#not christian prairie roleplay

[thunderheadfred]

Facebook's Instagram Reels bleed-over has started trying to show me tradwife homesteader waifish 20-something blonde women "cutting native grasses" in diaphanous gowns and I'm like

I will burn your house all the way down

[delta-queerdrant]

big doctor energy (Heroes & Demons, s1 e12)

Yeah, our first holodeck episode + our first Doctor episode! This one is pretty silly but it's a capital-R Romp and I'm here for it.

Once again this is an episode that begins with resource management! One of the things that has been cracking me up during this rewatch is what a hands-on and, perhaps, micromanager Janeway is. She really does love science and is always going on away missions, peeking over people's shoulders, and in this case, beaming aboard samples of "intense photonic activity" to see if they can be used in the ship's power converters. No one seems to mind, but there are presumably some off-screen science officers who are grumpy because they never get to do the fun labwork.

Janeway hair watch - the "bun of steel" has been swapped out for a side-swept French twist kinda thing. It's definitely an improvement, though the twisty parts are slightly fussy and overcomplicated. Damn this woman would look good with an undercut! Anyhoo.

If I were sending the Doctor on a fantastical adventure, would I choose Beowulf? Perhaps not - Hollywood depictions of the "Dark Ages" do little for me - but it's an okay time. I appreciate the inclusion of Freya; shieldmaidens are authentic to early Scandinavian culture if not to Beowulf itself. And I have always enjoyed Unferth as a side villain - he is the ultimate undermining coworker and I love that he has existed in literature for at least the last millennium. We all have our inner Unferth and I think that's fine.

Shame they're not all speaking in alliterative verse, or that the forest looks like no forest that ever appeared in Denmark, or that the Doctor is eating what appears to be a giant turkey(????) leg despite it being pre-Columbian Exchange times, but none of that is the point.

Watching the Doctor laconically roleplay his way through this adventure is, of course, a fun and silly time. He is such a fish out of water and his blunt, uncomplicated responses are all accidental zingers. By the end he has really come into his own and his moment of heroism feels earned, facing down Unferth with the absolute banger line, "The only reason you won't die is that I've taken an oath to do no harm." I wrote big doctor energy in my notes and I think we can all agree with this assessment.

I should probably be mad about Freya getting fridged, but, like, she feels surprisingly three-dimensional for a fictional character? And at the same time, she is an in-universe fictional character and it doesn't matter? It's complicated, since both she and the Doctor are holograms. From where I'm standing, she genuinely had her own character arc and her death felt meaningful on its own terms. I will have things to say later in the series about the Doctor's sexuality, but I don't think I'll say them here.

The Doctor makes peace with the glowing squiggle (sorry, photonic life form) and the captured crew are restored, including Harry Kim in his very cute LARP outfit. I am always here for Harry being the absolute dorkiest of dorks; in this episode he looks like he is cosplaying Bilbo Baggins.

As mentioned in an earlier review, I am an ex-ELCA Lutheran (Lutheranism and I are still pals, we just weren't right for one another) so I was tickled by the Doctor briefly taking on the soubriquet of Schweitzer. I am not culturally Lutheran, but Albert Schweitzer is definitely a big Lutheran hero and gets Lutherans going (other things that get Lutherans going - potlucks, Prairie Home Companion, "A Mighty Fortress is our God").

After watching this episode I went down a Schweitzer rabbit hole and was reminded that, in addition to his humanitarian work, he also wrote one of the important "historical Jesus" books, in which the facts of Jesus's life were reevaluated. It was so interesting reading about his (shockingly recent) rediscovery that early Christianity was basically an apocalypse cult. Schweitzer was down with this, because he thought it was punk rock or something. I find this approach to religion - religion as something that can be analyzed, that is both culturally contingent and, at its nucleus, contains a critique of powerful political and social forces - such a compelling antidote to gray goo evangelism, in which no belief is ever examined. This is not to excuse Lutheranism for its complicity in many shitty things, or to privilege belief over various forms of nonbelief, but the fact is that many of us have a Christian worldview lodged in our brains whether we like it or not, and it helps to spend some time thinking about what Christianity actually is, deciding what we'd like to hold onto and what's better discarded.

Sorry! This isn't a theology blog! I, ah, definitely can't promise I won't do it again.

Hardly gripping television, but a pretty good entry point to a beloved character's journey. 3.5/5 improbably sized turkey(!?!?) legs.