NuWho Rewatch: The God Complex
Sep. 15th, 2015 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatThe core concept of The God Complex, in which the Doctor must destroy a companion's faith in him, had been done before in The Curse of Fenric but its framing here is very different and, this time around, the differences between the two stories seemed more significant to me than their similarities.
The Doctor, Rory and Amy find themselves trapped in a strange hotel. The rooms contain people's greatest fears, a bizarre and surreal selection ranging across clowns, weeping angels, angry fathers and men in gorilla suits. As each person is confronted by their deepest fear they become susceptible to praise of the minotaur-like being that stalks the maze-like corridors of the hotel and destroys them. The key weakness of the characters, it gradually transpires, is not their fear but their faith. Rory, in particular, is shown an exit, a way out of the hotel. The set up has no use for him since he has no implicit faith in anything. Amy on the other hand has faith in the Doctor and this needs to be broken in order to save her life.
The contrast between the two central scenes in The God Complex and The Curse of Fenric is, I think, that in The Curse of Fenric the Doctor's harsh words to Ace are almost immediately revealed as a ruse and her faith is restored. Essentially a reset button is pressed. Here we are given to understand that the Doctor must genuinely give up that faith and set Amy and Rory free to live separate lives. I think this is intended to be a specific contrast to The Girl who Waited where the Doctor clings onto the Amy who has faith in him.
It is fairly strongly suggested by the writing that the Doctor also has faith in something, and it is hinted that he also has a greatest fear, but neither is made explicit (wikipedia tells me that it is the crack in the universe which seems a little lame to me). Only Rory sees an exit, though.
The other interesting thing I noticed about The God Complex, on rewatching, is the camera work. In many of the sequences we are placed in something like the viewpoint of the characters as they begin to praise the beast and the images cut jarringly between their moments of praise and their moments of rationality. It's not a technique you see used often in Doctor Who which generally prefers the camera to be an impartial (and implicitly reliable) observer.
Do I like this? Like Night Terrors I appreciate what this is trying to do and I think it achieves it pretty well. However, it also feels a bit restrained and melancholy for Doctor Who and I can't see it as a story I would particularly choose to rewatch.
The Doctor, Rory and Amy find themselves trapped in a strange hotel. The rooms contain people's greatest fears, a bizarre and surreal selection ranging across clowns, weeping angels, angry fathers and men in gorilla suits. As each person is confronted by their deepest fear they become susceptible to praise of the minotaur-like being that stalks the maze-like corridors of the hotel and destroys them. The key weakness of the characters, it gradually transpires, is not their fear but their faith. Rory, in particular, is shown an exit, a way out of the hotel. The set up has no use for him since he has no implicit faith in anything. Amy on the other hand has faith in the Doctor and this needs to be broken in order to save her life.
The contrast between the two central scenes in The God Complex and The Curse of Fenric is, I think, that in The Curse of Fenric the Doctor's harsh words to Ace are almost immediately revealed as a ruse and her faith is restored. Essentially a reset button is pressed. Here we are given to understand that the Doctor must genuinely give up that faith and set Amy and Rory free to live separate lives. I think this is intended to be a specific contrast to The Girl who Waited where the Doctor clings onto the Amy who has faith in him.
It is fairly strongly suggested by the writing that the Doctor also has faith in something, and it is hinted that he also has a greatest fear, but neither is made explicit (wikipedia tells me that it is the crack in the universe which seems a little lame to me). Only Rory sees an exit, though.
The other interesting thing I noticed about The God Complex, on rewatching, is the camera work. In many of the sequences we are placed in something like the viewpoint of the characters as they begin to praise the beast and the images cut jarringly between their moments of praise and their moments of rationality. It's not a technique you see used often in Doctor Who which generally prefers the camera to be an impartial (and implicitly reliable) observer.
Do I like this? Like Night Terrors I appreciate what this is trying to do and I think it achieves it pretty well. However, it also feels a bit restrained and melancholy for Doctor Who and I can't see it as a story I would particularly choose to rewatch.