![]() ![]() The Wedding Of River Song next week, then.Related: Doctor Who star's The Devil's Hour releases teaser And, even though Closing Time had its moments, I can’t help but feel that the men of steel did it no favours at all. Doctor Who has proven these past two years that it needs neither to generate its finest episodes, and biggest jumps. I don’t know about you, but even appreciating that toys need to be sold, I’d be quite happy if the Cybermen joined the Daleks in the prop cupboard for a bit of a longer rest now. And while it’s not the worst we’ve seen of Doctor Who this year, it’s a slightly quieter episode to lead in to the series finale than we’ve been used to seeing. It was good fun in places (Stormageddon is a great name for a kid), but by turns frustrating and wasteful. Which all makes Closing Time a bit of a mixed bag. ![]() But, for a change this series, it seemed a little more obvious than we’ve been used to. I appreciate that there’s still room for a rug pull, and that this ending wasn’t necessarily about a massive cliffhanger, rather sliding things into place for next week. And that Madame Kovarian would be back, with the Silence in tow. That it was River Song that seemingly killed the Doctor. I wonder, then, how many people by now hadn’t worked out that it was River Song in the astronaut suit back in The Impossible Astronaut. If you’re sorted out before the ending of that episode that River Song was Amy’s baby, then none of the revelations would resonate that strongly. It’s a bit like A Good Man Goes To War in that respect. It all felt a bit tacked on this bit, for me, and how impactful it was for you depends on how much you’d guessed as to what was going to happen. Taken as a standalone episode, though, which Closing Time felt like for the most part, it was a decent, solid piece of work, albeit one that’s well down the list of this series’ finest.īut then the ending happened, which tied it into the broader series narrative. The mixed emotions, when he briefly saw Amy and Rory, was a good example of that, but also the constant nods to the fact that he only had a day to live. This is a Doctor walking to his doom, after all, and more and more it felt like his world was closing in on him. Not that there wasn’t an undercurrent of doom about Closing Time. It made for a lighter episode, certainly, but in the light of the intensity of weeks gone by, I can understand the logic in the tonal change, ahead of the big finale. ![]() There wasn’t any ramification of Craig being let into the Doctor’s head from last time, which was disappointing, but Smith and Corden’s double act was great fun. Many parents would surely be nodding sagely at that, while eyeing up a toy Tardis for themselves. I liked, too, the ghosts in the fridge line (a nod to Ghostbusters, surely), and the sending up overpriced toys in the toy shop (I wanted Gizmo from Gremlins to drive by). That the Doctor was desperately trying to resist getting involved, but couldn’t stop himself. Here, they just got in the way of the best bits of the episode. But Steven Moffat showed us that just one bit of a Cyberman could be scary in the finale last year. Now granted, this appearance by the Cybermen might be all about saving up narrative touchpoints for later down the line. The way they were here, thousands of them wouldn’t help them in their latest wheeze.Īlso, at no stage was there a ‘how are they going to get out of that’ moment, and by the time James Corden escaped by virtue of hearing his character’s baby crying, the Cybermen were suddenly giving the impression of being one of the weakest foes the Doctor has ever faced. “You know that is enough”, they told the Doctor of the fact there were just six of them. More than that, they appear to pose no obvious threat whatsoever.Įven at their weakest, I’d expect Cybermen to be deadly, but there was no sense of that coming across (even appreciating what they’d been up to). But when the Cybermen appeared, we learn that they’re weak. We’ve seen flickering lights and disappearing people before, in a collection of good horror films, as well as Doctor Who, and the build up here suggested a real sense of menace. We got a shopping centre, chatty characters, a dodgy lift, parenting advice, underwear, and some nice direction (some really nice direction in places), for starters. ![]() That’s not a bad basis for a story, and in the early stages, Closing Time had a lot of fun with it. And they were trying to gather together enough further power and recruits to rebuild themselves Thus, you had a small collection of Cybermen, brought back to life by the laying of power lines. ![]()
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