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| The Doctor is reunited with an old friend. |
1 episode. Approx. 45 minutes. Written by: Gareth Roberts. Directed by: Steve Hughes. Produced by: Denise Paul.
THE PLOT
Now traveling on his own, and very aware of his death at a fixed point at Lake Silencio, the Doctor is at what may be his lowest emotional point when he decides to pay a farewell visit to Craig (James Corden), his one-time flatmate. He is surprised to find Craig at a new home, taking care of the baby he had with Sophie (Daisy Haggard) while she is away.
The Doctor intends a short visit. But when he discovers evidence of alien technology, he investigates, ultimately taking a job at a shop when he discovers disappearances in the store's vicinity. It isn't long before the Doctor traces all this to its source: A damaged spaceship belonging to the Doctor's old enemies, the Cybermen!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: I think I've finally figured it out. The Doctor falling "so much further" than he ever has before wasn't the moment in A Good Man Goes to War at which his triumph and Amy's baby were snatched away from him. It's been his gradual loss of faith in himself since then. From having to acknowledge that River's path is set in Let's Kill Hitler, to having to sentence Old Amy to oblivion, to dashing Amy's faith so that she sees him as just "a madman in a box." Bit by bit, he has spent the last half of this season deciding that he is a cancer who does nothing but harm to those he touches. His "fall" was not a single defeat, but a gradual and self-inflicted process. Hopefully, the events of this episode have served to remind him that the mad man in a box truly can be a hero, giving him the faith in himself to (presumably) subvert his fate in the finale.
Craig: Reminds the Doctor of something he's forgotten: That he isn't really the cause of all the deaths around him. Craig remembers their last encounter, and tells the Doctor that the people who died last time were "people you didn't know." He states that the place where he and his son are safest in a dangerous situation is with the Doctor. After all, for Craig and Sophie, the Doctor was their salvation.
Amy/Rory: Only glimpsed in passing this episode, walking through the store just as the Doctor's talking about coincidence. We see that they have moved on with their lives and appear happy, with Amy having achieved a certain level of fame modeling cosmetics. The Doctor is pleased to see her happy and successful - though I'll wager that will be interrupted in the next episode.
Cybermen: Purely a plot device, the Cybermen here are just a last foe for the Doctor to defeat on his last adventure. They ultimately aren't defeated by the Doctor, but instead by soppy sentiment, in what may well be the most unconvincing and mawkish climax of the entire series. Still, this episode isn't really about them, so their overeasy defeat actually doesn't destroy the show the way it would have done to a "normal" Cyberman story.
THOUGHTS
Series Five's The Lodger came just before the season ending fireworks. It was a small but pleasant episode. Before telling something on a larger scale than ever before, the show took a breath and reminded us of the human scale. The result was a success, making it little surprise that, one year later, the series tries to do the same thing over again.
When it sticks to being a human-scale comedy/drama, Closing Time works pretty well. Not as well as The Lodger did, mind you. The idea isn't as fresh, Daisy Haggard's largely-absent Sophie is missed, and the jokes just aren't as funny this time around. Still, enough of the humor works to keep it all turning over quite nicely for most of its running time, and Matt Smith and James Corden make an engaging duo. It particularly suits this Doctor to be forced into the mundane.
There's only one really big problem with this episode: The Cyberman.
I don't think the Cybermen have ever been worse-used than they are here. It's not that the versions we see are weakened - Some of the best Cyber stories involve Cybermen in a weakened state. It's not even that their presence keeps interrupting the far more interesting character material, such as the Doctor's "enhancement" of the baby's outer space diorama. The balance between the character story and the monster story may be off, but not so badly as to destroy a solid episode.
Unfortunately, the Cyber material goes from weak to atrocious at the end. In a season that's been marred by an unfortunate tendency toward heavy-handed sentiment, this ending turns out to be the biggest offender. Not only are the Cybermen defeated in a way that completely defuses them as a threat for this episode - The ending actually takes the most frightening aspect of the Cybermen and drowns it in such a way that I'd wonder how there could even be successful cyber-conversions. Forget shooting them with a slingshot - Turns out the Beatles were right and "all you need is love."
The solidity of the Doctor/Craig material manages to (just barely) keep this afloat. But I can't quite forgive the weakness of the Cybermen plot and particularly its resolution, meaning that I left this episode with a bad taste in my mouth.
Rating: 5/10.
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