Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, October 30, 2003
| More on Doctor Who
Liz Shaw: Goodness and the Material World Liz is the Doctor's first companion. Trying to stay true to what I think the series intended, I depict Liz, a research professor and lecturer from Cambridge who has four post-graduate degrees by the age of 25, as an atheist. And she's not as liberal minded as she supposes. The TV series starts with her subtly mocking the Brigadier for his views on extra-terrestrial life, so she doesn't come off as being all that tolerant. But Liz is in search of the real thing. Intellectual and plutonically intense, she sees through facades and demands a certain purity of thought. Liz discards that which is merely conventional (not realizing where she is conventional) and wants to get things right. Hence her open skepticism of the Brig and UNIT. Any large mass of men trained to act without thinking, in perfect conformity to a uniform mandate, earns Liz's contempt. In her opinion, soldiers are bunglers. |  |
 | However, in the face of genuine and personal religious belief, Liz is not an adamant atheist, and the religion of others, if they are sincerely devout, does not put her off. Liz respects Father Stephen Dunn's beliefs because he risks his life to save a woman who is being abducted (The Fighting Dead). And the gentle acceptance and Christian witness of Sister Mercy in The Dead Go Searching moves Liz to tears. Face to face with devout people whose faith is a reality to them, Liz is humble and even teachable. This humility comes from her intense desire to get things right and understand. |
| Because Liz searches for the "real thing," she is skeptical of the Doctor. Oh, certainly he's brilliant and has traveled in time and space. But there's a lot of twaddle to the Third Doctor, especially early in the series. He wears frilly shirts, velvet smoking jackets, and a flamboyant opera cape. He boasts and he swaggers, and he bullies, and he gets huffy. All of these things diminish him to Liz. She can be tolerant of him, but she cannot unite with him whole heartedly in friendship, because his dishonesty is a roadblock. After all, the Doctor did steal his TARDIS (though he claims he just borrowed it), and he cons people to get what he wants. He would call this "bluffing," but Liz calls it lying. In Night Terrors, Liz concludes that the Doctor's exile is just punishment for him because of his callous pride. To his credit, the Doctor has a fit of meekness and does not dispute with her. |  |
 | Realistically, I recognize that Liz is a beautiful intellectual who reaches her adulthood during the Sexual Revolution. Most likely, she would be an emancipated woman, which is how I depict her. On the other hand, in keeping with her intensely pure pursuit of that which is the real thing and the real truth, Liz would not be casual in her affairs. And in matters regarding telling the truth and respecting the property of other people, Liz would be downright puritanical. She definitely disapproves of the Doctor's self-centered ethics. And with his bluster added into the mix, Liz remains more of an intellectual associate with him and less of a genuine friend. They have their moments of solidarity and even tenderness, but they are never interdependent on each other. |
| Liz is truly a rationalist who cannot perceive that which cannot be quantified. She cannot believe in God. Period. Not if you present Him as a non-corporeal, omnipotent being. But when Liz experiences goodness, she begins to doubt her atheism. As the stories in my canon progress, Liz meets the concrete evidences of God again and again: redemption, mercy, good works, compassion, insight into the needs of others. When she becomes the agent of the redemption of another person, the true breakdown of Liz's atheism begins, for she knows that something acted through her. The invisible aspects of God become visible to her when they operate concretely through her, and for a moment she sees the shadow of the divine. |  |
Liz's closest brushes with grace come at the extremes. In Shadow of the Daleks, she encounters evil and wickedness so profound that her rational training don't equip her to deal with it effectively. It very nearly destroys her life, and certainly traumatizes her emotionally. At the other extreme, Liz becomes empowered to save the life of a homeless street girl, Anne Thompson in The Fighting Dead and realizes that some other influence is acting through her that is not of her---grace. I would assume that if Liz ever were to come to Christ, she would still face many intellectual battles over whether Christ could really be true or not as the eternal Son of God. Liz would be a doubting Christian. But side by side with her doubts, Liz would serve God with all her integrity and purity of intent. Good works will win her, and the depth of God's goodness will convert her, and good works would be Liz's Christian life. My stories do not depict that she converts to Christ. I only point things in that direction.
