(767) The Lodger

The Lodger is the cheap episode of the series. Now by being cheap it doesn’t mean that the creepiness or scariness isn’t there. Gareth Roberts returns after writing The Unicorn and the Wasp and I will say now that this is a lot better than Unicorn and the Wasp. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate that story but this story makes it look a bit below par.The episode starts with the Doctor leaving the TARDIS and saying he can see a Ryman’s. I like this because I work for Ryman and for my place of work to be mentioned in my favourite TV show. Amy and the Doctor are separated as Amy is in the TARDIS and the Doctor is Craig Owens’ (James Corden) new lodger.

James Corden is the guest star of the episode and at the moment he is hosting a late night talk show on CBS having replaced Craig Ferguson who was quite the Doctor Who fan. Before this (and after) I couldn’t stand Corden. I just found him to be an annoying fool. There was nothing that would make me watch Gavin and Stacey (BBC3) or A League of their Own (Sky1) so for the second episode in a row, I find myself surprised. I thought that Corden’s performance in this was likeable and the interaction between Smith and Corden was nice.

The most interesting aspect of the episode comes when the Doctor plays football. We have never seen the Doctor play football in eleven incarnations but here we a scene where he is indeed playing football and it reminds of that time in Black Orchid where the fifth Doctor is playing cricket so its not that strange to have the Doctor playing sport. The Doctor does a good job of integrating himself into Craig’s world including going to his work and sitting in a planning meeting and becoming Mr Popular.

The threat of this starts off innocently enough with people walking past Craig’s flat and are called in by a weird voice and lured up the stairs. Things carry on like this until Amy reveals that there is no upstairs and we get to see the spaceship that has crashed on top of Craig’s flat. This is dealt with in quite a quick amount of time but it is good and the question remains is whether it was a house and CGI used to make it look like a flat or vice versa. The ship needed pilots and was using humans to do it but they aren’t compatible and 17 people had died and like the Krafayis in the previous story, this aspect of the story kind of gets in the way of everything else.

For the third episode in a row there is a nod back to previous Doctors and it comes when Craig sees the previous incarnations and it seems to be that the floodgates have opened in this regard and by that I mean that the show is starting to submerge itself in its history that isn’t a problem at the moment because its not at the expense of the story. This was never going to be as good as Vincent and the Doctor but this is still an enjoyable episode and now the fun stuff is over and the series finale is here and this is where as far as I remember things start to get overly complicated.

(763) Amy's Choice

Amy’s Choice was one of my favourite episodes of Matt Smith’s debut series. The reason being that it does something different that we haven’t seen in the show before. Simon Nye is normally a comedy writer and is perhaps best known for the BBC/ITV sitcom Men Behaving Badly and to be honest I thought that this episode was going a comedy episode but that is far from what we get.

The pre-title scene sees Amy pregnant and Rory with the worst ponytail wig that I have seen since Rodney’s stirrup in Only Fools and Horses. Moments later they all wake up in the TARDIS realising that they had the same dream and then wake up back in Upper Ledworth.

Toby Jones is the Dreamlord in this episode and I think that he’s a great actor and so think that his performance is really good. The episode has a simple premise and that is to decide which scenario is real. Is the TARDIS real or is Upper Ledworth real. It’s not just the Doctor, Amy and Rory that have to work this out as we the viewer have to decide. Rory wants Upper Ledworth to be the real place because he gets everything he wants, the Doctor wants the TARDIS to be real and Amy is happy with both. What makes the thing tick over quicker than usual is that in Upper Ledworth there are old people with aliens inside them and in the TARDIS they are going to be freezing to death. I found the Upper Ledworth monsters to be a bit disappointing. That was the only aspect of this episode that didn’t work for me. Killer old people does work and the Dreamlord help make up for this.

I like how Amy suddenly realises that she really loves Rory because she has been using him as an emotional weight and its only when she thinks that he is dead that she realises. She then turns on the Doctor and asks what the point of him is. Karen Gillan starts to show just how good she is and this is something that gets shown in The Girl Who Waited but Gillan has managed to become one of the strongest companions since the show started in 2005 and has to be considered better that Billie Piper.

The explanation about the Dreamlord is quite good. It was the Doctor’s dark impulses and it used the psychic pollen that had got caught in the time rotor. I do wish that the Dreamlord would come back because I think that there is potential for the character to be what the Celestial Toymaker could have been. I still like this episode because I think the setting is very good, the characters are well developed and the directing has been very good as well. I think at the moment The Eleventh Hour is the better episode but this is a very close second.

On a final note, I have just 50 episodes left and I am on course to finish seven weeks tomorrow.