Doxacast Remix

Our panel of Twin Peaks first-watchers joins host Cindy Collins Smith to react to the resolution of the Laura Palmer murder mystery—with its themes of innocence, the passions, demonic possession and resistance, and the unwavering search for truth.

Ever wonder what it sounds like when three Orthodox Christian fans of speculative fiction meet Twin Peaks for the first time? Maggie and Jos Johnson, along with Christina Zrake, recently started a Twin Peaks Watch… and then proposed we talk about it on the podcast. In this episode, Cindy hosts the trio to get their first impressions of the first season of Twin Peaks—its twisting and layered relati...

Our Babylon 5 panel unpacks the final six episodes of season 2 — episodes addressing the destruction of species, war crimes and genocide, the relationship between identity (“Who are you?”) and sacrifice, and the unveiling of both Psi Corps and the Night Watch as arms of Earth Gov’s encroaching surveillance state. In these stories, Londo’s choices finally catch up with him, Sheridan and Delenn are...

Fr. David Subu joins host Cindy Collins Smith for an exploration of Ryan Coogler’s multi-layered film and its depiction of the wages of sin. Sinners is unabashedly a vampire movie - not sexy vampires, not reluctant vampires, not vegetarian or sparkly vampires. Vampires. Monstrous beings who entice their victims with promises of unity, family, freedom, and endless music, only to leave them enslaved...

Amy Browning-Dill and host Cindy Collins Smith discuss the film adaptation of The Life of Chuck - a later-career work by Stephen King that offers a meditation on life, death, the cosmos, the wonder of being, and ghosts in the attic.

Father David Subu joins host Cindy Collins Smith to discuss their recent theatrical experience of Project Hail Mary - a hard science fiction film that blends humor, optimism, and self-sacrifice in the face of a potentially galaxy-ending phenomenon, and holds an unexpected and transformative friendship at the center of the film.

Our Babylon 5 panel was stunned in its previous episode to learn that Maggie had never seen the classic Star Trek: TNG episode “Darmok.” Now, along with “Maggie, her eyes uncovered,” part of our panel reconvenes to discuss Darmok… and Maggie’s response. Join us as we recount Captain Dathon’s faith and hope as he puts his life on the line to establish communication (and maybe communion?) between tw...

Our panel - composed of Cindy Collins Smith, Maggie and Jos Johnson, Richard Strube, Sam Cook, and Amy Browning-Dill - returns as Babylon 5 hits its stride. With the Centauri Emperor’s visit, the beginning of the Great War, and the first true revelations of the Shadows, the series accelerates into its central arc - and rarely lets up. These episodes bring those threads together, deepening the char...

George R.R. Martin’s reputation does not often include serving up tales of honor, goodness, and chivalry, yet his personal favorite work is his series of Dunk & Egg novellas, following the adventures of an un-ironically good hedge knight and his young squire about a century before Game of Thrones starts. Amy Browning-Dill and Fr. David Subu join host Cindy Collins Smith to discuss the memorable ch...

In this sequel to the “Android Dreams” episode, Derek Power returns as he and host Cindy Collins Smith tackle Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. While Derek finds echoes of the Incarnation in the miraculously-born child and its protectors, the conversation ultimately centers on the results of choice more than destiny.

For many months Fr. David Subu, Jos Johnson, Sam Cook, and Cindy Collins Smith traveled the Sword Coast together in a Baldur’s Gate 3 multiplayer campaign, confronting enemies who sought to enslave the world and turn them into Mindflayers. In this episode, they recount their adventures and discuss the choices for good, evil, and chaos that their characters made along the way and the ways they help...

In this episode, new guest Derek Power and host Cindy Collins Smith geek out over Blade Runner’s place in cinema and examine the Frankensteinian questions it raises about what it means to be human and what it means to be a facsimile. To what extent can the two become like the other and where is God in all of this? The episode title (“Android Dreams”) of course calls back to “Do Androids Dream of E...

In another solo reaction commentary, host Cindy Collins Smith takes on the finale to Stranger Things - including how its Mind Flayer plot parallels the Mind Flayer in Baldur’s Gate 3, how the government’s efforts to turn humans into Cold War weapons hearkens back to Frankenstein and Myst, how confronting fear can lead differently disposed characters to compassion or an embrace of evil, how El’s fi...

Modern video gaming does not exist without the 90s classics Myst and Riven. In this episode, we dive into these video game classics and their associated novels with a panel consisting of host Cindy Collins Smith, Fr. Evan Cummings, and Maggie and Jos Johnson. The ensuing conversation covers the groundbreaking nature of Myst, its influence on other media like the TV show Lost, and the impact of its...

Amy Browning-Dill and host Cindy Collins Smith probe the history and implications of Frankenstein - from Mary Shelley’s book through the James Whale and Hammer Studios adaptations all the way to more recent adaptations by Kenneth Branagh and Guillermo del Toro. Shelley’s tale is often considered an example of man playing God - and of course it is - but it also opens the door to profound questions...

Host Cindy Collins Smith goes solo in this brief reaction commentary on the first batch of new Stranger Things episodes. Fodder for discussion includes upside-down dice rolls, conspiracy theories (and real-world conspiracies), missing hot topics of the 80s, where these episodes sit in the series - and of course, how Stranger Things might resonate with Christians. And as for that 1983 Alt-CCM song...

The Babylon 5 Watch is back! Our panel - composed of Cindy Collins Smith, Maggie and Jos Johnson, Amy Browning-Dill, Richard Strube, and Sam Cook - picks up the conversation with the first eight episodes of season 2, ominously titled: "The Coming of Shadows.” Our panelists discuss the poignant backstory of Sinclair’s replacement with Sheridan, character trajectories, the increasing complexity of r...

Turn off the lights, light an atmospheric candle, and listen as Fr. David Subu and host Cindy Collins Smith talk and read through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s spooky tale of a young Puritan’s journey into the heathen forest near Salem at night. Known as one of the great stories of 19th century American Romanticism, Young Goodman Brown is also surprisingly rich in its treatment of sin, demonic temptation,...

Allison Franklin-Jordan again joins host Cindy Collins Smith - this time to discuss sin, choice, and change in two works that illustrate vividly how one person’s actions can change the world for good or ill. Iroh’s and Zuko’s repentance in Avatar: the Last Airbender transforms the Fire Nation from following an ideology of conquest to following a path of redemption and peace, while the abusive fath...

Tokusatsu enthusiast Sarah Esker joins Godzilla enthusiast Cindy Collins Smith for a stomp through Japanese media, its cross-pollination with the West, and the themes that are likely to resonate with Christians. Buckle up because this conversation takes us from giant monsters and aliens to Spaghetti Westerns, Star Wars, and even the Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

What happens when you put together a couple of Doctor Who aficionados to cover more than 60 years of epic (and sometimes not-so-epic) television? Tune in to find out as Fr. Demetrios Kehagias joins host Cindy Collins Smith for a joyride through the ups and downs of Doctor Who and a discussion of how the Doctor’s near-immortality parallels and differs from the life of Christ.

2025 Doxacon speakers Jake Reed and Jon James join host Cindy Collins Smith to talk about one of literature’s most enduring tropes - the Wasteland. From crippling famines to post-apocalyptic fallout, the Wasteland has led pagans to offer sacrifice and moderns to despair. But it can also lead us to seek God. Covering ground from Oedipus Rex and Grail legends to A Canticle for Leibowitz and Fallout,...

What can a seemingly fluffy animated feature reveal to its audience about guilt, confession, restoration, uncovering shame, and -yeah- fighting demons? In this episode, Sr. Allison Regina Gliot and Sr. Orianne Pietra Rene Dyck join host Cindy Collins Smith for an exuberant conversation covering these topics and more in the breakout streaming hit K-Pop Demon Hunters.

2025 Doxacon speaker Richard Strube joins host Cindy Collins Smith to illumine the moral conundrums, thematic innovations, deft and heavy-handed storytelling, and memorable appearances in a handful of favorite (and not-so-favorite) episodes from Star Trek’s The Original Series and The Next Generation. Sprinkled with anecdotes and analysis, the conversation takes us from the heights of The City on...

2025 Doxacon Lay Keynote speaker M.R. Leonard joins host Cindy Collins Smith to discuss his first contact novel Pilgrims and some “must see / must watch” science fiction. Along the way, the conversation turns to influences on the novel, what would happen if Catholic (or Orthodox) aliens visited Earth, why secular-oriented gamers fell in love with an overtly Christian novel, and how we can baptize...