The God Complex (TV story)
The God Complex (TV story) was the eleventh episode in the sixth series of Doctor Who.
Synopsis
The Doctor, Amy and Rory investigate a hotel of horror where repeat business is low but the body count is high, where a mighty monster stalks the corridors and the rooms hold visions of angels, apes and creepy clowns. Who - or what - has brought them to this place? Can the Doctor solve the mystery before the residents check out in grisly style?
Plot
Lucy Hayward is running through the corridors of a hotel, writing about a monster and how it has made all of her former companions 'praise him' after they find their rooms. Soon she starts to praise him and the Creature kills her. The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in the hotel and the Doctor begins to investigate, certain that they are somewhere fascinating.
Rory shows him a picture of a Sontaran on the wall as well as others portraying a Judoon Captain, a cat person and Lucy Hayward. They ring the front desk bell and almost gets hit by a chair leg held by Rita, who is quickly followed Howie and Gibbis, a cowardly, mole-like alien from Tivoli. The Doctor quickly takes a liking to Rita, noting how clever she is and joking with Amy that he's firing her for Rita.
Rita says that each room contains 'a bad dream'. When the Doctor takes them to the Tardis, they find it missing. They reveal there is someone else, a man named Joe who they tied up because he was acting unstable. They take the Doctor to Joe's room, which is full of ventriloquist's dummies. Joe tells him that everyone here has a room, even the Doctor.
While searching for the missing Tardis or an exit, Howie finds his room which contains attractive girls who mock him for being nerdy and stuttering. The Doctor pulls him out of the room and they look for somewhere else to hide as a roaring beast nears. Rita and a captive Joe enter a room, which contains Rita's father, a doctor who berates her on her grades. Amy, Howie, and Gibbis enter a room full of Weeping Angels. The Doctor arrives and tells Amy to face her fear, and reveals that the angels aren't real.
Joe frees himself and runs out and the creature, described as a alien Minotaur, senses Joe's presence and kills him. Later, upon seeing Gibbis' reaction to the Angels, Amy realises that it wasn't her room, but his, as the Angels were the only creatures to invade Tivoli and try to kill rather than conquer the inhabitants. Gibbis however unnerves Amy by telling her that her room was still out there.
The Doctor devises a plan to confront the Minotaur by using a speaker broadcasting Howie's voice to trap the Minotaur in the same room as the Doctor. The Doctor talks to the Minotaur, who explains that the hotel is a prison that has trapped it for eons, and it wishes for this to end but the prison keeps it alive. It doesn't want to kill, it is running on instinct alone.
Meanwhile, terrified of the Minotaur, Gibbis lets Howie go, causing the Minotaur escapes and kill him. Amy finds her room; however Rita pulls her away from it before she can go in. Rita and the Doctor bond privately, with him offering to take her through time and space once they escape. However she has been hiding her own devotions to the Minotaur and separates herself from the remaining survivors to avoid putting them in danger when the Minotaur comes for her.
The Doctor is distraught and full of grief after Rita dies, knocking over objects on the front desk and screaming loudly with rage. Later the Doctor realises that only after people fell back on their faiths when confronted by fear were they killed by the Minotaur.
Joe was a gambler, who believed in luck; Rita was Muslim; Gibbis believes that his planet is going to be invaded again and Howie was a conspiracy theorist who believed the government controls everything. By breaking their faiths, it converts it into energy into a form that it can consume. Rory has remained unaffected because he has to strong faith in anything; hence the reason the ship has been showing him exits throughout the hotel that the others cannot see. Amy suddenly begins praising the Minotaur. The four of them run to Amy's room, revealing 7 year old Amelia Pond sitting on her suitcase staring at the stars waiting for the Doctor.
The Doctor kills the Minotaur by breaking Amy's faith in himself, her deepest belief. He admits his own faults to Amy, how most who come with him die or get hurt. That he is not a hero, but a mad man in a box. And it is time they saw each other for who they are. He was a fallible being, and she was Amy Williams.
With the Minotaur dying, the hotel reveals itself to be a massive holographic ship. By hacking the ship, the Doctor determines that the Minotaur is from a species related to the Nimon. The Minotaur's kind need people to worship them in order to survive. Long ago it posed itself as a god to a race that advanced to the point where they realised what the Minotaur really was. They imprisoned it in an automated ship which fed it by scooping up people with strong faiths, keeping it alive for eons against its own will.
As it lay dying, the Minotaur tells the Doctor, "An ancient creature drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space through an endless shifting maze. Such a creature, death would be a gift and accepted." After the Doctor consoles the Minotaur, it reveals with its dying breath, "I wasn't talking about myself," to which the Doctor seems shocked.
The Doctor uses the Tardis to drop Gibbis off on his homeworld and takes Rory and Amy back to Earth, giving them a house and Rory's dream car as a goodbye present. While Rory is inside getting champagne, the Doctor explains that he can't keep putting them in danger, before departing. Rory comes out and Amy reveals to him that the Doctor is saving them.
Cast
- The Doctor - Matt Smith
- Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
- Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
- Amelia Pond - Caitlin Blackwood
- Lucy Hayward - Sarah Quintrell
- Rita - Amara Karan
- Howie Spragg - Dimitri Leonidas
- Joe Buchanan - Daniel Pirrie
- Gibbis - David Walliams
- PE Teacher - Dafydd Emyr
- The Creature - Spencer Wilding
- Rita's Father - Rashid Karapiet
- Gorilla - Roger Ennals
Crew
to be added
References
Cultural references from the real world
- Joe sings "Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head". This is from the centuries-old nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons.
- One of the girls from Howie's room mentions the Klingons, suggesting that Howie may have been a fan of Star Trek.
- The 80's hotel setting is similar to the one in The Shining
- A shapeshifting prison plucking individuals out of their lives is a similar premise to that of Cube.
Foods and beverages
- The Doctor now appears to enjoy apples.
Individuals
- Amy's room number was 7, a reference to her age when she first met the Doctor and Karen Gillan being the seventh multi-story Companion since the start of the new series.
- The Doctor's room number was 11, a reference to the fact that Matt Smith is the Eleventh Doctor and that this story is the eleventh of the 2011 series.
- One room contained a clown. This may have been a reference to Sarah Jane Smith, companion to the Third and Fourth Doctors, who suffered from a fear of clowns from childhood. (SJA: The Day of the Clown)
Races and species
- The Minotaur is a distant cousin of the Nimon.
- A Sontaran, a Silurian, a Tritovore, a Hoix , a Catkind and a Judoon appear in photographs.
- One of the photos show Lady Silver-Tear's fear was Daleks.
- The Weeping Angels are Gibbis' biggest fear, and Amy mentions having encountered them.
Story notes
- At the time of the script read-through, Lucy Hayward's name was "Lucy Miller". (CON: Heartbreak Hotel) It was ostensibly changed so as to avoid conflict with Lucie Miller, the long-term audio companion of the Eighth Doctor.
- Rita becomes the latest in a line of characters who are invited to become companions by the Doctor, only to die soon after.
- David Walliams previously played Quincy Flowers and Ned Cotton in BFA: Phantasmagoria.
- The Doctor's room number was 11, which is a reference to his eleventh incarnation and a reference to this episode being the eleventh in the series.
Ratings
- UK Overnight: 5.2 Million
Myths
To Be Added
Filming locations
Seabank Hotel, Porthcawl (Lobby, Bar, Stairwell)
Doctor Who Studio, Cardiff (Corridors, Rooms)
Production errors
- As the group climbed the stairs (all six of them), the edge of the TARDIS was visible. (To see this, look to the mid-right of the screen in this shot. The TARDIS' bottom can just be seen) (11:15)
- When the Doctor and the gang enter the room containing the ventriloquist dummys, a boom mic is visible in the reflection of the mirror behind the bar (07:16).
Continuity
- Ace previously "saved the day" by losing faith in the Seventh Doctor in DW: The Curse of Fenric.
- A Rubik's cube is seen again. The Doctor threw one away in DW: Night Terrors when talking to George.
- Amy has previously encountered the Weeping Angels in DW: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, NSA: Touched by an Angel.
- The Minotaur's final words were a prophetic statement delivered both to and about a long-lived traveller, similar to the last words of the Face of Boe in DW: Gridlock. It also foreshadows the Doctor's final death. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)
- In BFA: The Holy Terror, the Sixth Doctor similarly visited a world designed to imprison an individual, namely Eugene Tacitus.
- The Doctor has previously been made to view images of that which he most fears due to the Master's Keller Machine. (DW: The Mind of Evil) In that case, he saw images of many of his enemies and a world consumed by fire.
- The Doctor says the minotaur is beautiful when he first sees it. The Tenth Doctor previously made this comment about the Lupine Wavelength Haemovariform and a Clockwork Droid. (DW: Tooth and Claw, The Girl in the Fireplace)
- The Doctor had also encountered a Minotaur in DW: The Mind Robber.
- The Doctor said to Amy at the end of The Eleventh Hour that he is definitely a "Mad Man with a box" and that understanding this could save her life, the exact words he uses to save her from the minotaur.
Home video releases
The episode will be released on DVD and Blu-ray shortly after the airing of episode 13.http://doctorwhotv.co.uk/series-6-dvd-releases-15635.htm
