In the most recent season of Doctor Who, we get several episodes with social commentary. This is a staple of Doctor Who, but that commentary can now be wider because the audience has become larger. One episode in particular taps into the result of the marriage between the Church, the State, the Market Economy, and Violence. That episode is Boom.
The episode opens with two soldiers moving slowly across an inflamed battlefield. One soldier has a bandage across his eye. The soldier leading seems nervous and constantly scans the horizon for something. An enemy, we might assume, but it is much more sinister. The soldiers’ uniforms are strange, but familiar as they appear to wear the “dog collar” of priests. The injured soldier gets a call from his daughter back at camp and the two continue to discuss the time to get to camp.
The leading soldier mentions he thinks he sees an ambulance with foreboding and the injured soldier says they will be fine. They keep discussing “the algorithm” and whether the ambulance will help or something left unsaid. Suddenly, the leading soldier slips and falls into a depression and steps on a device that lights up and vaporizes him. He had stepped on a landmine. Instantly, a small siren alert starts and a robot turns on, stating “combat detected” as it begins rolling. The ambulance approaches the impaired man and sends probes to evaluate him. It goes through his vital signs and we see on screen that he is an Anglican Marine. The ambulance determines that his recovery time is four weeks, which is outside of acceptable range and fails him for combat medical. To our horror, we learn that means he is to be executed by the ambulance. As the man is vaporized, we zoom across the battlefield to an external shot of the T.A.R.D.I.S and the Doctor runs out asking if Ruby heard the screaming. The Doctor runs toward the sound, step on a land mine, freezes, and the intro begins.
Ruby finds the Doctor singing to keep him calm, so he does not activate the mine. The episode will find the Doctor standing on the mine for the entirety while he works out how to keep from activating the mine. But as we are learning about the mine, we learn that war has become big business in the future. Ruby asks why a landmine would have flashing lights and the Doctor simply says “Capitalism.” He says that flashing lights play well in a showroom and that modern warfare is death by salesmen. He finds out the mine is produced by Vellingard who produces all arms for all sides for centuries in the sector.
As the episode progresses, we learn several things. The military is an arm of the Church (Anglican in this case because of the United Kingdom origins). Ranks are the offices of the Church like Verger, Bishop, and people speak of how much divinity they have instead of influence. Amidst the stories of the people involved, we keep hearing of the nebulous enemy and how no one has seen them. Leading to the resolution, which I will not spoil, the Doctor tries to get everyone to ask the question of who is the enemy. Finally, as things are reaching a climax, the Doctor points out all the inconsistencies with the supposed enemy and reveals that he worked out that there is no enemy, but that once shots were fired, the Vellingard algorithm kicked in to keep acceptable losses just at the threshold so that sales would continue for more weapons.
This dramatized look at the extreme of a market economy, the Church in power, and violence as a product is a commentary on where we find ourselves. Of course, we do not have the Church in power yet. But we have the market economy and the economy of war. Violence makes money because it churns weapons and resources out for profit. The market economy seeks to monetize everything it can and drive us to the addiction of acquisition. But we are not to the extreme of what is depicted in the episode Boom…
Maybe not, but we are hurtling toward that reality. We already have been gripped by the market economy and violence. In the U.S., and a few other countries, there are Christian Nationalists who want to dramatically reshape government and society. Pastors like Joel Webbon, who believes we should withdraw the right for women to vote or that immigration must stop because he is uncomfortable with traditional Indian garb being worn in his presence, are wanting their ideology to be that of our society. Men like Stephen Wolfe who wrote a book making a case for Christian Nationalism as a replacement for the liberal secular democracy (constitutional republic) in the United States want us to bow to a Christian Prince who enforces a specific form of Christian thought on the people in a country. But those are the more extreme versions of this melding.
Louisiana recently passed a law that requires the display of a state approved version of the “Ten Commandments” in public school classrooms. Many think this a good thing, but consider that the state has created its own version of the scriptures that make up the Ten Commandments such that it omits phrases like the God who brought you out of Egypt. The state doesn’t want anyone to get ideas about a God who rescues the enslaved or oppressed.
Likewise, the state of Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education has decreed that the Bible must be taught in all classrooms and in all courses. Once again, whose interpretive lens is being used here? What about teachers who are not religious or are not Christian? Will they be forced to teach something they do not believe, such that any dialogue with Christians will be lost to them? The more onerous thought is that the state will determine what scriptures mean in this context. So, be careful what you wish for, as the children may be taught something foreign to your family’s faith.
It is only a hair’s breadth from those decisions to what we see in Doctor Who’s Boom. Faithful Christians might take a few moments to think about the messages being sent in our names. Are we OK with a state sponsored version of the Bible? Are we OK with the state version of salvation, or the meaning of scriptures? That is a path that leads to an unholy alliance of the Market Economy, Violence, and the Church waging war on its own subjects to keep the profits up.
God help us not go BOOM…