Okay, so I took a quick hop-and-skip through the episode.
When we find the Weeping Angels, Amy and Conspiracy Weenie are the first ones through the door. Rory and The Doctor come in a good 10 or 15 seconds later.
So…I guess the big question is if people see the same thing every time or if it varies. Amy could have been Weeping Angels in one room and Young Waiting Amelia in the other. The last one being the one that kills you “and once you see it you always knew it couldn’t be anything else”
That was my initial thought, too when I saw the episode. It fits with the season’s theme, but for the episode theme failing Amy by leading another companion to his/her death yet again.
And, to reiterate, WTF WAS THE DEAL WITH THE GOLD FISH! I think it got more screen time than the gambler!
the lodger voice was simply using whatever would appeal to people. Sometimes it was a girl, sometimes it was an old man. I don’t think there’s any tie in to River/Melody.
The Doctor hung a do not disturb sign on his door, and we saw it fall down when the maze was deactivated, so it can’t be his room that little Amelia was in. Personally I think that was bang on seeing her younger self for Amy, wondering if in fact she’d spend her entire life waiting for him and whether that wait had fucked her up forever.
I thought this episode rocked. I thought it was going to be terrible from last week’s preview but as soon as it got going it was really good, and the resolution of it just… well, it made sense, bizarrely enough. Good to see that we meet Craig again, although I guess that means he didn’t stay in Africa with the monkey woman after all.
I get the impression that the AV Club write-ups are written as the show airs or right after, and these errors sometimes creep in. BTW, thanks for the explanation as to why it was of course room 11.
I thought it was made clear the Weeping Angels were for the ‘Cowardly Lion’ - didn’t we see Amy comforting him for being scared of them?
No, the clown was left over from a previous visitor, we were told at the end that the prison had failed to delete some fears. Conspiracy Boy (Howie?) was scared of his stammer/ridicule.
Rory’s room would have been too easy. Walking in on Amy having sex with The Doctor; the thing he believes in, worships, being Amy of course.
I still like Joe’s take, but I see how it was left as indeterminate if the Angels were for Amy or Cowardly Lion.
But yes, the beaten into us theme through the end of Tennant and into Smith has been: Is The Doctor A God? Certainly at least him wrestling with thinking of himself as one, of others interacting with him as one, and with the consequences of that, the failures, the tragedies, that result.
No small thing that it was the Minotaur and the labyrinth being referenced as it also calls up an allusion to Daedalus and of course to his son Icarus. Also to the hero who actually killed the Minotaur, Theseus -whose ship is famous as a philosophic metaphor about identity - along the way all of it wood rots and is replaced …
Analogies to our Doctor, his incarnations, and Doctor Goo, to Amy and older Amy, so on, all abound.
As I am rewatching I also note something else - the shout-out to “Night Terrors” at the start, when we first learn that bad dreams are in the rooms and he tosses up the Rubic’s cube. Perhaps Moffat gave his stand alone ep writers that theme as one to riff off of.
Wonder if that’s significant, seeing as how when he looked at it in Night Terrors he played with it for a second and then gave up with a disgusted look.
I’ll bet we’ll never know what was in the Doctor’s room.
Also, for a while I wondered if this was going to be another dream and we would be seeing the return of the Dream Lord because elements of the hotel, such as the hallways stretching out seemed very dream like. That, and the rooms that held your fears.
Don’t know if this illuminates things any further but since we are looking for “clews,” he follows that up with, “Who else?” a personal pronoun meaning it’s some-one and not some-thing or event. If it was the death of someone or the destruction of the Tardis, wouldn’t he say, “what else?” No, this is someone that represents the Doctor’s greatest fear. Or perhaps I am reading too much into things.