New!
Author resources • Lorehaven Guild
Podcast sponsors • Subscribe for free
Crew manifest Faith statement FAQs
All author resources Lorehaven Guild Subscribe for free

The Chase
Book Quests, Apr 1, 2023

Once Upon a Ren Faire
Reviews, Mar 31, 2023

How to Disciple Your Kids With Dangerous Books
Ticia Messing in Articles, Mar 30, 2023

Library

Find fantastical Christian novels

fantasy · sci-fi · and beyond
middle grade · teens + YA · adults
All novels Search Add a novel
Enhanced, Candace Kade
Bear Knight, James R. Hannibal
The Wayward, Tabitha Caplinger
Fortified, V. Romas Burton
Canaan Sleeps, Daniel Camomile
Silver Bounty, Victoria McCombs
A Sword for the Immerland King, F. W. Faller
Calor, J. J. Fisher
Once Upon A Ren Faire, A. C. Castillo
The Genesis 6 Project, Michael Ferguson
Exile, Loren G. Warnemuende
Aberration, Cathy McCrumb
The Truth Beyond the Lies, Kathleen Bird
Frost, Winter's Lonely Guardian, E. E. Rawls
Podcast

Get the Fantastical Truth podcast

Podcast sponsors | Subscribe links
Archives Feedback

155. How Might Sentimentalism Threaten Christian Fiction?
Fantastical Truth, Mar 28, 2023

154. What If You Had to Fake Being Genetically Modified? | Enhanced with Candace Kade
Fantastical Truth, Mar 21, 2023

153. When Can Deconstructionism Threaten Christian Fiction? | with Michael Young aka ‘Wokal Distance’
Fantastical Truth, Mar 14, 2023

152. How Can Christian Fantasy Fans Heal from Church Trauma? | with Marian Jacobs and L. G. McCary
Fantastical Truth, Mar 7, 2023

151. How Can Fantastical Satire Sharpen Our Theology? | The Pilgrim’s Progress Reloaded with David Umstattd
Fantastical Truth, Feb 28, 2023

150. Is the U.S. Government Covering Up Spy Balloons or Alien Spaceships? | with James R. Hannibal
Fantastical Truth, Feb 21, 2023

Quests

Join our monthly digital book quests.

Lorehaven Guild Faith statement FAQs
Reviews

Find fantastical Christian reviews

All reviews Request review
Gifts

Find new gifts for Christian fans

Archives

The original SpecFaith: est. 2006

Speculative Faith | archives

Lorehaven issues (2018–2020)

Order back issues online!
New
Library
Podcast
Quests
Reviews
Gifts
Archives
Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Subscribe free to Lorehaven
/ SpecFaith /

News and Views: Ben-man, Gnosticism, The Doctor

Ben Affleck as Batman, Kathy Tyers reboots Gnostic notions, “Doctor Who” news, author Brett McCracken’s nonfiction “Gray Matters.”
E. Stephen Burnett on Aug 23, 2013
No comments
weirdalyancovic_benaffleck

From Weird Al Yancovic’s “I’ll Sue Ya” music video

First up: yes, actor/director Ben Affleck has been announced as the next cinematic Batman. He’ll pair up with Henry Cavill as Superman for the Man of Steel sequel, which will feature the “world’s finest” team-up of Batman and Superman leading to a Justice League franchise.

Nobody’s shrugging over this news, not even myself. Joining many, my first reaction was:

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”

And:

“I sued Ben Affleck! Awww, do I even need a *reason*?!” — Weird @AlYankovic, “I’ll Sue Ya” #BenAffleck #Batman

— E. Stephen Burnett (@EStephenBurnett) August 23, 2013

However, a Facebook friend (perhaps more wisely) notes:

Well Chris Evans was in Fantastic 4 and that didn’t stop them from casting him as Captain America, so there is precedent there.

Speaking of reboots …

Rebooting Gnostic notions

The Firebird series conclusion released last year.

The Firebird series conclusion released last year.

Firebird and Star Wars novelist Kathy Tyers has on SpecFaith discussed her return to writing. Yet I enjoyed meeting her at Realm Makers, and later writing Defeating Gnostic Notions in Fantasy Fiction. She recounts her early and recent storytelling journeys:

Tyers is no stranger to rewriting her novels. During her 30-year career, she has adapted two of them for Christian markets. But more recently, she says, she is revising even more after God — through the teaching of J.I. Packer and others at Regent College in Vancouver — rebooted her real world.

[…] Tyers is more critical of her other novels that she’s now rewriting. She explains that in One Mind’s Eye,

[W]e find out that a parasitic alien race actually exists on this higher plane of imagery, and there they spend all their time in this inner world, singing and dancing and giving glory to God in their own way. They’re totally unbodied.

I had no idea how Gnostic I had become, as essentially a person coming of age spiritually in North American consensus evangelicalism, until I got to study at Regent College.

Speaking of academic-sounding titles, such as professors, or doctors …

What, where, when, why, ‘Who’

Doctor Who showrunner Steven “Grand Moff” Moffat has been busy:

1. Doctor Who producer teases NZ episode

No, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit director, and DW fan Peter Jackson, was not kidding about wanting to bring the show’s filming to New Zealand, direct at least one episode — and get a golden Dalek. (Jackson already has Who memorabilia, including Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy playing Radagast the Brown.) Outgoing Eleventh Doctor actor Matt Smith endorsed this, and Moffat is quoted as saying, “We talked at The Hobbit premiere — he just wants a [D]alek. So we’ll give him a [D]alek and he’ll direct an episode.”

2. Could Peter Capaldi really be the final face of Doctor Who?

doctorwho_firesofpompeii_petercapaldi_tardis

Peter Capaldi in Doctor Who‘s series 4 episode “The Fires of Pompeii”

Media hype, of course. The Doctor is now a cash cow and is growing bigger than Apple; any (more) threats of killing him only makes him more powerful. Moffat knows this. Ergo:

At the Ad-Lib event at this year’s Edinburgh TV festival, host Frank Skinner reportedly asked, “Do you acknowledge the convention that The Doctor can only regenerate 12 times?” And Moffat answered simply, “Yes.” But would not go into any detail about how he might circumvent that limitation at the end of Capaldi’s run (if Moffat is even still writing Who then.)

Some wonder if Moffat has reordered the Doctors by introducing John Hurt as a previously unknown Doctor. It’s a perfect loophole chance, for no one ever saw the Eighth Doctor regenerate directly into the Ninth, after all. So will Hurt be the surprise “interim” doctor, between Eighth and Ninth, perhaps the one who chose to destroy his own civilization? Or some future version of the Doctor, perhaps (as classic Who fans would know better than I) the Valeyard? Myself, I’m more inclined to believe Hurt is an eighth-and-a-half Doctor, or real Ninth Doctor.1

3. Moffat’s 12th Doctor Hints

Steven Moffat offers a few intriguing titbits on Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine (#464). Here’s some highlights:

  • Moffat is pretty certain Capaldi will keep his native Scottish accent for the role
  • At the moment, they’ve only discussed Twelve’s costume in the lightest terms

More here. I wonder if David Tennant now wants to know why he couldn’t keep his brogue.

What do you hope for a Jackson episode, for regeneration(s), and for the Twelfth Doctor?

Speaking of media discernment …

The case for more cultured Christians

cover_graymattersThese issues have recently come up on SpecFaith (surely they always will), from questions about Biblical speculation to the Harry Potter / magic issue I just won’t shut up about.

La Shawn Barber points to what looks like a perfect book-length treatment of Gray Matters:

We are to avoid fornicating and practicing sorcery, but what about watching movies that depict fornication or sorcery? We can extrapolate from what God does forbid, of course, but scriptural silence on a particular issue isn’t license to do it or to shun it. In some matters, we can think beyond black and white.

“Christians have a hard time with nuance,” Brett McCracken writes in Gray Matters: Navigating the Space Between Legalism and Liberty (Baker Books, 2013). “Gray areas are not our strong suit. It’s way easier to just say yes or no to things, rather than ‘well, maybe, depending. …’” Complicated questions might require more than simple responses to avoid Christian legalism on the one hand (shunning all secular music, movies, and television, for example) and libertinism on the other (getting drunk, cursing, and embracing “anything goes”).

Have a news item I didn’t address? Let us know.

  1. This would make Christopher Eccleston the Tenth, David Tennant the Eleventh, Matt Smith the Twelfth, and Peter Capaldi the 13th and “final” Doctor. The name ordinals are rarely if ever echoed in the series, but only by fans and promos as I recall. ↩
E. Stephen Burnett
E. Stephen Burnett creates sci-fi and fantasy novels as well as nonfiction, exploring fantastical stories for God’s glory as publisher of Lorehaven.com and cohost of the Fantastical Truth podcast. As the oldest of six, he enjoys connecting with his homeschool roots by speaking at conferences for Christian families and creators. Stephen is coauthor of The Pop Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ from New Growth Press (2020, with Ted Turnau and Dr. Jared Moore). Stephen and his wife, Lacy, live in the Austin area, where they help with foster parenting and serve as members of Southern Hills Baptist Church.
Website · Facebook · Instagram · Twitter
  1. dmdutcher says:
    August 23, 2013 at 10:36 am

    I may be in the minority, but he can’t be much worse than Christian Bale. In two out of the three Dark Knight movies, he’s upstaged by his own villains and is so growly that he’s ridiculous.

    The gnostic thing doesn’t seem that much of a problem. It’s not just a matter of worshipping in spirit and in truth or having unbodied characters in a novel; you need to really believe physical matter is evil, make God a demiurge and Jesus the guy rebelling against him, and generally promote secret, cultic knowledge over the open Word. Pretty much the only Gnostic fantasy I’ve seen is the Matrix movies, and they are almost a textbook case of those beliefs in fiction.

    Reply
  2. Izzy says:
    August 23, 2013 at 10:41 am

    “(Jackson already has Who memorabilia, including Eighth Doctor Sylvester McCoy playing Radagast the Brown.)”

    Just a heads up. Sylvester McCoy played the Seventh Doctor. Eight was Paul McGann. 😉

    Reply
    • E. Stephen Burnett says:
      August 23, 2013 at 11:04 am

      Correction appended.

      Reply
  3. Heather Titus says:
    August 23, 2013 at 11:22 am

    It wouldn’t surprise me that Moffatt intentionally left out a Doctor…the man’s evil genius knows no bounds. I also could see the Valeyard as being the one who brought destruction on the Time Lords, and not one of the Doctor’s regular regenerations.

    Reply
  4. Joanna Wilson says:
    August 23, 2013 at 11:53 am

    But… but…. Tennant’s name goes so well with number Ten…..

    Also, I’m so excited to see Eleven (?) regenerate into Twelve (?) ….. I don’t know if I could take this shift – it would just be *wrong*. >_< 😀

    As for the new Superman/Batman movie – the team at Blimey Cow sum up my feelings there:

    …..And I loved "One Mind's Eye," so I'm really excited to see how much better it will be – after all, the Firebird books were good the first time through, and fabulous in their re-written state. 😀 So I know Kathy will only improve on her original story. 😀

    Reply
    • E. Stephen Burnett says:
      August 23, 2013 at 3:19 pm

      Tennant’s name goes so well with number Ten…..

      Yes, it does. That alone is enough reason to keep the order the same. But the best reason is that it would only make the whole “Doctor Who” ‘verse even more confusing to reorder all the Doctors’ incarnations’ ordinals like that.

      Reply
  5. Marion says:
    August 23, 2013 at 1:35 pm

    Stephen,

    I just heard Brett McCracken last week on Christian Radio promoting his new book. The gray area is an area that needs to be explored more in evangelical Christianity. I plan to get a copy and review it on my blog.

    Marion

    Reply
    • E. Stephen Burnett says:
      August 23, 2013 at 3:53 pm

      Yes, I’ve been waiting for a specific, book-length, in-depth-yet-readable treatment of this topic for a long time. And it sounds like he’s one of the best to write it.

      Reply
  6. Kessie Carroll says:
    August 24, 2013 at 9:08 pm

    What? Nobody complaining that they didn’t cast a woman as Batman?

    Reply
    • E. Stephen Burnett says:
      August 26, 2013 at 12:03 pm

      Zing!

      Reply
  7. Galadriel says:
    August 27, 2013 at 12:46 pm

    I’m actually really excited about Capaldi, though I’m not at all looking forward to Smith’s departure. With an older actor, the character can explore new directions and hopefully downplay the romantic angle (except with River. He and River can make kissyfaces all they want)

    Reply

What do you think? Cancel reply

  • Superman Soups Up SermonsSuperman Soups Up Sermons
  • Exploring Doctrine Through Fiction, With Kathy TyersExploring Doctrine Through Fiction, With Kathy Tyers
  • What Tolkien Taught About Fighting EvilWhat Tolkien Taught About Fighting Evil
  • Why Batman Can't Save GothamWhy Batman Can't Save Gotham
Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

Wear the wonder:
Get exclusive shirts and beyond

Listen to Lorehaven’s podcast

Authors and publishers:
Reach new fans with Lorehaven

Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
Website · Facebook · Instagram · Twitter