News: High turnover!

In order to make this blog's second anniversary (all the way on February 4th!) special, I've been trying to write more reviews than I normally would. The downside to this is that I'm really getting through my material, and my aim (400 posts) is a little far-fetched. Regardless, I hope you enjoy my increased workrate and that this will encourage more people to read my work.
     Coming up before the Anniversary we'll have Trial of a Time Lord Month in October, where I'll look at Colin Baker's second season as The Doctor. October will also see the return of Merlin, as well as the end of my Doctor Who reviews (for both Seasons 27 and 32). Being Human reviews will continue weekly on Tuesdays, and Fades on Wednesdays.
      In November I'll finally finish Lost with three Finale reviews and we'll also see the return of Misfits for an eight-part series! In Classic Doctor Who I'll examine three of the show's classics - Spearhead from Space, Caves of Androzani and Vengeance on Varos. I'll also be reviewing some films.
      In December I'll exhaust my Doctor Who supply by ending the year with The Beginning, the first three serials from 1963. Merlin and Misfits will finish, and I'll review the Christmas special as Audenshaw Reviews bows out to 2012.

Thanks.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: Four To Doomsday

Android Frogs arrive to take over the world!

Doctor Who - Season 19, Story Two - Four To Doomsday

Because they wanted Davison's first story to be at least mildly well-performed, the first one he ever recorded was the second story of the season, Four to Doomsday. Fans don't give it a lot of credit; its shoddy special effects and the fact that it comes between two of the Fifth Doctor's more notable stories certainly doesn't help, but the serial itself is a recent favourite of mine for more reasons than one. It's certainly nowhere near perfect, but no Who story truly is and a lot of the time this story's foibles are what make it so entertaining.     
      The Doctor and his roster of three companions are bickering in the Tardis, Adric showing a bit of a chavanistic side, when The Doctor lands where he thinks is Heathrow Airport 1982 - get used to it, this is a common theme throughout Davison's run and this season in particular. In fact he's landed on a spaceship headed towards Earth, run by the mysterious Monarch (the affably evil Stratford Johns) and his creepy assistants Persuasion and Enlightenment. Carrying what appear to be four groups of Earth based civilisations going back in four-thousand year gaps, Monarch keeps the four Tardis passengers on the ship and they soon discover the truth behind Monarch's plot. He believes himself a God, and through the use of android technology he plans to recreate his entire civilisation as immortal beings, and to do so he's going to invade Earth, kill the inhabitants and then use the planet's crust for his silicon chips. Despite Adric going out of his way to side with the villain, The Doctor wins round the leaders of the android civilisations and defeats Monarch, leaving the androids free to find their own planet and live in peace forever.
     Four To Doomsday's enemies are the frog-like people of Urbanka, and their use is incredibly well-done. Stratford Johns, working under the stresses of a heavy costume, still portrays a likeable but ultimately megolamaniac Monarch, who delivers some of the episode's best lines - "Ah, conformity. Is there any other freedom?" - in a way that, considering the stresses he was under, is admirable. Enlightenment and Persuasion are the first clues to the ship's mechanical nature as they change themselves from the frog-like creatures into two humanoids played by Annie Lambert and Paul Shelly respectively. Shelly is especially good as the sly, manipulative Persuasion, who serves as Monarch's Dragon for the majority of the serial.Lambert has less of a presence, but she doesn't harm the story.

He hasn't grounded his 4026B...

     Guest stars aside from the villains are ok if not stellar; Bond actor Phillip Locke's role as the Athenian Leader Bigon is fascinating to watch and his delivery of the mid-serial bombshell that everyone on the ship is an Android (carved around the new twice-a-week-scheduling) is mindblowing. Elsewhere, and Burt Kwouk plays the Chinese leader with the charm that he brings to every one of his characters.
     Davison makes a point in the commentary that this episode couldn't have been done as a Baker story, and I agree with him. Davison is a lot more active here than Tom was in his final series, and some of the special effects seem like they might have angered his sense of familiarity with the process (flying through space as performed by riding an office chair over a blue screen, for instance). Maybe Tom would have a bit more fun with the megalomaniac villain angle but over all things this was written specifically for Five and thus he fills the role perfectly.
      Companions, however, are another story entirely. Janet Fielding is funny on the commentary, and that's the only solace I can find that Tegan is even here, her unrealistic characterisation carried over from her first few appearances and not improving here any. With so many companions, they all become incredibly one note and if that note is off-key than it strikes particularly badly - Tegan is gobby and yet absurdly skilled (she's able to draw a still-life drawing of what she considers average dress from memory as well as speak a 40,000 year old Australasian dialect), Adric is annoying, chavanistic and whiney and Nyssa... Nyssa doesn't do much. Of course one could blame this on the fact that she wasn't written into these early stories until the last minute - the next story has her faint unexpectedly for no reason and then get better at the end - but it doesn't exactly add credence to the three-companion drive when one of them, and the least irritating one at that, is constantly sidelined.

Tenko, you say? Never heard of it.

      Another thing mentioned in the commentary that is a lot more sublte than one would expect is the use of lighting. The set they had was on the edge of the studio and was plain white, and so to inject some colour lighting is used incredibly well to provide an atmosphere for the story.  One thing I love, probably influenced by other sci-fi, are the swooshy doors which appear to have come at a great cost to the production team but make the setting seem like less of a set and more like a real space ship. There's also no music at all except for a few rare moments, which is strange considering Eighties Who's habit of having intrusive melodies constant in the background.
      Four To Doomsday makes the best of a bad lot, using lighting and music - the notable lack of - to create an atmospheric and interesting piece of television bolstered and complimented by the brilliant acting on display. There are a lot of problems with it, but the story has an inescapable charm that leads me to chuckle at the absurdity instead of groan. Davison's first outing is an entertaining hundred minutes and sets the tone of his serial perfectly after the rough leftovers from Castrovalva.

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Review: Doctor Who 1.8: Father's Day

Pete Tyler

During the era in which Who was off air, the nature of modern sci-fi changed. Notably, time paradoxes and examinations of such became incredibly popular, and to keep up with the times Who was going to have to produce a story that messed with Time. Moffat would later take this and run away with it, but in Series One this task was left for writer Phil Cornell, who was a prolific writer of Doctor Who fiction during the Era. Taking an opportunity to develop the characters as well as present an interesting concept, Father's Day has the right ingredients to make one excellent cake.
     Rose's father Pete Tyler (Shaun Dingwall) died when she was a baby, and the memories of the aftermath have haunted Rose ever since. On her request The Doctor takes her to the incident in 1987, where Rose wants to make sure that her dad didn't die alone. The first time, however, she fails, and so The Doctor lets her do it again with the warning that they can't cross timelines with their past selves. Rose can't help herself, pushing her dad out of the way of the oncoming car and saving his life. The Doctor is angry at her because the laws of time have been broken and now they'll have to pay the price.
     The Tardis interior disappears and strange creatures (not named, but referred to in publicity as Reapers) arive out of nowhere and start eating people. After barricading everyone inside a church The Doctor explains that these are creatures who live outside Time and who have come to sterilize the wound. The Doctor himself is eaten by a Reaper and the TARDIS is destroyed, but everything is set right when Pete realises that he shouldn't be alive and throws himself in front of the car, which had been driving around the block for the entire episode.

Rose and Nine try again. No, not that way. Rude.

     I mentioned in previous reviews that this series touched upon the characterisation of the Companion a lot more than the classic series, and this is a big example of the techniques this series uses to do so. On its own, Father's Day would make a decent if slightly convaluted (the laws of time presented here are never visited again) sci-fi time travel story, but it's the underlying plot with Rose's dad that makes it so compelling. Both Rose and then The Doctor are prepared to rip apart space and time for one man, who it turns out is nothing like the rich businessman of Rose's imaginings but more of a Del Boy. Then, of course, we have the lovely touch where it's revealed that Pete instead sacrificed himself to the timeline to save the woman who he now recognises as his daughter. This is great characterisation right here.
     However, this does strike a pretty big contrast when compared to the previous episode. All Adam did was send some info about futuristic computers home and he was kicked out of the TARDIS; here Rose endangers the entirety of time and space and Nine's hunkey dory about the whole thing. And herein lies its main issue; the episode is more skewered towards an emotional reaction rather than an intellectually satisfying one. Instead of learning her lesson here, Rose would go on to make even more time fuck-ups and there really is no excuse after what happened here. I can accept that The Doctor may have felt some empathy with Rose for wanting to return the people she loves, but Rose had to break more laws of time just to fix the mess she made.

Do not fear the Reaper...

     RTD's Who was always about the big emotional punch and this is yet another episode where that focus gets in the way of what could have been a really good sci-fi story. It could have been perfect, but the story was a little too balanced towards the melodrama and often felt ignorant of common sense - a let down for what is otherwise one of this series strongest episodes so far.

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Review: Doctor Who 6.12: Closing Time

Gareth Roberts' "The Lodger" began life as a Tenth Doctor comic strip, and was adapted as an Eleventh Doctor companion-lite episode last year. Here, for the first time in NuWho, we forgo the two-parter finale and instead have a penultimate that not only brings back Craig (James Corden) from that episode but gives us the first focus on the Cybermen since the changeover. After the string of confused, arc-enthused episodes that this series has so far produced, will this more light-hearted offering change anything?
     Well, it was certainly more arc-oriented than I expected. The Doctor, two hundred years after dropping Amy and Rory off, pops in to see Craig on a "farewell tour" before he dies. While initially The Doctor insists that he won't save them and that he's only there for a housecall, he feels he has to notice what's going on - strange power fluctuations in the area and a disappearance at a local shop. To the dismay of Craig, home alone looking after his baby (who converses with The Doctor and prefers to be named "Stormaggedon"), The Doctor gets a job in the shop where the woman disappears and finds a teleport link to a Cyberman spaceship. After capturing a Cybermat that was draining the store's power, the two face the Cybermen in person and Craig is nearly converted into a Cyber-Controller . The day is only saved when Craig hears the sound of his baby crying and an emotional loop destroys the Cybermen. The Doctor goes off to the last day of his life and on Luna University, Doctor Song is captured by The Silence and placed, inside a spacesuit, at the bottom of Lake Silencio.
     I was perhaps hoping too much from the episode's villains, the Cybermen. They've consistantly been my favourite Who monster in concept rather than execution, mainly because there hasn't been a really, really good Cyberman story since the 1960s. Here they felt a bit more like the Classic Cybermen - an aspect of the episode that I was looking forward to - but that didn't make up for their shoddy voice-work and lack of motivation beyond the norm. They didn't have any charm, and while they weren't necessarily the most important part of the episode it still stood out. And the solution to the all of their problems was just nonsensical - the Cybermen, whose entire ideology is to eradicate difference and thus Emotion, apparently have no safeguards against it.
     Craig and The Doctor should have worked better than it did, with most of the "bonding" being done through the Baby, who became a character in his own right. It was funny in places, but after a while it became routine and the other underlying theme regarding the Doctor's impending death is not exactly news. James Corden played more of a comedy character here, which is a bad idea - his only saving grace in The Lodger was that he was the straight man in the duo. Oh, and there was a subplot where that women from Come Outside thought they were a gay partnership.

Hi. I'm just here to sprout stereotypes. Good day.

      This in mind, the only thing that this episode really leaves you with is those final few moments that relate to the arc. Yes, the arc this year has been incredibly messy, but this episode is the penultimate piece is a two-series-long jigsaw puzzle, and I can only hope that the final piece gives us a much clearer picture than has be presented. I actually went and watched The Impossible Astronaught after watching this, and I think that despite initial appearances this arc is tighter than I thought. That doesn't make up for lack of good storytelling, but we won't be able to fully judge that until next week.
     Closing Time purported to be a breather episode like its predecessor last year, but in many ways it was still a Penultimate Episode. Aside from the few pivotal points relating to the arc, it made the fatal mistake of being disappointing in some areas and boring everywhere else. Maybe it's the arc overshadowing everything, maybe it's because I'm disappointed by the treatment of the Cybermen, but I really felt let down by this otherwise average episode. Sorry.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Mindfucks galore as we gate-crash The Wedding of River Song.

Review: Fades 1.1

BBC Three is good at things like this. Being Human in itself is proof of that, and Fades' cryptic advertising campaign duals with its relatively all-star cast to create something that could be so much better. My impression of the series by the first episode alone? Well, it's impressive - there's a nice mixture of mythology and character work, and it runs on that to create something both emotionally connective and intriguing.
     The premise revolves around a quasi-religious ideology; the Fades are the remnants of people whose souls haven't ascended. Whether one ascends is random, but the Fades often become spiteful because of their eternal limbo. The series begins as our protagonist, Paul (Iain De Caestecker) with his friend Mac (Daniel Kaluuya) discovers the Fades for the first time via an incident with a Fade that has broken through into the world of the living, killing Sarah (Natalie Dormer) and half-blinding Neil (Johnny Harris) who serves as our series' Obi-wan. Paul is balancing his life by a thread; he has constant bad dreams which cause him to wet the bed, and he's in a loose Will-they-won't-they situation with the girl of his dreams. When he finds out that the visions he sees are caused by his pre-ordained ability rather than personal delusions, he goes with Neil to discover the truth. Elsewhere, Mark (Miranda's Tom Ellis), Sarah's partner, works at the school as a teacher and is devastated by the news of her death.
      I bring up Mark because it would be easy to overlook his character entirely. The majority of the episode was a pair of double acts between Paul and either Neil or Mac. Kaluuya, fresh from a cancelled Psychoville, puts his comedy bones to good use and provides some much needed comic relief in an episode where the mythology is on the gory side. In fact, all of the characters are instantly watchable and fundamentally human. In fact, the only performance I had trouble with was Dormer, whose lines consist of trailer taglines.

      The episode doesn't really pick up until about ten minutes in, after the very mythology-laden beginning falls away for the character development that I so loved in this episode. Paul is the textbook flawed protagonist; and Neil is the textbook "wise old one". But it still feels fresh despite how worn the format is and the while the concept itself is by no means new - and what ideas are nowadays - it's well executed, in a way that has me wanting more next week.
      The first episode of Fades was near-perfect, with well-written characterisations fused perfectly with gory visuals and interesting mythology to back it up. While it had a slow first few mintutes, when it got going it was an incredibly gripping piece of television that I'll definitely return to next week. The perfect premier.

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Review: Being Human 2.1

Gelvin prepares for the experiment.

The second series of Toby Whithouse's initially novel supernatural drama takes the themes of the original and ups the stakes with two extra episodes. Whether this works or not we'll decide along the way, but suffice to say that a mere two hours more allows for a lot more useless padding. So, I ask: What would happen if you took the most notable tropes from vampire films and twisted them so that the Vampire was the hero? This is what Being Human purports to do in this second series, although it's a lot cleverer than that in many ways.
     George and Nina are living together, with Nina keeping the secret of her new form away from George, who she fears might go mad from the guilt. Outside a pub where George is drowning his sorrows, he and Mitchell run into two fellow vampires, Ivan and Daisy (Amy Manson, whose career died with Outcasts), who attacked George because of his new celebrity status as Herrick's killer. While Daisy seduces George, Ivan tells Mitchell about the power vaccuum in the Vampire World he's created. Ivan's speeches are quite good here. Ivan and Daisy leave together as Nina reveals to Annie her lycanthropy and asks her to come with her to the first transformation. The grief here is portrayed realistically and the only off character is George, who's acting like a macho dick for some reason. Character development is one thing; this is another.
     Really, George spends the entire second series acting dreadfully out of character; he has an affair with Daisy, is unable to talk honestly to a grief-ridden Nina and upon her leaving is engaged to another woman within a few weeks. George's entire story arc for this series is terrible in my eyes, and while it doesn't necessarily get better or worse it certainly puts a dampener on this series.

Amy Manson struts into the series.

      After some moping and completely unrealistic characterisation in the context of the series, Annie announces that she's applied for a job at the local bar. Mitchell is as dismissive as I am, but Dick!George explains that he's probably only doing so because both George and Annie have found a "purpose" while he has not. He's no bloodlust - nothing to fight, nothing to protect. Mitchell calls him an idiot. I agree. Annie's Job interview goes well, gaining an admirer in boss and admirer Bowser, while Mitchell has a chance encounter with a cynical Doctor called Lucy. She's upset because she's moved here from a rich hospital in London (Lyndsey Marshal) who Mitchell manages to out-misery.
     Both George and Nina prepare for transformation, and we get a gory scene where we see our first female werewolf. At the same time, a test subject called Gelvin is being tested inside a compression chamber by a Mr. Kemp, who claims to be able to stop the transformation into a Werewolf. As Nina transforms, Gelvin is killed by the absurdly high pressure in a gory scene where the blood simply rushes from his body. Kemp cements his villainy by increasing the pressure and watching Gelvin die.
      Daisy meets a naked George in the woods and he gets his first decent moment in the episode. She taunts him and he questions her on why those that enjoy the supernatural want to make everyone else enjoy it too. She explains that there's no better way to experience the world than to just have fun. Then he bonks her, ignoring everything he'd just said. Great. Nina returns home and there's awkwardness when Mitchell reveals he knew all along. She berates him and then George returns home, remaining oblivious. Nina, with her enhanced Werewolf senses, smells Daisy's perfume and accuses George of having an affair. The scene together is quite tense and is easily Tovey's best performance in the episode itself as he channels the testosterone that the wolf in George has built up. In this context George's dickishness feels more like bittersweet irony at his ignorance of Nina's situation. She reveals her lycanthropy in what is the best scene in this particular series.

Bad hair day?

     Mitchell buys Lucy a goldfish and they flirt. A lot. Annie meanwhile meets Saul, and flirts with him as well. They get talking. Nina and George share prolonged looks. George sniffs out Daisy in the hospital, who's visiting her aged daughter preparing to kill her. He rejects her advances for the first time and then psychs her out of the murder and reduces Daisy to tears. George has grown up, and falls to tears in front of Nina in the hospital with his guilt. Annie invites Saul back to the House to use a phone, and the foursome come together in a scene that changes the tone back into quirky comedy. Ending the episode, the four are brought out of their house on an excuse and Kemp wanders around it, quoting from the Bible.
      Series Two stripped away the humour entirely, and this episode is an immediate demonstration of that. While it contains incredible dramatic scenes covering a wide range of interesting concepts, the sudden tonal shift is jarring and the impact on the characters is unmistakeable. Different shouldn't have to mean worse, but here it often feels a hell of a lot like it. George's plotline took a turn for the dark, stroking upon spousal abuse and the depravities of Human Nature, while Annie's storyline turned into a weird, non-funny sitcom. There's something wrong, in my eyes, when the villain of the piece is outshadowed by the inital stupidity of the protagonist, and that's what happened in this incredibly mixed bag. A surprising disappointment.

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Opinion: Misfits 3.X: Vegas Baby!

Misfits has always been about the rise of new young talent but it must be said that Irish Robert Sheehin really took the headline over the two years of the program that he inhabited. The franchise's Captain Jack figure, he was a comic protagonist in the first series due to his apparent lack of abilities. There we could emphasise with him while laughing at his ridiculously over the top personality. In Series Two Simon took over the role of protagonist a lot more with the more interesting SuperHoodie storyline, leaving Nathan with only one decent episode dealing with his past. After the second series, Sheehin decided to leave and thus Howard Overman produced this 8-minute short to take him out of the picture and introduce the new kid on the block, Rudy.
      While disappointing, Vegas Baby! is very funny and truly typical of Misfits' style. Featuring a newly-powered Nathan using his ability to make anything happen to win at the Casino in Las Vegas, he gets arrested when he forgets that there are only six sides on a dice and the short ends with him being dragged off after failing to ring Simon.
      This is an "Opinion" piece because there isn't really enough to call it a review in the true sense of the word. What we got would have been interesting as a segment of a longer episode but the main problem here was that the gross jokes Nathan is known for took up far too much time that could have been used more effectively. His storyline didn't end conclusively, and while it does leave it open for Sheehin to return it felt like a bit of a cop out. Finally, this wasn't so much as an "Introduction" to Rudy as a five second cameo appearance.
     However, and this is a big however, it did get me excited for the new series, and the trailer that followed it made me think of the series that Misfits could be if it didn't have to branch into Nathan-style humour every five minutes. So yeah. It wasn't that good as a standalone, but it was an entertaining few minutes that allowed Sheehin some fun before departure as well as making me more ready than ever for the new series in early November.

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Review: Doctor Who 1.7: The Long Game

Cathica is very openminded.

Even an avid 80s Who fan like myself has to admit that the general public didn't like that period. Colin Baker's turbulent era effectively killed the series despite better scheduling, and the series died a slow death four years later. The Long Game is an episode that story-wise and aestheically harks back to the 80s in many ways, particularly in the set design and the general tone of the story. Will The Long Game redeem the memory of the 80s? As we'll find out, yes and no.
     I mentioned last time that Adam, the new companion, was the shortest lived companion and the only one in Who history to be ejected for bad behaviour. His actions in this episode, which include sending information from 200,000 to 2012, make the 80s comparison incredibly unfortunate. He's the modern Adric through and through, from the irritating naivity, boy-genius arrogance and the selfish attitude. All he needs now is a set of pjamas.
     Nine, Rose and Adam arrive on Satellite Five, a space station orbitting the Earth in the year 200,000, at the height of the Fourth Great and Bountful Human Empire. The Doctor is worried when he discovers that the station, a news agency, is using technology several hundred years out of date - using implanted chips to operate computers and holes in people's brains to organise information. He's also intrigued by the station's command structure, in which people are promoted at random to a legendary Floor 500, which then turns out to be a freezing cold control room run by The Editor (the brilliant Simon Pegg!!!) and an unseen monster.

Tamsin Grieg opens Adam's mind.

     Nine shows off to Adam by giving him futuristic money and Rose allows him the use of the SuperPhone to ring home. While Nine and Rose uncover the corruption in the news system and head up to confront Floor 500, Adam noses about with the futuristic computer system, getting himself a hole-in-the-head implant and trying to broadcast the information home with the SuperPhone. The Editor captures Nine and Rose, who the Editor recognises because of Adam's exploits. His master is called the Mighty Jagrafess, a giant gelationous blob on the ceiling that requires cold temperatures to live. One of the workers who had been following the events of the episode (and chatted with The Doctor) also discovers the secret of Floor 500 and uses her head-hole to send all the heat to the top, killing the Jagrafess and saving the world from corrupt misinformation. Adam gets kicked out at home.
     One of the biggest problems that I have with The Long Game is that despite the Doctor's proclamations that the people of 200,000 are living in a terrible dictatorship where a giant blob controls all passage of information, I really don't see it. How are we, the good people of 2005 (2011 at time of review, but for the sake of argument) supposed to feel the slow of technology in 200,000 when we've never visited said period before? Everyone looks pretty happy, and a system is a system, despite how ridiculous the system may appear. Nine tries pulling the "slavery" card, but the controlling nature of the Jagrafess on individuals only seems to really affect the workers on Satellite Five, and the only things put upon the people of Earth are registers. Not exactly 1984. And yes, it was making them more xenophobic and developing them as a race of people that didn't ask vital questions. Seems nothing much as changed in 199, 989 years.
      And there's the fact that a guest character saves the day yet again, with The Doctor this time tied up by computer controlled corpses and a man with a terrible goatee. I love Nine but his track record, "saving the day" wise isn't that good in that he only ever explicity saves the day once, and did that with assistance.

Shouldn't I be off making Hot Fuzz?

       Yet, despite how bad it seems on paper, I really enjoy The Long Game. I can't help but adore the campy aesthetic, Pegg's flamboyant performance and sets made out of cardboard. There's a rich layer of satire running underneath that, while reducing the almightly problem behind the episode into a more trial modern issue, gives it more layers than it really deserves. Case in point; how is Satellite Five any different to modern Western governments? RTD hasn't always been clever with his satire, but here it's better than normal. I also, despite his nature, like most of Adam's scenes, especially the ones on Floor 16. The medicinal floor, Adam goes there to get his brain-chip and his nurse is the wonderful Tamsin Grieg whose understated performance is charming despite its one-dimensional, expositional nature. Christine Adams' supporting role as Cathica is interesting to watch and as the Saver of The Day this week she needs to be.
     The Long Game is a cheesy satire with the aesthetic of the eighties and the performances to match. It fails in the same areas that it suceeds and while it could have been one of the best episodes of the series it's let down by the same things that bring it up. I like it, but in places I don't and I can see why it's one of the lower rated episodes of this series that doesn't include anything particularly offensive.

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News: Merlin and Misfits

This Autumn, two shows return to Audenshaw Reviews. In early October, Merlin returns in its fourth series on BBC1 - will it suck as much as the last series? In November, Misfits delivers its third series, with new character Rudy replacing headliner Robert Sheehin. Will the loss of its major star damage the show?

Find out this Autumn here on Audenshaw Reviews.

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Review: Doctor Who 1.11: The God Complex

"Gottle o' geer! Gottle o' geer!"

I really wasn't looking forward to this episode. While Toby Whithouse has never put a foot wrong in the writing department, the trailers made it look like a cheesy 80's style Monster-of-the-week episode, while didn't really enthuse me considering this series' track record with standalones. I was, fortunately, surprised. While the story began as a powerful standalone it morphed into a deep, involving arc episode that brought the companions' story full circle and took Moffat's arc in a direction that I loved while dealing for the first time on the show with issues like faith and dependance.
     The trio arrive in what appears to be an Eighties Hotel, one built on an alien world. They're met by three people in reception; Rita, a Muslim Nurse, Howie Spragg, a nerdy blogger conspiracy theorist (not liking the stereotype) and Gibbis (comedian David Walliams), an alien from the most invaded planet in the galaxy. The other member of their group, Joe, has been possessed by an entity that causes him to "worship him." The Hotel is a mind-bending labyrinth within which every room contains the greatest fear of one of the survivors, and soon after they face their fear they become posessed and killed by an alien Minotaur that stalks the hallways.
      The Doctor tries to encourage high spirits to get everyone through it, even talking to the Minotaur who reveals that he only kills on instinct and wants it to end. It's only when everyone except he, Gibbis and his companions are dead that he realises that the thing the creatures feasts on is not Fear but Faith. Rory and Gibbis have survived thus far because they have no faith to speak of; Rory has spent his entire life being let down by Amy and Gibbis comes from a society built around weaponsied cowardice. Only Amy is left, with her faith in the Doctor. They go to her Room and find her greatest fear is that The Doctor will abandon her - and to both save the day and save her, he reveals that he only invited her in because of his own vanity and that he isn't as reliable as she wants to believe. She has to stop waiting. It's revealed that the entire scenario was a hallucination inside a malfunctioning alien prison. Day saved, a melancholic Doctor sets Rory and Amy down on Earth with the house and car of their dreams. He explains to Amy that she's safe now, and that this is the only way it could end.

Gibbis takes mad Joe to safety.

    Despite the strength of the characters, the story doesn't really pick up until that powerful ending. Toby Whithouse is incredibly good at writing humanised characters, but here he seems to slink into sterotype. The gambler is greedy and mindless, the nerdy blogger is a conspiracy theorist petrified of girls (again, really not appreaciating the stereotype) and the Muslim girl believes that the hotel is Hell. Despite all of the characters being likeable, it ruined it for me that they were comparatively cutouts. The three who died because of their respective faiths should have been more easy to empathise with than they were here.
      Gibbis is at first the cringing Walliams stereotype, a character that could easily have walked out of a space-themed Little Britain. However, Walliams is good friends with Mr. Mark Gattis and shared his obsession with Doctor Who, which shows as the character becomes the most interesting of the guest cast through sheer philosophy. What at first feels like a comedy caricature soon turns into a sinister manipulative streak that compliments the story instead of leaving it, "that one with the guy from Little Britain."
       I've been thinking, and I'd love Toby Whithouse as the next showrunner. Not just because I happened to love his writing here, but also because he's shown with Being Human that he can handle a full series. The arc here was so much more powerful than Moffat's whirring revelatory fan-fests, and compared to the first half of the series, this and the previous episode have made me care about the Williams' so much more. I loathed it when Amy said, "I'm pregnant" in The Impossible Astronaught, because I knew that that would lead to the type of story telling the arc has provided with us up to this point - shock tactics. I don't want to be shocked; I want to be moved and this episode did it for me.

Inside The Doctor's Door...

     The God Complex is Toby Whithouses' finest work for the series to date, providing the perfect fusion between a fascinating standalone mystery and the powerful emotive arc that this series needs. Despite some characters that were unfortunately burdoned by stereotype, the episode took the arc and the Williams' storylines and brought them a mile ahead of the shock tactics used elsewhere in this series. Thanks, Whithouse. Thank you so much.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Gareth Roberts continues his Lodger storyline as we rejoin Craig as he battles the Cybermen!