Doctor Who – ‘The God Complex’

“The God Complex”

Series 6
Episode 11
Transmitted 17 September, 2011
“I’d forgotten that not all victories are about saving the universe.”

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land the TARDIS in what appears to be a 1980’s luxury hotel. The unlucky few inside are frightened for their lives, desperately attempting to escape a monstrous beast preying on their very fears. Each room in the hotel is unique and tailored to a specific guest. In time, each occupant loses his/her sanity and praises the creature sworn to destroy them. Thankfully, the Doctor, monster-slayer extraordinaire, has arrived with his gadgets, gimmicks and mad ideas to save the day. Unfortunately, the threat posed by the monster is more complex than originally thought and that misunderstanding could cost them all their lives.

The God Complex is very unusual for ‘Nu-Who’ in that it is so very traditional. It features a pedestrian setting doubling as an alien one, several quirky supporting characters in danger and the Doctor as their only hope against a silly monster. Seriously, I thought for sure that Matt Smith was going to help the poor sod out of the massive headdress when the Minotaur fell in a heap in the hallway. In the past, whenever a cast of supporting characters have been introduced the focus has moved to them rather than the monster since a more character-centric approach is more modern and appealing for RTD and Moffat. In this case, the supporting cast were utilized wisely and sparingly, allowing the rather splendid plot to expand on its own and for the Doctor to play a more familiar role of detective and hero.

I’ve brought this up before, but Smith’s Doctor has had very little to actually do in the past few episodes. He has lost the spotlight to River Song or the Ponds each week when the program is still named after him. Many have criticized this as a sign that Moffat is uninterested in writing for the Doctor and more attracted to River Song or Amy Pond. That theory falls flat with this week’s installment, however. In the God Complex, the Doctor has a sudden awakening of sorts as he meets a brave and intelligent young woman named Rita whom he would usually whisk off for a life of quarries and near-death experiences. He sees himself in a new light as someone who entices innocents to come with him, placing their lives in jeopardy and often causing their death. The Doctor places his companions in situations where only he can save them. Rita calls it what it is, a God complex, a failing that the Doctor recognizes as possibly fatal. At first I put off this plot thread as a novel idea but one that would ultimately end up getting cast aside.

The quartet of survivors seem an unlikely lot, an online blogger named Howie, a devout Muslim nurse named Rita and a cowardly alien named Gibbis (played incredibly well by David Walliams). After the loss of both Rita and conspiracy theorist Howie, it becomes clear that the Doctor’s advise on finding inner strength through faith was a fatal error. Each occupant isn’t just afraid but full of a specific faith that kept them going. It is that faith that the monster prowling the halls uses as a doorway into their psyche, turning their personal beliefs into an undying devotion to death at the Minotaur’s hands/paws.

The Doctor’s companion Amy is drawn to her own ‘room’ in which she sees herself a young girl endlessly waiting for her childhood mythical hero, the Doctor, to arrive. The Doctor kneels by Amy’s side and disarms her faith in him, telling her that he is not perfect and not worthy of her faith. Echoes of Curse of Fenric occurred to me when the Doctor unraveled Ace’s faith in him in order to defeat his enemy. In that case, it was more of a trick than anything else. In this story, the Doctor is being sincere (another angle I did not expect). Since the program returned in 2005, the Doctor has become a folk hero more than anything else, able to defeat any creature and quell any invasion. The 10th Doctor took that concept to another level and transformed it into hubris. The 11th Doctor seems to be facing this aspect of his persona in a different manner.

After finally defeating the Minotaur by depriving it of Amy’s faith, he decides that the time is right to end their friendship while the pair of them are alive and in one piece. It was a touching moment, reminiscent of the Hand of Fear in which the Doctor leaves Sarah Jane Smith behind to face a threat too dangerous for her. The new Doctor Who program has consistently insisted that it is more character-driven than its predecessor and more interested in telling compelling stories than schlocky adventures but honestly I have not really seen much evidence to support this claim until now.

I know that Amy and Rory are hardly out of the series (there have been hints from Karen Gillan that we will see her next year), so this farewell can hardly be final, but the moment justified all of the stories in which Amy and Rory took attention away from the Doctor and all of the compassion and touching concern that the Doctor had for his companions.

I have forcibly restricted myself from reading spoilers (for the first time in about 6 years) about the upcoming last episodes (my heart sank however, when I read that the finale is entitled ‘The Wedding of River Song’), so I have no idea where this series is headed, but I am very impressed with this week’s installment that honored so many ideas that previous stories have explored. The Doctor knows that he is about to come face to face with a fate so deadly that it could destroy those he loves so dear and he has to finally admit that he isn’t a god-like being at all. He’s just a mad man in a box. It’s the flipside to the 2nd Doctor who operated under the facade of a buffoon but was actually a cunning mastermind or the 7th Doctor who seemed to be a silly little man with a goofy accent but was secretly a being of immense power.

The 11th Doctor is about to come to terms with who he is and the path that his life has taken… and is likely not going to be pretty. The viewer does not get a glimpse of the Doctor’s nightmare room, but from the first moment that I saw the image of the sad clown in the God Complex, I thought of this incarnation of the Doctor. Despite his numerous near-death scrapes and successes against power-mad conspirators, he may just be a clown himself.

The 11th Doctor remains an inspired incarnation of the Time Lord as he seems to be operating under the remote control of his subconscious. Madly pressing buttons and rewiring devices with some scheme known only in his most secret thoughts, he is as in the dark as anyone else. Several moments of the 11th Doctor’s character have revolved around his apparent confusion and befuddlement at his own actions, hoping that he got it right rather than knowing that he is the supreme authority (as the 10th incarnation had).

It would certainly play into his interaction with Amy. If he were a super powerful being that should be feared and fought as Madam Kovarian and her crew no doubt feel, there would be no reason to fear facing her army again. But if he won first time out of luck… maybe it would be best to face the music alone this time.

Next week: ‘Closing Time’

Doctor Who – The Big Bang

Series 05
Story 13
19 June 2010

The Doctor and Amy have been followed throughout their journeys by a crack in time, caused by an unknown event in space/time. River Song, a time traveler from the Doctor’s future, has hinted that the next time they meet the Pandorica will open, but the Doctor insists that is only a fairy tale. Having encountered the Pandorica, the Doctor discovers that he has been fooled into a trap by the combined might of every alien race he has ever fought. This strange unified force has noticed the crack in time and determined that the destruction of the Doctor’s TARDIS is the cause. To keep this event from ever happening, they have trapped their nemesis in an inescapable prison despite the Doctor’s warnings that their plan will not stop the disaster from occurring. As the Doctor is confined, the Auton army, formerly believed to be ancient Roman soldiers, activates. One of the Autons believing itself to be Amy’s one-time sweetheart Rory, kills her as the universe is uncreated around him and the stars extinguished.

Things look, well… bad.

Spoilers for anyone who has not watched this episode yet… all one of you. I apologize for the incredibly long delay in this review.

When Steven Moffat took over as head writer and producer of Doctor Who, his take on the series was that it is a children’s program. He also saw it as a modern fairy tale more than a science fiction program. While I don’t really agree with Moffat’s view, I have cited a few examples in his run that support this approach as a worthwhile take. Since its return in 2005, the new Doctor Who series has had a year-long theme or recurring idea and a bombastic finale. For his first year on the show, Moffat tasked his new Doctor with the task of escaping an inescapable trap and the destruction of the universe from an event that hasn’t happened yet.

Matt Smith’s Doctor has been a frazzled dizzy explorer/scientist who seems to be running in one direction before he is sure exactly where he is going and why. Nevertheless, this has been his strength, a kind of frenzied brilliance that even he cannot understand. He is possessed by an electric personality that seems to take over while Smith dangles about like a marionette. It’s an unusual approach to the character and embraces the odd alien manner of the Doctor’s mental process. It also makes the resolution to last week’s cliffhanger a real nail-biter.

The opening of the Big Bang is a great example of the fairy tale aspect that I brought up earlier. The Doctor has met Amy Pond as a child who referred to him as her imaginary friend and grew to think of the time traveling stranger who visited her home that night as a magical being (and why not?). Meeting Amy Pond again, this time later in her life as a woman on the eve of her wedding, the Doctor awakens in her the child that he met that night who still believes in the impossible. This is a solid use of the fairy tale idiom and gives the entire series an air of fantasy and adventure that it never had before (despite what Moffat thinks).

Young Amy Pond is a concern for her Aunt. She daydreams of impossible things and draws pictures of stars, even though there aren’t any. She is invited to the museum by a postcard dropped in her letter box by a shadowy figure with a circle scrawled around the newest item of interest, the Pandorica and a message ‘Come Along, Pond!’ Following the direction of another strange note, she remains in the museum after closing, braving the petrified specimen of a Dalek to get close enough to actually touch the Pandorica which promptly opens… revealing an adult Amy Pond.

Things get… complicated.

The plot of the Big Bang is a massive run-around full to the gills with whimsical action and ideas that fly by so fast that you may find yourself re-watching this one to get all the details. The Doctor’s escape from the Pandorica is wrapped in a temporal trick that curves back upon itself, something that may be familiar to fans of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The Doctor escapes because he helps himself in the future after he has escaped. It’s complete nonsense but Smith plays it very well. There are plenty of magical concepts such as the light from the Pandorica solving any problem and Rory the Auton being in undying love with Amy so that he remains by her side for hundreds of years until the Doctor can help her escape. It’s a fairy tale love.

Petrified Dalek

The petrified Dalek is amazing and brings the metallic meanies back to their former ranking of the deadliest and most terrifying of the Doctor’s enemies, the same treatment the Cybermen got last week. Moffat seems to understand that the strength of these creatures isn’t so much an army of them swarming across the screen attacking an abstract concept but in creating a lone monster stalking its victim in the dark. He has created two near-iconic moments in a row that make this jaded viewer excited about Daleks and Cybermen again.

The Doctor zips back and forth through time laying hints for himself and trying to get his messages straight for the past so that he can get to the next thing in the present. It’s all very silly until they bump into a Doctor from the future who has been fried by Dalek fire. Then young Amy Pond is gone from the time-line as well and things start to get scary again. In the end, the Doctor of course has to sacrifice himself by piloting the Pandorica (it flies??) into the heart of the TARDIS which is exploding just above the Earth like a sun going supernova. He shares some incredibly moving dialog with Amy, recognizing just how special she is and how she has a unique curse that can be turned into a gift. The crack in time has been stealing her life from her, but as reality rebuilds around her, she can get it all back if she wants, including her parents who mysteriously disappeared from her life.

The deadly Dalek gets to kill the Doctor (sorta) before being shot in the eye by River Song and destroyed.

It makes so little sense that River quickly explains how it is possible right before it happens. The character of River Song is still a bit too Han Solo with a fringe haircut for me, but what can you do? She’s sassy and indestructible, a Captain Jack-type, which we already have more than enough of. She exits the series fairly well and I am hoping that next year when we see her again it will finally close that character’s story. Since it has been three year’s running now, I’m getting a little bored of the River Song mystery.

After a cataclysmic explosion, the Doctor is surprised to find that he has apparently survived the ordeal and is back in the TARDIS. It is soon made apparent, however, that time is running backwards as the universe rebuilds itself. This allows the Doctor a few key opportunities as a cunning plan begins to formulate in his mind. The speech in Flesh and Stone when the Doctor tells Amy to remember what he told her when she was a child is finally made apparent as the Doctor travels far back to young Amy’s bedside where he tells her his final tale, the story of how his adventure began back on Gallifrey.

There have been more than 11 actors to date who have played the Doctor on screen, stage, audio, etc. Connecting the thread of the character back to his origins has always been a challenge that few of the actors have lived up to. Seeing 26 year-old Smith tell the story of how he stole the TARDIS as an old man from his home planet somehow works and ties the threads tight around this incarnation. The ageless wanderer in time and space is personified in Smith who is old beyond his years and equally strange and wonderful. His ‘magical touch’ is so powerful that he manages to being Amy’s parents back into existence and make it to her wedding in a full formal tuxedo.

I can’t think of anything I haven’t already said about the magnificent Karen Gillan (Amy) and the animated Arthur Darvil (Rory). Doctor Who has been trying to find the ideal companion setup for decades with mixed results. For myself, I quite liked Martha Jones, but the writers seldom knew what to do with her. The combination of Rory and Amy is ideal and gives the program new legs, presenting the first married couple on board the TARDIS as well!

Even though he has eluded death and halted the entropy of the universe, the Doctor is still puzzled about what could destroy the TARDIS in the future, causing the cracks in time to occur. The only clue that the viewers at home have is the phrase, ‘Silence Will Fall’ spoken from the TARDIS speakers in a voice that sounds exactly like Julian Bleach’s Davros to me. But that’s a story for another time apparently.

I am not sure what is next (rumors of the return of the Yeti, possibly the Ice Warriors and more) but the concluding moments of this series have me on hook ends for Christmas Day when the Doctor will return for another hour-long adventure in time and space.