Doctor Who Review: The God Complex

Classic horror tropes galore this week, and a surprise too.

Cast and Crew

Matt Smith as The Doctor
Karen Gillan as Amy Pond
Arthur Darvill as Rory
Sarah Quintrell as Lucy Hayward
Amara Karan as Rita
Dimitri Leonidas as Howie Spragg
Daniel Pirrie as Joe Buchanan
David Walliams as Gibbis
Dafydd Emyr as P.E. Teacher
Spencer Wilding as The Creature
Rashid Karapiet as Rita’s Father
Caitlin Blackwood as Amelia Pond
Roger Ennals as Gorilla

Written by Toby Whithouse

Produced by Marcus Wilson

Directed by Nick Hurran

Originally shown on the 17th of September 2011

Premise

The TARDIS crew arrive in a strange hotel where the layout is fluid and the rooms are full of fears and people get eaten one by one. It’s not a good holiday spot.

High Points

  • The captions under the photographs.
  • Rita’s last conversation with the Doctor.

Low Points

  • I couldn’t get over it being David Walliams under all that makeup. The problem with casting someone really well-known is if viewers fail to see them as their character, and this happened to me.

Scores

Originality: Ah, horror tropes. Quite a lot of them here. Three out of six.

Effects: Quite minimal, generally good, except for the minotaur thing which looked like a man in a suit from an early 80s episode. Four out of six.

Story: Not boring as such, but not particularly exciting either. I’m not sure I entirely followed it all the way through, and the end feels like I missed part of the process which got us to that point. Four out of six.

Acting: A much bigger cast than last episode brings much more opportunity for people to mess it up. Fortunately they didn’t. Five out of six.

Emotional Response: Not really. Three out of six.

Production: This was the good bit. The sets were wonderfully put together, and some great lighting and camerawork and use of CCTV camera viewpoints. Five out of six.

Overall: I felt it fell a bit flat after last week. Four out of six.

In total, The God Complex receives forty out of forty-two.

19 replies on “Doctor Who Review: The God Complex”

  1. First: 3+4+4+5+3+5+4=28

    Second: The Doctor’s room is number 11? Perfect.

    Third: One of the things I love about this show is unpredictability. I’m usually pretty good about predicting where serialized stories are going. Last week, I was half right: they wouldn’t spend that much time on the Amy/Rory relationship unless they were planning something. I’m just happy I got their plan completely wrong.

    • Fourth: the David Walliams thing didn’t bother me at all, given that I had no idea who he was. Checking out his IMDB page, the only other work I’ve seen him is was “Shaun of the Dead,” and I didn’t recognize him.

      • I get the feeling David Walliams is one of those actors who is well known in their home country, and nowhere else. I didn’t recognize him from anything else either.

          • I assumed it was under the caveat that it was someone well-known either as themselves, or for a specific role or type of roles.

            I almost have that problem with Hugo Weaving, where every character he plays takes on elements of Elrond and Agent Smith.

          • Who reviewed the Dumbledore episode? I don’t remember if his fame was a problem or not.
            I loved that episode, btw. :)

  3. I loved the minotaur suit – it was considerably better than the original Nimon upon which this was based – 1979, but close enough to a man in a suit from an early 80s episode!

  4. That was a fun episode. I did really enjoy it, but it left me wondering who’s going to kidnap Amy and Rory for the series finale.

  5. Just a nitpick. I make the total score twenty-eight out of forty-two rather than the stated forty. Unless we’re supposed to be using the new arithmetic that I never really grokked.

Comments are closed.