'Heaven’s Design Team' Makes an Argument for Intelligent Design

Heaven’s Design Team is a fictional twist on the Creation story.  God, after creating the Earth, decides to outsource to a team of designers the task of creating the animals that will populate the planet.  For every job order, the designers must make a particular animal that meets the vague or enigmatic requirements that their Client has given for it.  A rookie angel named Shimoda serves as their liaison, and provides them invaluable emotional support.

The designers, who named similar to the planets (plus Pluto, and sans Earth and Uranus), have different personalities and tastes.  Their personal preferences and biases end up defining their respective approaches in creating animals.  Neptune likes making cute animals.  Jupiter, a foodie, is keen on making edible and delicious animals.  Mercury values efficiency, while Venus values aesthetics.  Pluto is fond of giving animals morbid traits.  Saturn, the most senior among them and the chief of the design team, is unendingly proud of his magnum opus, which is the horse, and thus, he perpetually sneaks in horse designs on his projects.  Meanwhile, Mars doesn’t personally take charge of projects, but being the chief engineer who creates the prototypes of the animals, her insights and inputs usually make their way into the design.

When I first read the synopsis of Heaven’s Design Team, I just knew I had to pick it up.  Such an interesting premise had the potential to be a notably wacky but clever show.  And, indeed, after watching its 13-episode debut season, I’ve found it to be exactly that.

As a comedy, Heaven’s Design Team is as extremely amusing and endearing as you would expect from a show about animals being produced as if they are inventions or products.  But, at the same time, it’s pretty educational.  The real-life principles of problem solving, engineering, and design thinking are at play whenever the characters are creating their animals.  Thus, although the narrative itself is fictional, there is logic in the process of their creation within the narrative.  Furthermore, using the same method, it presents the problems that make it impossible for mythological animals like the Pegasus or unicorns to exist in the real world.

Lastly, I feel that intelligent design is an unmistakable undertone in Heaven’s Design Team.  A support for it is probably not the intention, but it also doesn’t look like it’s mocking it either.  In fact, by coherently presenting the idea that the appearances and characteristics of animals are so fine-tuned that it’s as if they have been designed, it actually reiterates a truth that should be obvious to everyone (Romans 1:20): Creation affirms the Creator.

In the end, even disregarding any theological merits, Heaven’s Design Team is a worthwhile show.