Doctor Who XXXII.11: The God Complex
Toby Whithouse must be going through a hotel phase. First Being Human, now his Doctor Who is set in a faded hotel. The result wasn't bad at all, though the central problem was set up a bit glibly and I would not be surprised to find a lot of cuts once the DWM series companions reaches this episode. There's a pervasive sense that what we are seeing in this series of Doctor Who is a commentary on an ideal Doctor-Amy-Rory set of adventures which we never saw and which only exist in Steven Moffat's head: last series was about establishing relationships, or discovering relationships already established by proxy, and this is about their dismantling, a process which was going on (from the Doctor's point of view) before he ever crashed in Amy's garden, though he never knew it.
Still, we took a less convoluted path to a loss-of-faith denouement than The Curse of Fenric managed, and without any self-consciously clever cathartic swimming. The Doctor - as Uncle did literally in 'The Doctor's Wife' - has two left feet emotionally; he's selfish and knows it, and has clung on to Amy and Rory too long. Rory, after 'The Girl Who Waited' (to which this was an effective companion piece, though the connections were understated) has already left, referring to his adventures in the past tense.
Fannishly, the cross-reference to the Nimon was appreciated, and the visual references to Tron (which I've never seen beyond clips and much-reproduced images) and the Star Trek holodecks, and an intriguing reuse of the Teselecta effect - but then this is all part of the same dream, I suppose.
Those studying the attitude of Moffat-Who to gender roles might note that in the faith-destroying scene in room 7, the Doctor addresses Amy as 'Amy Williams'. Is this (as the placing of the studio footage in Doctor Who Confidential suggests) an acknowledgement on the Doctor's part that Amy has or needs to grow up? Or another part of his destruction of her faith in him?
Also posted at http://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/452066.html.
Still, we took a less convoluted path to a loss-of-faith denouement than The Curse of Fenric managed, and without any self-consciously clever cathartic swimming. The Doctor - as Uncle did literally in 'The Doctor's Wife' - has two left feet emotionally; he's selfish and knows it, and has clung on to Amy and Rory too long. Rory, after 'The Girl Who Waited' (to which this was an effective companion piece, though the connections were understated) has already left, referring to his adventures in the past tense.
Fannishly, the cross-reference to the Nimon was appreciated, and the visual references to Tron (which I've never seen beyond clips and much-reproduced images) and the Star Trek holodecks, and an intriguing reuse of the Teselecta effect - but then this is all part of the same dream, I suppose.
Those studying the attitude of Moffat-Who to gender roles might note that in the faith-destroying scene in room 7, the Doctor addresses Amy as 'Amy Williams'. Is this (as the placing of the studio footage in Doctor Who Confidential suggests) an acknowledgement on the Doctor's part that Amy has or needs to grow up? Or another part of his destruction of her faith in him?
Also posted at http://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/452066.html.