The Lodger

Dear Gary—

The Lodger is filler. Amusing filler, yes, but filler nonetheless. That is the problem with season long story arcs; inevitably you get stories like this. Perfectly fine stories. Stories that in any other season could stand on their own. But wedged into a season of story arc they are just place holders, biding time until the slam bang season finale. The Lodger is such a story.

They didn’t even really try with the villain of the piece. I’m not actually sure you can call it a villain; it’s just a crashed spaceship equipped with an emergency hologram in search of a new pilot to replace its dead crew. There is no explanation as to how or why it crashed, where it came from, or what is providing its power. The simpletons who are lured up are never noticed or missed. And the love-is-all-you-need solution is ludicrous. I’m still wondering at the notion that the Doctor as pilot would trigger an explosion to endanger the entire solar system but with Craig as pilot the ship implodes. It’s quite tidy and convenient. All Doctor Who aliens should be so self-cleaning.

The focus of the tale is on the Doctor as a fish out of water and an advice to the lovelorn purveyor, and as such it is a great showcase for Matt Smith. The Doctor has been stranded on Earth before (the Third Doctor for multiple seasons) and he has contemplated life on the slow path sans TARDIS before. In recent memory he has spent more time on Earth than he probably ever spent on Gallifrey. Yet this is the first we spend significant time with him trying to navigate day to day drudgery on his adopted planet, and Matt Smith shines in the moment.  This Eleventh Doctor is charming and awkward and completely alien as he fits right in to ordinary life in the most extraordinary manner. His description of himself as he greets Craig is perfect: “Less of a young professional; more of an ancient amateur; but frankly I’m an absolute dream.”

 Amy does a lot of pointless bouncing around the TARDIS, more to give the actress some face time than to add anything meaningful to the plot. The companion role is taken over by Craig for this episode and he settles in nicely; as does Sophie to a lesser degree.  It is unbelievably handy how the Craig and Sophie romance dovetails with the there’s-no-place-like-home solution to the monster on the second floor; almost as if it had been written that way. It’s a nice little story that is wrapped up in a most expedient package.

There really isn’t much more to say about it. The Doctor does reveal one or two new abilities that would have come in handy quite a few times before now, and one has to wonder why he held on to them for so long only to break them out in this relatively tame adventure.  For example the head-butt info dump probably would have gotten him out of a multitude of scrapes, and I’m sure that more than a few companions would have appreciated the use of the TARDIS blue tooth hot line.

Keeping it short and sweet, Gary, as I gear up for the big bang finish.