The Lodger
Story 211, Episode 767, Series 5 Episode 11
Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Amy Pond
The Lodger goes for comedy, and I find it not nearly as funny as I did eight years ago.
The Review
Comedy is a funny thing. I remember this story being hilarious, and really enjoyed it in 2013. Watching it today, I thought it was just fine. Sometimes I can’t believe the scores I give stories, like a 8.9 to The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, the most disposable series finale in the new series? A terrible grade to Last Christmas, which foretold the heights of Series 9? The Lodger is a fun story, and gets a lot of mileage out of how supremely weird and alien the Eleventh Doctor is. With Tennant’s charming Tenth Doctor, it’s a very different story. I am starting to tire of Matt Smith’s quirkiness watching this many of his stories in a row, it can get old. I am liking Amy Pond better than I remembered, I loved her sass and attitude toward the Doctor a lot. At the end she finds Rory’s engagement ring, and remembers something.
This story is really about James Corden’s Craig, and maybe it was a lot funnier when I didn’t know James Corden was. His celebrity has probably hurt this story from being as good as it could’ve been. The Doctor comes in and basically ruins his life, showing him up at a football match, telling his crush Sophie to pursue her dreams, even besting him at his call center job. In the end, it’s a love story as the Doctor gets Craig and Sophie to finally realize, duh, they love each other to defeat the evil malfunctioning alien spaceship on the roof. It’s a pretty disposable story, and I am sad to say I did not find it nearly as funny as I remembered. Makes me very worried for Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. That is the danger with the funny episodes: sometimes things just aren’t as funny anymore.
Comedy holds up worse than drama, and sadly for me, this didn’t really hold up. I don’t feel too melancholy right now, but who knows?
8/10 It was very funny once, and thus it still gets an 8.
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