(782) Closing Time

The penultimate episode of the series sees the return of James Corden as Craig. After the success of The Lodger it didn’t seem too much of a shock that he would be returning. The Cybermen make a return but it isn’t just a cameo appearance like in A Good Man Goes to War. The comedy between Smith and Corden which I liked in The Lodger is on show in this story and they both are having fun with it. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are reduced to cameo status with Amy now a model. I guess that whilst Smith was filming this, Darvill and Gillan were filming The Girl Who Waited.

The Doctor gets a job in a toy shop and presumably they had to either remove or clever shooting means that we don’t see all the Doctor Who merchandise. I did like the stuff in the shop because it meant that we got to see Lynda Baron. Baron makes her third appearance in Doctor Who after appearing in The Gunfighters (1966) and Enlightenment (1983). This performance is nice and warm and quite funny.

Matt Smith has some good scenes in this episode. First comes when the Doctor is talking to Stormageddon. Another comes at the end when his time has run out and he gets set to embark on his journey to go to where we joined the Doctor in The Impossible Astronaut. There was a nice balance between happy and sad for Smith and he (yet again) deals with both things well. James Corden is yet again entertaining and any hatred that had built up since his last story seeing him on other stuff went away again. Damn Doctor Who for this.

If there is a problem with the story then it’s the use of the Cybermen. They have lost some of their menace in this episode and in fact the Cybermat (which makes a overdue return) is actually more sinister. I like how the Cybermat now has teeth. It looks scarier than it has ever done. I think that the Cybermat has been an under-utilised weapon for the Cybermen and it felt like it got more story time than the Cybermen. The Cybermen are a little bit underused in my opinion because there is a nice idea in there but it doesn’t really get time to breathe. It seems like the story was just going to be the Craig and Doctor show and then they realised that they needed to introduce a monster and the Cybermen but it does feel like a bit of a bolted on part of the story.

The final scene of the episode is where the eye patch lady and River Song meet and it’s where River Song is put in the Astronaut suit and at the bottom of the lake. She is the one that shoots the Doctor in that opening episode.  As an ending it’s rather good and sets the finale up rather well. I can’t say that this was as bad as I thought that it was going to be but I think that the inclusion of the Cybermen seemed to tip it towards not being as good.