The Atheist Blogger

I watched a clip of the new BBC Drama series “Bonekickers” on Friday Night with Jonathon Ross last week, and the first thing that crossed my mind was how unscientific it was for an archaeology show. They had a scene where the team was gathered around a piece of wood, the analysis said it was from 32AD and it had human blood seeped in it. One of the lead characters said “I’m just giving you the facts. 2000 years ago, someone was lacerated to this piece of wood”. They all gather round a picture of Jesus on the cross.

I was sat there thinking “What? You got that from a piece of blood soaked wood?”. It was a massive assumption, but I decided to watch the episode anyway. The scene in question was put in a slightly better context when it mentioned the finding of Templar Knight skeletons, and went around the basis that they were being hunted and wanted to preserve Christian artifacts. Of course it’s still a big leap of faith for an archaeologist.

The story went on, introduced a Christian Evangelist who was getting in trouble for hate crimes against Muslims, and two characters who turned out to be modern Templar Knights (swords and all). The characters were under the command of the Evangelist, who bought the dig site and ordered the Knights to go about killing Muslims. Only one is executed in the episode, and it was a pretty useless scene that was probably included to be politically correct.

Anyway, one of the nurses at the nursing home the dig was next to had helped remove the bit of wood from the ground, and she’d received a splinter for her trouble. Of course, this being the cross of Christ, suddenly she has healing powers, and managed to bring a man back from a coma. She is then asked to bless a boy with leukemia.

The story unfolds, and then manage to trace the cross to some well next to a church, which they descend into and find about 30 odd crosses from the Crusades. They are followed by the Evangelist and the Templars, which turns into a swordfight (!?) and the crosses end up getting burnt. The Evangelist dies along with one of his Knights, and the others manage to escape having deconverted the other Knight.

Everything get’s back to normal, the miracle nurse’s miracle patient dies after all, and she removes the splinter but keeps her faith. To add insult to injury though, there is a shot of the burning crosses, and when the fire touches another one, bright light emits from it and glorifying music is played.

I’ve probably made it sound better than it actually was, but if you want to watch the episode it’s on the BBC iPlayer for a few more days. If they’d taken the ridiculous ending out it still wouldn’t have been good though. They showed terribly unscientific behaviour the entire way through, and whilst it’s all well and good trying to combine a CSI show with the adventures of Doctor Jones, you have to keep the science in or nobody will believe it. Be reckless, have swordfights, but don’t jump to conclusions about pieces of wood when several thousand people were cruxified in Roman times!