'It uses time travel to structure complex non-linear narratives, and switches our sympathies around as characters reveal new aspects.'

Science fiction author Philip Purser-Hallard looks at how religion and super heroes mix

This article contains spoilers to Life on Mars and Heroes

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I occasionally like to strip-mine recent science fiction (SF) television (TV) shows for their potential theological significance.

Last year I wrote about Doctor Who, Torchwood and Battlestar Galactica. I may even have mentioned Life on Mars – although Sam Tyler’s slight effect on his police colleagues’ primeval ethics, let alone his suicide (if indeed that’s what was going on in the final episode) scarcely qualify him as a Christ-figure.

So far, though, I’ve neglected the rather splendid US superhero soap Heroes, whose first season aired on BBC2 last year. Given that its tagline explicitly refers to salvation (both of one specific individual and of the world), this is rather an omission on my part.

Heroes is a very smart drama, avoiding many clichés of the superhero genre (including the costumes). It’s not afraid to introduce its characters gradually, so that we already care about the core cast when they get involved in the big dramatic arc story.

It uses time travel to structure complex non-linear narratives, and switches our sympathies around as characters reveal new aspects, sometimes deciding only at the last moment whether they’re heroes or villains.

Most importantly, it’s a drama about real-seeming people – a student, a policeman, a nurse – in extraordinary situations, which is the ideal formula for televisual SF.

Ka-pow!

On the religious-imagery front, Biblical names – Isaac, Micah, Noah, Gabriel – abound, and the first season carries the umbrella title ‘Genesis’. Characters rise from the dead, thanks to their superhuman regenerative powers. A clever twist gives one of the nastier villains the Christ-like ability to heal through laying-on of hands.

The season’s climax sees Nathan – the corrupt politician whose unwelcome heroic tendencies are coupled with his unexpected ability to fly – apparently laying down his life to save his city, whilst simultaneously ascending into heaven as he plucks his unstable brother Peter from the heart of New York, moments before Peter detonates in a super-powered nuclear explosion.

An orthodox Christian interpretation of the series – and indeed of the superhero genre as a whole – might be that it expresses humanity’s unacknowledged need for a saviour, a need which can only be fulfilled by… well, etcetera. As usual, I’m not convinced.

Splat!

While Superman, for instance – the last son of a doomed world, raised as human by humble parents and grown into an uncomplicatedly altruistic hero with a tedious lack of moral ambiguity – may be a reasonable fit, other comic-book super heroes are less Christ-like.

Some, like vigilante and borderline sociopath Batman, are more ambivalent (not to say interesting), while others are simply too specific in their powers.

For all his miraculous abilities, none of the surviving Gospel accounts credits Jesus with climbing sheer walls or shooting webbing from his fingers.

Furthermore, for a Christ-figure, Superman seems unusually reluctant to turn the other cheek. The superhero genre is at heart an adversarial one, and even Heroes comes down in the end to a pitched battle between heroes and villains.

While some evangelistic comics may have attempted it, it takes a rather special mindset to read, say, Jesus’s subtle battle of words against Satan and draw it as a high-octane fist-fight.

To my mind, superhero stories are instead the SF equivalent of the parable of the talents.

To quote the Gospel according to Spider-Man, ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. We may not be able to read minds or become invisible – or heal by touch or speak in tongues, for that matter – but each of us has gifts and abilities which are uniquely ours. We owe it to our creator to make of them the best use possible.

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