Since Buster Monday fell on Sunday this week to account for the 100-year anniversary of His Wedding Night, your regularly-scheduled Sunday Who Review is here a day late.
I’m an
absolute sucker for stories that feature the Doctor’s version of mundane,
everyday things, and in series 5, “The Lodger” gave us that in spades. With Craig as the audience stand-in, we got
the Doctor as our flatmate!
Cooking! Playing football! Showing up at the office! The following season, “Closing Time” is less
of an overall lark but plays with some of the same concepts at a time when the
Doctor could really use it. (A few setup
spoilers for series 6.)
When the
Doctor unexpectedly pops in on his old friend Craig, he’s just passing
through. Really, he is. However, a series of odd power fluctuations
and a rash of disappearances pique his curiosity, and even though he insists
he’s “done saving them,” he just can’t help himself. Soon, he and Craig (with Craig’s newborn baby
in tow – Sophie’s away for the weekend, and Craig is struggling to cope on his
own) are investigating a potential alien incursion that, delightfully, involves
the Doctor going undercover as an employee in a department store.
Though
the Doctor’s demeanor is cheerful when he arrives, he’s far from it. In one of his more recent fits of guilt over
people he’s failed to save, he’s parted with Amy and Rory for their own
protection (we’re not quite sure how long ago at this point.) Currently,
he’s on the tail-end of his “farewell tour” before submitting to history and
keeping his appointment to die at Lake Silencio. So, the Doctor is alone, guilt-ridden, and
gearing up to face his mortality.
Cheery, right?
That’s
why this story comes along at the right time.
While Craig obviously knows the Doctor is an alien and goes about the
business of world-saving on the regular, he’s not really a full-fledged
companion and doesn’t relate to the Doctor as such. Instead, he can view the Doctor’s
extraordinary life in fairly grounded terms, and he can be frank about things
the Doctor is wrestling with. Not all
the time – he sometimes confuses the issue and equates the Doctor’s presence
with the trouble he seems to find wherever he goes, which makes him snappish
and causes him to blame the Doctor for bringing
aliens to his doorstep. Those are his
lower moments, though. When Craig is
thinking more impartially, he’s able to get through to the Doctor and remind him
of the force for good he is in the universe.
The Doctor is afraid that he’s a danger to others, but Craig gets what’s
really going on: the danger will be
there with or without the Doctor, who’s in fact a person’s best chance of
surviving it. It’s a really nice
friendship, fun but surprisingly warm.
Towards the end of the episode, the Doctor has a short, gorgeous speech
about all his friends that’s just to die for.
In general,
it’s an enjoyable episode with fast jokes, fun interactions, and good
jokes. Some of the humor is a bit
belabored (I could do without the wink-wink jokes that one of the Doctor’s
co-workers at the store thinks he and Craig are a couple, and a little of the
Doctor “speaking baby” goes a long way,) and the alien plot feels a little
slapped-together, but it’s still a great time.
It’s a story that lives and dies on its character interactions, and
that’s always excellent. Whether the
Doctor and Craig are bickering, running around, freaking out, having a
heart-to-heart, solving a mystery, protecting each other, fighting some aliens,
vegging out, or taking care of a baby, they’re fantastic together. The whole thing is kind of a funny,
entertaining love letter to friendship, and that’s why I’ll always adore it.
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