Is Religion Killing Good Sci-Fi Shows? [minimal politics]

[Christopher]

How did religion "ruin" Quantum Leap? It was one of the show's central pillars.

Maybe. They kept it ambiguous most of the time, generally referring to "God or fate or whatever" as being behind the leaps. Some intelligence was directing Sam, but it was never made explicit what it was. After all, as I think I mentioned several pages/years ago in this thread, networks have always been uneasy with religious themes in TV shows for fear of offending people, so they prefer leaving it as vague and ambiguous as possible.

I was kind of partial to the idea that Ziggy was the one controlling Sam's leaps in order to bring about the future Ziggy considered best. (I think some of the Ashley McConnell novels may have hinted at that.) And didn't the series finale kind of hint that Sam himself may have been the one responsible for his own leaping, perhaps subconsciously or through some timey-wimey retroactive influence? Heck, maybe those are both true, given that Ziggy had some of Sam's brain cells in her and that their minds were linked. The combination of Ziggy and the temporally delocalized Sam as a gestalt entity may have formed some higher level of consciousness that transcended time and causality, saw the shape of all history and possibility, and caused the part of itself that was Sam to go to where and when he was needed to work toward the optimal probability state.

Then again, the show did pretty much acknowledge that Satan was real, and its Christmas Carol pastiche episode ended with an apparent miracle (though that could've been Ziggy acting without Al's knowledge, I suppose).

 

[Greg Cox]

Speaking of aggressive atheism, I've found perhaps a certain stubborn streak of that in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's a show filled with a lot of the standard Christian imagery seen in your typical vampire stories. Buffyverse vampires can be hurt by crosses or holy water. Buffy died at the end of Season 5 and when she came back in Season 6, she was depressed because her resurrection took her out of heaven. And yet Buffy is still unsure as to whether God exists in Season 7's "Conversations with Dead People."

But then, in the 2nd episode of the series, Giles pretty blatantly denies the creation myth from the book of Genesis. "This world is older than you know. And contrary to popular mythology, it did not start out as a paradise..."

Or maybe they just wanted to squeeze Lovecraftian mythology into a fantasy-horror series . . .

Doesn't have to be part of an agenda. More likely, they were just trying to work in every horror-fantasy trope that comes to mind. Yeah, we had the crosses and holy water bit, straight out of Bram Stoker and the old movies, but we also had Aztec mummies, Native American spirits, Wiccan spells that actually worked, robots, gill-men, and all sorts of magical artifacts and talismans from any number of mythologies. (How they missed genies or golems I'll never know . . .)

That's not "aggressive atheism." That's just a gleeful stew of pop-culture, monster-movie cliches.

Sometimes a cross in a vampire story is just a plot device and not a religious statement. Like garlic or not having a reflection in a mirror.

Or silver bullets in werewolf story or Kryptonite on SUPERGIRL.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Speaking of aggressive atheism, I've found perhaps a certain stubborn streak of that in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's a show filled with a lot of the standard Christian imagery seen in your typical vampire stories. Buffyverse vampires can be hurt by crosses or holy water. Buffy died at the end of Season 5 and when she came back in Season 6, she was depressed because her resurrection took her out of heaven. And yet Buffy is still unsure as to whether God exists in Season 7's "Conversations with Dead People."

But then, in the 2nd episode of the series, Giles pretty blatantly denies the creation myth from the book of Genesis. "This world is older than you know. And contrary to popular mythology, it did not start out as a paradise..."

Or maybe they just wanted to squeeze Lovecraftian mythology into a fantasy-horror series . . .

Doesn't have to be part of an agenda. More likely, they were just trying to work in every horror-fantasy trope that comes to mind. Yeah, we had the crosses and holy water bit, straight out of Bram Stoker and the old movies, but we also had Aztec mummies, Native American spirits, Wiccan spells that actually worked, robots, gill-men, and all sorts of magical artifacts and talismans from any number of mythologies. (How they missed genies or golems I'll never know . . .)

That's not "aggressive atheism." That's just a gleeful stew of pop-culture, monster-movie cliches.

Sometimes a cross in a vampire story is just a plot device and not a religious statement. Like garlic or not having a reflection in a mirror.

Or silver bullets in werewolf story or Kryptonite on SUPERGIRL.

Not to mention that the mythological symbolism of crosses and water being purifying holy things that can destroy evil is far older than christianity, so using those things does not need to imply a christian world anyway. Although, it is a fair cop that Buffy stuck to the christian tradition of holy water only being water that has been blessed by a priest, rather than all water.

Incidentally, they did have genies. They ditched the magic lamp thing and the arabic background, but vengeance demons are obviously inspired by stories of genies (make a wish, have it viciously turned against you).

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Okay I wanted to post this in the The Neutral Zone and decided against it. In keeping to minimal politics let's discuss if shows content and storylines are being hurt by religion.

Will the sci-fi community ever trust Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick to write a sci-fi show again? Has our faith in them been betrayed upon finding out that they were not actually writing sci-fi shows, but instead delivering pontification on their religious views?

The quote is instantly invalidated by drawing a set of erroneous conclusions:

1. There's some (implied) universal "sci-fi community." That does not exist.
2. This community was universally upset at the Eick, Moore & Lindelof's application of religion in their stories. Numbers, please.
3. There would be some distaste or rejection, which assumes this nonexistent "sci-fi community" are some unified (group of atheists--despite his claim to be of faith) who do not want to see religion as part of sci-fi stories at all.

The author of that quote seems to ignore how religion in science fiction is not new. In fact, its been there since the earliest sci-fi stories, so the author comes off as misguided at best.

 

[Christopher]

Not to mention that the mythological symbolism of crosses and water being purifying holy things that can destroy evil is far older than christianity, so using those things does not need to imply a christian world anyway.

And really, I think that vampire lore comes mainly from folklore and was never really a church-approved interpretation of Christianity. So some might even see the appropriation of Christian symbols in stories of demonic forces as blasphemous, particularly if those stories treat other religious traditions as real alongside Christianity.

See, this is why, if you see a show avoiding religiosity, there's a very good chance that that decision came from the network censors or the advertisers rather than the show's own creative staff. In the past, there have been big uproars from religious fundamentalists about "Satanism" and demonic or pagan imagery in fiction. People who are that driven by ideology tend to assume everyone else is too, so they don't get that these stories are using these ideas from myth and magic and folklore merely as fictional devices; they assume it's a sincere endorsement of pagan or Satanic beliefs and an attack on Christianity. Or maybe they just wanted to grab publicity by complaining about something popular. So they've organized protest campaigns and boycotts and the like. Maybe people remember that happening with Harry Potter, but that was hardly the first instance. I remember there was a big fuss in the '80s from the so-called Moral Majority or similar groups about "Satanic" imagery in kids' TV -- they even went after The Smurfs for having Gargamel draw a pentagram or something.

Now, granted, if the networks and advertisers took these protests seriously enough, they'd probably never let something like Buffy on the air at all. But they've faced enough controversies from religious groups that they prefer to avoid risking more. So they probably felt it was safest for a show about vampires and demons and supernatural forces to keep its cosmology as generic and vague and free of direct religious references as possible. Having Angel go to the Christian Hell or Buffy to the Christian Heaven would've been way too specific, with too many potential land mines, so they skirted around it with "dimensions" that were heavenly or hellish.

Sort of like how, when Xena introduced a Christlike character into their chronologically and culturally jumbled mythology, they called him "Eli" and gave him a somewhat generic pacifist philosophy. They didn't have a problem overtly depicting Ares and Aphrodite or Odin and Brunhilda or Hanuman and Krishna (though they did earn protests from Hindus for those, since that's still a currently active religion), but they could only use a genericized surrogate for Christ. That has nothing to do with the showrunners' own religious beliefs; it's just about trying not to offend people and make advertisers uncomfortable.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In the final episode we find out that Sam's guiding force/director (the bartender) was the same person who was watching him make the test fight in the very first episode.

No, it wasn't the same character. Same actor, yes (Bruce McGill) but in-universe, a different person.

As for religion in general...much as I hate to say this, I agree with Christopher. Shows won't deal with it, because they don't want to piss off advertisers OR fans.

Nothing any show or film says on the subject is going to please everyone. If there's a showrunner who IS a Christian, for example, and wants to put a positive religious message in their show, they still won't do it, because that might not go over well with atheist fans (at least in sci-fi, anyway...shows like Touched by an Angel did manage). The same would be true in reverse - JMS, for example, is an atheist, but he never insulted Christianity (or any religion) in B5 and in fact went out of his way to include many different messages in it.

And while I've never seen any Buffyverse show, I have never been offended by anything I've seen in shows that I do watch. It's just entertainment, after all. I'm a Christian, but I try the best I can not to get pissed off at things I see. I go to church to hear about Jesus. I wouldn't expect TV or movies to try and put it in there.

That being said, I do remember one episode of a show - I can't remember which one, though I think it might have been Charmed - that I stumbled across. One of the characters was upset because her boyfriend was entering a seminary to become a minister. Her voiceover at the end said something like this: "If I'm going to lose my boyfriend to another guy, it might as well be...the BIG guy". I thought that was kind of a cool thing for her to say. (If any of you remember which show this actually was, would you mind telling me, I'd like to look it up on YT!)

 

[Greg Cox]

More thoughts on the crosses and holy water business, as employed in horror stories.

BEN-HUR is a deliberately religious movie. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST is a deliberately religious movie.

But BRIDES OF DRACULA or BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER? Not so much.

I could be wrong here, but i doubt many viewers look to vampire stories for spiritual messages. The business with the crosses and the holy water is just part of the genre. Like flying carpets in an Arabian Nights adventure.

Look at it this way: if a voodoo doll pops up on a horror-fantasy show, does that mean the show is implicitly making a statement about voodoo as a religion? Of course not. So you can have angels and voodoo dolls and the Holy Grail and Pandora's Box and Thor's hammer all in the same universe, as far as movies and TV and comics are concerned.

It's not about religion vs atheism. It's about pulp fiction and entertainment. Granted, crosses have a profoundly deeper meaning to many believers, but maybe not in this context. It's possible to read too much into the "Christian imagery" in something like BUFFY.

Venturing beyond horror, look at the Indian Jones movies, in which the Ark of the Covenant and The Holy Grail are basically just magical McGuffins, employed in the service of an action-paced old-school adventure story. They might as well be the Golden Fleece or Blackbeard's treasure . . ..

 

[Kemaiku]

BRIDES OF DRACULA

Even with the Holy Water, there was the introduction of the idea the bite was an infection that could be burned out.

And that was one gruesome scene for it's time.

 

[Greg Cox]

BRIDES OF DRACULA

Even with the Holy Water, there was the introduction of the idea the bite was an infection that could be burned out.

And that was one gruesome scene for it's time.

Still my favorite Hammer movie. And, yes, that scene is "seared" into my memory.

(See what I did there?)

 

[Kemaiku]

BRIDES OF DRACULA

Even with the Holy Water, there was the introduction of the idea the bite was an infection that could be burned out.

And that was one gruesome scene for it's time.

Still my favorite Hammer movie. And, yes, that scene is "seared" into my memory.

(See what I did there?)

Boo

But it is one of the very best of the Hammer series.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Most religion in scifi is fictionalized religions. The problem with shows like BSG isn't that they use religion, but more that they use them badly. Science fiction has always at some level been an analysis of human behavior separated out from its real life context, and religion is one of the most common motivators of human behavior. The problem is when literal acts of deities override the agency of the characters. This is often done as 'Deus ex machina' or win buttons discovered at the last minute, and also often takes the form of retconning predestination into prior story events.

Anytime it seems 'The characters never really had control over the outcome or free will because of the direct intervention of a higher magic or just fate', religion is being used wrong.

 

[theenglish]

Most religion in scifi is fictionalized religions. The problem with shows like BSG isn't that they use religion, but more that they use them badly. Science fiction has always at some level been an analysis of human behavior separated out from its real life context, and religion is one of the most common motivators of human behavior. The problem is when literal acts of deities override the agency of the characters. This is often done as 'Deus ex machina' or win buttons discovered at the last minute, and also often takes the form of retconning predestination into prior story events.

Anytime it seems 'The characters never really had control over the outcome or free will because of the direct intervention of a higher magic or just fate', religion is being used wrong.

Unless it is introduced properly into the story at an appropriate time. The argument can be made in shows like BSG and Lost that the seeds of the ultimate reveals were introduced early on in the story. People could choose to reject the story we finally got, but you cannot argue that the possibility had been planted early on.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

But BRIDES OF DRACULA or BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER? Not so much.

I could be wrong here, but i doubt many viewers look to vampire stories for spiritual messages. The business with the crosses and the holy water is just part of the genre. Like flying carpets in an Arabian Nights adventure.

I have to disagree. The Hammer vampire films had characters (not just Cushing's Van Helsing) espousing Christianity often--with some characters explaining how the faith stands against vampirism, which (in certain Hammer films) is said to be tied to Satan.

There seemed to be a strong effort to use Christianity as the lone defense against vampires, and not placed in the same, screen-made category as silver against werewolves, or the best seeing the pentagram in the hands of his next victim (see: Curt Siodmak's myth making for The Wolf Man)

Venturing beyond horror, look at the Indian Jones movies, in which the Ark of the Covenant and The Holy Grail are basically just magical McGuffins, employed in the service of an action-paced old-school adventure story. They might as well be the Golden Fleece or Blackbeard's treasure . . ..

Again, I have to disagree--at least where the Ark is concerned, since the drive of the original concept was to have Jones going after some religious or mystical artifact. However, if you add the well known Lucas interest in history to the historical reality of both the Ark and the Nazi's pursuit of religious artifacts, then Raiders removed Jones from being just another adventurer going after some made-up thing, but one who ends up being defined by his association with one of the most significant objects in that religion.

It is the backdrop of history and faith that transformed Raiders--or Jones into a character who is inseparable from religion as a constant subject or motivator for his stories. You were not going to get that from something universally considered myth, such as the Golden Fleece, etc.

 

[Greg Cox]

I don't know. There's no indication in the films that encountering the Ark was some sort of profoundly religious experience for Jones. Sure, he might have become a little less skeptical about magic and mysticism in general, but it's not as though he's portrayed as having become much more devoutly Christian in the subsequent movies and novels as such.

Heck, even in RAIDERS, when Belloq threatens to destroy the Ark, causing Indy to surrender, it's all about the historical significance of the Ark, not its religious significance. And at the end of RAIDERS, he's happy because a dangerous artifact is safely locked away and he got the girl in the end. If witnessing God's wrath in person has affected him spiritually, there's no indication of it.

And when we next see Indy in THE LAST CRUSADE, skipping TEMPLE OF DOOM since it's nominally set before RAIDERS, Indy does not appear to have been transformed at all by his encounter with the Ark. He's the same guy he was before RAIDERS.

So, yes, it might as well have been the Golden Fleece as far as Indy (and Marion) are concerned.

 

[Kemaiku]

It has a lot to do with Indy himself. I know Crystal Skull gets a lot of flak, but in the end all he wanted to do was lay the skull to rest. His own curiosity seemed to come second and he was willing to learn only what he could, and leave it at that.

It extends to potentially religious and cosmological beings apparently.

 

[Christopher]

I don't know. There's no indication in the films that encountering the Ark was some sort of profoundly religious experience for Jones. Sure, he might have become a little less skeptical about magic and mysticism in general, but it's not as though he's portrayed as having become much more devoutly Christian in the subsequent movies and novels as such.

Heck, even in RAIDERS, when Belloq threatens to destroy the Ark, causing Indy to surrender, it's all about the historical significance of the Ark, not its religious significance. And at the end of RAIDERS, he's happy because a dangerous artifact is safely locked away and he got the girl in the end. If witnessing God's wrath in person has affected him spiritually, there's no indication of it.

And when we next see Indy in THE LAST CRUSADE, skipping TEMPLE OF DOOM since it's nominally set before RAIDERS, Indy does not appear to have been transformed at all by his encounter with the Ark. He's the same guy he was before RAIDERS.

So, yes, it might as well have been the Golden Fleece as far as Indy (and Marion) are concerned.

Tor.com has just done a series of posts on this very subject, about how the Indy trilogy (the three that were about mysticism rather than sci-fi) basically functioned as a conversion narrative in which the hero failed to convert. Indy may have gotten evidence that there was some kind of unknown power behind those artifacts, but presumably he was too much of a scholar just to jump to the conclusion that the ancients' interpretation of that power was accurate. After all, volcanoes are real, but that doesn't mean we have to worship Hephaistos or Pele.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Most religion in scifi is fictionalized religions. The problem with shows like BSG isn't that they use religion, but more that they use them badly. Science fiction has always at some level been an analysis of human behavior separated out from its real life context, and religion is one of the most common motivators of human behavior. The problem is when literal acts of deities override the agency of the characters. This is often done as 'Deus ex machina' or win buttons discovered at the last minute, and also often takes the form of retconning predestination into prior story events.

Anytime it seems 'The characters never really had control over the outcome or free will because of the direct intervention of a higher magic or just fate', religion is being used wrong.

Unless it is introduced properly into the story at an appropriate time. The argument can be made in shows like BSG and Lost that the seeds of the ultimate reveals were introduced early on in the story. People could choose to reject the story we finally got, but you cannot argue that the possibility had been planted early on.

I accepted the way it was done in Lost more than the way it was done in BSG. I don't know if BSG is too old to need to spoiler tag, but I think Starbuck's role in season four and the opera house reveal were incredibly weak, and it all literally ended up as a 'God did everything'. In Lost, I felt like the characters had agency even if the result of that agency was already determined by a predestination paradox. And it seemed like that 'The will of the island' was nudging characters toward particular actions but they still had to choose to perform those actions.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I don't know. There's no indication in the films that encountering the Ark was some sort of profoundly religious experience for Jones. Sure, he might have become a little less skeptical about magic and mysticism in general, but it's not as though he's portrayed as having become much more devoutly Christian in the subsequent movies and novels as such.

Heck, even in RAIDERS, when Belloq threatens to destroy the Ark, causing Indy to surrender, it's all about the historical significance of the Ark, not its religious significance.

I would say what skepticism he displayed (early in the film) to Brody vanished by the time he was tied to the post, since he's absolutely tense in his warning for Marion to keep her eyes shut, once the power of the Ark makes its presence known. If he looked at the Ark as purely a historical object before, he's fully respecting it by the start of the "miracle of the Ark."

And at the end of RAIDERS, he's happy because a dangerous artifact is safely locked away and he got the girl in the end. If witnessing God's wrath in person has affected him spiritually, there's no indication of it.

Well, if he occupied the same place at the end of the film as seen during his Brody conversation, that would make Jones seem like he's sort of thick, instead of the open-minded character he's supposed to be.

And when we next see Indy in THE LAST CRUSADE, skipping TEMPLE OF DOOM since it's nominally set before RAIDERS, Indy does not appear to have been transformed at all by his encounter with the Ark. He's the same guy he was before RAIDERS.[/quote]

Then, that's a problem for the writers, as they would have ignored character growth for no apparent reason. That said, in Last Crusade, Indy's disbelief is (as in Raiders) swept away by hard evidence. One, he meets the Grail Knight--there's no writing him off as some Scooby Doo-esque guy in a costume. Then, he had to select the correct grail, but recall his trepidation as he's preparing to drink; a disbelieving person would not normally have that reaction (fearing suffering the same the fate as Donovan) if he thought it was nonsense.

 

[Christopher]

I don't know if BSG is too old to need to spoiler tag, but I think Starbuck's role in season four and the opera house reveal were incredibly weak, and it all literally ended up as a 'God did everything'.

Well, as I said earlier (and years ago) in the thread, the writers were giving us evidence of supernatural intervention as far back as the first chamalla prophecies in season 1 and the revelation in season 2 that Baltar's Head Six was not created by an impant chip (which was when she revealed that she was an angel). I resisted accepting those because I still wanted there to be a rational explanation, but the signs were there all along. Once I saw the finale and it became clear that there was no secular explanation, I finally admitted that it had been a magic-realist space opera all along.

 

[Reverend]

More thoughts on the crosses and holy water business, as employed in horror stories.

BEN-HUR is a deliberately religious movie. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST is a deliberately religious movie.

But BRIDES OF DRACULA or BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER? Not so much.

I could be wrong here, but i doubt many viewers look to vampire stories for spiritual messages. The business with the crosses and the holy water is just part of the genre. Like flying carpets in an Arabian Nights adventure.

Look at it this way: if a voodoo doll pops up on a horror-fantasy show, does that mean the show is implicitly making a statement about voodoo as a religion? Of course not. So you can have angels and voodoo dolls and the Holy Grail and Pandora's Box and Thor's hammer all in the same universe, as far as movies and TV and comics are concerned.

It's not about religion vs atheism. It's about pulp fiction and entertainment. Granted, crosses have a profoundly deeper meaning to many believers, but maybe not in this context. It's possible to read too much into the "Christian imagery" in something like BUFFY.

Venturing beyond horror, look at the Indian Jones movies, in which the Ark of the Covenant and The Holy Grail are basically just magical McGuffins, employed in the service of an action-paced old-school adventure story. They might as well be the Golden Fleece or Blackbeard's treasure . . ..

I know it's stupid and a little sad, but it always somewhat bothered me that 'Buffy' never really addressed *why* exactly crucifixes worked on vampires. If it was just general items of faith of any denomination I could get behind it, but that didn't appear to be the case. Indeed I recall as least one instance where Willow (who happens to be Jewish) has to surreptitiously vamp-proof her house with a crucifix. Apparently the Star of David wouldn't work.

I know it's all part of the modern mythos/pulp-horror era lore (just like silver bullets for werewolves) once you start to pick apart the "rules" of any similar thing it's never going to make any real sense. Still, it always seemed odd in a show that featured "good" demons, a decidedly Lovecraft mythos inspired view of primordial history and a plethora of "higher" forces, each seemingly with their own agenda. Indeed, aside from the crosses, they seemed to avoid Judeo-Christian mythology like the plague.