Theory:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The God Complex

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This page is for discussing the ways in which The God Complex doesn't fit well with other DWU narratives. You can also talk about the plot holes that render its own, internal narrative confusing.

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• When the Doctor say "I wasn't talking about myself" is he telling the ponds that he was talking about the minotaur or was the minotaur telling the doctor about himself?

As I understand it, we were supposed to think the minotaur was talking about itself (being old, expecting death and whatnot). The Doctor translates the minotaur simultaneously. Then the minotaur says "I wasn't talking about myself", and the Doctor translates that.

In more detail: The minotaur talks about an ancient creature drenched in blood going through space in a maze and on the brink of its death - we, and the Doctor, assume it's describing itself, though that could just as well describe the Doctor in the TARDIS, but this doesn't occur to the Doctor or us yet. The minotaur says: for such a creature, death would be a gift. Up until now everything the Doctor said was a translation of the minotaur, not his own words (hence the pauses and stuttering. Happens to me too when I translate on the spot). Then the Doctor, thinking the minotaur was talking about itself, says "then accept it (the gift of death), and sleep well". The minotaur then clarifies that it was talking about the Doctor, and the Doctor translates that clarification - again, with a stutter that could be attributed to the ad-hoc translation. (And/or to the emotional baggage that comes with that statement).

• Why does the TARDIS not translate the words of the minotaur?

Maybe it doesn't need to, because the Doctor seems to understand exactly what the Minotaur is saying (like how the TARDIS doesn't translate Gallifreyan in A Good Man Goes to War). The other possibility is the Minotaur's growls are not speech or words, but it is actually communicating telepathically with the Doctor which is why he seems to understand everything it is saying.

:::It's also possible that if translation were required, it was translated, but not to the viewer, possibly in the same way the bubbling of the Hath could be understood despite no indication to the viewer.

Or maybe the TARDIS can't translate its language because it's so ancient, but the Doctor can because he speaks so many languages. (In which case the minotaur must understand a little English because it understands what the Doctor says to it)

• Even though the Weeping Angels in this episode are fake, wouldn't they still be a threat, as "whatever has the image of an angel becomes an angel itself"?

That's not meant to be taken literally, not everything that looks like an angel becomes one, they're only referring to films or pictures of an angel, after all why would making a statue of something make it come to life?

They weren't a threat to anyone but Gibbis, as they were his nightmare.

I'd say this is probably right, and the control over the rooms supersedes the image rules. I know the guy above this doesn't agree, but there's no reason to actually think he's right or wrong either way and I'd be inclined to agree it would happen under normal circumstances, so long as it was actually based on an Angel, taking shape, and hence image, as opposed to a religious angel or something.

They weren't a threat to anyone, _especially_ not Gibbis. If the rooms killed people instead of just scaring them, the minotaur wouldn't be able to eat their faith.

The images may also need a real angel to be animated.

• What happened to the dead individuals (Rita, Joe etc) once the unreal world was stripped away leaving the survivors and the TARDIS. Also the Minotaur fed on faith not flesh so why wasn't the 'hotel' full of bodies in various cycles of decay?

If the prison was designed to feed the beast then you can assume a large number of people would have had to have been transported on board, so I'm guessing it has some kind of cleaning system/protocol in place to remove the bodies after a period of time, or maybe after the current iteration/group of people have been killed.

:It may have had, although we know the prison was a bit broken and 'got stuck on the same setting' and didn't clear the previous fears away. So it seems a bit strange the part clearing up dead bodies is still working but it may be a separate part of the system that's working fine. Of course this doesn't really explain why Rita etc seemed to disappear suddenly (well sometime between when we last saw them and the minotaur dying). And if the body cleaning system exists and is working, it's not clear when bodies are normally are cleaned up since they didn't seem to get cleaned up immediately yet Lisa Hayward's body was never seen (and we know the system must have been broken since then since she saw the clown). Perhaps the designers thought people seeing their friends dead bodies helps to make them more susceptible to going back to their fears but seeing other dead bodies doesn't? It does seem the bodies are hard to find so perhaps the Doctor just never found them although it also seems likely the body should have been near the note. Of course the most likely explanation is the producers just didn't think about that so there's no real explanation. (Having a lot of bodies lying around wouldn't work and having the bodies of Rita etc would have ruined the poignancy of the moment with the Minotaur.)

I think the Doctor lied when he said it got stuck on the same setting etc. He sounded like he's making that up on the spot. Maybe he just wants to hide his faith and avoid the question, seeing as what he saw in room #11 WAS meant for him and DID represent a fear of his. As for the bodies, you could just as well ask how they ran so far in a ship not that big. Maybe the bodies went where the long corridors went.

• Who lined up the ventriloquist dummies as mourners for the dead, and why would they have bothered to?

Weren't the dummies already in the dining room when Joe was alive? If so, nobody brought them there. The question is, why did they bring Joe's corpse, and the others, back to a room full of creepy ventriloquist dummies?

Maybe because it was right next to the kitchen, and that's where the tea was? As silly as that sounds, it's in keeping with Rita's character. And then Howie's body and hers were brought there out of respect for her choice, or just because everyone was too busy thinking about other things to re-think it, or something.

Actually, that's not the only question. If the dummies were in the dining room in the first place, how did they get there? Was that Joe's room, even though everyone else got a guest room? Or did Joe actually carry all of the dolls from his room to the dining room so he could sit around and giggle with them while waiting to praise the minotaur?

I got the impression that the dining room WAS Joe's room. I know it seems a bit out of place, but if the idea was to have Joe's room be a real fear of dummies, then filling an entire dining theatre full of them was a pretty terrifying idea. One dummy in a room isn't that scary, but walking into what seems like a dinner party... and all the dummies turn around to face you? Run for the hills. As for who lined them up, I think it was just the Doctor, Amy, etc moving them from the chairs. Seems pretty logical to me that they would just put them in some kind of line against the wall. And the bodies would, again, just be lined up near the wall. "Out of the way", I guess.

It's true that nobody says "your room" has to be a guest room, and it would make sense to use all the rooms of the hotel, since they'd already been created anyway.

• The order of people seeing their rooms was Joe, Howie, Rita and Gibbs and then Amy (omitting Eleven). And the order of people being possessed was Joe, Howie, Rita and then Amy. So we can presume you are possessed in order of when you saw your room. So why wasn't Gibbs possessed over his faith of being conquered?

Never presume. It's not in order of seeing your room. It was whomever thought about their faith the strongest. Joe was obviously first, then Howie and Rita. Gibbs however, when he faced his fear, didn't seem to think about his faith of surrendering. He hid instead of accepting the Weeping Angels. He forgot his faith, so there was no supply of food for the Minotaur, so it didn't come for him. And then Amy was the next to think strongly on her faith.

In fact, you could see this as the Doctor's fault (and he probably does). He explicitly told everyone to think of their faith to avoid being afraid, and this worked better on Amy than on Gibbis (for obvious reasons), so she was possessed before him.

Gibbis also believed that he could survive by sacrificing the others in his place. This may have kept him more sane than the others, who knew that they would most likely be the next victim.

• It appears that the Ponds totally forgot about the Doctor's death in this episode.

Amy's greatest fear is being without The Doctor. The room could have shown a dead Doctor, but being that little girl waiting, left behind, forgotten about is a much better way of showing that fear.

I mean, he was surely leaving them for good - why haven't they told him? Of course he knows by the moment, but they do not know that he knows!

Amy had already revealed to the Doctor about his forthcoming death accidentally in an earlier episode, and he had also found out the details about it from the Tesselecta.

For the same reason they made the pact with River not to tell him in the first episode. Knowing about your future can cause a grandfather paradox and that could be worse than death - that could erase the person or even harm space and time. Remember Silence in the Library? River tells him that the rule against spoilers is his own. Timelord knows best.

• What was inside the Doctor's room?

It is possible that when the Doctor says, "Who else?" He is talking to his next regeneration. In "The End of Time Part 2", the episode in which Ten regenerates in Eleven, Ten is heard saying, "I don't want to go." Therefore, it is simply a hop, skip, and a jump to assume that the Doctor doesn't like regenerating because he technically is dying and losing another part of himself. If the Doctor doesn't like regenerating, maybe it is his deepest fear because of the pain and damage to himself and the TARDIS it causes.

The episode TV: The Time of the Doctor reveals what was in the Doctor's room.

• It may be trivial, but in TV: The Eleventh Hour, the Doctor says he doesn't like apples. But he eats an apple in this episode.

He's obviously developed a liking (or at least a tolerance) for apples since then.