First broadcast 24 September 2011.

There is always a problem when an experiment works out; one tends to try performing it again. Season 5’s episode “The Lodger”, written by Gareth Roberts, side-lined the usual science fiction narrative as much as feasible to deliver instead a comedy about the Doctor (Matt Smith) living away from his TARDIS as a flatmate to confused local resident Craig (guest star James Corden). It was an unusual episode, and as a one-off it worked surprisingly well.

“Closing Time” is, of course, the ill-considered sequel that tries to recapture the proverbial ‘lightning in a bottle’ and in doing so manages to fail where the original episode succeeded. It has the same actors, the same writer, and the same producer, and it simply does not work any way how it should. It has a new director, Steve Hughes, but I honestly do not think the problems here are in any way due to his direction. This is a bad script, with bad ideas presented poorly.

The Doctor is travelling alone, as he grows closer to his apparently murder on the shore of Lake Silencio. Declaring himself on a ‘farewell tour’, he revisits his former flatmate Craig only to discover Craig in over his head as father to a baby, and an alien menace lurking below a nearby department store.

The Doctor spending time with Craig worked well in “The Lodger” because the reason for him being trapped outside his own TARDIS was directly linked to the alien menace in that episode. Here he seems to appear there entirely by coincidence, and that simply does not give the episode as strong a foundation. It is an excuse for a lot of jokes about men struggling to raise babies – which isn’t particularly funny – and cashiers mistaking the Doctor and Craig for a gay couple – which isn’t particularly funny either. The Doctor’s behaviour, about as strange in the original as Matt Smith’s take on the character already was, feels exaggerated a little here. It feels like Roberts trying to push the humour harder, and he goes too far.

The mysterious alien menace is revealed to be the Cyberman – Season 6’s only real classic villain – and as if often the case, they are poorly written and misused. They are a deceptively tricky monster to use in Doctor Who, as most of their new series stories prove, and here they simply feel shoe-horned into a script whose first draft probably read “insert monster here”.

The weirdest misstep is Moffat’s to make, allowing “Closing Time” to conclude with a ‘love conquers all’ climax in which a father’s love for his son overcomes the alien threat. It is dramatically weak to begin, but it is also the exact same climax employed in Mark Gatiss’ “Night Terrors” just three episodes ago. Someone should have noticed.

With that, and with a brief epilogue to set up the next episode, all is done spare for the season finale. Lake Silencio awaits.