I saw at SCMP something that made me chuckle.
It’s Battlestar China!
Media passes off sci-fi pictures as aircraft carrier of the future
Japanese-language version of a state media site used images from Battlestar Galactica.When a Chinese news portal ran a piece about aircraft carriers of the future, its editors wanted to illustrate it with a selection of hi-tech images.
But they may have stepped slightly too far into the future, as the accompanying pictures that appeared on the site showed designs for spaceships featured in the US smash sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica.
The article, entitled ‘4 Major Trends In Aircraft Carrier Development’, was published on the Japanese language version of the China Internet Information Centre, a web portal authorised by the Chinese government which features official news translated into a variety of languages, including Japanese, Korean and English.
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I kinda wish it were true. I’d sign up for chaplain duty.
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I like the idea of Fr. Z as a Battlestar Chaplain!
Though I think the LCWR and Fishwrap would quickly start pushing for Cylon Priests.
“…But they may have stepped slightly too far into the future…”
Shouldn’t that be “… into the past?”
Battlestar Galactica was my favorite show at that time. Saw it start. 1978.
lsclerkin: Me too! Too bad it’s only nuBSG gear they’re showing…
I love it! Who’dathunk Fr. Z is such a sci-fi junkie?
I think there’s a PhD dissertation waiting to be written (at some university) on the heresies and heterodoxy to be found in all the various sci-fi shows. That’s not a knock on those shows … many of them were great entertainment – imaginative, and well-scripted and acted. But there’s no denying that the ‘theology’ to be found in them was a reflection of lib-left Hollywood orthodoxy. I’ve often wondered about the subliminal effect of that on the younger generation who were not well catechized.
How about it, Father? A new thread, along these lines? Is Star Trek’s ‘Prime Directive’ anti-evangelist? Syncretist? A manifestation of Indifferentism? A repudiation of the Good Samaritan?
I’ll bet that chaplain duty would be out of this world…
;-)
Oliverian, we can take a sneak-preview…
I’d say the prime directive is actually none of those. It only applies to the Federation as a government, as written. Even if we assume it is enforced against private citizens in so far pre-warp societies are concerned, it would be not really different from regulations we see in real-life Brazil and Peru banning contact with certain “undiscovered” tribes in the Amazon, which would likely be wiped out by contact with civilization (due to lacking any resistance to many diseases). I’ve yet to hear anything from the Church against such policies. After all, these tribes do not know Christ, but due to no fault of their own, and our obligation to evangelize them seems podtponed by the fact we haven’t found a way to do so without a way that would kill a very large number ov them, be it indirectly.
The absence of chaplains in the Star Trek universe, as well as the paucity of private spaceflight, do much more to instill the picture of a monolithical, atheist future – but apart from a few lines here and there, that’s a sin of omission, rathrr thsn of commission.
Fr. wants to serve on the Galactica, Fr. can Serve on the Galatctica, just so long as I get to be Weapons officer on the Pegasus
Oliverian: Is Star Trek’s ‘Prime Directive’ anti-evangelist? Syncretist? A manifestation of Indifferentism? A repudiation of the Good Samaritan?
Ah, it’s just a lame plot device to explain how the cast can encounter a planet that somehow happened to develop like a 1930s gangster-film whenever the script calls for it.
(But yes, the lousy philosophy pushed implicitly and explicitly by TV in general has certainly been a bad influence on society.)
I have read that Holy Mass was celebrated every morning on the airship Hindenburg. What a chaplaincy that would have been (on the several dozen or so flights before the airship burned, anyway)!