; controlling the minds of others, if those minds are weak and impressionable; and sensing distant events both distant and nearby but hidden. Possibly the most remarkable application of The Force is in the ability of certain of its users to reportedly either raise the dead, or defeat death itself, continuing to exist after death as conscious and communicative beings (if incorporeal ones) -- visible at least to other wielders of this power.

Now, one interesting thing about The Force is that, much like the magical talent on display in the Harry Potter series, access to it (formally called being 'Force-sensitive') seems limited to those with a genetic predisposition, an accident of birth perhaps, but one which is clearly inheritable. Parents who are 'strong in The Force' will be likely to have children with the same propensity. One who had not inherited this knack would not be able to use the Force for levitation and mind control and such, no matter how strongly they believed in it; just as the few regular humans in Harry Potter's world who actually know about the magic are not themselves able to wield wands and cast spells.

Interestingly as well, although the Jedi are unquestionably shown to exist and to exercise remarkable abilities, they are not infrequently dismissed as quasi-mythic -- even to their faces!! This is best illustrated in the earliest film, where we see Obi-Wan training Luke as they travel in the Millennium Falcon; Luke is attempting to block blasts from a hovering training robot:

Obi-Wan: Remember, a Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him.
Luke: You mean it controls your actions?
Obi-Wan: Partially, but it also obeys your commands.
Han Solo: (laughing as Luke is blasted by the training robot) Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
Luke: You don't believe in the Force, do you?
Han Solo: Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. Anyway, it's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Obi-Wan then places a blast helmet on Luke, covering Luke's eyes. Despite misgivings, Luke follows Obi-Wan's instructions to 'stretch out with his feelings', and then succeeds in blocking several blasts from the training robot. Han Solo's response, when confronted by the reality before him, is to call it luck -- to which Obi-Wan insists, "there is no such thing as luck."

Han Solo presents perhaps the most interesting theological perspective, for he begins this journey as a true atheist, with no faith in 'hokey religions' or a 'mystical energy field.' And yet, we are shown throughout the course of the series that such an energy field -- the Force -- does indeed exist!! At the same time, despite the actual presence of one spiritual truth, it is shown that some adhere to religiosity reflecting false superstition, as with the Ewoks worshiping C3PO as a deity (notably even before Luke Skywalker supplies the physics-defying display which cements this impression).

But for all of the wonders accessible through The Force, the Universe of Star Wars offers no explanation as to why this phenomenon exists. The extended universe of novels and other materials includes some reference to an ancient 'discovery' of The Force, but offer no explication of its origin. This has been left in a sense to critics who have attacked the stories as supplanting theistic religions with a form of Pantheism, the idea that 'God' is the Universe itself. And, despite the occasional condemnation of this notion from theists, a fairly significant number of people have responded to census requests by identifying themselves as 'Jedi.'

But here we find the world of Star Wars to operate consistently with a pandeistic Universe. Look at the things going on here. First, despite the fuzziness of the technology in use, there is unquestionably a consistently governing physics. Comparable to Star Trek once the metaphysical element is put aside, the distribution of life forms observed on various planets is consistent with each such planet's life developing through a process of evolution by natural selection. This process has led to intelligent life arising on numerous worlds, such that interactions between civilizations generate a rich array of experiences, as predicted by the presumption in the most popular formulation of Pandeism, wherein our Universe is designed to provide such experiences to the Creator which has become it.

And, the governing dynamics of the Star Wars Universe are sufficiently decipherable that people therein have been able to develop technology and move towards transhumanism, with lost and damaged body parts being replaceable with mechanical substitutes. At the same time, true artificial intelligence exists. And, on top of all of this, there is the recognition of an underlying energy suffusing the Universe, one which certain people by happenstance can tap into to perform seemingly miraculous physical feats, divine prophecies, and so influence others towards belief in the quasitheological import of these abilities. Despite the leveling of the accusation of Pantheism against the authors of Star Wars, there is no element in that fictional Universe suggesting it to be an temporally static (or even an uncreated) Universe. In having a present pantheistic aspect, it is thusly entirely consistent with a pandeistic Universe wherein the Creator has becomes the Creation so that it might experience things like the breathtaking adventures of Jedi Knights swashbuckling their way around the galaxy and defeating the forces of evil.

Lastly, given the possibility that physics may vary by slight degrees in different parts of our Universe, and given that the story related in the Star Wars saga is claimed to have happened "a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," it is impossible to declare absolutely that the events thus depicted are indeed fictional at all. Indeed, their putative author, George Lucas might well have been unconsciously capturing and relating historical facts preserved and transmitted to his thoughts through some unknown mechanism of the fabric of a pandeistic Universe. Not that this is proposed as a likely explanation of anything, and certainly not as an aspect of the theory of Pandeism itself -- but simply as a diversion of thought, and one of the myriad fascinating possibilities our Universe presents to us.