Critique of Dr Who Series 32 Episode 11 – The God Complex

Most disappointingly of all and fundamental to why I didn’t enjoy this episode so much is that neither the plot nor the characters were developed well – if at all.

The classic advice taught to schoolchildren about a story requiring “a beginning, a middle and an end” appears to have been ignored. It seems they ran out of time because they put so much in. The consequence is that the beginning and end are very rushed indeed and the middle is just tedious repetition of a ‘there goes another one’.

As a result, I couldn’t feel any particular sadness when the extras met very sudden deaths: even the female nurse who was developed a little more than the others was so ‘irrelevant’ because the introduction of the episode-specific characters was inevitably so rushed that they were only ever really extras and no one cares about the extras. Comparing this to how uneasy / somewhat unsettled I felt when people died in the The Rebel Flesh and it’s really quite a poor outcome.

Partly because so much was going on almost nothing was really explained and that’s not enjoyable.

Sadly, a ‘simple idea’ was over complicated. The best plots explore complex ideas in a simply and succinct episode. This week’s episode contrasts unfavourably with last week’s brilliantly complex paradox elegantly conveyed.

If this had just been the Doctor, Amy and Rory (probably one too many core-characters anyway to my mind) as per two other notable, clever and thought-provoking ‘get-out-of-this-dilemma‘ type episodes (Amy’s Choice and The Girl Who Waited) the story and the concept behind it might have become clear and I might have had time to start thinking about the episode. I think you could have told the story without the others and their inclusion was therefore superfluous

As it was, with so many semi-important ‘extras’ and their various sub-plots having to be pointlessly slotted-in to the main storyline, I ended up too confused and unable to concentrate properly on the episodes core message / point.

Suddenly, because Amy is told to, she stops believing in the Doctor. Immediately, as an apparent consequence a barley-explained ancient creature which ‘feeds on praise’ / ‘feeds on belief?’ staggers and drops dead. The place is revealed to be a star-trek-type holodeck.

Reminded me a little of a child’s way of drawing to a close a story: “And then I woke up and it had all been a dream”.

The ‘second’ ending too was just peculiar. Now he’s decided they’re unsafe? He always knows they’re unsafe: they’re not the first to take the chance and it’s not reasonable to expect that he’s suddenly had a change of heart.

I hated the line about the alternative to his letting Amy and Rory live happily-ever-after being that he’ll otherwise stand over their graves on day. He’s a Time Lord – that’s his fate: he stands over all of their graves at some point other other. The Doctor’s normal ‘live-for-today’ mentality and wise rationale behind it seems to have been thrown out and I find that unsettling: it’s really quite important that his fundamental character / style remains intact.

Uninspiring set in a grim looking hotel – very “The Shining”. Oddly appears to be another ‘bigger on the inside’ place: getting to have too many of those given that one of the greatest novelties of the franchise is that the TARDIS is – exceptionally – ‘bigger on the inside’.

With the cast all running around but not often getting lost (unless they wanted to?) it reminded me a little of the Doctor’s Wife episode in the last series (which I loved but which had a very tedious Amy-and-Rory-run-around-the-TARDIS scene). It doesn’t make for a good viewing experience because as Howard Hughes found out when he tried to film aircraft flying in a clear sky: you can’t easily appreciate the scale. Indeed, the scenes just end up looking like a Tom and Jerry cartoon with people whizzing backward and forwards across the screen to and from in identical corridors: it becomes a farce when done for more than a few seconds.

To name only some of the things that bother:

Rory seeing a fire exit and failing to explain? What was that all about?
Rory is fearless / has no belief?
Unnecessary / cheap reference to being afraid (or not) of Muslims.
How / why did the other humans suddenly find themselves on board?
Why did Amy succumb to it and the other guy didn’t? Why was the timescale?
What was that Police woman all about? Was the (a) lengthy writing the note (b) lengthy reading of the note all really just to get the “Praise Him” line in? If yes, it was a bit of a waste of time.
What happens to all of the dead bodies? Only one remained: that of the Minotaur-thing. The other 3 / dozens from past are where?

Billed as the scariest ever episodes but compared to the Weeping Angels in the Time of Angels (and briefly, confusingly, back in this episode) or the Silence (as in The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon) who were very scary, the more or less silent Minotaur–esque creature wondering around killing in this episode failed to frighten me remotely.

I thought the wooden puppets / the clown had the potential to have been a bit creepy but even they weren’t done too well and like all of the other apparent irrelevances in the episode they weren’t explained or in the plot long enough that I cared to work them out.

Also, a less-serious point perhaps but who thought to make the monster’s eyes sky-blue? You can’t be afraid of anything with nice-coloured eyes. Fiery red or bright green – that would have been more like it….

David Walliams is amusing in his way but then he’s a comedian and I suspect he can hardly help himself. In spite of his make-up he still ends up looking and sounding like ‘Lou’ from Andy and Lou in Little Britain. Aside from that, nothing much amused me.

What, how, when and Why?! This isn’t secret millionaire! Since when does the Doctor do that sort of thing? It’s so ‘simple’ and slightly gratuitous so as to be quite out of character and even a bit seedy. This is very different to when the Doctor, knowing he’s dying goes to give Donna Noble a lottery ticket at her Wedding – something he does silently without grand-standing through a proxy rather than as some benevolent benefactor.

Is this to be the way of things now? If you’re a side-kick you get automatic inclusion in the TARDIS pension scheme when you’re retired – just in order that there’s no unhappy ending?

Another example of something thrown in last minute that could just as well been left out so as not to confuse things even further.

A recurring irritation in episodes featuring the Eleventh Doctor is that he is so frequently coming across as being clueless / out-of-control / and generally powerless to actually do anything. The cleverest thing he did in this episode was to trap a monster by tricking it with a speaker and barring the doors. Hardly the stuff worthy of a millennium of Time-Lord life experience?

Once again the resolution of the situation is brought about basically by dumb luck, right at the end and principally by yet another Amy-is-all-important-and-brilliant ending.

Maybe the line about not being a hero but actually just being a mad man with a box was a nod to this general theme but actually, I want Doctor Who to be a hero: to be impressive and inspiring. I want him to be a genius and special: I don’t want him to be just lucky / a mad chancer always. Where’s the fun in that?

I’d make the same point about “Let’s Kill Hitler” – suppose it hadn’t to have just so happened that River was in possession of the ability and will to do something I didn’t know a Time Lord (let alone a half-human-Time Lord, Like Donna Noble?) could do; he’d have been dead. I don’t want him to always be alive just by sheer luck: I want to see him be brilliant.