Doctor Who in Review: “The Lodger”

WARNING! The following review contains NITPICKING OF DETAILS and SPOILERS! Much like Love and Monsters and Midnight from series two and four, respectively, The Lodger is one of those oddball episodes of Doctor Who. Despite--or maybe because of--its kookiness, I'd have to say that it's a strong contender for my favorite stand-alone episode of series five; the primary competition being The Eleventh Hour. Amy is mostly absent this episode; standing in for her is Craig, the Arthur Dent of the bizarre little saga that begins to unfold when the Doctor gets punted from the TARDIS in an abrupt and unexplained fashion. Much like that guy who was erased from existence two episode ago, the Doctor efficiently uproots everything stable in the life of poor "beginning-to-look-like-his-sofa" Craig when he becomes his flatmate. Soon all of the people around Craig are fascinated by the Doctor, including Craig's not-quite-yet-girlfriend, Sophie, his football mates, and his boss. This distinctly accents how many times the Doctor has stumbled into someone's life, utterly changed it, and then stumbled back out again. Of course, the spaceship masquerading as the second floor would have eventually become problematic for Craig; the Doctor was the lesser evil by a long-shot. I want to reiterate that this next image is of the guy that's supposed to be saving the world: Quite possibly the funniest moment in this episode is the one that really propels Craig's weirdness meter into the red. Apparently the Doctor lost some of his finesse in the transition from 10 to 11; gone are his gentle touches to the temple to share his mind with others'. Now he has taken to head-butting, though perhaps this is related to his talent for football/soccer and he's practicing for head-shots on goal? In any case, Craig's reaction is pretty damn near priceless, and his acceptance pretty quick, but consider who he's been living with the past few days and I think we can let it slide. There are a lot of details in this episode that intrigue and/or infuriate me. First off, Craig has a lovely Van Gogh exhibit postcard on his fridge, but says he "[doesn't] see the point of Paris," so where'd he get it from? One of the spaceship's victims looks like she had been abused or otherwise had a terrible night--though it only was downhill from there--but we're only with her for a few moments, so why show us that? The control panels in the space ship are coffin-shaped, which I find quite appropriate considering what they do to people (what is it with spaceships in Doctor Who trying to use people for parts?). However, the jaw-dropping, "WTF, how can you throw that out there and leave it?!" moment for me was when the Doctor casually mentions the killer spaceship was someone's attempts to build a TARDIS, and then promptly lets the subject drop. Considering TARDISes are supposed to be grown, not made, it leaves a plethora of unanswered questions in its wake, and it had better be addressed sometime in the future! Even though Amy wasn't featured strongly in the episode, the interaction between her and the Doctor has take a turn for the better. He's started calling her "Pond," which I highly approve of. It's a pretty adorable nickname, but at the same time the change in sentiment throughly quashes that potential romantic nonsense between the two of them. The look on her face when she discovers the ring at the end of the episode is almost unreadable, a mix of confusion and the missing bits of memory. All in all, maybe The Lodger wasn't the deepest episode of Who this season, but it had humor, romance, good vs. evil, and a pretty wicked cliffhanger. If that's not entertainment, I don't know what is.