Inspirations: The God Complex

Steven Moffat had considered a story set around a huge, seemingly deserted hotel as a possible first Christmas Special. A woman staying at the luxurious hotel over the festive period would find that her family and all the other guests had vanished, and she was alone until she met the Doctor. Moffat even had an idea of who he might like to play the woman - Helen Mirren.

The inspiration had been Moffat's own stays in hotels, which he often found disorientating.

Moffat passed the idea onto Toby Whithouse - suggesting that the hotel should instead be run-down and that the rooms keep changing. The story was originally intended to occupy the sixth slot of Series 5.

The changing rooms and the corridors resembling a maze led inevitably to thoughts of the Minotaur.

The series had already featured the legendary half-man, half-bull on more than one occasion. The Doctor and Zoe had encountered the mythical creature in The Mind Robber, and then he and Jo Grant had met a real Minotaur - created by the Chronovore Kronos - in ancient Atlantis.

Former Script Editor Anthony Read, who favoured adapting works of literature for Doctor Who stories, later contributed a sci-fi adventure based on the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur - The Horns of Nimon. 

Rather than simply ignore the resemblance, Whithouse elected to explicitly make his Minotaur a relative of the Nimon.

Both the original myth and Read's adventure had seen the Minotaur being fed sacrifices, and this is carried on here.

Whithouse came up with the idea that the people who had once worshipped the creature had grown apathetic and turned their back on this religion. They therefore cast it out in a form of prison which would float through space, occasionally bringing sacrifices to it to continue to feed it.

He did not want the Minotaur to be purely evil, however. Knowing that people had to die to feed it, it had over time come to hate its existence and wanted to die itself. This would make it a sympathetic monster.

The nature of the hotel settled on a 1980's design - as this was the time when Whithouse had stayed in hotels on childhood holidays.

He was also inspired by the cult ITV series Sapphire and Steel, which had featured its characters trapped in seemingly mundane environments (such as the roadside café in the final story).

The story title is a play on words - in the same way that Tony Read had played with the term "power complex" in his story - it's both Soldeed's state of mind and the Nimon's lair.

A "god complex" is a psychological condition in which a person has an unshakeable belief that they are infallible - always right and can do no wrong. As well as having a story about a being which feeds on faith, it is also a god - albeit a redundant one - which lives in a labyrinth (or complex) of corridors.

Gibbis the Tivolian was created to act as a mirror to the Minotaur. He and his people exhibit the opposite of the "god complex" - being conditioned to fail and be perpetually conquered.

In the initial drafts, Gibbis was a human character named Edward.

The religious character was originally going to be a devout Christian, but this was changed to make them a Muslim to give the group more diversity.

The idea of the bedrooms containing personal fears came later. The executive producers were worried that the hotel setting might prove boring for viewers after a while, and so it was suggested that the rooms could feature bizarre characters - clowns and gorillas as well as people - to add some visual variety.

Whithouse had been thinking a lot about Hell and Purgatory / Limbo after writing the opening episode of his third series of Being Human, which had featured characters in a form of limbo.

The appearance of Weeping Angels was purely a cameo decision. 

The Doctor gets a room of his own, and it is obviously No.11. This was always going to be left open for fans to debate what it might contain, until Moffat revisited it for his final Matt Smith episode.

Amy's room, containing young Amelia Pond, was No.7 - the age she was when she first encountered the Doctor.

Cameos of a different kind were the photographs on the hotel walls of previous victims. These were simply standard publicity pictures of various creatures, plus members of the crew - including producer Marcus Wilson.

The reveal of the true spacecraft environment was inspired by the holodeck in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

As part of the overall season story arc agreed with Moffat, Whithouse included the idea of the Doctor deciding that his adventures were going to get Amy and Rory killed, and it might be best to part company - helping facilitate this year's Doctor-lite episode.

Next time: Are you being converted? The Cybermen find the concept of Love mind-blowing in a sequel to The Lodger.