Complex Gods

Saw "The God Complex" yesterday.

Spoilers follow.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

The prologue has a policewoman walking through a maze that looks like an 80's style hotel. In each room she enters, there's something creepy.

Like clowns.

She's keeping a running diary and finally has some kind of mental breakdown. With a blissful look on her face she's snagged by something that sounds bestial and hungry.

Enter the Doctor, Amy, and Rory. They landed randomly and start exploring. While there, they encounter four people: a medic of some sort, a paranoiac blogger, a cowardly alien, and a crazy dude tied to a chair.

The crazy dude is in a room of ventriloquist dummies. Oh but that's creepy. Crazy dude says that he's ready to be snacked up by the thing behind it all and advises everyone that there's a "room for each of them".

Cue the creepy encounters. Crazy guy gets snacked on by the creature. It doesn't physically harm him. It just takes out his life somehow.

One-by-one the blogger and the medic also fall to the creature. The alien dude, a member of "the most conquered race in the universe" manages to stay alive. Rory seems unaffected while Amy winds up in the creature's sights.

The creature is essentially a minotaur (old-timers of the show will catch the reference to the Nimon of the old Tom Baker era episode "The Horns of Nimon"). It snacks on the faith of those who wind up in its prison/lair.

The episode devolves a bit into clumsy storytelling. The Doctor seems unaffected by the creature's lure. Rory isn't affected for reasons very unclear to me, but in order to save Amy, the Doctor gives some kind of bullshit-ish story to make Amy lose faith in him.

'Cause the creature wanted to eat Amy's faith.

The defeat of the creature was weird and a bit nonsensical.

The alien guy from the most-conquered world survived and remained intensely-annoying.

The episode ended with the Doctor parting ways with Amy and Rory (after giving Rory a nice, red sports car). The parting was awkward and weird. It wasn't terribly well-done in my opinion.

In a nutshell, "The God Complex" was pretty typical fare for the Smith era offerings. It had a great setup but crapped out on delivery. As a horror-ish episode, it's weak tea next to the Tom Baker era horror fare or even the McCoy era stuff.

Two more episodes left before the end of series six.