Poll: Rate and Discuss 6.12: Closing Time

[Alex]

I'm afraid that really didn't work for me. It was bad as such, just very bland, with dull dialogue, the cybermen reduced to being a bit pathetic, and James Corden blathering on annoyingly in the background. There was the odd nice moment (Amy and Rory, the ending) but most of the time I was all a bit bored and really struggled to maintain interest in it. And the fact that 'the power of love' once again saved the day was all a bit poor. (Okay, the relationship between father and baby, but still...). 5/10 - though only just, and largely because of the ending, otherwise it'd have been a rather poor 4/10.

[Dino]

James Corden wasn't bad this time. I liked the story. It was good to have the Cybermen back. But... what happened at the end? Spoilers for people who haven't seen it yet. (And I'll be back to edit the spoiler tags out once everyone's seen it)

So James Corden is to be the Cybercontroller. No problem with that. But when the helmet closed on him, we heard a saw! I heard a saw! "Ah! He becomes a Cyberman so it ends on the heartbreak of him being part Cyber in a family unit" But no! He got away WITHOUT A SCRATCH ON HIM! The Cybermen deserved to be blown up if they did things so slowly!

Aside from that, the rest of it was great. It made me more excited about the next series not being so heavy on plot arcs but it means finally, we can have proper endings! Beginning, middle and ends, not beginnings, middle and hacked off end to shoehorn the plot arc in!
So mixed bag at 6 then. (Also I've had a rant on another forum about Coldplay and haven't calmed down, so I'm a bit more animated in this post)

The things I thought would annoy me, didn't. There was nothing wrong with the story... apart from the last few scenes.
Damn... I should of voted 7 then!

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed a new TV episode that much. I feel like I've just watched Matt Smith and James Corden acting out a Planet Skaro audio I was grinning and laughing so much.
As I enjoyed it so much more than last week's (even though that was still good enough to rank 7/10) I've gone for 9/10.

Also that was one of the best episodes of Confidential this year so far having been a bit lacking in some of its previous installments.

[Andrew Curnow]

Really enjoyed it - lots of laughs, some unexpected thrills, bit of action, bit of drama, Cybermen... This is my sort of Who. Yes "saved by love" is going to fall apart with each rewatching, but for now it's possibly my favourite of the season.

Not sure why the Doctor is so sure he's going to die tomorrow - he's going to Utah in the TARDIS, not on a bus, so tomorrow is a bit meaningless, but that's a quibble for another time (next week maybe). Disappointing to see Amy & Rory pop up, for many reasons not least of which is that it had nothing to do with the story at all (maybe they just have very good agents?) but the sparkle between Smith & Corden more than made up for it.

Lovely!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Load of tish

[Alex Me]

I'm not sure why, but did not enjoy that much. It had all the elements in it, James, Matt, The Cybermen, foreshadowing for the finale, but it just did not seem to gel together. I had to give it a 6/10

The plot was silly (which is hardly something you should criticise who for) but the ending just seemed a bit stupid. If Cybermen conversion is that easy to resist, then why isn't everyone who is converted doing it?

Still the Rory and Amy appearance was a nice surprise, I assume we will get more info on what was going on there next week.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Why are people using spoiler tags in here?

[Darren]

8 out of 10

I enjoyed that. Full of holes it may have been, but Matt and James are a good pairing and it was a fun 45 minutes. Very unusual not to end on a two parter, I thought. A spaceship buried in the Earth for hundreds of years undetected when the department store was built wasn't very believeable, and the saved by love bit and resolution was a bit hurried, but all in all I liked it.

[Dirk Gently]

A quite enjoyable but disposable 45 mins of fun & frolics. Simple story premise (couldn't help but think of it as a fuller version of Rose) but very good on a basic level. Really nice not to have a "block buster" 2 part ending to the series.
I assumed that the slow conversion of James Corden was because of the low power reserves they had, meaning that only one process could be done at a time.
It may not stand up to repeated viewing but tonight I'm giving it 7/10, which may go up or down.

Still the Rory and Amy appearance was a nice surprise, I assume we will get more info on what was going on there next week.

More info? They were getting on with their life, shopping. What more did you want?
I loved that Amy is now a minor celeb, the face of some up market fragrance.

[Martin Curnow]

Liked it and didn't like it!!!

Loved the Doctor coming back to see Craig again (although if it was his last day alive is this the person he'd visit - a bloke he met not that long ago? What about Susan or Ian/Barbara - the first humans that he took with him?)


As a stand alone it was OK, although I have to say I have never liked the new series Cyberman design (and all of a sudden it seems to have changed. As I remember in Age Of Steel the Cyberhead came down onto the body but now the human is consumed by the Cyber-suit) or the ease they seem to be defeated in the new series episodes.

The last 5 minutes with River Song/Eye-Patch could have been the pre-title sequence of the next episode.

Amy being someone who is famous enough to give an autograph suggests that she and Rory have moved on a long time since they last saw the Doctor.

Just because the Doctor lands on Earth the day before his apparent death, why does he say he's dying tomorrow and go off assuming that's it? He has a time machine - today may be 22 April (where this story was set) - why can't the Doctor's tomorrow be 10 April 1999? ?

OK, so that's weird. I liked the episode when I watched it but I'm only seeming to latch onto the continuity issues above. Maybe I'm thinking subconsciously that the season arc should be less in your face than the Doctor being zapped in the first 10 minutes of the series!!

[Wayne]

Like an episode of the worst sitcom ever.

[Junkyard]

The plot just didn't work for me. On the other hand the performances were great. So, 6/10.

[Paul Clement]

I was a little bit disappointed with that one. There were some good moments in there, but that's all they were, moments. Some of the interplay between the characters was very good, but it just seemed to meander its way to a hugely unconvincing resolution. 6 out of 10.

[SiHart]

I really, really liked it. Oddly I wasn't expecting to, but James Corden and Matt Smith make a good team.

I loved the way it juxtaposed danger with comedy stuff, and the down ti earth with the fantastic and the scary with the homely. Pitched absolutely correctly all the way through.

I loved the little scene of the Doctor talking to Alfie in his cot, talking about the stars. What a wonderfully Doctor Who-ey moment that was. It was magical and heart warming, one of those little scenes to treasure.

[Darren]

As I remember in Age Of Steel the Cyberhead came down onto the body but now the human is consumed by the Cyber-suit

These are our Cybermen, not the Parallel Cybermen created by Lucus.

Amy being someone who is famous enough to give an autograph suggests that she and Rory have moved on a long time since they last saw the Doctor.

And the Doctor. I think he may have been alone for decades.

Like an episode of the worst sitcom ever.

Thought you wouldn't like it Wayne.

[Larry]

Personally I'd of liked to see a bit more of the cybermen but in truth this episode was the calm before the storm and the Cybermen, were just there for window dressing , I don't think it weakens them as such as we were not really told enough of why their ship crashed but what they were doing is what they always do taking people for conversion. Matt, was once again at his brilliant best as was James Corden, and the pair make a great double act.

over all a very enjoyable episode

[Rob McCow]

It was a huge amount of fun. There were a few bits I think they didn't get quite right, but overall it was a brilliant, boisterous episode. I sincerely hope they bring Craig back next year!

Also - next week, LIVE CHESS!!!!

[Perry Vale]

I'm not in the best position to vote on this just now, as I came to it under bad circumstances, and then didn't enjoy it very much at all. On first viewing, Alex has summed it all up for me, pretty much.

First off, my PVR decided that 'Series Link' didn't include this episode, for some reason, and as I've moaned about elsewhere, the good old Beeb have taken away the repeat showings for the second half of the series to sell the dvds/blurays. After deciding to watch it on iPlayer, I then had the surprise of the Cybermen's appearance taken away from me by the synopsis. So having avoided that spoiler until five hours after the episode had aired, I wasn't best pleased by this.

And then I felt the episode bordered on dreadful. Pointless, and incoherent. What was all that 'I die tomorrow' stuff? When was it set? If it actually was 21/4/11, then Amy & Rory are living in our world twice, as they should be on a plane to Utah right then.

Overall, a real shame. Smith and Corden genuinely do have a great rapport (as DW:C showed), but this was pretty awful, IMO, and should have been much better. It's often been said you should never go back, and this seemed to prove it. I've not enjoyed most of Gareth Roberts' scripts, and this suggested that the wonderful 'The Lodger' was just a blip...

[Perry Vale]

(maybe they just have very good agents?)

Or maybe it was easier than having to change the opening credits? I didn't notice, but were they the same as the rest of this season?

[Darren]

What was all that 'I die tomorrow' stuff?

Could have been his own personal timeline. Since dropping off Amy and Rory he could have travelled on his own for 200 years. He is now 1103 and is due to die.

[Logo Polish]

Or maybe it was easier than having to change the opening credits? I didn't notice, but were they the same as the rest of this season?

Yes, they were still the same credits.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Could have been his own personal timeline. Since dropping off Amy and Rory he could have travelled on his own for 200 years. He is now 1103 and is due to die.

That's my reading of the situation. Also we don't really know how long the gap between A Good Man Goes To War and Let's Kill Hitler was for the Doctor. Just because it was only three months for Amy and Rory doesn't mean he couldn't have been gone for decades. Also the opening sequence of The Impossible Astronaut certainly implied that the older Doctor Amy and Rory met in Utah had been having lots of adventures on his own immediately prior to his death.
I reckon the databank on the Teselecta would have included details of the Doctor's age at death (there was a line in Let's Kill Hitler from one of the crew saying it was too early in his time stream for him to die) so that would explain the Doctor knowing it was finally time.

[Alex Me]

That's my reading of the situation. Also we don't really know how long the gap between A Good Man Goes To War and Let's Kill Hitler was for the Doctor. Just because it was only three months for Amy and Rory doesn't mean he couldn't have been gone for decades. Also the opening sequence of The Impossible Astronaut certainly implied that the older Doctor Amy and Rory met in Utah had been having lots of adventures on his own immediately prior to his death.
I reckon the databank on the Teselecta would have included details of the Doctor's age at death (there was a line in Let's Kill Hitler from one of the crew saying it was too early in his time stream for him to die) so that would explain the Doctor knowing it was finally time.

Thats what I guessed too, guess it leaves a lot of room for books/audio's etc, if we ever get another wilderness years.

[Llordllama]

I really quite enjoyed it, worries over the now oh so easily avoided cyberconversion aside. James Corden didn't annoy me, Matt shone and obviously I want a Cyber-weasel (mat) for Xmas, which might well have been the Beebs plan all along.

Jolly fun romp, although the Cybermen have been a) Blown up by Rory b) beaten with love this season - they seriously need a scary return to ramp up their believability as a credible foe. Maybe they could shoot Amy or something.

Even the "Oh ho ho, here comes the finalé" bit at the end didn't feel like it was stealing screen time from the rest of the episode. Although frankly if we apply Dr Evil's "how to beat a good guy" rule, Eye Patch Lady and the Silent Duo's revenge scheme is pretty, pretty lame.

8/10

[Jason Thompson]

Not bad, not great. Fairly middling. Good interplay between Smith and Corden, and somehow this Doctor really does not seem out of place working in a shop or indeed doing anything on Earth.

It does, unfortunately, flag up the main issue a lot of people have had with this story arc. In a series in which the whole premise of the second half is essentially Amy's baby being abducted and then, apparently, not being talked much about by either Amy or Rory in the next few episodes, we are now presented with an episode in which the cry of his baby so resonates with Craig's emotions that he not only breaks out of a sealed cybersuit mid-conversion but emotes so strongly it feeds back into the system and blows up the Cybermen! The bit-part mainly comic character appears to have a stronger bond with his child than Amy and Rory do with theirs, and his child wasn't even being directly threatened.

The episode also is another example of one of the biggest problems with the revived series, which is putting the Doctor through the emotional wringer over his companions. Yes, we know life with him is dangerous. He has got people killed. He lives a dangerous life. But now he suddenly starts to feel that and beats himself up over it. Davros called him on it back in Journey's End. Last week he dropped Amy and Rory off before they died because of him. In Let's Kill Hitler he complained of the guilt he felt over all his companions since Rose. And yet in the same episode he's beating himself up over putting Craig and Alfie in danger, he's also laughing and acting like this whole business is fun.

Even in the classic series it has never quite worked when the characters start to acknowledge elements of the series format. The Doctor promises Vicki adventure, and Barbara desribes their time as adventures when they are in Rome and Vicki is complaining about being bored. But only just before landing on Dido they were in just about the bleakest place they had ever been, and immediately after talking about adventures Ian and Barbara are chained up and sold as slaves, while the Doctor is involved in lethal intrigue. Tegan leaves because 'it stopped being fun', but I'd have thought that watching Adric get blown up, being taken over by the Mara twice, stuck in a plague ship and threatened with being burned alive would have stopped the whole thing being 'fun' some time ago.

The whole format of the show almost requires the characters not to acknowledge that their lifestyle effectively puts them in danger of dying every day (especially in the later years when the Doctor could have taken them home on demand at any time), and so when they do the whole thing starts to look a little schizophrenic.