MR 071: The Council of Nicaea

We do love our historical settings with this group don't we? This is the fourth historical setting we've had with them. I was expecting more of the usual with it. Changing history is bad in and of itself. The usual nonsense. It is there but it does a little more than usual to try to justify it. And more besides. This one caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was.

Honestly I don't know why the Doctor keeps going to these major historical events if he's going to get all pissy about changing them. Especially this one who is especially touchy about it. He should just go back to Gallifrey and never time travel at all for risk of contaminating his precious history he cares so much about.

The actual Council of Nicaea was the settlement of a dispute about the divinity of Jesus. Arius is a priest who rejects the idea of the trinity and thus believes that Jesus is created by God and not actually God. This, naturally, is tearing the church apart. It's a precarious time for the church too, because Constantine, the emperor, has just adopted Christianity which in and of itself could tear the empire apart religiously. Never mind just the Christian church.

Erimem meets Arius who tells her and Peri about his beliefs. I really LOVE Peri's response to Arius here. She laughs and doesn't see how this is important in the slightest. How could people get so upset over little religious differences like this? I wish we lived in a world where people didn't care about religion, but here we are. Erimem sees Arius as a persecuted minority who will not be allowed to speak on his behalf and so takes up his cause.

This is where some of that changing history stuff comes in. At least the Doctor attempts to justify this a little. Changing the council of nicaea will have reverberations for thousands of years to come. However long Christianity lasts. Personally I don't really care if Christians believe in the divinity of Jesus or not. The church has done terrible things down through history. But there's no real getting rid of the church from this point. Either way it will continue from the council.

Erimem is determined to help Arius but the Doctor will throw her out and leave her here because he's an asshole I guess. Except not really because that was just a cliffhanger. I'm honestly just over the Fifth Doctor's attitudes towards time travel and history at this point.

It is interesting how this is Erimem's future. So of course she doesn't know or care about whatever bs history justification the Doctor is yapping about. It's not history for her. History doesn't exist when you're a time traveler. Every time is the past, present, and future because you can always go to it.

The Doctor manages to get an invitation to the council, bumping into the emperor by accident as he does with historical figures. And then they go, but Erimem stands up and yells for Arius which causes a whole scene and then she gets thrown out. This was pretty wild. She's doing what she believes is right and she continues to do so.

Erimem drives the plot here. She fights against Constantine and even starts to doubt that Peri and the Doctor are her friends. Since they're working with Constantine to try to find her. Peri accidentally leads the Emperor's centurians right to Arius. The twists and turns here are interesting to listen to. The bishops are also at play here as the chief opponent to Arius is doing his own the with his own spy/assassin. Erimem even manages to stir up enough support for Arius to make a public demonstration in front of the palace.

Constantine responds to this demonstration by actually going out himself and talking with the protestors, which was a pretty great climax. After the bishop wanted to send out the soldiers. Constantine essentially explains that he doesn't necessarily care which way the church rules, as long as it's unified. A fractured church will fracture the empire. As will eventually happen with Orthodox Christianity, but that's another story. The bishops will rule on it and seeing how much support Arius has might help to influence them.

That's enough for Erimem. Arius still loses the debate though and gets exiled, which is what happened in our own history. So once again we don't have to confront the implications of changing history. Still, it's a very well done story. Finally someone standing up against the Doctor’s whole changing history is bad shtick. And what better character to do it with than Erimem? She doesn't care about that, she has her morals and she'll stick to them. And she does. She doesn't back down at all and she ultimately does get Arius a fair hearing. He still loses, but at least he was heard out. I quite enjoy seeing Erimem butting up against this Doctor. She's like my advocate in these stories and I'm here for it.