Overuse Of Humor Undermines "The Lodger!"

The Good: Adequate performances
The Bad: Forced humor, Poor mix with horror, Dull plot, No real character development
The Basics: "The Lodger" is an unremarkable episode of Doctor Who that is a clear tonal departure for the show, without positive results.


When it comes to Companions in Doctor Who, there is a surprisingly regular pattern to the show. In addition to there being, effectively, no male Companions for The Doctor since the show returned, the series very seldomly gets rid of Companions. The departure of a Companion is usually something that happens in a season finale and by the Christmas episode, there is a new or temporary Companion. Steven Moffat's tenure as showrunner tried to shake up the formula. As a result, after having Amy Pond mope through "Vincent And The Doctor" (reviewed here!), "The Lodger" ditches Amy and auditions Craig as a potential Companion.

"The Lodger" is a one-shot Doctor Who episode that follows Steven Moffat's trend of removing The Doctor from his familiar elements. Moffat's first major success was "Blink" (reviewed here!) which barely featured The Doctor and relied on new characters to even find the TARDIS and when Moffat took over as executive producer with "The Eleventh Hour" (reviewed here!), the first thing he did was trash the TARDIS and leave The Doctor without his sonic screwdriver.

The TARDIS returns to Earth, then disappears with Amy, leaving The Doctor stranded. A day later, a young man is wandering the neighborhood when he hears someone call for help from inside a flat. The flat is Craig's and there is someone upstairs who is luring people inside. Craig needs a boarder to help with rent and The Doctor arrives to take the position. The Doctor instantly notices the seeping rot or other mysterious thing on the kitchen ceiling and takes the room anyway.

After getting in touch with Amy, The Doctor figures out that the TARDIS cannot land because of a localized time distortion. Craig heads upstairs and survives an encounter with the man there before Sophie visits and Craig and The Doctor go out to play football. Returning home, The Doctor interrupts a would-be date between Craig and Sophie. Frustrated, Craig touches the mold and is poisoned. Saved by The Doctor, Craig recovers, though The Doctor fills in for him at work. When The Doctor learns of the people who have gone upstairs at the flat that have not come back down, he becomes convinced he has to stop whatever is going on upstairs.

Craig is played by James Corden. Corden's appearance instantly presages the comedic nature of "The Lodger." Craig is a lovesick guy who pines for Sophie and he is basically a straightman for The Doctor's gags. Sophie is pretty much a generic blonde for whom the plus sized man pines. Daisy Haggard plays Sophie well-enough with her eye glances to make the viewer believe that Sophie is into Craig long before The Doctor's lines make it explicit. Haggard and Corden have decent on-screen chemistry.

"The Lodger" is a mystery that feels incredibly forced, beginning with the idea that The Doctor being unable to use his sonic screwdriver because he does not want to tip off the man upstairs. The episode does not commit to the idea of being a supernatural mystery before it falls into an absurd comedy. There is no real character development in "The Lodger" and the plot plods along in an aimless fashion until it finally arrives at its decidedly mediocre conclusion.

There are few Doctor Who episodes that flop so hard that the viewer is left wondering how it ever got past the pitch; "The Lodger" is one such episode. "The Lodger" fails to commit on any front and it plays out in an entirely unsatisfying way.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fifth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Daisy Haggard, please check out my reviews of:
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hollows, Part 1
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
Nicholas Nickleby

1/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Define The Reality: "Amy's Choice" Is Wonderful Doctor Who!

The Good: Good character development, Wonderful performances, Generally good plot, Pretty neat special effects
The Bad: Somewhat predictable, Disappointing motivation for the Eknodine
The Basics: "Amy's Choice" is the first slam-dunk episode of Doctor Who since Matt Smith took over as The Doctor.


When it comes to reality-bending episodes of television that try to explore the nature of truth and fiction, all television lives in the shadow of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Duet" (reviewed here!). There are plenty of shows that attempt to make a compelling episode out of figuring out the truth of a situation, but "Duet" is pretty much the gold standard. The Doctor Who attempt to create an episode that truly challenges the viewer's understanding of reality is "Amy's Choice."

Sadly, the set-up for "Amy's Choice" makes it virtually impossible to believe there is any real choice in that to accept one option would require the viewer to completely redefine their perception of all the Doctor Who episodes that preceded it in the season. I'm not saying that Doctor Who fans could not adapt to the idea of a complete right turn in the narrative - hell, I'm often on Doctor Who forums advocating for the idea of Peter Capaldi as a Dream Crab-inpired vision based on how the last shot of "Last Christmas" (reviewed here!) makes no rational, in-series sense - but the writers and executive producers of the show do not have the courage to build a mindfuck for that long. Besides, attentive viewers of "Flesh And Stone" (reviewed here!) knew that there was a temporally-displaced version of The Doctor in the episode, which pretty much guts the menace of episodes like "Amy's Choice" until that reality is revealed.

Opening in a small village - Upper Leadworth - on Earth, a very pregnant Amy Pond is stirring custard when she things she is going into labor. Rory arrives in time to deal with the false alarm when The Doctor arrives. It has been five years since Amy and Rory traveled with The Doctor on the TARDIS. Sitting on a bench in the village, the trio falls asleep and wakes up on the TARDIS which has some red flashing lights The Doctor does not recognize. The three realize that they were having the same dream . . . and they begin to hear the same birds. That triggers The Doctor, Rory and Amy to wake back up in the village, where The Doctor questions which of the two versions of reality is real.

When returning to the TARDIS, the power goes out and The Dream Lord appears. The Dream Lord defines the terms of the engagement; the trio must decide which of the two settings is reality and they will face a deadly danger in each. The Dream Lord challenges The Doctor, Amy, and Rory to choose which reality is real before the danger in the true version of reality kills them. The Doctor is instantly suspicious of the senior citizens in the village, but on the TARDIS there are weird incongruities that make him suspect freezing to death there is a dream. As The Doctor attempts to reason his way out of the situation, Amy and Rory begin to experience tension in their relationship over Amy's choice to run off with The Doctor in the first place.

"Amy's Choice" opens with The Doctor feeling very awkward in visiting Amy and Rory and Matt Smith manages to find the right balance to play that moment as something other than his trademark goofy. "Amy's Choice" might be the first episode of Doctor Who since Matt Smith took over as The Doctor where Smith plays The Doctor like an individual clever enough to credibly be the latest incarnation of The Doctor. For a premise that could be ridiculous, Matt Smith manages to play the part with a sense of gravitas that he has not possessed in the episodes up until now.

As the name suggests, "Amy's Choice" manages to make the reality-bending episode into a character struggle for Amy. Amy is deeply conflicted over her relationships with Rory and The Doctor and it manifests itself in both realities. The idea that The Doctor might have loved prior Companions opens Amy up to the feeling that The Doctor, whom she has obsessed on for more than a decade, might love her. That creates a fundamental conflict for her with Rory, who still wonders why Amy ran away on their wedding night.

Arthur Darvill is good in "Amy's Choice," playing both an educated doctor and a very realistic human who grounds the surreal aspects of the episode. Darvill is not given a lot of time to play off of Toby Jones, who plays The Dream Lord. Jones is articulate and frightening as The Dream Lord as he repeatedly challenges the protagonists. Jones has a gravitas that allows him to hold his own against all of the regular stars of Doctor Who and he is wonderful in the one-shot role.

"Amy's Choice" is damn near perfect, but the problems it has are enough to noticeably undermine it. First and foremost, The Dream Lord appears in both "realities" and he challenges the trio from the first moment he appears. But none of the characters challenge the basic premise: the Dream Lord sets the terms and declares that the protagonists have to choose between the two realities, but the premise is a ridiculous dialectic. The moment the Dream Lord appeared in the second of the two realities, I found myself asking what the characters never explicitly ask, "Why do they not believe that both realities can be dreams?!" Beyond that, the Eknodine are an interesting alien race in the village with one line too far to keep their characterization compelling and interesting. The Eknodine are an alien race that was hunted and the victims of a genocide and their use of the senior citizens for shells is interesting. But when they turn into victimizers, they exhaust the viewer's empathy for them. Just once, it would have been nice to have an alien race, hunted near extinction, that wanted to survive and would just use the bare minimum of bodies needed to keep their race alive, as opposed to becoming killing machines themselves.

Ultimately, "Amy's Choice" is a solid episode that makes the gimmick into a chance to grow the characters and allow the performers to expand their on-screen range. And the episode works in a way that other episodes with dreams, most notably "Last Christmas," do not.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fifth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Toby Jones, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
"Valediction" - Agent Carter
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Snow White And The Huntsman
The Hunger Games
Red Lights
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
My Week With Marilyn
Captain America: The First Avenger
Virginia
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part I
W.
Frost/Nixon
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets
Ever After
Orlando

9/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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