One of the greatest things about the Doctor Who format is that it allows you to tell an enormous variety of stories. So far in Series Six, we've had creepy scarefests with forgettable monsters in sharp suits, don't-judge-a-mermaid-by-her-song metaphors, explorations of long-standing relationships with weird sentient planetoids with smelly armpits, nature of humanity riffs with added gunge-people, allegories of state power against the individual, with the occasional lactating Sontaran, knockabout running paradoxes with Hitler in a cupboard, Matt Smith's "Fear Her"-style housecall with peg dolls and alien babies, the true meaning of "killing with kindness" and the nature of disappointment, and dark parodies on the nature of faith, with a distant cousin of the Nimon.
Closing Time was this series' razorblade soufflé, all froth and lightness on the surface, with glints of steel inside, moments of true, painful outrage, and a parable of paternity. Will it change our understanding of the Whoniverse forever? Hardly. Is it a high point of the series? Mmmaybe.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Gareth Roberts was recycling his Lodger script with the opening of Closing Time, but this is 21st century Who, so we're required to be generous and think of it as A Thing. It's Craig's Thing with the Doctor that he opens the door to find the idiot-haired timelord standing there, beaming.
The parallel streams of Craig's insecurity about his skills as a father and a piecemeal invasion by subterranean Cybermen were blended with a fair amount of fluff and plenty of Running About, as one expects of a Gareth Roberts script, but strand three – the Doctor's approaching 'death' and its effect on him – pulsed heavily wherever it landed, Smith stretching his acting chops as he tried to simply walk away from missing people and teleport energy was particularly impressive, resonating with both Ninth and Tenth Doctors as they went along, feeling the weight of their own impact on those around them.
Other high points included the first sight of a Cybermat on screen since Revenge of the Cybermen, and in almost the same moment, the discovery that having them leap off the floor doesn't look annnny more convincing in 2011 than it did back in the early 70s. And then of course there was the defeat of the Cybermen – people like Craig as the everyman he is, so it was a real punch-in-the-stomach moment to see him captured, strapped into a conversion alcove, to see the cyber-face close over his own, and the Cybermen announce that his phase one conversion was complete.
Cleverly of course, Roberts got two punches for the price of one, because any fan who wasn't punching the air as Craig's paternal instinct kicked in, fed back and the Doctor told the "metal morons" (greatest line by a Doctor to the Cybermen since Tom Baker's "tin soldiers", anyone?) that Daddy was home...might as well be a Cyberman themselves.
Of course, the oversimplification of the solution is a feature of Moffat-style Wibbly-Wobbly Who, so "defeating the Cybermen with Love" is doable these days, though older fans are probably at the point by now of wanting what Rose Tyler would undoubtedly have called "a bit more Spock" in the resolutions to stories, and perhaps a little less Harry Potter. Also, is anyone else finding the re-use of the Cybermen's "emotional feedback leading to an exploding head" routine a little reminiscent of the Dalek's old "self-destruct-when-my-vision-is-impaired" schtick?
As for Amy Pond becoming a model – meh. Not unbelievable, but – unless there turns out to be some overarching Deeply Clever And Important reason for Amy and Rory to be beggaring about in Colchester of an afternoon, it feels a bit manipulative to have them there, almost entirely to prod the Doctor's conscience again. On the other hand, it was good to have Craig's rebuttal of the Doctor's growing self-loathing with his faith (which itself was much less loaded than Amy's was, just an episode ago), to give some emotional light and shade to the increasingly dark story-arc. And the story-beat with the Doctor telling Stormageddon about the wonders of a normal human life had a decidedly Kapra feel too, adding to the feeling of a story in balance.
River being 'revealed' as the Impossible Astronaut at the end of the episode was strangely anti-climactic though, for all Alex Kingston's yelling, and while in theory everything's now all neatly ribboned-up for the finale, the fact that we've been trained to expect two-part climaxes in new Who leads to a feeling that, somehow, there isn't the expectation, the anticipation that we're used to leading into the final episode. But with the how-the-heck-do-they-get-out-of-thatness of the Impossible Astronaut's "no, really, he's dead" set-up, and the insane images in the preview, I'm betting there's still enough bang in the Eleventh Doctor's buck to take us on one phenomenal rollercoaster ride before Series 6 brings its curtain down. This post started on "Life, Doctor Who & Combom" at www.combom.co.uk  |
No comments:
Post a Comment