The Helmholtz, the Doctor, the Minotaur, and the Labyrinth

Abstract

Victor Pelevin's The Helmet of Horror and Toby Whithouse's Doctor Who episode "The God Complex" are both retellings of the classical myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth of Crete. Both retellings, each serving as a labyrinth in itself, claim that myths are expressions of the subconscious frustration and question the possibility of progress and civilization. Ariadne's thread is replaced by a chat thread started by the character with the screen-name Ariadne in Pelevin's novel and by the notes of Lucy in Whithouse's script. The labyrinth takes on many forms from the actual labyrinths or a prison designed to look like a hotel to the labyrinthine mosaics on the cathedral floors to a hardware model of Window's screen-saver called "maze" to the internet, brain, discourses and choices between several alternatives. The repetitive killing of the Minotaur in The Helmet of Horror and the Minotaur's repetitive killing of his victims in "The God Complex," too, underline that everything--history, progress and/or civilization--is but the repetition of the same myth in slightly different forms.