Monday, August 05, 2013

The Canon of Doctor Who and the Canon of the New Testament

With the announcement of the twelfth doctor's casting still fresh in our minds, it's perhaps time for blog post about Doctor Who.  I've long thought that the way that Doctor Who fans talk about "canon" is rather different from the way that we might talk about the "canon" of the New Testament and, given that the term "canon" in fandom is derived from "canon" in early Christianity, I have sometimes thought about how the two discussions might inform one another.

My friend Chip, better known as the author of the esteemed Two Minute Timelord podcast, currently a Parsec Awards finalist, recently invited me to sit down for a chat in a time-dilation episode about this topic.  You can now listen to 2MTL 316.  Download it on iTunes, or using your standard podcast catcher, or listen here:


It was great fun to have this discussion, and I'm grateful to Chip for the invitation.

2 comments:

Jens Knudsen (Sili) said...

Interesting discussion of "personal canon". You sorta but not quite got to the idea of "fanon" when you broached Veronica - a Big Name Fan comes up with an idea that then permeates the fandom to the point that most fans think it must be canonical.

That certainly seems to have happened to much main-stream Christianity today. ("God helps those that help themselves", "Supply-side Jesus" and so on.)

Unknown said...

Sir , what r ur views on 2 Peter ? , is it pseudonymous as majority of scholars claim ? , or is it really written by Peter as Kruger , Greeen , Wallace and other conservative scholars claim ?