Give Me Corridors and Give Me Minotaurs

"The God Complex" is one of my favourite Eleventh Doctor Doctor Who episodes, mainly because I love stories where characters are trapped in houses or hotels. Watching it again last night, I found I still liked the mise en scene as well as the guest stars and the alien minotaur. I'm a little unsure what writer Toby Whithouse was trying to say, though, and the climax is a bit insubstantial.

There is something intriguing about the concept; a monster who uses hallucinations to inspire fear in order to provoke people to turn to their various sources of faith. He is then able to convert that faith into an adulation for himself that he can then feed on. There is something intriguing about this connexion between fear and faith, whether it be the political blogger (Dimitri Leonidas) and his faith in conspiracy theories or the Muslim nurse (Amara Karan) and her faith in God.

The implicit idea, though, that faith in itself is somehow inherently destructive doesn't quite make sense, particularly when Amy (Karen Gillen) is perfectly right in thinking her faith in the Doctor (Matt Smith) is justified. Though, is it really faith when he really does save her time and time again?

Wikipedia points out that the concept is very similar to one of the ideas in the Seventh Doctor story Curse of Fenric in which the Doctor much more convincingly breaks Ace's faith in him. However, I like how the concept works in "The God Complex" before its exact nature is revealed. When it's a group of isolated survivors and suddenly one of them starts spouting, "Praise him!" for no apparent reason; I like that sense of horror that anyone of any belief system can be radicalised to some arbitrary nonsense at any moment.

I also really like the scene where the Doctor first confronts the minotaur by setting up a room full of mirrors. It's a really cool effect; you're never sure where he is in relation to the monster but there's tension that the creature's sense of smell or something else will lead him to the Doctor at any moment. With the minotaur and the human imagination turned against itself, the story also strongly resembles the Second Doctor story The Mind Robber and more distantly I'm reminded of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. Of course, a minotaur in a labyrinth goes back to the original minotaur myth, a story I always liked when I was a kid. Maybe that's one of the reasons I grew up to like haunted house stories.

This episode featured one of Amy Pond's better outfits, a denim miniskirt with a bomber jacket.

Twitter Sonnet #1218

The poles beside the glass have blurred to grey.
A motion carried burned the static toast.
Removed from heated grills the bread's a clay.
A neutral word became a risky boast.
The sound of closing mouths adorn the ear.
The open teeth reveal a plane of plaque.
The ice became a frosty can of beer.
The yonder bag became a very sack.
Without direction cars became a wheel.
The flattened die was little like a coin.
The numbers squeezed along the ridge to deal.
The longest legs extend beyond the groin.
A quiet cloud of cotton worlds absorbs.
Within the plastic moon we stowed the orbs.

Getting the Doctor's Leadworth

I really can't say I'd mind ending up in the supposedly boring village featured in the 2010 Doctor Who episode "Amy's Choice". Filmed in a village called Skenfrith in Wales, plenty of beautiful location shots sell the place marvellously, albeit under the fictional name of Upper Leadworth. Watching it again, I was reminded how much the show's aesthetics were upgraded for the Eleventh Doctor era. The story, written by Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye, is a satisfying enough dream puzzle with an effective guest appearance from Toby Jones as the "Dream Lord".

Director Catherine Morshead provides a series of lovely shots of surrounding countryside before the reveal of pregnant Amy (Karen Gillan) who's suddenly the picture of traditional domesticity, stirring batter in a kitchen that looks like it came from a department store catalogue.

Sadly, she's married to Rory (Arthur Darvill) whose ponytail is mocked by everyone. Though I would say it's not the ponytail so much as that it's clearly part of a mullet.

He looks like a Saturday morning cartoon version of an 80s rock star. The Dream Lord taunts the three with the possibility that it's really the Doctor (Matt Smith) Amy prefers. Looking back, I find my feelings at the time that she ought to have chosen the Doctor over Rory were spot on. Rory was occasionally cute but, come on, it's the Doctor. Amy choosing to die for Rory may have been the first of the two expressing their love for each other by extreme, fatal means, I can't remember. But that's no way to build a relationship.

She'd have been better off with the Doctor but I can't share his disdain for Upper Leadworth. We should all be so lucky to settle down in that lovely little house with the flower beds and mossy stones. Even with the roving packs of elderly zombies with eye stalks in their mouths.

Not one of the show's more effective monsters but I can see them being pretty unnerving for small children watching.

Twitter Sonnet #1157

Collected leaves infuse the little sea.
In silhouettes success inscribes the page.
The painting shows a heavy cup of tea.
Beneath the ground the roots retrieved an age.
On paper, sheets of clouds convert the skies.
A ticking egg alerts the pan to cool.
A trusty oil cooks or say it fries.
The gen'ral dance completes the deathless duel.
An open book disclosed a glassy case.
In timeless march the figures cut the clay.
Resolving sight discerns a soil base.
The digging plant recused the rainy day.
In layers soot preserves the glossy street.
Correct adjustment lifts the office seat.

Cinco de Cyborg

I wanted an appropriate Doctor Who episode to watch for Cinco de Mayo but I guess there really isn't one. I suppose the best would be The Aztecs from the First Doctor era but I'd already rewatched that one kind of recently. So I looked up "Mexico" in the TARDIS wiki and was reminded the Eleventh Doctor had been trying to go to Mexico in the 2012 episode "A Town Called Mercy". So I watched that. It is kind of Cinco de Mayo-ish, it's set in 1870, less than a decade after the battle Cinco de Mayo commemorates. Written by Toby Whithouse, it's a decent Western homage episode.

It's set in the U.S. but filmed in Spain like several of the greatest Westerns ever made. With a presumably modest budget the show manages to get something of a Spaghetti Western feel using a standing backlot. It might have been much more effective as a Twelve Doctor story as Matt Smith in his irrepressible pluckiness never conveys the weight of conflicted conscience like Capaldi. Unexpectedly confronted with essentially an intergalactic Josef Mengele, we see the Doctor uncharacteristicly ready to blow someone's head off with a revolver.

He's stopped, of course, by Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), who seems absolutely sure he shouldn't execute this guy. I think it would've been nice if she'd come off as more conflicted but it is nice to see her again.

This is from her big shoulder pads period, though. I don't quite understand this. Was it to make her look more mature? There had to be a better way.

The episode also features Gillan's costar from Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Ben Browder. Well, he had a cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. There as here his presence is likely a nod to the great and most underrated Science Fiction series of the 21st century, Farscape. That show will exert its influence for a long, long time to come.

Browder is good as the sheriff of a little Western town and hearing him deliver dialogue about the town's name being Mercy reflecting their philosophy of acceptance feels very classic Western. It's too bad he's not in the episode for very long. Well, it's too bad there hasn't been a Farscape revival.

The end feels like it could've used more time to develop properly--the Doctor's final decision on the moral question seems kind of odd, as does how he decides to leave things with the cyborg. I was so happy the Twelfth Doctor's second season was primarily two part episodes, I still hold out some hope they'll switch back to a serialised format on a permanent basis. This show needs those wide open spaces.