1. Lostariel says:

    Oi! Just because I was thinking of the Doctor throughout the whole article doesn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention so I’m only going to comment… about… Well… fair enough.

  2. Galadriel says:

    *snatches the floor so fast everyone falls over*

    First of all, I have to disagree that the Doctor is fine with his near-immortality. Even near the end of the classic series, hints of self-pity begin to creep in:

    Well, look at me. I’m old, lacking in vigour, my mind’s in turmoil. I no longer know if I’m coming, have gone, or even been. I’m falling to pieces. I no longer even have any clothes sense… Self-pity is all I have left.
    –Six

    Think about me when you’re living your life one day after another, all in a neat pattern. Think about the homeless traveller in his old police box, his days like crazy paving.
    –Seven

    And then in the new series, it becomes full-blown, complicated by his guilt over the Time War:

    “I don’t age. I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone you–…you can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can’t spend the rest of mine with you.”
    Ten

     Even the time traveling isn’t much of a conselation.

    “I look at a star and it’s just a big ball of burning gas, and I know how it began, I know how it ends…and I was probably there both times. You know, after a while, everything is just stuff. That’s the problem. You make all of space and time your backyard what do you have? A backyard. But you can see it. And when you see it, I see it.”
    Eleven

    And you look at other immortal characters–Jack Harkness, and Ten’s punishment on the Family of Blood is summed up in one line: “We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure we did.”  He’s not exactly an exception.

  3. Fred Warren says:

    Thanks for that clarification, Galadriel. I haven’t watched enough of this series, particularly the recent episodes, to pull out nuances like that. So, it’s not all stardust and jelly babies for the Doctor either. This is why I leave all things Who to the experts. 🙂

    • Kaci says:

      I kinda think, especially for Eleven, humor and silliness are coping mechanisms for him.  I’ve only seen Nine, Ten, and Eleven, but that’s my understanding.  Get him to stop the jokes and games, and he’s a very battered, broken, jaded individual.  Eleven is just *really* good at hiding it (at least in season 5….season 6 rips the mask back off). So in a weird way, Eleven’s the most ridiculous of those three,  but ultimately only to conceal being by far the darkest.

      • Galadriel says:

        Agree, 100%.  To quote myself from “The Doctor’s Doctrines” post

        And what I kept noticing over the course of this season is how helpless the Doctor is, how he is reduced to saying “sorry” so many times, because he can’t do anything else.  I thought Ten was the apologizer, but Eleven is having just as much trouble. Even his companions’ faith in him is being twisted–and because he’s my Doctor and Amy’s my first companion, I’m recognizing it along with them. And, Rassilion, it hurts.

        He clowns because if he really acknowledged how he feels…I don’t even want to think about what he might do then.

  4. Kaci says:

    I find it a bit curious because at least two people are recorded as not dying: Enoch (he walked with God, and then he was no more, because God took him) and Elijah (gets taken up into Heaven by a chariot of fire). 
     

    In summary, immortality in spec fic is most often boring, futile, dismal, empty, or all of the above.*** It has less in common with life eternal than with death everlasting. Maybe God knew what He was doing when He fenced off that Tree of Life. It appears that making a sinful, messed-up, broken human being immortal would condemn them to an eternity of sinful, messed-up, brokenness. Perhaps immortality is best experienced after death. More about that next week.

     
    I’m a little weird in that I’d choose the ability to heal over immortality.  That explanation is one I had explained to me as the reason for Adam & Eve being kicked out of the Garden, and I think it fits. It goes along with  God’s marking Cain being an act of mercy at Cain’s pleading rather than judgment.  In a broken, corroding world that fades like grass and changes like clothing, immortality would be destructive. Plus, it seemed necessary in the face of redemption somehow, but I haven’t thought that one through yet.

    But I also think it’s partly a matter of perspective. Funny enough, some friends and I have between us a series of characters who are essentially immortal (they will not die of natural causes, but they can be killed).  One sees it as constantly losing everyone you love. Another sees himself as a kind of guardian & avenger of the innocent.  The world’s kinsman-redeemer, in a sense, I suppose, now that I’m thinking about it. Both are true, at least in that storyworld, but the former paints a bleak, eternal death while the other is a new life of itself.  
     
    But now we’re back to that “with great power comes great responsibility” bit…
     
     
    And I kinda think, realistically,  even characters who don’t age physically have to  continue to be able to learn, develop, and change, because [be happy, Whovians, I’m going to say it] not even an 1100-year-old man knows everything or has exhausted all knowledge & wisdom.  In fact, he’s more likely to discover the world was wrong all that time than anything else.  Can you imagine thinking the world was only as big as your hometown, only to watch the world grow until we’ve populated it all and jumped into the stars? Can you imagine thinking the empire would never die only to watch it fall and another rise in its place? Imagine watching from a distance Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham, Abraham to David, David to Christ, and Christ to whenever? Imagine watching technology transform from ancient to the 21stC?    I dunno. Immortality might be worth it just to watch the dramas unfold. 
     
    Then, I swear, I’m going to live to be 100, then disappear into the woods and become an urban legend. You watch.

    • Fred Warren says:

      I find it a bit curious because at least two people are recorded as not dying: Enoch (he walked with God, and then he was no more, because God took him) and Elijah (gets taken up into Heaven by a chariot of fire).

      Enoch in particular is very cryptic. This is all we know about him. There are several anecdotes in that part of Genesis that leave us waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never does.
      It’s like sitting on the sofa with Grandpa, and he says something like, “Did I ever tell you about your ancestor, Bilious the Pirate?”
      My ancestor? A real pirate? No! Tell me! Tell me!”
      “He was the most fearsome buccaneer to ever sail the Spanish Main. Shivers my timbers just thinking about him. Back in eighteen…eighteen twenty sev…zzzzz.”
       
       

      • Kaci says:

        Hahaha.  Yeah, Genesis can be a bit episodic, because it’s a series of “firsts” and such.  The other thing I think is interesting is that you have sacrifices to God in Genesis 4, but not until the birth of Seth is it said that “men began to call on the name of the Lord.”  By chapter 6 you’ve already got cities, polygamy, arts, textiles, and a million other things. Far cry from the mindless “cave man” depictions.
         
        But that is another rant entirely…

  5. Kessie says:

    Tiny correction: Asimov’s book is the Positronic Man. They retitled it to the Bicentennial Man for the movie. (And the book is so wonderful and the movie is … Robin Williams.)
     
    One thing I always wondered about was what would have happened had Eve denied the snake. What if Cain or Abel or someone else, hanging out in the garden, got introduced to the forbidden fruit? And the curse descended, not on the entire human race, but on only part of it?
     
    You think our wars have been bad. Imagine being a fallen human and interacting with perfect humanity. We’d hate them with a deathless passion and stop at nothing to exterminate them. Except perfect humanity might very well have powers like teleportation and telepathy, making them very hard to kill. Not to mention they talk to God face to face and we couldn’t do that.

    • Fred Warren says:

      Kessie: Actually, we’re both right. The novella “The Bicentennial Man” came first, winning Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1976. It was later expanded into the novel “The Positronic Man” in collaboration with Robert Silverberg, and the movie came after that.

    • I read part of an online series once that dealt with this topic, Kessie – it is sort of a blend of Tolkien and Old Testament.  The author hasn’t finished it, and I don’t think they update it very often, but here’s the link: http://apricotpie.com/james

  6. In summary, immortality in spec fic is most often boring, futile, dismal, empty, or all of the above.*** It has less in common with life eternal than with death everlasting. Maybe God knew what He was doing when He fenced off that Tree of Life. It appears that making a sinful, messed-up, broken human being immortal would condemn them to an eternity of sinful, messed-up, brokenness. Perhaps immortality is best experienced after death.

    Very true. It’s fascinating how even secular SF authors end up circling back to this truth.
    I believe, though, that making immortality miserable for nonhuman races is simply authors reading the human condition into all sentient species. We invent these races, and we give them what, at bottom, separates us from the animals – including our corrupt, yet redeemable nature. And it is our sin, as you say, that makes immortality unhappy.
    But if God created other races, He created them good. In their natural state they are (like mankind was) sinless. There’s no reason to assume that every other sentient race would fall like ours did. They could fall like the demons did, and be submerged in evil without hope of grace. They could stand like the angels did, and remain in unstained holiness. The immortality of a race like that would be glorious and joyful.
    I know: A righteous, immortal, joyful race is a hard thing for a sinful, mortal writer to handle well. But biblically speaking, it’s as supportable as unhappily immortal races.
    Thank you for the article, Fred. I enjoyed it.

  7. Fred Warren says:

    They could stand like the angels did, and remain in unstained holiness. The immortality of a race like that would be glorious and joyful.

    And C.S. Lewis gives us a hint of that in Perelandra.

    I know: A righteous, immortal, joyful race is a hard thing for a sinful, mortal writer to handle well. But biblically speaking, it’s as supportable as unhappily immortal races.

    Certainly, and something (or more precisely, Someone) is missing from the eternity of those jaded, discontented immortals that makes all the difference.

What do you think?