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[[File:The_God_Complex_3160.jpg|frame]]
{{quote|
Interior: [[The Shining|the Overlook Hotel]]. A policewoman, Lucy, cautiously walks along the hotel's red carpet hallways. Seeing a specific door, she turns and opens it. A gorilla steps out from the suite's bathroom and stares back at her. There are other nightmares: shadows, creatures, [[IT|a clown sitting on a bed with a balloon]]. Flashes of something go through her head along with the words "praise him". A smile crosses her face, and she closes the door. Taking out a worn notepad, she starts to anxiously write down how she is the last one left, but it doesn't matter now because she will be released soon. Her writing turns automatic, as she becomes [[Madness Mantra|stuck on the words]] "praise him, praise him..."
The TARDIS lands in a hotel hallway. Amy and Rory immediately complain about landing in a hotel, but the Doctor recognizes that it is an alien structure designed meticulously to look like a Earth hotel of the 1980s. They walk down towards the lobby, finding that the windows and doors are bricked up. Suddenly, they are set on by three people ready to attack them: Rita, a Indian medical worker, Howie, a lanky nerd and conspiracy blogger, and Gibbus, an alien from a highly cowardly, pacifist species. After calming the situation down, the Doctor learn they, plus a fourth man, are the last of their group that are left. Rita shows quick analytical thinking and a generally clever mind, and the Doctor instantly picks her as his new companion (and [[Harsher in Hindsight|jokingly]] tells Amy she's fired now). The Doctor offers to take them away with his TARDIS but it is suddenly gone from where they had left it. Howie explains that the hotel's layout can change in an instant, and escape is impossible.
The three take the TARDIS crew to a fourth person: Joe, a gambler. They have him tied up in the hotel's dining room, where every other chair is occupied by [[Nightmare Fuel|wooden ventriloquist dummies]]. Joe is stammering on, "praise him, praise him", which Rita notes is what happened to all the others. She also explains that there is a minotaur-like creature that roams the hallways, attacking and killing those that have been "taken" like Joe. The Doctor insists on exploring the hotel, and the group joins him, with Joe (his mouth duct-taped shut) wheeled along with the group.
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They find numerous pictures of the dead, human and alien alike, [[The Shining|mounted on the lobby walls]], with captions describing the greatest fear of each person. Amy finds sheets of Lucy's notebook in a hallway, and the Doctor realizes that whatever is killing the guests, does so by luring the person to open a specific door to witness their worst fear. At that moment, it is able to occupy the person's mind and turn them into a state like Joe's. He warns everyone to not open a single door unless instructed.
Of course, Howie is drawn to one, where he is shamed by a group of beautiful young women for being a stuttering conspiracy nerd. The Doctor quickly closes it, hoping that it is not too late. Joe starts to utter "praise him", luring the beast near. Rory briefly catches glimpse of a door labeled as a fire exit, but it disappears when he turns back to look at it. The Doctor instructs everyone into specific doors not containing anyone's fears, but Joe is left outside, and killed by the beast.
The group returns Joe's body to the dining room. The Doctor talks with Rita and Gibbus, learning that each were pulled from their worlds and brought here. Rita was a regular girl from Earth. Gibbus' species finds happiness in meek and nervous slavery, and he can't wait to go back home again for and quietly await the next random alien invasion of his planet.
As they determine their next plan, the Doctor becomes aware that Howie has started to utter "Praise him". The group uses Howie's voice over the intercom to lure the beast into the hotel's beauty parlor and trap him there temporary. While trapped, the Doctor finds the creature wishes to die, and realizes the hotel is really a prison for the creature. Howie manages to escape, but the beast instinctively breaks out of the parlor and kills him.
The group splits off to try to find more answers about the hotel. The Doctor tells them that the monster must feed on fear. Since Rory has no fear left in his life, the monster obviously doesn't want him. The answer, the Doctor tells everyone, is to focus on ''faith'' instead of fear.
Unfortunately alone, Amy opens up a door that calls to her. The Doctor happens to open another door (to Room 11) that has called to him, and glumly recognizes what is waiting for him. We never get to see it, and he puts a "do not disturb" sign on the door.
After everyone's regrouped, the Doctor chats with Rita in the stairwell, reassuring her that everyone will be fine. She comments that she knows things will be
When the Doctor finds the security booth, he begins scouring the screens for signs of the Minotaur, but sees only Rita finding her door again and walking in. It has her father in it, mocking her for average grades. The Doctor calls Rita's room on the phone, begging her to let him find her and save her. She refuses, telling him that the hotel's shifting rooms would keep them miles apart. As the Minotaur approaches, the Doctor's pleas for Rita to save herself go unanswered. Rita hangs up and begs the Doctor to look away while she dies, in order to give her some final dignity. The Doctor sonics the screen off as Rita bravely faces her death.
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The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Gibbus return to the hotel's bar. The Doctor comes to realize that the beast is not feeding off of fear at all. It's feeding off the strong faith of each of its victims. Joe, the gambler, was savvy to luck; Howie was a conspiracy theorist that stuck to his convictions, and Rita was a devoted Muslim. He tries to rationalize why the others haven't been affected: Gibbus, being from the most cowardly race in the universe, naturally worshipped his conquerors, but would be too timid to hold any convictions of his own. Rory just has no faith to speak of. The Doctor suffers of bit of a [[Heroic BSOD]] when he realises that he's been ''encouraging'' the gang to focus on their faith, and that he's now caused their deaths. He's interrupted, though, when he hears that Amy is now uttering "praise him". Her faith in the Doctor is what brought them to the hotel in the first place and what is being challenged right now.
The four race to the door that Amy opened previously, followed by the beast. Inside is young Amelia Pond, waiting in her coat with with her suitcase to join her Raggedy Doctor on the night she met him. As Rory and Gibbus try to hold the beast back, the Doctor, speaking to both Amys, insists he's not a hero. He took her along because he was vain and lonely. He ruins lives and lies to everyone. He invites along for a ride, ''knowing'' that his life is full of war, death and loss. Because he's not a God, and not a
As they watch, the hotel starts to dissolve around them, revealing it to be a digital simulation within a large ship. The Doctor talks to the beast, a relative of the Nimon, in its own language. The beast tells him that for such an ancient creature, who caused so much destruction and has the blood of a billion galaxies on his conscience, death would be a mercy. The Doctor agrees. The beast curtly tells him that it wasn't talking about itself; it meant the Doctor.
After the beast passes away, the Doctor recognizes the ship as an automated prison ship, plucking people with strong faith out of time and space as food for the beast. Nearby sits the TARDIS, and as they climb aboard, Gibbus asks for a lift back to his home planet.
Some time later, the TARDIS arrives in England, outside a townhouse. The Doctor presents the house, and a new car, to Amy and Rory as a gift, but Amy suspects that something is up. As Rory checks out the house, the Doctor tells Amy that they must stop travelling with him, as only death and destruction come to those that accompany them. The Doctor makes for a quick goodbye and disappears back into his TARDIS before Amy can protest.
{{tropelist|page=The God Complex}}
* [[Alas, Poor Villain]]: The Minotaur feeds because it must, and wishes it didn't. The Doctor pities it as it dies and it pities the Doctor. [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|Because he won't die.]]▼
* [[Abuse Is Okay When Its Female On Male]]: Mild example, but when Rory wakes up after getting knocked to the floor his first thought was that Amy hit him. It's mentioned that she has at least once in the past when he made a complaint about the Doctor.▼
▲* [[Alas Poor Villain]]: The Minotaur feeds because it must, and wishes it didn't. The Doctor pities it as it dies and it pities the Doctor. [[Who Wants to Live Forever|Because he won't die.]]
* [[Alpha Bitch]]: Howie's worst fear is a room party full of them.
* [[And I Must Scream]]: {{spoiler|Whoever put the Minotaur in the ship has a ''lot'' to answer for, ''because he put the Minotaur there''. The victims are '''also''' a crime.}}
* [[Anti
* [[Asshole Victim]]: {{spoiler|The Minotaur}}.
** Though this is only initially. {{spoiler|After so many years of torture, you can't consider it a villain anymore and agree that it's better to let the poor thing die.}}
* [[Ax Crazy]]: Inverted. The people under the Minotaur's influence are obviously insane, and incredibly peaceful and agreeable. The danger comes from the fact that they call the Minotaur, not them.
* [[Apocalyptic Log]]: Amy finds a handwritten account of one of the Minotaur's former victims.
* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: Gibbis often veers into this.
{{quote|
* [[Bad Vibrations]]
* [[Belief Makes You Stupid]]: Or more accurately, Belief makes you {{spoiler|[[Space Whale Aesop|vulnerable to a faith-devouring monster.]]}}
* [[The "B" Grade]]: Rita's nightmare.
* [[Blessed Are the Cheesemakers]]: One of the Doctor's [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist|many]], [[Not That Kind of Doctor|many]] [[Super Doc|degrees]].
* [[Bound and Gagged]]: Used on Joe to keep him quiet.
* [[Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs]]: Is it a minotaur? Or an alien? Or an alien minotaur?
{{quote|
* [[Break Her Heart to Save Her]] / [[Broken Pedestal]]: The Doctor deliberately {{spoiler|talks Amy into losing her faith in him, presenting himself not as an invincible hero incapable of wrong, but as a vain fool who did not consider the danger he was putting her in}}.
* [[British Stuffiness]]: Rita jokes about it, saying that the British deal with trauma by drinking tea and tutting.
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* [[Chronic Hero Syndrome]]: Basically what the Doctor's 'god complex' is - he can and must save everyone, always. Rita calls him out on it, asking him why he thinks it's his duty to save them all.
* [[Conspiracy Theorist]]: Howard decides that they're in a facility in Norway built by the CIA for when the world is destroyed. Rory congratulates him on coming up with something that makes even less sense that what's actually happening.
{{quote|
'''Howie:''' It's all there on the internet.
'''Rory:''' No, it's amazing you've come up with a theory even more insane than what's actually happening. }}
** Rory has no fear. No faith. Rory is a 2000 year old ... Rory. Where others see their worst fears, Rory sees fire exits.
* [[Continuity Nod]]:
** The [[Doctor Who
** The wall of photos has numerous aliens the Doctor has encountered over the years, either as the victims themselves or fears of the victims.
** A [[Doctor Who
** Oddly, the Doctor eats an apple. The Doctor [[Doctor Who
** [[Doctor Who
** "[[Doctor Who
** This isn't the first time Rory has wielded a mop. Or a broom. The Doctor, too.
* [[Cool Car]]: Rory's dream car, a red [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/1963_Jaguar_XK-E_Roadster.jpg E-Type Jag].
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* [[The Door Slams You]]: Happens in the episode. [[Butt Monkey|Not surprisingly, to Rory]].
* [[Double Meaning Title]]: The "God Complex" describes not only the Doctor's and Minotaur's need to be adored, but also the hotel itself: a prison to contain a deity.
▲* [[
* [[Emotion Eater]]: The obvious idea that the Minotaur feeds on fear is subverted. {{spoiler|It presents its victims' fear, causing them to use faith to strengthen themselves, at which point the Minotaur converts that to faith in itself, and drains it from the victim.}}
* [[Failsafe Failure]]: The whole reason anyone can escape in the first place is because the prison is broken. Instead of adjusting itself to match its victims, it's stuck in the form of the hotel. It also can't purge anyone that gets trapped, so their fears build up in the rooms, meaningless to the new victims.
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* [[The Gambling Addict]]: Implied for Joe via a horseshoe tie pin and die cufflinks.
* [[Genre Blindness]]: The Doctor still hasn't learned that offering companionship in the middle of an episode is basically signing the person's death warrant.
* [[Genre Savvy]]: This marks the first time in the new series the Doctor has {{spoiler|sent companions home}} without some kind of horrible accident happening.
** Jack: {{spoiler|Made [[Doctor Who
** Rose: {{spoiler|Got stuck in an [[Doctor Who
** Martha: {{spoiler|Had her whole [[Doctor Who
** River: {{spoiler|[[Heroic Sacrifice|Sacrificed herself]] in the [[Doctor Who
** Donna: {{spoiler|forced to forget [[Doctor Who
** Amy and Rory: {{spoiler|He just left them with a new car and an apartment, still sane and whole.}} He must be catching on.
*** {{spoiler|Sane, but not unchanged. All the traumas they endured over the past two series will still be with them, from [[Doctor Who
** Rory has one of his moments as well, leading to a bit of [[Black Comedy]]:
{{quote|
* [[A God Am I]]: The Minotaur needs to be believed as this to get his "meals". And Rita accuses the Doctor of having a "[[Title Drop|God Complex]]". {{spoiler|The Minotaur himself doesn't believe this, though.}}
* [[Gods Need Prayer Badly]]: The Minotaur feeds on {{spoiler|the belief of people who worship it. Any belief will do in a pinch, though.}}
* [[Got the Call
* [[Gym Class Hell]]: briefly appears as one of the left-over fears.
* [[Happiness in Slavery]]: Doesn't actually happen, but Gibbis seems wistful at thought of being saved by slavers.
* [[Hell Hotel]]: It's actually a prison. One of the prisoners does actually believe it to be Hell, at first.
* [[Hello, Insert Name Here]]: Gibbis's species' national anthem is entitled "Glory to (Insert Name Here)."
* [[Henpecked Husband]]: Rory's first response after getting unexpectedly knocked down: "[[
** He also complains of being hit by a shoe when he spoke ill of the Doctor in front of her.
*** She had to bend down and unlace it first!
** Averted at the end of the episode. Rory goes over a number of reasons why Amy won't want to accept the Doctor's gift of the [[Cool Car]]… then decides he can live with it. He ''really'' wants the car.
* [[Heroic BSOD]]: After Rita's death, the Doctor destroys the bar.
* [[Hey,
* [[I Cannot Self
* [[I Die Free]]: The [[Fair Cop]] in the cold open may be hoping for this. Her notes/narration state that they're being dictated in between periods of worship, that when she's not dictating "Praise him" and variants, that she's lucid. Unfortunately, she absolutely can't die free. You die a slave.
** Rita, [[Tear Jerker|wants the Doctor to remember her as she was]].
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** [[Fridge Logic|Based on the way they were acting, it may not have been voluntary.]] [[Fridge Brilliance|This may have been part of the jail set up by the jailers,]] to make sure that people found their worst fears and were forced to fall back on their {{spoiler|faith}}, instead of just wandering around the hotel randomly.
** Not to mention leaving the possessed guy under the care of the guy whose species is notoriously cowardly.
* [[I'm Not a Hero,
* [[Internal Homage]]: The plot is similar to the Eighth Doctor's adventure on [[Big Finish Doctor Who
* [[Ironic Nursery Rhyme]]: ''Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. Chop… chop… chop… chop!''
** Double points for being an actual nursery rhyme. Note to foreigners: British nursery rhymes are [http://www.rhymes.org.uk/oranges_and_lemons.htm deeply disturbing.]
* [[
* [[Karma Houdini]]: Gibbis never gets any comeuppance for {{spoiler|freeing Howie and lying about it.}}
** [[Justified Trope|Justified]]: He'd seen his fear. He was also under the Minotaur's control.
** A ''much'' bigger [[Karma Houdini]]: {{spoiler|whatever [[Complete Monster|bastards]] imprisoned that poor Minotaur in the first place, not only forcing it to continue [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|existing for all eternity when all it really wants to do is die]], but also scooping up who-knows-how-many innocent victims to be fed to it simply because they have any kind of faith.}}
* [[Kill
* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: "Every time I see the Doctor getting chummy with someone, I get the overwhelming urge to notify their next of kin."
* [[A Load of Bull]]: The Minotaur-like monster running about.
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* [[Meaningful Name]]: The room numbers on the hotel doors. The Doctor's door is 11; Amy's is 7 (her age when she first met the Doctor). The room where they try to trap the creature is called The Pasiphae Spa; Pasiphae was the mother of the Minotaur.
* [[Meaningful Rename]]: {{spoiler|After calling him "Rory Pond," and calling the couple "The Ponds," the Doctor finally calls her "Amy Williams." He's finally letting go of the little girl he accidentally abandoned and truly wants her to move on with her life. It seems significant that while talking to her during that scene he (and she?) see her as her 7-year-old self.}}
{{quote|
* [[Mind Rape]]: The Minotaur's ''modus operandi''.
* [[Monster Clown]]: Subverted. The clown represents someone's coulrophobia, but since that someone is long dead, all it does is sit on a bed and look sad.
** Until one remembers that coulrophobia is not uncommon. That sad clown lies in wait for... you.
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* [[Nerd Glasses]]: Howie Spragg. They're even old fashioned.
* [[Nightmare Fuel]]: The core plot element, how each of the taken's faith is broken by being exposed to their worst fears that are generally otherwise mundane and non-threatening to anyone else. Doesn't help that some overlap with real fears (such as clowns)
* [[Noodle Incident]]: This apparently isn't the first time the Doctor has been [[Makes Just
* [[Nothing Is Scarier]]: The opening sequence shows a woman, Lucy Hayward, opening door after door in the hotel, and finding various nightmares, including a creepy clown. She's then drawn to one particular door - her door - and opens it to reveal… an empty room. ''Then'' the gorilla comes out the bathroom.
** Used again later when the Doctor finds his room: {{spoiler|we hear the cloister bell ringing, and can assume that a person is in there, but that's all.}}
** We never learn what's in the Doctor's room, or in Amy's room. The room with {{spoiler|young Amelia Pond}} is never clarified. There are implications, of course, but we're talking about [[Steven Moffat]].
** The Minotaur itself.
* [[Not So Different]]: The Minotaur and the Doctor, to the point that it becomes [[Anvilicious]].
* [[Not That Kind of Doctor]]:
{{quote|
* [[One Steve Limit]]: In the script read-through (shown on ''[[Doctor Who Confidential]]'') the policewoman in the opening sequence is named Lucy Miller. By the time of the actual episode, she has been renamed as Lucy Hayward, presumably to avoid confusion with [[Big Finish Doctor Who
* [[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions]]: What happens to planets over time, cutting off the Minotaur's source of "food": {{spoiler|faith.}}
** Played with; it's shown that {{spoiler|"faith"}} is a catch-all phrase for {{spoiler|any strongly-held value, be it a faith in luck related to a compulsive gambling habit, a mountain of crazy conspiracy theories, or [[Tear Jerker|the belief that compels a seven-year-old girl to hold on to the memory of an imaginary friend for fourteen years.]]}}
* [[Planet of Hats]]: Gibbis comes from the race of [[Cheese
* [[Psychological Torment Zone]]
* [[Resistance Is Futile]]: Gibbis' old school motto was "Resistance is exhausting."
* [[Shadow Archetype]]: The Minotaur and the Doctor are played as [[Not So Different|being very similar]]: traveling the universe in a vessel with strange dimensions, and which is stuck in its current guise, drawing people to themselves at random and compelling those people to have faith in them. Both ultimately destroy those trapped with them, not because they want to but out of a sort of compulsion. Many of the things the Minotaur says (voiced by the Doctor) can apply to either of them.
* [[Shout
** [[Star Trek
** The setup of the episode as a whole is clearly based on the Minotaur of Crete from [[Greek Mythology]]: A bull/man monster trapped in an inescapable labyrinth, with victims periodically chucked in for it to feed on.
** [[House of Leaves|A constantly-shifting structure with a minotaur in it?]]
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*** Or, also, that this is the eleventh episode of the 2011 series.
*** Or that the Doctor's [[Evil Me Scares Me|greatest fear is himself]].
** Gibbis says he was planting trees on the sides of the streets so that alien invaders could march in the shade, similar to a joke about [[Cheese
*** Hitler had the trees along the Unter Den Linden cut down so he could get a better view of his troops marching up and down.
** The hotel itself is very reminiscent of the Overlook in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of [[Stephen King]]'s [[The Shining]]; it's worth noting that everybody keeps comparing the décor to that of a "hotel from the 1980s."
** The clown may be a reference to Pennywise from ''[[IT]]'', though admittedly, fear of clowns is not particularly uncommon.
*** A monster that feeds on the fear of its victims could also be a reference. {{spoiler|Subverted in that the Doctor eventually realizes that's NOT what's happening}}.
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*** Immediately after saying that line, the Doctor tosses a Rubik's Cube in the air and catches it.
*** Later, he finds a pair of glasses with one lens shattered and a small piece missing.
** The [[Ironic Nursery Rhyme]] is the same one used in [[Nineteen Eighty
** A tiny one. The Doctor is trying to catch Howie's attention while he's being mind-controlled. He taps on the table four times.
** When the Beast possesses people, you see brief flashes of them laughing, similar to a scene in [[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]] episode ''Objects in Space'' where bounty hunter Jubal Early is being tormented by memories from his past.
* [[Sorting Algorithm of Mortality]]: Subverted with [[Dirty Coward]] Gibbis surviving.
* [[Soundtrack Dissonance]]: The cheesy muzak being piped into the hotel corridors.
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** The hotel is also [[House of Leaves|a complex that houses a god]].
* [[Token Evil Teammate]]: Several. Anyone who's been overwhelmed by the Minotaur. And [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|Gibbis]].
* [[Too Spicy for Yog
** This is later revealed to be not quite true as the creature feeds not on fear, but on {{spoiler|faith}} with the fear merely being a catalyst for {{spoiler|them to draw on their faith in whatever they believe will save them}} and Rory is unsuitable to its needs because {{spoiler|he is neither religious nor superstitious and, unlike Amy, does not have an abiding faith that The Doctor will always save the day}}.
*** Rory does have {{spoiler|faith, mostly in Amy,}} but after his 2000 years as the Lone Centurion there is no longer any fear left in him to exploit in order to {{spoiler|subvert that faith}}. Even the fear of losing Amy has no power because he's already faced and defeated it.
** Anyone who has faith is too spicy. Once that faith is subverted, they're tasty morsels.
* [[Tortured Abomination]]: The Minotaur.
* [[The Un
* [[Vertigo Effect]]: Straight and played with.
** Several dolly zooms shorten or lengthen hallways. Because scary.
** An extreme variant, repeated multiple times, is the [[Vertigo]] stairwell. A shot down the middle of a stairwell iconically showed up in that film and is part of this episode's [[Mind Screw]].
* [[Voiceover Letter]]: Played with. When the Doctor starts reading Lucy's notes, her voice comes in, but his never fades away; both voices are audible, reading the same words with different inflections.
* [["Well Done, Son" Guy|"Well Done, Daughter" Gal]]: Rita's greatest fear is her father's rejection of her, manifesting as [[The "B" Grade|disappointment in a "B" in maths]].
* [[Wham! Episode]]: Bet you weren't expecting {{spoiler|Rory and Amy to part ways with the Doctor two episodes before the series ends.}}
* [["What Do They Fear?" Episode]]
* [[What Happened to
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: Done to the Doctor by ''himself''.
* [[Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?]]: The crazy worshiper who won't shut up. They tape his mouth shut.
* [[Your Worst Nightmare]]: The maze brings people's fears into physical form. They include [[Monster Clown|clowns]], a gang of [[Alpha Bitch
* [[Zero
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Doctor Who (TV)/Recap]]▼
[[Category:Recap]]
[[Category:{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]]
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