Muzak plays in an empty hotel lobby, where a policewoman looks through all the rooms. There's always a clown about somewhere, only this one is sad. The police woman, Lucy (Sarah Quintrell) writes her observations in a notebook. "You don't know what will be in your room until you see it and you realize it could never have been anything else...Praise him." she writes over and over, before being taken by some monster.
Amy (Karen Gillan) remarks they're not where they're meant to be. The Doctor (Matt Smith) calls Rory (Arthur Darvill) 'Beaky' this time round and not his usual 'Pointy Nose'. The Doctor's excited about the hotel as it's not on Earth but made to look like it. There are photos of the Vics on the walls. Rory points out Commander Halke - Sontaran. Wouldn't think a Sontaran would give in to his worst fears. Which must have been 'defeat' as it's written under his photo. Lucy was attacked by a gorilla . The Doctor rings for service. Two people and one alien appear and the Doctor claims he's never been hit with a chair leg before. He lies (!) He has. He thinks Rita's (Amara Karan) good.
Doctor: "Amy with regret you're fired." (Who was Amy all this time, The Apprentice?! ha.) He's joking. Not by the end of the episode he's not. Amy asks Rory if he just said "we're nice." Rita explains everything in the hotel moves and rooms vanish. The Doctor checks the door and finds a wall behind it. They're not doors but walls, or "Dwalls." The Doctor loves things. Rita tells them the rooms contain bad dreams. People are snatched and dropped into a hotel. the TARDIS has vanished from its spot.
They are taken to Joe who is tied up and surrounded by ventriloquist dummies, laughing. He'll feast on Joe soon. Joe tells the Doctor they're not ready, they're still raw. Then says everyone has a room, even the Doctor, has he found his yet? The Doctor takes Joe with them. Also warning not to go into the rooms. Joe speaks another rhyme; "here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head." Howie (Dimitri Leonidas) is into conspiracies and thinks this is a secret CIA facility. Rory is amazed Howie's theory is "more insane than what's actually happening." A PE teacher (Dafydd Emyr) comes out of a room and tells the Doctor he's forgotten his PE kit and will have to do it in his pants. Girls in another room laugh at Howie and make fun of his stammer. Amy finds Lucy's notes on the floor. So much for rooms vanishing, they seem to have found where Lucy disappeared.
Rory stops to tie his laces and for a second you think he's going to get lost too, but he doesn't thankfully, that would have been too coincidental. They all hide in a room. Rita sees her father (Rashad Karapiet) reprimanding her for only getting a 'B' in Maths. The Doctor enters into the room with the others and walks into the Weeping Angels. Amy: "Don't blink." The Doctor can put his hand through them and tells her they're not real. It's easy to see why Amy would fear them after turning into stone, practically, but apparently they're for Gibbis (David Walliams). He was a right old weasel! Thus my name for him. The Doctor must see what's outside and calls the creature ( Spencer Wilding) 'beautiful,' as usual. Joe's restraints come undone and he's devoured, as the Doctor loses him in a maze of corridors, which keep changing.
Rita makes tea. Amy tells Gibbis she's met the Weeping Angels and thought the room was for her, which would have been easier than what she'll have to go through. The Doctor's never let her down before, even when she was little, he came back for her. This gives a clue as to what Amy's room will hold. Rory comments "when the Doctor gets pally, he has an urge to notify their next of kin," and he's not far wrong. The Doctor has a degree in cheesemaking. (Didn't know you had those ha.) The Doctor realizes he's got tea, she's a Brit. She thinks this place is "Jahannam." That's her theory. Doctor; "You're a Muslim." Rita: "Don't be frightened." She thinks it's hell. The Doctor likes Rita, she's a "clever clogs." She's tried to live a good life and that keeps her sane.
Amy recalls the notes she found. Lucy was terrified of a gorilla from a book she read when she was little, as the Doctor reads her notes out aloud. Howie says "Praise him." It's coming for him. The Doctor promises he'll be fine - again and insists they stay together. He has a go at Gibbis - the weasel- he knows what he's really like, his civilization is the greatest - his cowardliness is aggressive. Doctor: "No one else dies today." That's what he always says and it always happens. Howie must answer the Doctor's questions next time he's possessed. Spoken like a true Doctor. He asks why they've not been got at. The Doctor believes it feeds on fear. Everything was there to frighten them and he tells them "not to give in to the fear." They're going to catch a monster, which they do. Rory with another mop! he only just had one in 6.9 Night Terrors.
The Doctor talks to the Minotaur who tells him this is a prison. Howie talks weasel, er, I mean Gibbis, into letting him go. He can tell them he was overpowered - with tied hands. The Minotaur makes them ready, "you have lived so long, even your name is lost." The Minotaur wants this to end. Take it that line refers to the Doctor. Doctor: "Pond bring the fish." - Pond, ha. Rory asks if Amy hit him, when the Minotaur escapes to get Howie. Amy relies on the Doctor as she normally does and takes a look inside Room number 7. The Doctor's clearly disgusted with Gibbis and his cowardly behavior. He asks Rory if he's found his room. Rory's not scared of anything, "what's there left to be scared of?" After all the time he's spent in the TARDIS. The Doctor says he used the past tense and said scared, but Rory denies this. Rory: "Not all victories are about saving the universe." This strikes a cord with the Doctor, as we'll see at the end.
Rita asks why the Doctor should be the one to save them and comments he's got a 'God complex.' He replies, "offer someone all of time and space and they'll take that too." He'll show Rita all of time and space when they get out. he notices the video surveillance camera and now it's Rita's turn to say "Praise him." Was that line another reference to the Doctor when he "borrowed" the TARDIS to go exploring.
The Doctor finds his room, number 11, for obvious reasons, him being the eleventh Doctor (and this being the eleventh episode of the season.) So what or who was actually in there when he says, "Of course, who else." He finds the monitors and sees Rita enter a room. He attempts to talk her out of it but she doesn't come back to them. He loses his temper when she dies.
The Doctor believes there's some connection between them. Then finally realizes it's not fear but faith which is their downfall. Joe gambled and believed in luck. The Doctor told them to find what keeps them brave and in the process made them expose their faith. It didn't want Rory that's why he was shown the way out, he's not religious or superstitious, but he wanted Amy cos of her faith in the Doctor. Doctor: "faith is an energy the creature needs to live." Amy says "Praise him."
She sees herself as Amelia (Caitlin Blackwood) in her room, sitting on her suitcase in front of the window, waiting for the Doctor to return. He tries to convince Amy to stop believing in him. He stole her childhood - led her to her death, he knew this would happen. "This always happens." Just like he keeps saying 'no one dies today' and they do. She should forget her faith in him. He took her with him cos he was vain. "The girl who waited for me. I'm not a hero. I really am a mad man in a box." The Minotaur gets weaker. The Doctor calls her Amy Williams, "it's time to stop waiting."
No matter what the episode is like, good or mediocre, Matt always turns it around, all that emotion he exudes in his performance is so believable. The Doctor sacrificed their faith in him allowing the Minotaur to die. The hotel vanishes. The Minotaur was a distant cousin of the Nimon, they set themselves up on planets to be worshipped. Amy tells the Doctor it didn't just want her and asks him what Time Lords believe in, which he cleverly doesn't answer. The Doctor translates what the Minotaur tells him; his dying words about "an ancient creature drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space though an endless, shifting maze. For such a creature, death would be a gift." Knew he was talking about the Doctor, it's always subtly disguised when it's about him. The Doctor tells the Minotaur to accept it. "I wasn't talking about myself." Even the Minotaur knew about the Doctor's bad dream. What was in his room?
The Doctor gives Amy a house and Rory the car he always wanted. He's leaving but they haven't seen the last of him. "Bad Penny is my middle name." Yeah as the saying goes, he keeps coming back like bad penny. He's leaving now cos Rory and Amy are still alive. He tells her the alternative would be his standing on her grave, or Rory's. Amy wants him to tell her mother, River Song, (Alex Kingston) if he comes across her, to contact her mother. Amy tells Rory, "he's saving us." The Doctor is left alone in the TARDIS.
Is the Doctor really saving them from their fate, which is not an eventuality for them or is he saving them so they don't see his destiny fulfilled. Whatever he saw in his room, could not have been River could it, or was it death itself, or was it himself. Oh hate these endings cos there's so much there to set me thinking.
The idea for this episode was meant to have seen fruition in season 5, but Toby Whithouse wrote the Vampires of Venice instead. Thus the God Complex was moved to season 6, where I think it fits in better with everything that is happening with the Doctor and his future date with destiny (and River, ha.) Have Amy and Rory really gone as companions - no they are great - don't want to see the old codger, lodger, Craig, back next episode. Also if the Doctor forced them out of the TARDIS to live their own lives and not be his companions anymore as he doesn't want to see them die, how can it be okay to get Craig involved and be placed in danger. Besides Amy and Rory have to return for the finale as it features River and Amy's mentioned her now too. Karen and Arthur have signed a season 7 contract so...let's hope they appear full time.
Also new companions don't really work with the Doctor all the time, remember after we watched Rose (Billy Piper) for so long, Martha (Freema Agyeman) didn't go down too well as the Tenth Doctor's (David Tennant's) companion and neither did Donna (Catherine Tate.) He always feels sorry for his companions eventually and having them around means he always has to let them go in some poignant manner, especially with Donna and Martha and most especially his beloved Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) as he said in 6.7 Let's Kill Hitler, he saw them as his guilt. Maybe now with Rory and Amy he couldn't live with that guilt if anything happened to them, which could not be reversed, so he let them go. A hint at what his past companions have had to endure. Yet still he took on more.
The title again alluding to the Doctor and Rita spells out the Doctor has a "God complex" - the inalienable (no pun) need to save and to help everyone he comes across. Also he just can't help interfering. As for Rita being Muslim, couldn't she have a proper Muslim name, which Rita ain't! A bit topical when she asks the Doctor if he's afraid of her cos she is a Muslim.
Amy's room was number 7 indicating Amelia was 7 when she waited around for the Doctor to return in 5.1 The Eleventh Doctor. Some inconsistencies - such as why is Amy's fear that the Doctor wouldn't come back for her. She knows he does return for her - he always does. Maybe it was more of a way to compound that faith she has in him, making her realize she should believe in someone more like Rory, or not at all. Thereby removing her faith in him, but also reinforcing she still has faith , but that she doesn't see him as a God or a hero, to be reveered.
Also weasel Gibbis saw the Weeping Angels but the Minotaur didn't come after him, opting for Amy, who opened her door after Gibbis had already seen the Angels. (Well no episode with an allusion to God would have been complete without angels!) Suppose like Rory, he didn't have any faith in anyone or anything, as we recall his civilization was all about cowardly giving in to any one who came to conquer. Not that Rory is a coward or sly, far from it.
Amy being fearful of the Doctor not coming back - maybe she was fearful of him not coming for her now - of being left behind, or more rather I have this niggling feeling it's cos he never existed (5.13) until she brought him back. Afraid he'll be wiped from existence, this time with his death; which none of them talk about anymore. Amy was she was older in 6.10, lost faith in the Doctor and when he shut the TARDIS door on her to keep her out, the look on his face as if he didn't want to know that bitter, older version. Perhaps here he was hoping that moment never arrives for him. Amy even said she hated the Doctor and maybe that was too much to bare from the "girl who always waited" for her "raggedy Doctor."
The TARDIS' cloister bell was last heard in the episode Logopolis with Tom Baker, signifying death/regeneration. The Doctor with another Rubik's cube, where'd he get that from then, 6.9. He doesn't like apples either as in 5.1. Hey is the Doctor actually the Doctor or perhaps his ganger has reappeared somehow. Oh that'd be too, too confusing or far fetched. As I said in my review of 6.6 The Almost People, is the Doctor's ganger going to be killed in place of him, as this is what the bell tolls for.
Another clown as he mentioned those in 6.9. This ending was a bit of a letdown, as in 6.9 as far as the Minotaur goes, as the boy was an alien who latched onto the parents' need for a child. Here the Minotaur was of a race of Nimons who do much the same thing. Nimons were seen as an enemy in The Horns of Nimon.
Convincing Amy not to believe in him was also done in The Curse of Fenric, where the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy)) has to coerce Ace to do the same. Oh, oh, in 6.7 A Good Man Goes To War episode, one of the soldiers comments they were being paid to fight him, not praise him. Here there were praises galore, were they meant for the Doctor and his God complex. Or perhaps we're not meant to recall that as being of any significance. Who knows...Have to say Matt Smith just gets better and better in portraying the Doctor, I thought David Tennant was great in his performance, but I have to say Matt has surpassed all expectations for me! Not that I don't still like David as the Doctor.
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