| Chapter The 211th, where you've not gotta have faith, you've not gotta have faith, faith, faith-uh... |
Plot:
The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in what appears to be an empty 1980s hotel, but the walls are moving - separating them from the TARDIS - and each bedroom is filled with a different horror that seems to have been specifically tailored for a particular person. They meet with others that have been brought there against their will: Rita, Howie, and Joe are from Earth, Gibbis is from Tivoli, a planet of mole-like people who pathologically yearn to be subjugated by invading forces. Joe is already possessed by some process that makes him worship a Minotaur creature, also resident. The Doctor sees that the place is designed to evoke fear, so tells everyone to hold on to their deep rooted certainties to keep the fear at bay. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of the right tactic, as it is the faith in a higher power invoked by the fear that makes people susceptible. Joe trusts in luck, Howie believes in conspiracy theories, Rita has her Muslim faith; and, one by one, they are taken over and killed, the Minotaur devouring their life force. When Amy starts to come under the influence too, because of her faith in the Doctor, the Doctor has to break her faith in him, Curse of Fenric-stylee, and that interruption in its food supply let's the Minotaur finally die. The hotel disappears to reveal a holodeck-like area where the TARDIS is parked. The creature is one of a race of beings that descend on planets to be worshipped as gods, and was imprisoned by ex-worshipers that turned against him. The rest, the kidnapping and scaring of people to keep him fed, was an automatic process he could not stop. The Doctor drops Gibbis home, then, concerned about Amy and Rory's safety, leaves them on Earth in a nice new flat, and goes off to face his fate at Lake Silencio.
Context:
As a festive thing, I am watching an episode of the BBC adaptation of John Masefield's The Box of Delights weekly with the whole family (Better Half, boys of 15 and 12, girl of 9) on Sundays, 37 years on to the day from when they were first shown in 1984. The first episode on 21st November (it was a Thursday in 1984), with the final episode planned for Christmas Eve 2021. I watch this serial in the run up to Christmas periodically as a tradition, but - given that the youngest child's age is almost into double figures - this might be the last time we can do it as a family (I didn't expect the eldest to be up for it this time, but he surprised me). With one weekly telly of yore watch ongoing, I didn't want to chance my arm suggesting another. As such, I watched The God Complex on my own later on that Sunday evening after watching the latest episode of Flux earlier, from the Blu-ray disc as part of the series 6 Box set.
First Time Round:
I always find it difficult to remember the details of my first watch of stories of this vintage. The series had been running long enough to become part of the furniture, rather than shiny and new, by Matt Smith's second year, and there was enough going on in my life to distract me. In general, I was still watching with the Better Half on the day of broadcast, time-shifted after putting our then two young children to bed. It would be another year or two before the youngsters were regularly watching new Doctor Who. The only thing of note I can recall was that long before it was shown, a dedicated trailer for the story was available online, before even a glimpse was revealed of the other episodes in this subsection of the series (Matt Smith's second run was split into two with a mid-series gap of a few weeks in the middle). At first, this looked like a big vote of confidence in the story: it must be one of which the producers were very proud if they were trailing it months ahead of broadcast and ahead of the three episodes set to air before. It turned out, though, that the trailer had just been prepared for Comic-Con as the writer Toby Whithouse had been on a panel to talk about it there.
Reaction:
Despite it not necessarily being thought worthy of being trailed ahead of every other story in series 6 part 2, and it just being a Comic-con related coincidence, I still think this is one of the best of the bunch (not just of the second half, but of all the stories of 2011). Some of those other stories had dabbled in overblown space opera, or got too deep into the intricacies of the human condition, and most had got tangled up in the increasingly convoluted series arc plots. The God Complex just presents a high-concept horror scenario, efficiently and cleanly. It also touches on the overall arc, but just with a well-integrated and significant character moment between Amy and the Doctor at the end. Sometimes less is more, and if The God Complex is simple compared to the stories around it, it is elegantly so. First up, the concept is a strong one, an abandoned hotel with bespoke fears in every room that's really a prison with in-built feeding system for a fake god. This allows for a wide diversity of different tableaux that could appear in each room, some of which get almost Fellini-esque in their gleeful visuals. It also allows for a decent "the Doctor's got it wrong" reversal, when the Doctor realises that it is not fear that the Minotaur at the centre of this labyrinth feeds on, but faith, and that all his advice up to now has been the opposite of what was required. The transformation of each person as their faith gets hijacked is nicely chilling, with the possessed getting a catchphrase "Praise him" as is a tradition in Doctor Who stories (like "Burn with Me" in 42, or "Contact Has Been Made" in classic Who story The Invisible Enemy); as people succumb one by one, obviously and inevitably the ante is upped as one of the regular cast (Amy in this instance) says "Praise Him" towards the end of the story.
The production design to encapsulate this concept is very strong throughout. There's clearly something about the idea of abandoned hotel corridors and rooms, particularly ones with chintzy 1980s decor, that is unsettling. If I remember right, some idea of a story set in an empty hotel was one that had been discussed from around the relaunch of the series in 2005 but never made it to screen before this point. As well as the retro furnishing, there's all the different fears to visualise, and they are all done very well, with the roomful of laughing ventriloquists' dummies being a highlight for me. The design and execution of the Minotaur is impeccable too: this is an aged and weary beast, and that really come across. Its dialogue being whispered groans that only the Doctor can understand and translate is a good choice too. It's a teensy bit clumsy at the end though, when the Doctor translates the creature's dying words about an aged creature drifting through space to whom death would come as a release, and we realise that the creature is talking about the Doctor when the Time Lord slavishly repeats "I wasn't talking about myself". The line just needs to be forced out of him a bit more - he repeats the other stuff, the creature says something else, the Doctor pauses with a sad look, Amy asks what it said and maybe asks again, and finally he tells her. That would work better. It's a minor flaw, though.
Another quibble is with the character of Gibbis, and again it's a minor one. The Tivoli are an interesting race, a planet of space Uriah Heaps, outwardly humble but inwardly calculating. The make-up job is good, and David Walliams (a lifelong Doctor Who fan) is having fun playing him as the cowardly comic relief. It's just that the script then has to hammer the point home of his cowardice being a passive aggressive technique to allow his survival, in a way that Dickens never had to for Uriah. It was already shown, it didn't need to be told too. As well as Walliams, the cast - guest and regular - are on top form, and their talents marshalled well by director Nick Hurran. Matt Smith has some great moments, not least the emotional (temporary) farewell with Karen Gillan as Amy at the end, but also in smaller moments - near the beginning, there's a scene where he's doing the eccentric act (the Doctor I mean, not Matt Smith) and turns in an instant to thoughtful and worried when nobody else can see. Arthur Darvill as Rory does dry humour very well, but also gets a nice moment where he mentions that Howie had previously overcome a stammer, an everyday victory far away from "saving the universe" but nonetheless important. It's nice too that Rory, normally the weak link who's always getting killed, is the one who's immune to the effects of the Minotaur and his prison, and for a similar reason - he believes in simple kindness as a nurse, and doesn't get into anything more high falutin'. It's a bit odd when the Doctor says that this is why the Minotaur prison "kept showing [Rory] a way out", as that only happened once and Rory didn't get to tell anyone about it - I'm assuming this means some moments ended up on the cutting room floor for time.
Best of the guest cast is as Amara Karan as Rita; the character is presented immediately as unflappable and resourceful, with the Doctor joking that she's companion material, so the savvy in the audience know her life expectancy is limited. She has some great moments both serious and sparky / funny ("You're a Muslim." "Don't be frightened."). When her inevitable death comes it's a magnificent scene: she bravely draws danger away from the rest of the party, then begs the Doctor not to watch her fate on the close circuit TV and instead remember her as she was before her dignity was taken away. She faces her final moments "at peace", and then Matt Smith gets to do righteous rage once she's gone (which he does very well too). The story has some nice little nods for fans (linking the Minotaur back to the titular foes in The Horns of Nimon for example) and some links into the overall story of the eleventh Doctor - we see Caitlin Blackwood as little Amelia again, the Doctor looks into his room and sees his greatest fear but the audience is not privy to it, and won't find out what he saw until his swan song story. As well as this, there's great music and good effects work; it's a gem.
Connectivity:
The God Complex is the third story in a row (following The Myth Makers and The Lazarus Experiment) with a three word title starting with the definitive article and themes taken from writings from antiquity (here it is the legend of the Minotaur in the labyrinth).
Deeper Thoughts:
Nick Fletcher MP's speech; a restrained reaction. Though it doesn't go as far as to say faith is bad exactly, The God Complex does posit that it is dangerous and leaves one open to exploitation. This made me muse on my own faith or lack thereof; I'm probably closest aligned to Rory in this narrative: I have no particular religion or superstition. I suppose I could be seen to be more like Amy in one regard, though, in that I do have a disproportionate amount of admiration for the positive power of the Doctor. Really, of course, I mean Doctor Who the series more than the character. It's a large set of generally well written and well intentioned drama segments, often with a moral position to be accepted or challenged, and it all comes together to form an enriching cultural artefact - no, in fact, more than that, a cultural phenomenon. I truly believe that it makes the lives of those that engage with it just a little bit better; it certainly has for me. Is this faith, though? It's not exactly going to be a faith that's tested too strenuously. Even if one doesn't like it, the worst that one could say about Doctor Who is that it is a bit silly but harmless. Nobody could seriously think that what happens in a family TV show about a benevolent time-travelling alien could possibly have a negative impact on the world. Could they? This would, of course, mean that I would struggle to stretch the topic to make up a few paragraphs of Deeper Thoughts, and would have to think of something else to talk about (Maybe a treatise on why 80s decor is inherently such a good a fit for a horror story? "The long shadow of the Overlook Hotel"? Hmm... needs work.) Praise be, then, when on Thursday 25th November 2021, Nick Fletcher, a Conservative MP in the UK, made a speech in a Westminster Hall debate and suddenly gave me all the material I would need.
 |
| A positive role model |
It was a speech that - if one is charitable, which I don't see why I should be, but I'll try - was based on a dubious premise. If one isn't inclined to be charitable, one might describe it as batshit crazy. Fletcher's vague thrust was that the dramatic arts (his focus being TV and film) have reduced the number of positive male role models, and - deprived of these - young men have increasingly turned to crime. I know this is demonstrably bobbins even in summary, but I still think it is worth going through the relevant section of his words - words, don't forget that were planned and written in advance, not said off the cuff by someone's crazy uncle in the snug of some pub after a boozy Sunday afternoon - line by line. "There seems to be a call," said he, the Member of Parliament for Don Valley, "From a tiny but very vocal minority that every male character, or good role model, must have a female replacement". Maybe this minority is so tiny that they don't show up in a scan, because: where are they? There's no organisation, no pressure group, not even a discussion forum I've ever seen that has been actively calling for any male character to be recast or rewritten as a woman, let alone all of them. One of the examples he gave was of course the Doctor in Doctor Who, and that's a world I know a great deal about. In all the years since Tom Baker first joked about his replacement potentially being a she - decades in which I have been studiously aware of the minutiae of every aspect of the programme and its fandom - I have never seen any person of any sex or gender orientation ever demand that the Doctor becomes a woman. They might have thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to try, or they might have considered that they'd be pleased if it ever happened, but that's not the same thing. Once it happened, though, I did see a small but vocal minority of fans that whinged on about wanting to turn things back the way they were, but the less said about them the better.
 |
| Another positive role model |
Fletcher continues: "One only needs to look at the discussions surrounding who will pay the next James Bond". Which discussions are these? If one googles "Who will play the next James Bond?" the first hit, as anyone who had been following the discourse over recent years would probably have guessed, is about Idris Elba. The next ten hits are lists of the usual suspects. Apart from Elba, there's Henry Cavill, Tom Hardy, Regé-Jean Page, etc. etc. The odd site's article pops a woman onto the shortlist to spice things up a bit, but a concerted campaign it is not. The simple but effective rejoinder to Fletcher would be that the discussions surrounding who will play the next James Bond are silly-season puffery, of no import whatsoever, and maybe shouldn't be a source for a politician's speech even if they said what the politician intimated they said, which they don't. There's more: "And it's not just James Bond, in recent years we have seen Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Luke Skywalker, The Equaliser, all replaced by women." The sheer desperation of not being able to list four roles without having to scrape the barrel by including The Equalizer is quite something (many people online hadn't even realised that this female-led version existed, so Fletcher might have succeeded in getting it some new viewers). It's an odd mix of titles. The Paul Feig Ghostbusters is five years old now, and famously didn't make sufficient money back to be considered a success. The franchise lurched back to the original cast in a film that was new and in cinemas at the same moment Fletcher was making his speech. So, those particular role models - if they ever were such a thing - are restored to masculinity. The Equaliser is a recast in the relatively low profile series, but in the big Hollywood film version before that (going back a bit, but only two years before the female Ghostbusters flick) it was still a man in the title role.
 |
| Fletcher giving the speech, 25th November 2021 |
Luke Skywalker didn't get recast, so I'm assuming that Fletcher thinks he's been replaced by Rey. But they're different characters, and they both appear in the Star Wars films together, so how exactly has been Luke been replaced? Is Fletcher upset that Luke isn't the young swashbuckling hero anymore? Putting aside that I'd ideally like my politicians' statements to be several cuts above the level of chatter you get in an online nerd boy forum, the only way for Luke to still be the young hero is if he was played by someone who is not Mark Hamill, a recasting choice that would likely be the only thing less popular in those nerd boy forums than The Last Jedi was. Fletcher continues: "Men are left with The Krays and Tommy Shelby". Where to start? The Krays were real people not characters, why have we suddenly switched? Is there a fictionalised TV series or film about the Krays on at the moment? Legend was 2015, but I suppose that's only a year before the Ghostbusters were last played by women, so maybe he was referring to that. Peaky Blinders hasn't been on TV for over two years either, though it is coming back in 2022. The main thing, though, is that these aren't the only two examples of TV or films around that feature male characters. What about Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Doctor Strange, Sherlock Holmes, Endeavour Morse, Withnail, Marwood? Completely random selection off the top of my head, but none of them has been recast as a woman in a big film or TV series - they are still around as positive role models (it might just be me that sees Withnail that way, but even so I'd pay to see a reboot with two female leads - that could be fantastic).
 |
| Some other dummies |
Maybe these examples aren't current enough for Fletcher. So, what about the top ten films in the UK at the time Fletcher made the speech? First off, there's the slight embarrassment for him of a James Bond and a Ghostbusters film in there, with the roles being incontrovertibly played by men. There are then a couple of ensemble pieces (The Eternals, The Addams Family 2) which include men in positive lead roles as part of the ensemble. Of the remaining six, only one has a female protagonist (Spencer), and the remaining five (Dune, King Richard, The Boss Baby 2, Venom: Let there Be Carnage, and Ron's Gone Wrong) all have male protagonists and none of them are crime lords. And even if they were, that would not cause a single person watching to turn to crime. Criminals are not made by TV or film. It's seductively easy for politicians to suggest that there is some causal link, because the things that are much more likely to have an impact - poverty, educational under-investment, cuts to council facilities for young people, reduction in police, reduction in health funding including mental health services, etc. etc - are all things for which the government, run by the party of which Nick Fletcher is a part, are responsible. If Fletcher wants positive male role models, he should maybe try to become one, and fight to get that investment flowing again to help the nation's male youth. If he doesn't want to do that, maybe it's time a woman took over his role?
In Summary:
I like it a lot, and as it has some strong roles for women in there it would probably annoy Nick Fletcher MP, and that makes me like it even more.
