The God Complex

OK, this is bad. At the moment, I don’t know how bad, but certainly we’re three buses, a long walk and eight quid in a taxi from good.

The Eleventh Doctor

Synopsis

The TARDIS lands in a hotel where every visitor’s room contains their deepest, darkest fears. What lies in wait in the Doctor’s room?

Review

The God Complex takes a bunch of creepy horror clichés and combines them with a labyrinthine hotel to create an exploration of faith, fear and the Eleventh Doctor.

Offer a child a suitcase full of sweets and they’ll take it. Offer someone all of time and space and they’ll take that too. Which is why you shouldn’t. Which is why grown-ups were invented.

The Eleventh Doctor

Toby Whithouse’s script is really sharp and keeps the action moving at a good pace, which combined with the direction of Nick Hurran makes things feel frenetic, like when the Doctor and his companions meet Rita, Howie and Gibbis in the lobby. It wears its influences on its sleeve, with establishing shots of the hotel corridors paying homage to films like The Shining, or the use of surveillance cameras, which allows the story to show private moments brilliantly. The setting may be basic but there is something terrifying about the idea of a hotel full of the fears of people who have previously been there is nonetheless effective. The Minotaur, when seen, is effective, and I’m particularly keen on the visual of the horn dragging along the low door frames of the hotel as it approaches its victims. It really helps to sell the size of this beast.

Even so, it can’t end like this. After what we’ve been through, Doctor…everything. You can’t just drop me at my house and say goodbye like we shared a cab.

And what’s the alternative? Me standing over your grave? Over your broken body? Over Rory’s?

Amy Pond and the Eleventh Doctor

The twist in the tale, that the Minotaur feeds on faith rather than fear, is one that I’d quite effective. The hotel rooms are full of scary things, from the Weeping Angels to clowns via gym teachers, so the reasonable assumption to make would be that the creature is feeding off fear. The Doctor’s room contains something that is expected to him but unknown to us, which is ultimately a terrifying prospect which we only have revealed in the Eleventh Doctor’s final episode. Amy’s room is the fear that the Doctor will never return for her, which causes her to fall back on her faith in him as a defence mechanism. There is, of course, a further twist that this hotel is not on Earth, but a prison in space, pulling people of space and time and trapping them in this horrendous project to feed the Minotaur. This does stop the story from feeling quite so beholden to some of the source material that it references, and truly put a Doctor Who spin on this story.

Every time the Doctor gets pally with someone, I have this overwhelming urge to notify their next of kin.

Rory Williams

We have a small but pretty decent guest cast here. Firstly we have Amara Khan as Rita, who is certainly shaped up to be our prospective new companion, and I think it is safe to say that Khan does a good job of ensuring that Rita makes an impact on the audience so that when she dies, it means something for the audience. We also have the conspiracy theorist Howie, who was bullied at school for a stammer, and quickly succumbs to the power of the Minotaur. Then we have David Wailliams as Gibbis, the only alien we see in this episode, a member of the cowardly Tivolian species. I will state here that I am not a fan of Walliams, so having him play this part feels like perfect casting – Gibbis is a pretty reprehensible character, who ultimately survives the events of the story. Doctor Who, no matter who is running it, will always point out that the Doctor is pretty powerless to chose who can survive a story’s runtime and it may not be who they or the audience wants to.

It’s an important story for cementing Steven Moffat’s view of the Doctor; not the lonely God of the first Russell T Davies era, but rather the mad man in the box, complete with flaws. Series 5 holds a lot of the hallmarks of a fairytale, despite Moffat stating that this was not intentional, whilst Series 6 has a more grown-up attitude. Amy has an idealistic view of the Doctor, formed when she was a child, and despite the evidence that the events of Series 6 has shown her, still has full faith in the Doctor. This leads to the Minotaur wanting to feast on her faith, with the Doctor being unable to save her. Rory, on the other hand, has no faith in anything and therefore, this prison keeps showing him the exit. I would have been interested to see what would have happened if Rory had gone through this door and whether it was really just an exit or that Rory does have a faith in something that he just doesn’t admit to. Whilst Rory might not have the same amount of belief in the Doctor as his wife, recognising in Vampires of Venice the risk that he poses to people, there must be a certain amount of him that believes he will get them safely out of the messes he gets them in.

In way, Smith’s Doctor hues closer to perhaps Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor here than any of his other predecessors. The Fifth Doctor loses Adric in Earthshock, and for the entirety of his run feels as though he is more flawed, more uncertain than certainly his first two predecessors and prone to making errors of judgement. The Eleventh Doctor in The God Complex makes mistakes too, like leaving Howie with the spineless Gibbis or failing to notice that Rita has succumbed to the creature until it is too late, and both have deadly consequences. It is perhaps not too much of a stretch to state that the two youngest actors to play the Doctor have these insecurities and flaws, and admit to them, rather than their older-looking and more self-assured incarnations, but there is also more than a smidge of the Seventh Doctor here, trying to break Ace’s faith in him in Season 26. This story definitely brings some cruel truths to bear for the Doctor, and he certainly seems to come more acerbic and angry as a result.

Your civilisation is one of the oldest in the galaxy. Now I see why. Your cowardice isn’t quaint, it’s sly, aggressive. It’s how that gene of gutlessness has persevered while so many others have perished.

The Eleventh Doctor

Matt Smith is on top form here, and he does a good job portraying the Doctor’s regret and flaws as the story progresses. We see how he thinks he should leave his companions, by giving Amy and Rory the chance to settle down, buying them a house and Rory’s dream car, and ultimately, still breathing. Amy is not ready to leave the Doctor at this point in the story, and Karen Gillan is good at capturing that admiration and affection for her childhood imaginary friend, and the scene where the Doctor tells her that it’s time to grow up is one of the most powerful in this episode, thanks to the performances of both Smith and Gillan. Whilst Amy not be ready to leave, Rory is in a much different place. The doors that he sees through this story could easily be a signal for his exit from the TARDIS, never mind this nightmare hotel. Whilst they get on, Rory has always seen through the Doctor to a certain extent, and stories like A Good Man Goes to War and The Girl Who Waited only serve to prove his initial thoughts about the Doctor right. Rory provides a valuable insight as an outsider, maybe in the mould of Harry Sullivan, as someone who is not really bothered if he carries on travelling with the Doctor or not. I have such fondness for this trio, as they were the incumbents when my fandom became concrete and I started to watch the original series, and Arthur Darvill is such an underrated and essential reason why it works so well.

Verdict: The God Complex is a character exploration of the Doctor and the dangers of travelling with him. It’s a really powerful story, with great performances. 9/10

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams), Sarah Quintrell (Lucy Hayward), Amara Khan (Rita), Dimitri Leonidas (Howie Spragg), Daniel Pirrie (Joe Buchanan), David Walliams (Gibbis), Dafydd Emyr (P.E. Teacher), Spencer Wilding (The Creature), Rashid Karapiet (Rita’s father), Caitlin Blackwood (Amelia Pond) and Roger Ennals (Gorilla).

Writer: Toby Whithouse

Director: Nick Hurran

Producer: Marcus Wilson

Composer: Murray Gold

Original Broadcast Date: 17 September 2011

Behind the Scenes

• At the time of the read through, Lucy Hayward was called Lucy Miller, however, this was changed to avoid confusion with the Eighth Doctor’s companion Lucie Miller.
• This is the last episode until Series 11 to show the Doctor’s companions living full-time on the TARDIS.
• Early drafts of this story featured a character called Edward, a conservative who put his faith in authority, but this character was revised and formed into Gibbis.
• Whilst Let’s Kill Hitler was filmed after this, this story features the last appearance of Caitlin Blackwood.

Cast Notes

• David Walliams played Quincy Flowers and Ned Cotton in Phantasmagoria.
• Spencer Wilding would go on to play the Wooden King in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, Skaldak in Cold War and the Lead Dreg in Orphan 55.

Best Moment

I really like the reveal that Rita has succumbed to the creature into the surveillance camera – the furtive way that she checks that the Doctor has gone before uttering her praise into the camera.

Best Quote

I can’t save you from this. There’s nothing I can do to stop this. I stole your childhood and now I’ve lead you by the hand to your death. But the worst thing is, I knew. I knew this would happen. This is what always happens. Forget your faith in me. I took you with me because I was vain. Because I wanted to be adored. Look at you. Glorious Pond. The girl who waited for me. I’m not a hero. I really am just a mad man in a box. And it’s time we saw each other as we really are. Amy Williams, it’s time to stop waiting.

The Eleventh Doctor

Previous Eleventh Doctor review: The Girl Who Waited

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