TV Review - Things That Go Bump in the Night

Doctor Who – The God Complex

Date aired: Saturday 17^th September, BBC1, 7:10pm

Superior Being - Matt Smith with Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill

The writer’s of Doctor Who seem to be struggling with coming up with reasons why the TARDIS and gang arrive at the main location of every new episode. The Doctor’s (Matt Smith) now clichéd ramblings of “I’m taking you to a wonderful new planet full of exciting adventures- oh, hang on...this isn’t it...” is getting a little tiresome.

This week Amy, Rory and the Doctor are surprised to arrive at a maze floating through space, decorated in the style of a 1980’s Torquay hotel. As if the floral carpet isn’t scary enough, stalking through the never-ending hallways is a Minotaur- a god who has become redundant in a secular world and now inhabits the maze while feeding on the faith of those imprisoned within. Add rooms filled with the manifestations of each prisoner’s deepest, darkest fears- including a sad clown and a room full of laughing ventriloquist dummies- and we’re well on our way to the level of Saturday evening frights we’ve become accustomed to.

The scariest part, however, is actually the appearance of David Walliams, almost unrecognisable under layers of rodent-like prosthetics. Looking like the love-child of William Hague and a mutated rat, he played the part of a dislikeable, irritating coward rather well. Turns out Walliams plays dislikeable and irritating even when he means to.

A few jokes short of a sketch show - David Walliams

The episode’s plot doesn’t twist and turn as much as usual, and the writers could have done a lot more with the idea of rooms filled with nightmares individually tailored to each character. There was nothing to hide behind the sofa from this week which feels like a bit of a letdown after the bar is continually set higher by the tension and horrifying monsters in each previous episode this series. The adventure climaxed in a Scooby-Doo “Let’s catch ourselves a monster” type chase, running through corridors to trap the Minotaur. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff. In fact, it looks like a laughable fallback plan of a writer out of ideas for plot development.

However, the final speech the doctor gives is rather poetic and stirs more emotion than the 40 minutes that went before. The ending leaves room for a whole new direction the series can be taken in, so the episode is worth a watch purely for this fact alone. Let’s just hope the rest of the episodes can pick the pace up again so as not to go out with a whimper, but with a bang.