The Story of a mad Man with a box series 6 (Doctor Who)

The God Complex Pt 4

[Corridor]

VOICES [OC]: Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him.
(The Doctor is drawn to Room 11. He opens the door.)
DOCTOR: Of course. Who else?
(He shuts the door and puts the Do Not Disturb notice on it. Downstairs, Gibbis is drawn to the goldfish.)

[Security room]

(Nine screens in a bank on the wall.)
DOCTOR: Oh, you beauty. Come on, big fellow, where are you? Rita, where are you going?
(He phones room 311. She hears it and stops.)
DOCTOR: Come on, come on, come on! Come on.
(The phone is answered.)
DOCTOR: Rita, where are you going? Can you take the phone into the corridor? Will it reach?
(She does.)
DOCTOR: You started to praise it, didn't you?
(She nods.)
DOCTOR: Rita, come back, please. We'll find a way to stop it, I swear to you.
RITA [on screen]: No, I need to get as far away from you all as possible.
DOCTOR: No, no, no, you don't. The creature only wants whoever's praising it.
RITA [on screen]: And then you'll put yourself in its way.
DOCTOR: I'm coming to get you. Block out the fear and stay focused on your belief.
RITA [on screen]: The hotel will keep us apart. I could be fifty miles away by now.
(Growl.)
RITA [on screen]: I want you to do me one last favour, Doctor. I can feel the rapture approaching, like a wave. I don't want you to witness this. I want you to remember me the way I was.
(Isabella  and Ronald  enter.)
Isabella : What's going on? Rita's disappeared. What's she doing there?
DOCTOR: Rita. Rita, please. Let me find you.
RITA [on screen]: You stay where you are. Please, let me be robbed of my faith in private.
DOCTOR: Look, Rita. Rita. Go into the room. Lock the door.
RITA [on screen]: I'm not frightened. I'm blessed, Doctor.

[Corridor]

(The Minotaur is close.)
RITA: I'm at peace.

[Security room]

RITA [on screen]: I'm going to hang up.
DOCTOR: No. No, no, Rita.
RITA [on screen]: Goodbye, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Rita!
RITA [on screen]: Thank you for trying.
DOCTOR: Rita, please! Please! Please.
(Rita puts down the phone and waits, smiling, as the shadow of the Minotaur is cast over her. The Doctor sonics the monitor off.)

[Bar]

(Gibbis is raiding the kitchen. Three bodies laid out now. The Doctor is smashing breakables in frustration.)
DOCTOR: Okay. It preys on people's fear and possesses them. But Rita wasn't afraid. She was brave and calm. Maybe it's something to do with the people, some connection between the four of you that'll tell me how to fight it.
GIBBIS: Yes, you keep saying that, but you never do. And while we wait, people keep dying. And we'll be next.
AMY: Look, he'll work it out. He always does. Just let him riff and move anything expensive out of his way.
DOCTOR: Oh, no. Oh, no, no.
Isabella : Doctor, what is wrong?
DOCTOR: It's not fear. It's faith. Not just religious faith, faith in something. Howard believed in conspiracies, that external forces controlled the world. Joe had dice cufflinks and a chain with a horseshoe. He was a gambler. Gamblers believe in luck, an intangible force that helps them win or lose. Gibbis has rejected any personal autonomy and is waiting for the next batch of invaders to oppress him and tell him what to do. They all believe there's something guiding them, about to save them. That's what it replaces. Every time someone was confronted with their most primal fear, they fell back on their most fundamental faith. And all this time, I have been telling you to dig deep, find the thing that keeps you brave. I made you expose your faith, show them what they needed.
RORY: But why us? Why are we here?
DOCTOR: It doesn't want you. That's why it kept showing you a way out. You're not religious or superstitious, so there's no faith for you to fall back on. It wants her.
Isabella : Me? Why?
DOCTOR: Your faith in me. That's what brought us here.
RONALD : But why do they lose their faith before they die and start worshipping it?
DOCTOR: It needs to convert the faith into a form it can consume. Faith is an energy, the specific emotional energy the creature needs to live. Which is why at the end of her note, Lucy said
AMY: Praise him.
DOCTOR: Exactly.
RORY: No. Oh, please, no.
(Stomp, stomp, growl.)

[Corridor]

(They run. Isabella  stops at a crossroads.)
DOCTOR: Isabella? What are you doing?
Isabella : He is beautiful.
GIBBIS: Leave her! Just leave her!
(The Doctor grabs Isabella  and half-carries her away into -)

[Isabella's room]

(Little Isabella is sitting on her suitcase, looking out of the window. Rory tries to hold the door shut as the Minotaur pounds on it. Isabella  drops to her knees.)
Isabella : Doctor, it's happening. It's changing me. It's changing my thoughts.
DOCTOR: I can't save you from this. There's nothing I can do to stop this.
Isabella : What?
DOCTOR: I stole your childhood and now I've led you by the hand to your death. But the worst thing is, I knew. I knew this would happen. This is what always happens.
(The Minotaur bursts in.)
DOCTOR: Forget your faith in me. I took you with me because I was vain. Because I wanted to be adored. Look at you. Glorious Pond, the girl who waited for me. I'm not a hero. I really am just a mad man in a box. And it's time we saw each other as we really are.
(The Minotaur staggers backwards.)
DOCTOR: Isabella Weasley , it's time to stop waiting.

[Corridor]

(The Minotaur collapses. The Doctor goes to it as the lights flicker.)
DOCTOR: I severed the food supply, sacrificing their faith in me. I gave you the space to die. Shush, shush.
(The hotel dissolves into a hologrid.)

[Hologrid]

AMY: What is it, a minotaur or an alien? Or an alien minotaur? That's not a question I thought I'd be asking this morning.
DOCTOR: It's both, actually. Yeah. Here we go.
(He reads a holographic database.)
DOCTOR: Distant cousin of the Nimon. They descend on planets and set themselves up as gods to be worshipped. Which is fine, until the inhabitants get all secular and advanced enough to build bonkers prisons.
RORY: Correction. Prisons in space.
(He and Gibbis are looking down through a porthole.)
Isabella : Where are the guards?
DOCTOR: No need for any. It's all automated. It drifts through space, snatching people with belief systems and converts their faith into food for the creature.
GIBBIS: See that planet there?
RONALD : Which one?
GIBBIS: There. The grey one there.
RORY: Mmm hmm.
GIBBIS: That's where I'm from.
AMY: It didn't want just me, so you must believe in some god or someone, or they'd have shown you the door too. So what do Time Lords pray to?
DOCTOR: According to the in-flight recorder, the programme developed glitches. It got stuck on the same setting, the fears from the people before us weren't tidied away.
(The Minotaur growls.)
Isabella : What's it saying?
DOCTOR: An ancient creature, drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space through an endless, shifting maze. For such a creature, death would be a gift. Then accept it, and sleep well. I wasn't talking about myself.
(The Minotaur dies.)
GIBBIS: Could I have a lift? Just to the nearest galaxy would do.