Seven/Religion (live show)

Blustering Time Lord meddler the Doctor and his friend Mel are ambushed by fellow Time Lord The Rani, and as his TARDIS crashes he is mortally wounded and forced to regenerate. His new persona starts out highly eccentric, scatter-brained and confused – but as his personality settles, it become unclear how much of this is real, and how much obfuscation of his real agenda. Teaming up with Ace, a teenager from the 1980s who had already become lost in time and has a penchant for high explosives, he soon begins to tie up plans and schemes he’d started lifetimes ago… 

Splendid Chaps is a year-long celebration of Doctor Who‘s fiftieth anniversary: eleven live performances recorded as podcasts in which your brains will be fed, your funny bones tickled, and your hearts opened (yes, both of them!). Our seventh episode in our main series discusses the Seventh and final Doctor of what we now call the classic era, played by variety performer and actor Sylvester McCoy. Famous for escapology, spoon playing and putting ferrets down his trousers, McCoy’s casting raised a few eyebrows, but his performance changed many doubters’ minds – especially when combined with Sophie Aldred as Ace, and under the new direction provided by the incoming production team under Andrew Cartmell. Of course, no-one knew that the program’s days were numbered…

We’re also looking at the theme of “religion” in Doctor Who. The Doctor has been all across space and time and encountered zealots, fanatics, kindly priests, and beings who believed themselves to be gods or demons or the devil himself. But what does the program say about religion, faith and belief? Is the Doctor Who universe truly a rational one in which the supernatural is really just advanced science, or is The Beast really the Devil? Is faith worthwhile, and if so, what does the Doctor believe?

Hosts Ben McKenzie, John Richards and Petra Elliott are joined by guests including writer and game designer Paul Callaghan, comedian and television writer Dave Bloustien, and for our discussion of religion, the Reverend Dr Avril Hannah-Jones, Uniting Church minister and founder of the Church of the Latter Day Geek (as seen on Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight)! Plus a very special musical performance from the one and only Lee Zachariah accompanied by the two and only Adam Rudegeair, and all the usual prizes and surprises!

Space: The Public Bar, 238 Victoria Street, North Melbourne (opposite Victoria Markets)
Time: Sunday, July 14; recording starts 5 PM
Accessibility: This venue is wheelchair accessible.
Tickets: $15 (plus booking fee where applicable)
Bookings: via trybooking.com or at the door (subject to availability)
Podcast: “Seven/Religion” released in two parts on the 23rd (part one) and 30th (part two) of July, 2013.

8 comments

  2. Scott Vandervalk says:

    Will someone be playing the spoons? Once upon a time I had a tape with Sylvester McCoy playing the Doctor Who theme song with spoons…

  5. Sam Streeter says:

    One of the almost religious occurrences that happens is that the companions are made “better” by following the Doctor. To me this makes what happened with Donna even more cruel (even more than when they die) as all her experiences & personal improvements were nullified with no chance of ever being that better person again.

  6. Andrew Waddington says:

    [Opps! put this in the wrong spot before: time for a re-run: with a fixed spelling error!]
    Wow! What an interesting show that was: good luck reducing that down to an hour of podcast. As an atheist myself I had never really considered that theist’s would enjoy the show as much as I do. Or at least a theist from a Christian perspective. The countless references of evolution and a planet 4 plus billion years old to me put pay to any thought of a ‘creator’ making the world 7,000 years ago as some young earth creationists would have us believe. After all, the Doctor is a time traveller: [his first adventure involved cavemen] he could go back and watch dinosaurs [or kill them with Adric] and meet Jesus etc! New Who has explored the concept even more with No.10 actually watching the planet come together.
    But I ramble, forgive me please. My mother, a staunch christian, loved Who, (although she thoroughly disapproved of stories involving witchcraft: she banned the Target novelisation of The Daemons from the house!) and maybe now I can see why she did so after Sunday.
    A great topic and a great podcast: maybe worth a revisit with a slightly altered topic heading of Morals?
    #ThankYouItsGoodKeepWarm
    P.S: I’ve already got the Ace Adventures so don’t worry about entering me in the virtual door prize chaps!

  7. Cristian Mendez says:

    Loving the shows! The seventh Doctor and Ace have been my faves ever since I first watched them together. I had just got into watching them at the Sydney Uni Who parties/ conventions and really enjoyed the cool and darker stories “We play the contest again, Time Lord”, is probably my all time favorite cliffhanger! The New Adventures created an environment where the 7th Doctor seemed to do so much. I also thought the era should have been recognized for its obvious influence on the new Who format presented by RTD. New Who even claimed they had the first stair climbing Dalek…. Anyway, cheers I was really hanging out for you guys to get to the 7th Doctor and then you guys do a 2 parter, awesome. Thanks.

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