Regenerating Jesus

It’s Easter. Which can mean only one thing. Forget Jesus and all that crap. The new series of Doctor Who was resurrected by the BBC five years ago (Easter weekend, 2005), with the one-time Son of God Christopher Eccleston playing the Doctor. He was replaced that same year by a son of a Scottish preacher, David Tennant. And now, he’s been superseded by someone who’s young enough to be my son!

After his brief debut on New Year’s Day, Matt Smith made his first full appearance as the Doctor in last night’s episode, The Eleventh Hour (which can be seen again this evening on BBC3, at 7 p.m., and in the US on BBC America, on Saturday, 17 April, at 9 p.m.).

And his isn’t the only debut. The award-winning writer Steven Moffat has taken over as the show’s lead writer and executive producer from Russell T Davies, who held that position from 2004. Davies was the creative force behind Queer as Folk, and, during his time on Who, was often – ridiculously – accused of having a “gay agenda” and an “atheist agenda”.

Davies and Moffat are both atheists, and both have incorporated nonreligious elements into their stories, culminating, in 2008, with Richard Dawkins appearing as himself in The Stolen Earth.

Davies is openly gay, while Moffat is openly straight, but both have incorporated gay characters and storylines into their episodes, the most obvious one being the character of Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman.

The “gay-agenda” conspiracists welcomed the announcement that Moffat was to replace Davies, until Moffat pointed out that it was he who had created Captain Jack’s character traits!

And the nutters keep cropping up. Over at Gallifrey Base, the world’s premiere Doctor Who forum, someone going by the name of Django Fett has had this to say:

The BBC have scheduled the broadcast of the first episode of the new Doctor Who series (on BBC1 in the UK) for Saturday 3rd April 2010.

This is also smack bang in the middle of the Easter Weekend.

The show features a newly regenerated Doctor.

Are the BBC trying to associate Doctor Who with the resurrection of Christ and thereby implying that watching the show will be some kind of religious experience?

I think that the BBC are thumbing their noses at one of the most important Christian festivals of the year. They are trying to cash in on this association by comparing Doctor Who to the Son of God. This is highly distasteful.

Fett claims to live in the Vatican City, so, hopefully, he’s having a laugh (though, these days, you never can tell – just take a look at the rubbish Christian Voice’s Stephen “Birdshit” Green spouts!).

And, anyway, it resulted in the above image being posted (by Kristoff) to the site, too. Anyone who’s seen a Time Lord regenerate in Doctor Who over the last few years will instantly get it!