The death of C S Lewis and birth of Doctor Who, 60 years on
Narnia and Who have shaped my imagination like no other stories – and my faith too.
Article coming up below, but first to say it’s been a busy time for me as a Doctor Who fan!
I’ve been writing and podcasting about the show’s anniversary, and I’ve managed to bag a ticket to the Royal Television Society’s anniversary special preview Doctor Who screening tonight. So watch out for my review of The Star Beast, with the return of writer Russell T Davies and stars David Tennant and Catherine Tate, very soon!
Here’s what else I’ve been up to…
Out now in print and online: My Premier Christianity article Doctor Who at 60: The spiritual themes behind the sci-fi phenomenon
Coming soon:
Premier Christian Radio interview on Doctor Who and faith - I’ll be on Esther Higham’s Inspirational Breakfast show on Tuesday 28th November, around 8.30am
I’ve recorded an episode of the God in Film podcast on spiritual themes in Doctor Who
I’ve written an article for Solas on Doctor Who and the human longing for a Messiah
60 years on…
60 years since the death of C.S. Lewis, and 60 years since the birth of Doctor Who. Narnia and Who have shaped my imagination like no other stories – and my faith too.
My Mum and Dad read the Narnia books to me as bedtime reading. I was captivated by these stories of children transported a magical land. I hunted in the back of my wardrobe for the way through to Narnia. I tried to get there through archways of trees in the woods, asking Aslan to let me in. I wanted to speak with Talking Animals, to dance with fauns and dryads, to see Cair Paravel on the sea and feast with Kings and Queens of Narnia. One of my first ever pieces of fan fiction, written around age 8, was a rewrite of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to include my arrival by means of a magic Blue Peter badge!
But although I have never been able to visit Narnia physically, having visited Narnia in my imagination made the animals and woods and castles of this world that much more fascinating to me. Like all books, but perhaps especially so, the Narnia stories are bigger on the inside. Every time I’ve re-entered the wardrobe, I’ve discovered new things.
Gateways to other worlds
The world of Narnia was my gateway into myth and legend. It was Narnia that brought me into the worlds of Norse and Greek myth, introducing me to dwarves and giants, dryads and naiads, to River Gods and Bacchus.
Later, it was reading Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia that inspired me to go back and do an English Literature MA to study Children’s Literature and Medievalism. I studied Lewis, Tolkien and other writers alongside their medieval sources. It was through Narnia that I came to read Mallory, Spenser, Dante and other great stories of the past.
I also discovered the rich layer of Christian themes and images, which aren’t so much allegory as “what if?” I can understand that some people are annoyed by this. But as a Christian myself, I felt excited rather than cheated by realising that Aslan has “another name in our world”, as he says to Lucy and Edmund at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The connection it is never made explicit, however. Drawing on the Christian story, with its themes of sacrifice, death and resurrection, gives the books a mythic resonance that would otherwise be lost.
Narnia also helped me discover Lewis’s apologetic writings. His books such as Mere Christianity and Miracles were my gateway to a more intellectually engaged Christian faith, and to many other philosophers, authors and thinkers.
C.S. Lewis died on 22nd November 1963, the day before Doctor Who first aired on television, 60 years ago today. I suspect if he had lived, he would have rather liked Doctor Who – he enjoyed reading pulp science fiction in his spare time. (In contrast, the BBC’s early report into science fiction dismissed C.S. Lewis’s science fiction trilogy as “clumsy and old-fashioned”!).
The spiritual dimensions of Narnia and Who
It might seem strange, but I find that both Narnia and Doctor Who give imaginative expression to my spiritual longings. In Aslan’s death and return, I experience the myth of the dying and rising God anew, stripped of the overfamiliarity of Sunday School stories.
The Doctor is also a figure to inspire, caught between divinity and humanity, never cruel or cowardly. In this rational, humanist hero, I actually find a powerful echo of the God I believe in. Although the Doctor isn’t actually a messiah, just a very naughty Time Lord, he is far more like the spiky, funny, subversive Jesus of the Gospels than any number of “serious” portrayals of Christ.
If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you really ought to investigate Christianity, to examine for yourself the historical evidence of whether Jesus really rose from the dead and is the Son of God that the Bible claims he is, and that many like C S Lewis have come to be convinced of, as he explains in his case for the faith Mere Christianity and in an autobiographic way in Surprised by Joy. I believe our longing for a hero like the Doctor finds its true fulfilment in knowing Jesus Christ as saviour and the real Lord of Time.
The tv series is at its best when it remembers that the Doctor doesn’t simply fight aliens or monsters – he fights injustice, wherever in the universe he finds it. The Doctor is a reluctant exile turned adventurer turned hero. His companions too are ordinary people learning to fight evil across the universe. Like Rose says in The Parting of the Ways of life with the Doctor:
It was a better life. I don’t mean all the travelling and seeing aliens and spaceships and things. That don’t matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand. You say “no.” You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else just runs away.
The best stories don’t just entertain, but expand you as a person. Lewis wrote that the reason he read was to “see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations… I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.”
C.S. Lewis and Doctor Who have both done just that. They have enlarged my imagination, my thinking and even my spirituality. They have helped me become “bigger on the inside”.
A version of this article was originally published for Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary on Hodderscape.