It’s surely time once again for you to forgive me a column constructed entirely out of lists. So…

The Top 3 Biblical Moments In Science Fiction Short Stories

1. ‘For I Am a Jealous People!’ by Lester Del Rey.
A U.S. evangelist discovers that Jehovah has reneged on his covenant with the children of Israel, and adopted a tribe of invading aliens as his new chosen race.

2. ‘Let’s Go to Golgotha’ by Garry Kilworth.
Time-travelling tourists visiting the Crucifixion blend in by calling for Pontius Pilate to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus. But then someone wonders how many in the crowd are actually first-century Judaeans…

3. ‘The Last Question’ by Isaac Asimov.
The Ultimate Analogue Computer continues pondering the question, ‘Can entropy be reversed?’ until it outlives the universe itself. Its eventual decision: ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT!’

3 More Religious Doctor Who Stories…

1. Kinda (1982).
There’s a garden with a snake in it, an apple, and a maniac quoting ‘Abide with Me’… but the Sanskrit character names reveal a Buddhist parable about wisdom and compassion overcoming suffering and death.

2. The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (2006).
Having met more false gods than he’s had split-second escapes from certain death, the Doctor discovers that not all spiritual beings are imaginary. Better the devil he knows?

3. Gridlock (2007).
25 years later, we’re back to ‘Abide with Me’ as the Doctor meets a dying god, harrows hell and discovers the power of congregational singing to cheer people up.

…And 3 Which Sound Religious But Aren’t

1. The Ark (1966).
God isn’t in evidence aboard this generation starship fleeing the destruction of the Earth in the Year Ten Million. There’s a big, booming, invisible voice waiting for them at the other end, though.

2. Revelation of the Daleks (1985).
No prophetic messages for the Dalek churches, no apocalyptic vision of a New Earth and a New Skaro – just Davros getting up to his old tricks in a funeral home. The Daleks had already had a Genesis and a Resurrection, and would go on to experience their own Remembrance and Doomsday.

3. The Lazarus Experiment (2007).
If Jesus had brought his friend back as a gigantic flesh-eating scorpion, the title might have been more relevant. Disappointingly, this science project doesn’t even involve raising the dead.

The Top 3 Science Fiction Saints

1. St Aquin (‘The Quest for St Aquin’ by Anthony Boucher). Examination of the saint’s uncorrupted remains reveals that Aquin was, surprisingly, a robot – a perfect reasoning machine which found its way to faith through logic alone.

2. St Leibowitz (A Canticle for Leibowitz and sequel by Walter M Miller Jr).
A physicist whose work precipitates a nuclear holocaust, Leibowitz founds a monastic order to preserve the lost knowledge of the time before the ‘Flame Deluge’.

3. St Teilhard (Hyperion and sequels by Dan Simmons).
By the 31st century, Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) has been canonised, his once-heretical evolutionary theology forming the basis for the Church’s dealings with humanity’s artificial descendants.

3 X-Files About Which Mulder Is More Sceptical Than Scully

1. Stigmata (Revelations).
Scully, a lapsed Catholic, comes to believe that a young stigmatic targeted by a Satanist serial-killer is actually a messiah whom she was sent by God to protect. Mulder thinks otherwise.

2. Faith healing (Redux II).
When Scully’s alien-induced cancer unexpectedly and inexplicably goes into remission, she considers it a miracle. Mulder disagrees.

3. Human-angel hybrids (All Souls).
Scully becomes convinced that a blind girl supposedly being hunted by the Devil is one of the Nephilim, and the avenging angel is actually her seraphic father. Mulder doesn’t.

The Top 3 Clerics In TV Space Opera

1. Shepherd Book (Ron Glass, Firefly).
A pastor with a past – and a surprising degree of firearms expertise – Book emerges from religious seclusion to minister to the unwilling renegades of the starship Serenity.

2. Brother Theo (Louis Turenne, Babylon 5).
A Dominican monk, Theo is ordered by the Vatican to found a community aboard the diplomatic space-station, with a mission to learn new religious truths among its alien population.

3. Brother Cavil (Dean Stockwell, Battlestar Galactica). Supposedly a priest of the polytheistic faith of the twelve human colonies, Cavil is secretly a Cylon and – unusually for an humanoid artificial intelligence – an atheist.

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