|
I felt this episode was dragged down by its editing/directing. There was some dumb stuff such as the shots of people's faces laughing before they die that were very poorly done
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2015 21:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 07:40 |
|
|
I should warn/turn everyone on to the short story The Enigma of Amigara Fault, since I end up using it heavily as a point of comparison in the review proper Here's a link, it's an incredibly short and affecting read (you'll be done with it in less that ten minutes, it's a very short comic), also it's japanese so you need to read it right-to-left, top-to-bottom if you've never read a translated-from-japanese comic before Also: it's real good
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2015 22:05
|
|
|
Monagle posted:I felt this episode was dragged down by its editing/directing. Yeah the whole super fast cuts of crying/laughing faces came off a little silly, but there's so much to like in this episode I don't see it as a big deal.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2015 22:27
|
|
|
I never would have drawn a "this hole was made for me!"/"this is my room" parallel, but I guess it fits.Monagle posted:I felt this episode was dragged down by its editing/directing. Blasmeister posted:Yeah the whole super fast cuts of crying/laughing faces came off a little silly, but there's so much to like in this episode I don't see it as a big deal. philistines
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2015 23:01
|
|
|
The Enigma of Amigara Fault is great. I hope it's a better analogy than wrestling. Also, The God Complex is great and now I'm pretty certain this is a six season elaborate troll.
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2015 23:26
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:I should warn/turn everyone on to the short story The Enigma of Amigara Fault, since I end up using it heavily as a point of comparison in the review proper Such a great comic. There was an episode of Steven Universe recently that almost certainly made reference to it, so it's weird for me to see it coming up again so soon!  
thexerox123 fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Apr 25, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2015 23:41
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:also it's japanese so you need to read it right-to-left, top-to-bottom if you've never read a translated-from-japanese comic before Like there is a single person on this entire forum who needs to be told that. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 25, 2015 23:45
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:I should warn/turn everyone on to the short story The Enigma of Amigara Fault, since I end up using it heavily as a point of comparison in the review proper gaaahhh gently caress youuuu that will haunt me til I die
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 02:17
|
|
|
thexerox123 posted:Such a great comic. IT'S MAAAH HOOOOLE! 
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 04:36
|
|
|
Doctor Who "The God Complex" Series 6, Episode 11 "The God Complex" comes across all the worse because it directly follows "The Girl Who Waited", an episode that knew exactly what it wanted to be, its thematic and tonal aims, at all times. In contrast, "The God Complex" is one long series of mistakes, narrative indulgences, and random asides until the near-perfect climax, and the myriad failures it makes up until then come across as an episode that was built entirely around that specific climax. I really wanted to like this episode. I really, really wanted to like this episode. I love horror stories in general, horror stories dealing with hotels (1408, The Shining), horror stories where the true enemy is psychological, mundane human needs and desires. This episode is my episode, it was made for me- Enigma of the Amigara Fault, a short story this episode apes in generalized themes and plot progression (the main characters' obsessions with the explicit, personalized artifact of their demise ends up destroying them) -and yet I've ended up extremely disliking most aspects of "The God Complex". Chief among my issues is how slipshod and rough so many different aspects of this episode are. I'm going to end up comparing this episode heavily to Enigma, since it's my overall favorite Junji Ito story that he's written, and to me so texturally similar in its aims to "The God Complex" (if more overtly horrifying) that the analogies end up writing themselves. I guess I should give a vague summation of the plot of Enigma for those that haven't read it. In the story, an earthquake reveals a previously-buried section of the titular Amigara Fault, which has a bunch of human-shaped holes in it. The two main characters, a late-teenaged man and woman, are two victims of a psychological compulsion that affects people who view the fault -namely, a need to find their "own" hole, the hole that was "made for them", and then enter it, which twists their bodies horribly until the final page of the comic, which reveals the other "side" of the Amigara Fault, where the now horrifically deformed "humans" come out the other side. Now, obviously, there are certain stylistic choices Enigma makes that "The God Complex" simply couldn't- the body dimorphism would be impossible to portray on such a family-focused show as Doctor Who, but the fundamental narrative, and where the true horror of the comic lies, is in its being a heady examination of the nature of obsession, a psychological bent to its horror and how people can be compelled to do what they're terrified of doing, what they know is bad and can even kill them, simply because it's there. The story of Enigma is not made on the final shot of the twisted and broken "humans", bodies stretched and broken, crawling slowly towards the horrified onlookers. It's made on the preceding narrative, where it illustrates the gnawing, horrified reactions the two main characters have, when their thoughts become dominated by the holes, which they develop a need to find and enter. "The God Complex" attempts this same trick, attempts to be a story about a group of individuals subjected to that same fear- there's even a personalized element much like how Enigma is set up around finding "your hole", where "God" is about characters finding their "room", and then succumbing to that room's attendant fear. It's just that the execution is so poorly done and roughshod that on the screen the fundamental horror comes across as laughable. Part of what makes Amigara Fault so effective is that the fear is so based in the characters' own mentality and internal reactions to the terror of the holes, which is never overtly shown. The imagination of the reader rushes to fill the void that the flat visual of a hole in the side of a mountain merely implies, and the effects of the mental dominance the holes inflict on their victims is all that's shown. This works to its favor because so much of what the mind thinks is happening is worse than whatever the eye sees, and leaving it so vague and ambiguous allows for a scarier, more effective narrative. In contrast, "God Complex" states and overstates the horrors it's presenting, which come across as both cheap and ineffective; there's a memorable shot of a man in a clear gorilla suit which is somehow meant to be the intro to the concepts "The God Complex" is presenting, but it's so cheap and so clearly just a dude in a gorilla suit it ends up making the whole experience laughable over affecting. There's an argument to be made that, well, that's the point; one person's terror is another person's comedy, and the central theme of "God Complex" revolves around the participants finding their own individual rooms. If that's true, though (and, to be fair, it absolutely is), then the flip side of that means revealing other people's terrors by and large is definitionally laughable, and the episode fundamentally fails by showing them in the first place. It should've remained vague and unexplained (having only the point of view characters- Amy and Rory -reveal their room(s) and lack of room, respectively) because then the ambiguity makes the horror land better in general. But then you get into specifics and the two side character's "greatest fears" are the hackiest, flattest bullshit ever- oh, you're saying the nebbish nerd's greatest fear is public humiliation? Wow, that's some real inciting terror, there, "God Complex"! And that moment where the overall actually quite-well-developed Rita (Amara Karan) walks in on her stereotypically Indian father berating her for getting a B was so cliched and stereotypical it bordered on racist. The absolute last thing it was, was scary, and it's executional failures like this that kills any horror the episode attempts to build. Showing what each person feared was a loving mistake, where it overimpressed the narrative and revealed it for as flat and as obvious as it was. It's also not helped by certain editing tricks the episode employs. The irony is is that the cinematography is uncharacteristically fantastic and is probably the single thing most responsible for setting the episode's mood- the dutch angles, the fact that every shot of someone's face is zoomed a little too far in, the queasy, took-quick-by-half cuts...structurally, this episode impresses the horror of the episode far better then anything actually happening on the screen. The cinematography is so strong that it's able to set the mood for the terror to happen, and is a large reason that it's as effective as it is; so it's more the shame that the content, the stuff that's being shot and displayed on screen whether that comes from the director, writer, editor, or all three is so largely rubbish. The quick cuts are effective, yes, but when it's in service of watching people laughing then crying it comes across as hacky garbage, a cinematic convenience meant to impress "horrot" that does anything but. This is kind of the resounding refrain of the episode- the structure and framing is good, but the content sucks. The sets? Amazing. What happens within them? Largely trash. The concept? Frightening. The costuming? Garbage. The execution? Almost completely lacking. And this "concept is great, content is terrible" trend continues, with the characters. Now, as aforementioned the character of Rita is surprisingly well-formed, and her arc throughout the episode is both deft and works as a neat, dark little bit of foreshadowing for what is to come. It's unfortunate, then, that Rita shares screentime with two other characters, both of which are different flavors of bad- Howie Spragg (Dmitri Leonidas) comes across as flat, boring Richard Ayoade clone they didn't even have the decency to simply cast Richard Ayoade as, and Gibbis (David Walliams) has exactly one good scene- where it's revealed he's actually a sinister, malevolent douchebag over simply a spineless twerp that doesn't go anywhere as he reverts quickly back to the utterly hack comic relief role. And finally, we get to arguably the biggest sin the episode commits, which is the dialog. Outside of rare (and notable) exceptions, most of the dialog of this episode is absolutely garbage. It's far, far too expositional- so much of this episode's screentime is dominated by people explaining things at each other over actually interacting, and it's bizarre that there's just so much goddamn exposition in an episode that has such a relatively simple conceit. When the first line of the episode (after the wretched, wretched cold open) is "blah blah blah, he says! blah blah blah blah blah, he says!"- my second least favorite "convey exposition as dialog" trick, by the way -it's a clear indicator of how deeply the episode hosed up the execution of its dialog. And it gets worse with every single "The Doctor interacts with the Minotaur" scene, of which there are two and both are draggy nonsense (one even kinda ruins the climax)- my first least favorite "convey exposition as dialog" trick is when a character is talking over the phone, or to someone who isn't speaking in a language understood by the audience, or basically any sort of scene where the audience can only hear one side of a conversation, and that character turns into a human echo machine- it's lazy as poo poo dialog writing because, and I need to stress this, nobody ever loving talks like that. The episode should've just made the Minotaur speak in subtitles and be done with it, because the solution they arrived at in making The Doctor into a human parrot destroyed the believability and resonance of those scenes, because I was so utterly distracted by the stilted, forced, and obvious dialog. And so we arrive at the climax. Admittedly, the climax was pretty good- The Doctor realizing the Minotaur fed on faith and not fear was actually clever in as much as it enables the confession to Amy, where he reveals himself as just a big ol' timey-wimey liar that she shouldn't ever place her hopes in. It was a nice moment of characterization The Doctor definitely needed after the events of "The Girl Who Waited", and a nice emotional moment for both himself and Amy. But the effects that realization, and the twist in general, has on the episode as a whole make it an overall negative. Firstly, the reveal of the food source being a shift from terror- which is an emotion -to faith- which is more of a general concept- makes the episode into one big logistical nightmare, where one naturally questions the conceit more thoroughly. With terror being a state you can force people into- via, well, scaring them- and faith being something people can have at all times, and can be both strengthened and weakened by a bunch of different factors, it makes the episode into one giant mess. It's also a daisy chain of reasoning- we feed on faith, so we're going to imprison people and scare them, so they get terrorized, so they fall back on faith (whatever even that nebulous concept even is, and it implies that people only need faith when they're in terror? What?), so that faith becomes faith in the Minotaur, which the Minotaur then feeds on and kills the faith-host? It's this incredibly long narrative stretch for the episode to make and feels like one step too many. Terror has exactly one source- fear, which is what the "this is my room" conceit is built around, it's why it and Amigara Fault function, because both works buy into and reinforce the idea that fear can be and is personalized. Faith has many forms, and is usually present- sometimes in overwhelming amounts -from person to person, it's a less consistent thing to "harvest" because the sources can be from joy as well as fear, or hatred, or sadness, or stress, or generalized contentedness. But more importantly than even that complaint- which is largely philosophical, outside of the daisy chain line of reasoning -is the fact that making the episode ultimately "about" faith means that it sells out the conceit of the episode being "about" fear. The setup and foundation of the episode, all the hotel and room stuff, all the imagery- most of it, admittedly, bad -feels like merely a means to an end. It's most plainly a bunch of narrative faffing about until the forty-minute mark which is when the episode reveals its whole intentions, and it gives the entire episode a half-assed, disingenuous feel, especially in retrospect. It makes the whole experience feel half-assed, which explains its myriad dialog failures or cheap costuming or faulty execution because the episode didn't care about any of it, it's all in ultimate service of its climax and nothing else. In contrast to "The Girl Who Waited", the episode directly beforehand, which had every single disparate element of its leadup be as flawless as realistically possible to service and make good its tearjerker climax, "The God Complex" comes across even more explicitly as wasting the audience's time. I don't know what episode Toby Whithouse was trying to write, but the episode he ended up writing was half a really interesting framing narrative for a great horror episode of Who, one that desperately needed some rewrites and some time to cook, and half a really interesting moral examination into faith and its literal power to change people, of which the audience witnessed exactly one scene of that episode. Neither get the service they deserved and as a result "The God Complex" comes across as even more of an unfocused, unclear mess, when what it most needed was clear thematic coherency. Even the climax, though, I had fundamental issues with- mostly with the scene in the denouement, because selling out Rory's goodbye to focus on Amy's was a mistake, and just flat-out disrespectful to his character. It also ignores the events of "The Girl Who Waited" in a big way, where the episode never makes clear how much, if anything Amy actually knows. If I go off the assumption that Amy has zero idea what happened to the older version of herself, like the episode intimates, than that fact alone undercuts any real catharsis The Doctor's confession has- it's yet another moment of a half-truth that The Doctor states to get the job done over any real sort of arcing, emotional realization that he's arrived at. The moment where The Doctor needs to have Amy lose faith in him or she'd literally die- that's the moment where he confesses that he killed Old Amy, that's what the episode should've built to, and his reminder of the "mad man with a box" from when she was 12 seems like yet another half-measure when the episode demanded a full one. It's an episode that builds entirely to a climax that it then hosed up, kind of fundamentally, which is in and of itself disappointing. But even that could have been fixed if there was some sort of moment, acknowledgement, or final conversation between Rory and The Doctor. The question of how much Amy knows is still up in the air, but in contrast Rory and The Doctor are on relatively equal footing. The fact that Rory is essentially reduced to comic relief in that final scene when he should've at least had some form of a "true" goodbye, the same one that Amy has with The Doctor, is both disrespectful to his character- he's the third main cast member, not Amy's hanger-on -and ignores the events of the previous episode, in a big way. Maybe The Doctor couldn't confess to Amy, for whatever reason, that he killed her older self. I understand that. But Rory deserved some sort of conclusion to his arc, one he does not get in any way, shape or form- The Doctor simply leaves Rory and Amy on Earth having realized that he can't keep placing them in lethal danger, but he doesn't treat them both equally in his goodbyes, which is thematically, narratively, and as a character move just flat-out not sound. Rory deserves to get the exact same treatment from The Doctor as Amy within the narrative, straight up, flatly, and he doesn't. That's loving bullshit, and it's not an intentional choice so much as the writer either forgetting or straight-up ignoring Rory's importance to the overarcing story of Who, his importance to the arc of the Eleventh Doctor, and his importance to the hanging, deliberately unanswered questions of the narrative of the episode "The God Complex" directly followed. Yeah, this one's a big zero. What a waste. Grade: C Random Thoughts: NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Apr 26, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 04:55
|
|
|
I don't mind that Rory didn't get a farewell because the scene with Amy at the end wasn't so much a goodbye as... an explanation, an apology for leaving them. And Rory didn't need that. That had been well covered earlier. His goodbye was stretched over the entire past two episodes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 05:10
|
|
|
See, episodes like this are why Perfectly Acceptable Doctor Who episodes shouldn't be overvalued. This show is merely alright about 80% of the time. 15% of the time, it's abysmal. Then there's that five percent that is just incredible.Toxxupation posted:Special note should be made of how well-designed the sets (they all were absolutely beautiful and vibrant, the stark whites of the chamber interiors contrasting wonderfully to the loving beautiful lush greens of the gardens) were, and how well-placed and apropros the score for "The Girl Who Waited" ended up being. Even outside of being a wonderful parable/moral examination of The Doctor and his Companions, this is just a drat good looking episode of Who visually and aurally impressive. I'm glad somebody else could really feel this. Although I also had been expecting that The Doctor was going to land in an Evil Apple Store Of Doom eventually. Also, and quite understandably, this seems to be the episode where Amy, present day Amy or whatever is closest to it, really begins to fall out of obsession with the goofy space box man that she spent her childhood obsessed with. The whole Doctor/companion relationship angle of the RTD years went in some strange new directions by having a companion who more or less fancied the Doctor on some level since she was six years old; but starting here it seems like Amy is on board more out of obligation. And that's only if fate doesn't practically force her in the TARDIS.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 05:35
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:See, episodes like this are why Perfectly Acceptable Doctor Who episodes shouldn't be overvalued. you're right the god complex is Bad
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 05:38
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:you're right the god complex is Bad Toxxupation posted:
I've learned to just stop questioning the scores anymore.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 05:47
|
|
|
That Jerk Steve posted:I've learned to just stop questioning the scores anymore. jokes
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 05:49
|
|
|
Frankly I think this episode should be downgraded to a D, which was what I guessed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 05:50
|
|
|
2house2fly posted:Frankly I think this episode should be downgraded to a D, which was what I guessed. I'd prefer if this episode were to be upgraded to B, which was what I guessed. Furthermore I hereto submit that Day of the Moon be raised to an A, Let's Kill Hitler knocked down to a D, and The Girl Who Waited be changed to a C. These are my opinions and it would please me very much if this thread were to be so kind as to validate them. Seriously, Day of the Moon a C, and Let's Kill Hitler a B? I... just... can't... MY MIND!!!!
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 05:58
|
|
|
To me it sounds like you decided early on in the episode that it was an attempt to do what Enigma does and then got more and more mad at it as it went on and it wasn't like that at all. I mean, I read Enigma long before I watched this episode as well and it literally never occurred to me that it was anything like it, because it isn't anything like it aside from one surface parallel in set up. There are definitely legitimate criticisms to make of it but not being a different story isn't really a fair one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 06:05
|
|
|
No, I think he found it as a comparison point after the fact, but I still don't like it. It's a rhetorical, reviewing device that certainly makes things easier, but one I'm not always fond of seeing. There's a certain movie reviewer who was terrible, not merely for having contrarian opinions, which he was entitled to, and some of them were right, but for turning almost every review into "this movie didn't do whatever it was doing as well as this movie/movies I like". He even had a "Better Than" list, where he found roughly comparable films, one he loved, one he hated, that was basically his whole review M.O. in listicle form. All this is a roundabout way of saying, I respect your writing, Toxx, but be less like Armond White.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 06:41
|
|
|
I had no idea "the episode where a minotaur runs around a hotel" had so many fervent defenders. edit: VVV that isn't the plot of citizen kane. Escobarbarian fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Apr 26, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 09:45
|
|
|
Bown posted:I had no idea "the episode where a minotaur runs around a hotel" had so many fervent defenders. Looking at it that way, I had no idea "the movie where the guy can't remember the name of his sled" has so many fervent defenders!
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 10:33
|
|
|
Bown posted:I had no idea "the episode where a minotaur runs around a hotel" had so many fervent defenders. The only thing I took from the episode at all was that the minotaur still seems like a really weird selection for the monster's design. It fits to be something pretty old, that wouldn't necessarily carry any traits of typical Doctor Who fare, but I feel like the minotaur's too beastly to carry the monster role for this, the setup's too intricate. I get the connection to the whole labyrinth setup, but that's really only a superficial way in which it works. I just can't buy a minotaur being the weird faith-hijacking monster. Back when it aired, I remember thinking that it's a role that would've been well served by a properly biblical angel design, something both terrifying and awe-inspiring. That clearly would've been well out of the abilities of the show (both monetarily and 'they wouldn't have been able to get away with it'), but I still think something more along those lines would have served the role better than the minotaur.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 10:52
|
|
|
It was actually a callback to an old classic series monster called the Nimon, though you could just as easily treat that as another reason to criticize the design decision - if using a minotaur as the mysterious faith-eating monster already struck you as an odd choice (the hotel being a "labyrinth" is pretty thin justification) then having the answer be,"Because it's a continuity reference" probably isn't likely to make a person say,"Oh well in that case it makes perfect sense!"
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 11:41
|
|
|
The thing I remember taking away from this episode is that it was interesting until they, of course, had to shoehorn an actual physical monster into it. And then didn't even have the decency of making it an interesting one!
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 14:06
|
|
|
Mooseontheloose posted:The ending line is pretty bad and is really just superfluous. Also, the whole having faith being a bit ill defined doesn't help. The Curse of Fenric did it much better, to join the conversations between the threads 
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 14:07
|
|
|
Cleretic posted:Back when it aired, I remember thinking that it's a role that would've been well served by a properly biblical angel design, something both terrifying and awe-inspiring. Big wheel with eyes on it, gotcha.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 14:09
|
|
|
I liked that Gibbis' greatest fear was the one race in the galaxy completely uninterested in conquest or subjugation, just being unstoppable serial killers who can't and won't be surrendered to or bargained with. Does make you wonder though, if the holographic angels shouldn't have become real angels. Maybe they just weren't there that long.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 15:31
|
|
|
I think I picked a B on this one. I had the same impression of a good idea dragged down by its faults, but to a lesser degree. Overall, I actually like the idea that we're set up for something that feeds on fear (a concept that has been done a hundred times) and then have that particular rug yanked out from under us. I also like that the reaction the characters have in the first two-thirds of the episode is the exact intended one - we'll fight back against the fear through the power of belief! No, actually, that's what kills you. I also really like that the villain of the piece is not the monster; we don't ever see or know about the villain here, really, since the minotaur is perfectly happy to die and stop killing everyone; it's the builder of the hotel that has screwed random people from across the universe. In general, though, what I would have wanted is for the greatest fears to be more revelatory. Pulling something like that is a great chance to show some hidden side of a character; if you're going to literally externalize some portion of their mind, let us see something we don't know. It's okay to have one or two be trivial, but it felt kind of like all of them were (except the Doctor's, which despite what I've just said I was okay with - a little mystery is fine sometimes too).
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 15:45
|
|
|
you gotta admit it's got a clever title though
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2015 20:01
|
|
|
In which https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXN6tgE4g_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closing_Time_%28Doctor_Who%29 NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Apr 27, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 00:11
|
|
|
it's the huey lewis and the news appreciation station right now btw
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 00:13
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:it's the huey lewis and the news appreciation station right now btw do you like huey lewis and the news? [/bateman] anyway here's neil cicierega: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XFLcWIgrfw
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 00:25
|
|
|
I'm not a fan of this one, sadly, which is a shame since I enjoyed The Lodger so much. There are some really great moments in it, but a lot of terrible bits too, and the whole thing smacks of trying to recapture the unexpected magic of that previous episode. Like warmed up leftovers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 00:40
|
|
|
This is a cyberman episode, so it was already going to be hard to make it any good, and the ending felt like an RTD episode in a bad way. In my opinion it would have been better with no monster story, just two men and a baby sitcom hijinks.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 00:54
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:I'm not a fan of this one, sadly, which is a shame since I enjoyed The Lodger so much. There are some really great moments in it, but a lot of terrible bits too, and the whole thing smacks of trying to recapture the unexpected magic of that previous episode. Like warmed up leftovers. I think its great moments elevate it to mediocrity, but that it unfortunately repeats some of the mistakes from the prior episode without doubling up on the successes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 01:15
|
|
|
Toxxupation posted:In contrast, "God Complex" states and overstates the horrors it's presenting, which come across as both cheap and ineffective; there's a memorable shot of a man in a clear gorilla suit which is somehow meant to be the intro to the concepts "The God Complex" is presenting, but it's so cheap and so clearly just a dude in a gorilla suit it ends up making the whole experience laughable over affecting. Huh, I assumed the man in a gorilla suit was supposed to be a man in a gorilla suit, not a gorilla. Exactly the sort of thing a kid might have encountered at fair ground and birthday party an found absolutely horrifying while everyone around him considered it hilarious cheap entertainment. It is supposed to be personally horrifying to exactly one person. As for the rest, I assumed it was because the program was 1. alien and 2. breaking down. It was trapped in fear mode either because that was what worked best for the original species or for a particular victim species along the way. Just like it was trapped in 80s hotel mode with a bunch of rooms of obsolete fears because the simulator was old and breaking down. Awe might have been better than fear for getting humans to connect with our faith, and a holodeck could certainly produce awe inspiring locations, but this one was falling apart and stuck as an 80s hotel. If I was building a human fear generator I'd probably go with something simple like trapping each one alone in the dark in a coffin sized room. You get a handful of very common primal human fears all in on go, and it takes up hardly any space. With the space saved you could process dozens at a time, so if you catch the occasional xen master it wouldn't matter, just toss him back.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 01:55
|
|
|
I hate when the Doctor just disappears for 200 years with no explanation, but it does give the audio drama people a gap in which they can write stories.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 03:50
|
|
|
Toxx, I don't think you're allowed to compare a fantastic but pulpy episode of television to a junji ito comic, that is not fair! Also, I think going in comparing the similarities there might have affected what you considered the episode's goal. One of the things that makes me love God Complex so much is that I totally didn't watch it as anything approaching a horror story. Sure, the characters are encountering/being destroyed by their personal fears, but, in a large part because the concept is that "each room contains a fear tailored specifically to the person", it could never attempt to scare the audience. It's much more just a fantastical tale that takes place in a fake earth hotel. It's much more of a standard fable-with-moral. ("If you let your fear control you, you'll get eaten by a minotaur space-monster!") I think the tone they hit in it is pretty much perfect for Smith's doctor, too. This episode would have been terrible with ten, because it would take on that panicky, claustrophobic feel in a way that this doesn't, even though it involves a lot of ten-like running through halls away from a monster with hapless victims around and dying off. Craptacular! posted:I hate when the Doctor just disappears for 200 years with no explanation[...] This seems totally weird to me, because before I knew about Big Finish, the only thought I gave those was "oh that's a neat nod to him being an ancient time-traveller." Is there anything particular about it that you don't like, or just one of those "eh, doesn't fit for how I like the show" things?
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 14:45
|
|
|
surc posted:
He may have said he's been gone for 200+ years, but it just feels like he's only been gone for a few years at most, like Ten. 200 years is a VERY drat LONG TIME to not follow a character- unless they were doing absolutely loving nothing, they should have been changed by those events and should be recognizably not the same. Even for the Doctor, who we've often seen change over a relatively short time. Yet 11 pretty much walks into one of those rotating doors and by the time it brings him back in, he says he's been gone for centuries. It rings hollow. Of course there's an easy answer to this- he's lying his rear end off, and in fact has only been traveling for all of a day, got bored, and came to find some humans to kick around with.
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 15:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 07:40 |
|
|
The problem being that the gaps aren't character sold. Ever meet up with an old high school friend? They are way different now! That one guy is bald, has three, kids, fatyt, went through depression, got a divorce... The point is, these things show. If someone takes off for 200 years there should be almost as big of a change as from one actor to another in character. When 11 pops back in he's pretty much still the same happy-go-lucky guy. Not that I even care one way or another, but I think that's the gist of it, -Devil's Advocate
|
|
#
?
Apr 27, 2015 15:21
|
|
