From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho.moderated
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Subject: Re: jphalt's Doctor Who reviews

CLOSING TIME

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 (The Lodger). 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 ship -
belonging to the Doctor's old enemy, 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 like a
cancer, doing harm to those he touches. His "fall" was not a single
defeat. It was a gradual and self-inflicted process. Hopefully, the
events of this episode have served to remind him that the mad man in a
box can also be a hero and can also do legitimate good, giving him the
faith in himself he'll need 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, the people who died the last time he encountered the Time
Lord? They were people who were not with the Doctor. 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 - 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 new series. Still, this
episode isn't really about them, so their overeasy defeat actually
doesn't destroy this episode 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, one that gave both the Doctor and
the audience a chance to enjoy a fairly quiet, human story. 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 Sophie is missed, and the jokes just aren't
quite as funny this time around. Still, enough of the humor clicks to
keep it all turning over quite nicely, and Matt Smith and James Corden
make an engaging comedy duo. It particularly suits this Doctor to be
forced into the mundane.

There's only one really big problem with this episode, and that is the
Cyberman.

I don't think the Cybermen have ever been used worse than they are in
this episode. 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
overt sentiment, the ending here is the biggest offender. Not only are
they 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 out in such a way that I'd wonder how
there could even be successful cyber-conversions. Forget shooting
Cybermen with a slingshot - Turns out the Beatles were right and "all
you need is love."

A tag that leads into the finale, and the solidity of the Doctor/Craig
material, just about keeps this afloat. But I can't quite forgive the
weakness of the Cybermen plot and particularly the resolution of it,
leaving this one with a mixed score:


Rating: 5/10.

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