Review: Doctor Who - The Lodger

[angelophile]

Tough call on the latest episode of Doctor Who. Your enjoyment of the episode may hinge on whether you find James Corden a refreshingly normal bloke and decent character actor or now a horribly over-exposed, increasingly smug and irritating supposed comedian and about as funny as cholera. The latter may hinge on whether you've seen any of his lamentable comedy show with Mat Horne or his painful World Cup coverage. The more you know of the latter, the more you'll love Patrick Stewart.

However, trying to ignore any particular bias on the guest star, did the episode work? Firstly, it's the "lead lite" episode of the series. Apparently Matt Smith's decided to (*gasp*) work full time on the series and didn't need an episode off, like we've seen previously with Blink or Turn Left. Instead we had a companion-lite episode, with Amy stuck on a runaway TARDIS and spending most of the episode on the sideline.

Secondly, the episode has its history in a comic story that was originally published in Doctor Who Magazine where Tennant era Doctor got stuck, in similar circumstances, as Mickey's flatmate for one or two weeks. (Available to read here. It's been dusted off, a couple of new supporting characters added in place of Mickey, an alien plot tagged on and then pushed out into the world to fend for itself.

Which it actually does so is open to interpretation. There's a sense of unoriginality around the episode. The story comes from that strip. The secondary story appears to have been stripped out of Douglas Adams' never filmed Shada episode, which in turn he developed as Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Then there's also the feeling of having seen the alien with multiple appearances hiding in plain sight and a door you shouldn't open from the very start of this series in Matt Smith's first episode. The first two will be happily ignored by anyone who's unfamiliar with them – the latter echo of a recent story is less easy to pass over.

Then there's the "he loves her, she loves him, but they never speak of it!" plot, which somehow wound it's way into being the climax of the whole thing. Whereas, frankly, I found it the most tedious because there wasn't a single original thing about it. Apart from, perhaps, the boy getting sick by touching alien dry rot.

So, a fair number of ticks against the episode going in and, at the end of the day, I just couldn't love this episode as much as some people seemed to. In fact, there were a fair number of moments that I found cringeworthy and performances that never rose above awkward and average.

Hooray, then, for Matt Smith, who pretty much saved this entire episode from mediocrity. Wacky comedy only works with the right actor. An episode like this with Tennant, as the original story was, would have just felt uncomfortable and flat. With his blokeish charm, he’d have fitted in easily. (Although with Eccleston/Mickey I could have seen it working.) But Smith’s angular, awkward young fogey is a more obvious outsider, ripe for mining fish-out-of-water comic potential. He's endearingly goofy and Smith has great comedy timing, ensuring that we weren't left to suffer Corden goofing it up for the camera but instead playing the straight man Mindy to Matt Smith's Mork. There was plenty of talent on display (and I'm not talking about the much talked about towel scene) and Smith carried the thing, whipping a flat omelette into a tasty, light soufflé.

Good production values this week, too. The normality of the setting meant that the villain of the piece was nicely creepy by comparison and the money shot of the hand-built TARDIS was impressive and it was a lovely piece of work - worthy of the interior of the Master's TARDIS. I hope this comes to play in the series finale, though, and it's not a throw-away with some unnamed alien race being able to build (nearly) working TARDISes off the Gallifreyian's spec. And what's with alien races and their oft-fatal design flaws anyway? One ship breaks down and starts using the crew for spare parts. This one won't go anywhere unless you want to leave, which strikes me as a particularly silly idea and plot-serving rather than in any way logical.

Another irritation, however, was the fact that the Doctor didn't just go blundering in. That's pretty much his whole schtick, so somehow the Doctor spending his time skulking around, playing in pub football games and generally messing about sticking his nose into his flatmate's love life while people died, instead of, y'know, just going upstairs and sticking his nose in didn't ring true. I suppose the episode would have been rather short if the Doctor has just burst through the door in the first five minutes, bumbling in with a "Hello, I'm the Doctor!" It may have been brief, but at least it would have been in character.

However, all in all, it was a pleasant enough distraction and certainly Corden's guest slot was less embarrassing than other comedy actors managed (Peter Kaye, I'm looking at you). Daisy Haggard was inoffensive and did decently enough with average material, but it was Matt Smith that really made it sing.

Comments

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

I think part of the reason the Doctor didn't go blundering in was that he actually didn't realize people were dying. He never learned of mysterious disappearances, and all the victims were strangers. As far as he was concerned, this was a problem with somebody interfering with the TARDIS and who might have been dangerous just for having that capability (the other reason not to go blundering in). If he thought people were actually dying right then, I think he would have run right in despite the danger.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

All true, but it did make the comedy football matches etc a little more hard to stomach when the audience, if not the Doctor, knew others were still dying.

Particularly when the Doctor's spend several decades wandering into dangerous situations without advance plans or any idea what's going on. Him suddenly being uber-cautious served the story, but it felt a little odd, particularly when combined with the fact that the audience knew people were still being killed.