During the final days leading up to his imminent death, the Doctor pays a social visit to his old friend, Craig Owens. But things are never quite that straight forward when the Doctor comes knocking on your door...
In Closing Time, the sequel to series five's popular episode The Lodger, Gareth Roberts continues with the story of Craig Owens. Now a father and living in Colchester, Craig's living an idyllic (if average) life with now-long-term girlfriend Sophie and their son Alfie. Left to care for himself and Alfie for the weekend, Craig's determined to prove he can cope on his own – that is, until a certain Time Lord turns up. As part of his farewell tour, the Doctor drops by for a quick 'hello' and 'goodbye'. But strange things are afoot in a local department store; with electrical fluctuations and missing people, this is a mystery the Doctor can't pass up...
In a similar vein to The Lodger, Closing Time has more of a sense of the comedic about it. Playing largely with the character dynamic of Craig and the Doctor (and the James Corden/Matt Smith double-act), the story revolves around their interactions with each other and Alfie (who would rather be called Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All). With equal parts joyful-eccentricity and morbid-brooding, Smith's delivery of the Doctor acknowledging his final days was brilliant. Despite still being physically quite young compared to former Doctors, Matt Smith has the ability to appear both young and yet impossibly old at the same time, and that was remarkably prominent in this episode – he is quintessentially the Doctor!
Providing the framework of Closing Time's narrative were the Cybermen, and the welcome return of their rodent-like cybernetic helpers, the Cybermats (and as I hypothesised their return in my review of A Good Man Goes To War, I'm rather pleased about that; I do like being right!). Re-energised by the laying of power cables in the area, a small and dormant group of Cybermen try to rebuild, dispatching Cybermats to harvest more energy, whilst one by one the staff of the shop are abducted and taken for Cyber-conversion. Despite this brilliant set up, the Cybermen's role felt somewhat lacking, only really appearing towards the end of the episode and in a fairly weak state. For a once fearsome and powerful foe, the Cybermen posed little-to-no threat, with the Cybermat proving to be the more lethal of the lot!
That's not to discredit the Cybermat – it was as deadly and 'bitey' as the Yorkshire terrier that lives down the road from me (and that thing's bloody vicious!), but it's creators were much less of a threat. The only stage in which the Cybermen felt like a legitimate danger was in the climax of the episode, with Craig and the Doctor caught in what appeared to be a no-win situation, but the Cybermen were ultimately defeated by an overload of emotion when Craig's fatherly instincts kicked in. Closing Time saw the Cybermen at their weakest, and it felt as if more could have been done with them, but that didn't get in the way of an otherwise excellent episode.
It's interesting to note (well, interesting to me anyway!) that in this episode the sonic screwdriver appears to have had a couple of modifications made to it – namely a laser-like function accompanied by a high pitched tonal oscillation, reminiscent of the three-button-press sound on the sonic screwdriver toys of last year (I guess that means I've just revealed I have – and occasionally piss about with – a sonic screwdriver toy...). Could this somehow be connected to a brief glimpse of a screen on Demons Run in A Good Man Goes to War which reads: “Remember: 1. It's not sonic 2. It's not a screwdriver”? This function certainly felt distinctly more weapon-esque.
As the penultimate episode of the series, Closing Time answered a couple of pertinent questions leading in to the finale; namely, where the Doctor got his stetson from. Secondly, we can now be quite sure that River Song is the astronaut in the lake – largely because we see River Song dressed as an astronaut submerged in a lake (bit of a give-away, really!). On that topic, back in Let's Kill Hitler the Doctor whispers something into Melody Pond/River Song's ear – is it possible that perhaps, with the foreknowledge that he was going to die, he could have planted a suggestion or a message that will prevent his death? Or at the very least, make the Doctor's demise not-so-permanent as a way of tricking the Silence into thinking him dead?
Overall, Closing Time was an enjoyable adventure with a brilliant story. However, as the first penultimate episode to not be the first half of a two parter, it'll be interesting to see how the final episode, The Wedding of River Song, will pan out. Now off to meet his fate, the Doctor is ready for his date with destiny on the shore of Lake Silencio...
If you missed Closing Time, it's available on iPlayer Here.
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