Doctor Who/Recap/S32/E11 The God Complex: Difference between revisions

The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Gibbus return to the hotel's bar. The Doctor comes to realize that the beast is not feeding off of fear at all. It's feeding off the strong faith of each of its victims. Joe, the gambler, was savvy to luck; Howie was a conspiracy theorist that stuck to his convictions, and Rita was a devoted Muslim. He tries to rationalize why the others haven't been affected: Gibbus, being from the most cowardly race in the universe, naturally worshipped his conquerors, but would be too timid to hold any convictions of his own. Rory just has no faith to speak of. The Doctor suffers of bit of a [[Heroic BSOD]] when he realises that he's been ''encouraging'' the gang to focus on their faith, and that he's now caused their deaths. He's interrupted, though, when he hears that Amy is now uttering "praise him". Her faith in the Doctor is what brought them to the hotel in the first place and what is being challenged right now.

 

 

As they watch, the hotel starts to dissolve around them, revealing it to be a digital simulation within a large ship. The Doctor talks to the beast, a relative of the Nimon, in its own language. The beast tells him that for such an ancient creature, who caused so much destruction and has the blood of a billion galaxies on his conscience, death would be a mercy. The Doctor agrees. The beast curtly tells him that it wasn't talking about itself; it meant the Doctor.

* [[Bad Vibrations]]

* [[Belief Makes You Stupid]]: Or more accurately, Belief makes you {{spoiler|[[Space Whale Aesop|vulnerable to a faith-devouring monster.]]}}

* [[Blessed Are the Cheesemakers]]: One of the Doctor's [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist|many]], [[Not That Kind of Doctor|many]] [[Super Doc|degrees]].

* [[Bound and Gagged]]: Used on Joe to keep him quiet.

{{quote| '''Amy:''' That's not a question I thought I'd be asking this morning…}}

* [[Break Her Heart to Save Her]] / [[Broken Pedestal]]: The Doctor deliberately {{spoiler|talks Amy into losing her faith in him, presenting himself not as an invincible hero incapable of wrong, but as a vain fool who did not consider the danger he was putting her in}}.

** Rory has no fear. No faith. Rory is a 2000 year old ... Rory. Where others see their worst fears, Rory sees fire exits.

* [[Continuity Nod]]:

** The wall of photos has numerous aliens the Doctor has encountered over the years, either as the victims themselves or fears of the victims.

** This isn't the first time Rory has wielded a mop. Or a broom. The Doctor, too.

* [[Cool Car]]: Rory's dream car, a red [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/1963_Jaguar_XK-E_Roadster.jpg E-Type Jag].

* [[Genre Blindness]]: The Doctor still hasn't learned that offering companionship in the middle of an episode is basically signing the person's death warrant.

* [[Genre Savvy]]: This marks the first time in the new series the Doctor has {{spoiler|sent companions home}} without some kind of horrible accident happening.

** Amy and Rory: {{spoiler|He just left them with a new car and an apartment, still sane and whole.}} He must be catching on.

** Rory has one of his moments as well, leading to a bit of [[Black Comedy]]:

{{quote| '''Rory (on Rita):''' Whenever someone gets close to the Doctor, I feel the need to [[Cartwright Curse|inform their next of kin]]. }}

** Averted at the end of the episode. Rory goes over a number of reasons why Amy won't want to accept the Doctor's gift of the [[Cool Car]]… then decides he can live with it. He ''really'' wants the car.

* [[Heroic BSOD]]: After Rita's death, the Doctor destroys the bar.

* [[I Cannot Self-Terminate]]: {{spoiler|The Minotaur just wants to die, but it can't because the prison ship is programmed to supply it with food and its own instincts are too powerful for it to starve itself.}}

* [[I Die Free]]: The [[Fair Cop]] in the cold open may be hoping for this. Her notes/narration state that they're being dictated in between periods of worship, that when she's not dictating "Praise him" and variants, that she's lucid. Unfortunately, she absolutely can't die free. You die a slave.

** [[Fridge Logic|Based on the way they were acting, it may not have been voluntary.]] [[Fridge Brilliance|This may have been part of the jail set up by the jailers,]] to make sure that people found their worst fears and were forced to fall back on their {{spoiler|faith}}, instead of just wandering around the hotel randomly.

** Not to mention leaving the possessed guy under the care of the guy whose species is notoriously cowardly.

* [[Internal Homage]]: The plot is similar to the Eighth Doctor's adventure on [[Big Finish Doctor Who (Radio)/NEDA/Recap/S1 E5 Phobos|Big Finish Doctor Who]].

* [[Ironic Nursery Rhyme]]: ''Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. Chop… chop… chop… chop!''

** Double points for being an actual nursery rhyme. Note to foreigners: British nursery rhymes are [http://www.rhymes.org.uk/oranges_and_lemons.htm deeply disturbing.]

* [[Karma Houdini]]: Gibbis never gets any comeuppance for {{spoiler|freeing Howie and lying about it.}}

** [[Justified Trope|Justified]]: He'd seen his fear. He was also under the Minotaur's control.

* [[Resistance Is Futile]]: Gibbis' old school motto was "Resistance is exhausting."

* [[Shadow Archetype]]: The Minotaur and the Doctor are played as [[Not So Different|being very similar]]: traveling the universe in a vessel with strange dimensions, and which is stuck in its current guise, drawing people to themselves at random and compelling those people to have faith in them. Both ultimately destroy those trapped with them, not because they want to but out of a sort of compulsion. Many of the things the Minotaur says (voiced by the Doctor) can apply to either of them.

** [[Star Trek (Franchise)|Speaking Klingon]] is mentioned, and {{spoiler|our heroes are trapped on a holodeck}}.

** The setup of the episode as a whole is clearly based on the Minotaur of Crete from [[Greek Mythology]]: A bull/man monster trapped in an inescapable labyrinth, with victims periodically chucked in for it to feed on.

** An extreme variant, repeated multiple times, is the [[Vertigo]] stairwell. A shot down the middle of a stairwell iconically showed up in that film and is part of this episode's [[Mind Screw]].

* [[Voiceover Letter]]: Played with. When the Doctor starts reading Lucy's notes, her voice comes in, but his never fades away; both voices are audible, reading the same words with different inflections.

* [[What Happened to The Mouse?]] The "Do Not Disturb" sign the Doctor hung on his own room is never explained.

* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: Done to the Doctor by ''himself''.

* [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?]]: The crazy worshiper who won't shut up. They tape his mouth shut.

 

{{reflist}}