Planet of the O’OD

The unfortunate truth:

I’ve been hanging out on an email list with some Reformed types who are discussing the political theology of Anglican writer Oliver O’Donovan.  Whose name someone just, for the first time, abbreviated to O’OD.  Which I could not see without thinking about the creature pictured above.  Which may color my view of O’Donovan’s take on the appropriate relationship between Church and state from now on.

Not unrelated: Seems to me that Doctor Who is actually the perfect anti-Star Trek in terms of its own political theology.  Rejecting the goopy pomo UN-style cultural marxist imperialism of the Federation, the Doctor embodies the opposite of the Prime Directive.  He ALWAYS interferes, ALWAYS sees in the common personhood of all alien species a requirement of relationship.  He can’t stand apart.  And because he is a Time Lord, he has the best possible aristocratic sense that it is his business to care for the weakest in the universe, to right wrongs.  And he constantly searches for ways to not pull the nuclear option, to avoid genocide even of the Daleks, to quarantine where necessary, but to seek redemption and reintegration of even the most hostile species into the community of creatures.

His superpower isn’t time travel.  It’s the ability to see personhood where it exists; to love the good; and to see it as his business to seek it.

NB: The image above is a BBC screenshot.  I hope this counts as fair use.