Episode Title: "The Lodger"
Writer: Gareth Roberts
Director: Catherine Morshead
Previously on "Doctor Who":
Following the loss (and subsequent erasure) of her finance Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and the Doctor (Matt Smith) teamed up with Vincent van Gogh (Tony Curran) against an invisible alien beast. Vincent also sensed Amy's innate sadness over Rory's fate even though she couldn't remember him or understand why she was crying.
After dispatching the beast, the Doctor and Amy briefly brought Vincent to the future to see the impact his art would have upon the world. He was overjoyed and returned to the past. However, Amy was extremely disappointed to learn that Vincent still committed suicide a few months after they left him. However, one of his final paintings was now dedicated to Amy by name.
Story:
The TARDIS accidentally lands in Colchester and when the Doctor steps outside to investigate, the TARDIS immediately disappears leaving him stranded on Earth. Quickly realizing that something is keeping the TARDIS from materializing, the Doctor tracks down the source to a nearby house and sets himself up as the new flatmate of Craig (James Corden). Although initially finding the Doctor to be intolerably weird, Craig is soon won over by the Doctor's cooking abilities and his paper bag filled with money.
The Doctor makes contact with Amy on the TARDIS and secretly spies on the upstairs tenant, whom he is convinced is behind the temporal disturbance. Meanwhile, the Doctor meets Craig's friend Sophie (Daisy Haggard) and rapidly gets more and more involved with their lives. The Doctor talks Sophie into pursuing her dreams overseas while joining Craig's soccer team and dominating the match. The next day, Craig becomes violently ill from the strange black mold emanating from the upstairs apartment. The Doctor saves his life and his office job, by temporarily filling in for him.
Completely frustrated by the Doctor's antics, Craig demands that he leave the building. However, the Doctor creates a physic link between them to explain his real identity, just as Sophie begins to fall prey to the entity in the upstairs apartment. The Doctor and Craig soon discover that the upstairs apartment doesn't actually exist. In reality, it's an alien ship attempting to build its own primitive TARDIS. They manage to save Sophie, the Doctor and then Craig himself from the machine and escape together. Craig and Sophie declare their love for each other before the alien ship departs, leaving the building with only a single story again.
The Doctor says his goodbyes to Craig and Sophie who thank him for the experience. Nearby, the crack in time appears in their apartment and grows larger by the second. Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor and Amy reunite and she discovers a wedding ring in his coat pocket... the same ring Rory had given to her before he was last in the crack in time.
Breakdown:
After the previous episode of "Doctor Who" by Richard Curtis, I mentioned that I wanted to see him try his hand at a more comedic episode of the series. Interestingly enough, that describes this installment perfectly.
James Corden is apparently the co-creator and star of the BBC comedy series "Gavin & Stacey," which I am not very familiar with. However, he acquits himself well as Craig, an ordinary man trying to deal with the Doctor. To the uninitiated, the Doctor must seem like a crazy person. His early interaction with Craig was particularly funny when he attempted to explain why he is only called the Doctor and in Craig's mind (through the physic paper) had a recommendation from the Archbishop of Canterbury (that's the equivalent of the Pope in the Church of England).
Also, one of the lines of the night came from the Doctor when Craig wondered out loud why he was telling the Doctor so much about his life:
"People never stop blurting out their plans when I'm around."
The Doctor's attempt to explain away his scanner as an example of modern art was also hilarious.
For all of the times that the Doctor has said that he can't have a normal life, this show proves him wrong. The Doctor was actually better at Craig's life than Craig was!
As a sitcom set up, it probably wouldn't work long term and this is a great example of a story that could only have been told in a single installment. The only black mark against it is that the Doctor basically lets two people die because he's too scared to confront the alien machine until he "knows what [he's] up against." He actually comes off as somewhat cowardly for not taking action sooner.
This episode also appears to be the calm before the storm. The two-part season finale begins next week and two major developments appear to have taken place on that front: the crack in time growing in Craig's apartment and Amy finding Rory's ring. The question is whether that will be enough for her to remember Rory or if she will be under the impression that the Doctor wants to marry her.
This has been an outstanding season of "Doctor Who," with only two or three episodes noticeably less impressive than the rest. Next week, we get to see how it ends...
Crave Online Rating: 8.5 out of 10.
