The God Complex

You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples; it could also be something much better. Prepare to enter: The Scary Door.

This episode had a lot of promise, and didn't turn out to be as entirely shit as it could have been, but the really irritating thing is that it could have been so much better if everyone didn't keep acting like retards the whole damn time.

They arrive in a hotel where the rooms contain your greatest fear. There's an obvious problem here, in that sometimes your greatest fear is not a thing that can be in a room, like, if your greatest fear is failure or disease or having to give a speech that you're completely unprepared for, but I guess it is possible to overlook that and just go with it.

The characters in this episode mostly aren't terrible either, although the guy from the planet that keeps getting invaded is pretty shit. That absurd backstory really wasn't necessary to make him a coward, people can just be cowards without it being built in to their species. And given that it is built into his species, it's pretty unfair of the Doctor to give him shit for it later on.

After the introductions are done with and the first person dies (well, first since the TARDIS arrived), the Doctor sensibly advises everyone to stick together and not go into any of the rooms. Everyone, including the Doctor, ignores this, and I may have missed some of the subtleties of the plot from this point on as I had trouble hearing the TV over the sound of my own voice screaming "Stop wandering off by yourselves! Stay together, you fucking morons!"

Oh wait, did I say subtlety? Sorry, I must have been thinking of a different show, because this one doesn't understand the meaning of that word. This is made abundantly clear by the extremely jarring way they introduce the fact that one of the characters is a Muslim. This is slightly relevant to the plot later on, but it seems like that relevance was added later, because the whole point of this revelation seems to be so the writers can congratulate themselves for blowing our minds. "BAM! Muslim! Didn't see that one coming, did you, audience? You don't even know what to think now! Bet that's making you rethink all your prejudices! We are the best writers!"

Anyway, turns out there's a minotaur I mean a Nimon a Nimon-like thing that apparently lives on fear, and they all wander around not doing much until it's killed everyone except the Doctor, Amy, Rory and the coward, and eventually the Doctor figures out that the not-Nimon lives on faith, not fear. Apparently this makes Rory immune because he is a soulless Auton because he hasn't got faith in anything or anyone (for some reason, maybe because he is a robot), and so to kill it the Doctor has to wait till it's trying to feed on Amy's faith in him and then convince her not to have faith in him. And that works, somehow.

That sorted out, The Doctor takes Amy and Rory back to Earth where he has somehow arranged a house and car for them without them noticing (Phoned UNIT and organised it through them maybe?) and then there's a big dramatic goodbye, because apparently no one can just leave these days, it has to be full of emotion and shit.

Seriously, what is it with companions in Doctor Who these days having to have these big dramatic final scenes? They used to just get to the end of an episode and decide they wanted to stay wherever they'd ended up that week or just ask the Doctor to take them home because they'd had enough of traveling with him. Or just wait for him to stop by Earth again and just say "You know what, this is close enough, I'll walk."

Do we really need to make a big deal of it every time? At least Rory had the decency to give no fucks. "Thanks for the car, it's been fun. I'll go inside now." He may have had no personality and been a complete waste of space, but he knew how to leave the show with a bit of dignity.

Assuming they actually are gone, of course, which would be nice, because Amy is really starting to shit me lately, but I'm not holding out too much hope.