Christian sci-fi fans say: ‘The truth is out there’

Posted: 10/13/06

Christian sci-fi fans say: ‘The truth is out there’

By Bob Smietana

Religion News Service

NEW YORK (RNS)—In the original Star Trek series, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise explored strange new worlds, sought out new life and new civilizations and boldly went “where no man has gone before.”

And once in awhile, when advanced technology failed them, they even took a leap of faith.

That’s what gave Star Trek soul—transforming an ordinary television series into something transcendent, according to The Truth is Out There, a new book on science fiction and Christianity.

Often in Star Trek, “phaser beams or warp drives alone couldn’t save the crew of the Enterprise. Instead, something as simple as human compassion came to the rescue,” said Kim Paffenroth, professor of religious studies at Iona College in New York, and co-author of The Truth is Out There.

Paffenroth points to an episode called “Arena” as an example. In it, a human colony is destroyed by aliens known as the Gorn. When the Enterprise pursues the Gorn ship, intent on revenge, Kirk and the Gorn captain are captured by a race called the Metrons. The two are forced to fight to the death for the survival of their crews. At the show’s climax, Kirk refuses to finish off his helpless opponent. Both crews are saved by that act of mercy.

“In that episode, Kirk very manfully and courageously says that he will not kill for someone else’s amusement, or even for his own revenge, and if the aliens wish to kill him for that, then so be it,” Paffenroth said.

Along with Star Trek, Paffenroth and co-author Thomas Bertonneau, professor of English at State University of New York at Oswego, said they’ve found echoes of Christianity in five other classic sci-fi television series: Dr. Who, The Prisoner, The Twilight Zone, The X-Files and Babylon 5.

These sci-fi series employ a trick first perfected by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels, Bertonneau asserted. “They take a familiar problem to an unfamiliar setting. The Twilight Zone works that way. You take a familiar problem and displace it into a new context, and you see it in a clearer light,” Bertonneau said.

Bertonneau characterized Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, and Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, as “cantankerous prophets.” While neither was especially religious, they both had a strong sense of right and wrong, which comes through in their art, he said. They also understood the best way to explore moral issues isn’t for characters to give sermons but instead put them in moral dilemmas where answers are unclear and watch them search for a solution.

That idea resonates with John Scalzi, author of the sci-fi novels Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades. “I think it’s true that characters are more interesting when they don’t already have the answers—when what they have to guide them are not hard-and-fast rules, but rather the need to practically apply their own moral and ethical sense,” Scalzi said.

“And I think that it’s resonant when characters, particularly those with a strong moral or religious sense, have that moment of doubt—when they do have to decide to continue on through faith. No matter how fantastic the setting, that’s a fundamentally human event.”‘

The X-Files, in which FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully try to sort out a worldwide conspiracy involving UFOs and other paranormal phenomenon, addresses another important religious reality, Bertonneau said.

“I think that The X-Files makes a really important theological point that revelation isn’t necessarily an event at the end of time—revelation is happening all the time, all around us.”

Because of that, “every ethical person is obligated to discern the signs of the times” and determine what is good in a culture and what needs to be opposed, Bertonneau concluded.