As an aside/addendum to the "God" option: I once had a full 4-part storyline in the works (for the 7th Doctor and Ace) based on the idea of a (human) evangelist turning up on an alien planet, with the intent of reaching out to the natives and making the first steps in translating the Bible into their language. Since they didn't have any sensors for optical EM wavelengths (all the species on the planet would be shown to have highly developed senses that did not use EM radiation, in particular the "Listening Camels"...), this was going to be a bit of a challenge, what with all the light- and sight-related imagery in the Bible, so he needed to learn somethhing about how the locals ("Olfers") sensed/"saw" the world.
Over the course of the story he learns that his challenge is even bigger than he suspected - not just the language, but their entire conception of the world around them is different - but in the meantime, he helps the Doctor uncover and defeat a plot by a self-seeking human scientist to use and abuse the Olfers.
The trick was, that this evangelist had a full and more-accurate-than-normal "God-sense" (to borrow smallship1's term). So while in himself he was a bit naive, and had a lot to learn about the world, and was liable to rush into things quoting scripture when he should be sitting back and listening to what was really going on, he also had a genuine functioning hot-line to God, which sometimes put him one-step ahead of the Doctor, and sometimes, quite deliberately (on God's part!) one step behind.
The title was "The Blind" - the idea being that, apart from the obviously "blind" Olfers (whose primary sense is smell, hence the name), everyone in the story was blind to something(s), in one way or another, including the Doctor.
In retrospect, it might have worked nicely as an NA/MA, but I doubt I could have got it past a script editor on the show itself (and if I had, I'd have been in a pickle: So much of what I wanted to convey could only sensibly/plausibly be conveyed in "internal monologue" or narrative. It probably would have ended up as a run-of-the-mill "human colonisation and subjugation of alien species" story; Not a patch on Kinda, and probably as forgettable as "The Mutants". =:o\ )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-11-18 03:03 pm (UTC)Over the course of the story he learns that his challenge is even bigger than he suspected - not just the language, but their entire conception of the world around them is different - but in the meantime, he helps the Doctor uncover and defeat a plot by a self-seeking human scientist to use and abuse the Olfers.
The trick was, that this evangelist had a full and more-accurate-than-normal "God-sense" (to borrow
The title was "The Blind" - the idea being that, apart from the obviously "blind" Olfers (whose primary sense is smell, hence the name), everyone in the story was blind to something(s), in one way or another, including the Doctor.
In retrospect, it might have worked nicely as an NA/MA, but I doubt I could have got it past a script editor on the show itself (and if I had, I'd have been in a pickle: So much of what I wanted to convey could only sensibly/plausibly be conveyed in "internal monologue" or narrative. It probably would have ended up as a run-of-the-mill "human colonisation and subjugation of alien species" story; Not a patch on Kinda, and probably as forgettable as "The Mutants". =:o\ )