Hornswoggling

The God Complex

I don’t think anyone saw that climax coming. What a wonderfully moving end to the episode. For those of us who have been campaigning for the return of the Nimon for decades, the reference to them at the end of The God Complex was a glorious and emotional vindication. Closure at last. And fortunately the rest of the episode was pretty good as well. In fact The God Complex was an exercise in wrong-footing the audience. At first it appeared to be another spooky tale in the mould of Mark Gatiss’s Night Terrors; a sort of cross between Sapphire and Steel and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense with a ridiculous monster thrown into the mix. Ultimately though, it not only formed the culmination of the long-running Amy Pond storyline, but also clearly alluded to the Doctor’s future development by further developing some of the themes recently explored in the mid-season finale A Good Man Goes to War.

First though – is anyone else still puzzled about the resequencing of The Curse of the Black Spot and Night Terrors? Ostensibly, Night Terrors was moved from the first half of the season because the production crew wanted to break up a run of claustrophobic episodes set in the dark, and so they put The Curse of the Black Spot in its place. An odd decision when you consider that the latter story was largely set below decks on a pirate ship sailing at night. It’s worth mentioning simply because in trying to ensure a varied run of episodes in the first half of the season the producers ended up putting Night Terrors first in a sequence of three stories that are superficially very similar. All three feature the Doctor and/or companions trapped in a dream-like or conceptually baffling environment, and in each case, in a roundabout fashion, love acts as the escape route.

Initially The God Complex looked like it could be a rather tedious, if atmospheric, story that trotted though some rather familiar childhood terrors such as clowns and ventriloquist dummies. For those of us who have never had a problem with either, it appeared at first that the story might not be for us. In fact The God Complex took up exactly that point and ingeniously made it part of the narrative. I loved the idea of the many rooms of a hotel holding a different object of fear, each specific to one person. In some cases, such as the PE teacher and the teenage girls, it is inexplicable as to why they should be scary other than to the individual concerned, on the other hand everyone can see why The Weeping Angels are frightening but only to some would they be the ultimate and specific object of dread. The fact that these various phenomena stayed corporeal even after the victim had died was very effective, and I particularly liked the row of ventriloquist dummies neatly sitting in a row next to the growing line of dead bodies.

Nick Hurran’s direction, for the second week in a row, made the most of the setting and his use of CCTV shots and rapid intercutting when characters became possessed was frequently unsettling. Some of the directorial flourishes didn’t make a lot of sense though. I’m still not sure why when people became possessed and said “Praise Him” we then saw the words on paper in a couple of different fonts. Perhaps this was specified in Toby Whithouse’s script, which while elegant in many ways still had some mysterious aspects. If I understood it correctly, the Nimon monster had once been worshipped as a God but when secularism emerged the newly rational population imprisoned the beast on a prison ship but, feeling sorry for it, they set up a system that would beam in people of faith to satisfy the creature’s insatiable appetite for worship. I’m not sure a) why the secular people felt the need to feed the beast with innocent people and b) how the prison ship selected the victims. Were they selected from all around the universe? Out of all the people of faith in the cosmos, how was the sample chosen?

However, criticising Doctor Who for not making sense is always a dubious line of argument. The important thing about The God Complex is that although it appears to be a standalone story, it’s actually all about the series arc. Amy may have been talked out of her faith for the Doctor a bit swiftly, but I’d like to think that her long-running story has finally reached closure in this episode. The relationship between Amy and the Doctor has always been unhealthy – basically a childish love for a mysterious deity – and the defeat of the story’s monster was really about putting that relationship on a normal footing. Sadly this also resulted in the relationship ending.

The final farewell was among the most moving scenes in the series history but as Rory and Amy are surely going to appear in the series finale it’s inevitably going to be undermined. I’d prefer the series arc to conclude with the Doctor’s story rather than any further twists involving Rory and Ms Pond. The fact that Rory keeps seeing exits and didn’t have a fear seem to indicate that something tragic might happen – let’s hope not as the couple started off rather tritely, but over subsequent episodes and especially The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex, their relationship has become one of the most successfully realised in the history of the programme.

Although the Doctor’s line “I wasn’t talking about myself” was a bit clunky, it’s clear that the Doctor’s not in a good place if he thinks he’s “drenched in the blood of the innocent” and that “for a such a creature death would be a gift.” Masquerading as a standalone story, The God Complex explored Amy’s devotion to the Doctor but also his effect on everyone with whom he comes into contact. The Doctor’s lethal impact on the lives of innocents has been a preoccupation of the series since Rose – it’ll be interesting to see if Moffat manages to resolve this in a way that frees Series Seven from the baggage of the past.

Incidentally, I’m writing this review at the Regenerations convention in Cardiff – everyone says hello!