Closing Time

The Lodger was so good that it makes complete sense to go back for second helpings. Unfortunately, this just doesn't hit the spot. The kids love Craig to bits, love the talking to babies stuff, and laughed like drains throughout. Lynda Baron is great as Val, with her persistent, understandable and kindly gay-dad assumptions; the chemistry between Smith and Corden is still a joy, and there are plenty of jokes to ease us through, but Closing Time just isn't as much fun as its predecessor. What's the matter with me?

In The Lodger, Craig had two problems, his inability to speak to Sophie and the threat of the Doctor taking over his life, and both of these made him rather likeable. Now he only has one problem, which is that he doesn't believe he's cut out to be a father. It makes him seem whiny rather than adorable and, coming hard on the heels of Alex in Night Terrors, creates an uncomfortable echo. Also, great snakes, which parent doesn't feel inadequate? You might as well tell a story about water running downhill.

The other thing that irks is the (under)use of the Cybermen. The Cybermat picks up a lot of the slack and is used effectively, whizzing around the toy department and the lunging at Craig, but the Cybermen feel like an afterthought here, enfeebled and uninspiring, lurking under a department store to steal electricity. They do get a shot at their signature body-horror, human conversion, but the impact is diminished, partly because Craig has to escape, and partly because the dreadful process itself amounts to little more than making Craig dress up as a Cyberman. Not so much conversion, as costumery. They deserve bigger and better than this.

Worst of all, the rushed and improbable ending. The Doctor disputes Craig's claim that he "blew them up with love" as a "grossly sentimental and over-simplistic" explanation - but it's not the explanation that's the problem. The threat of the Cybermen, their strength, should be their emotionless state. Yes, they miss out on enjoying well-prepared meals, but they don't get scared, they don't feel pity, or experience doubt. Our humanity, the thing they want to take away from us, should be something we wish to protect because we value it, not because it gives us an advantage. In The Age of Steel, the Doctor defeated the Cybermen by sabotaging their emotional inhibitors, causing them to feel their own suppressed human angst - and that was fair enough. Here, it seems that the surge of Craig's parental emotions swamps those same Cyber systems, and the upshot of this would appear to be that the Cybermen have inadvertently been given a stupid Achilles' Heel. Sometimes a story needs a villain to have a convenient weakness, and goodness knows this lot have had their fair share. But please, let's not have the Cybermen be allergic to love.


NEXT TIME...