Doctor Who: The Lodger Review…

What’s worse than a time traveler without his time traveling machine?
What’s worse than living on Planet Earth day by day?
What’s more alien, the Cybermen or Planet Earth?
These are the questions that went into The Lodger.

The TARDIS minus the Doctor with Amy being on board could have an excellent psychological episode. Ever since the series was given new life the TARDIS has been treated more as a transport than a home. Sure, we’ve seen rooms in the past and the last time the TARDIS was used as a set piece was in the Fox movie of the week. Ideally, Amy wandering room to room finding bits and pieces of the Doctor’s previous life, his companions and maybe even something the Doctor wants no one to see would have made for a great episode I think.
Instead, we get the Doctor stranded on Earth with no TARDIS, his only lifeline being a lovely steampunk looking bluetooth headset synched to the runaway TARDIS and Pond. This is fine as well since we’ve never seen the Doctor actually interact with many people unless the world is about to go all explodey.
The Doctor as a customer service rep was priceless.
The villain of the week is suitably creepy, the Lodger upstairs is killing people one by one. It’s reasons and motives turn out to be a quick breeze and while it makes sense I liked the interactions between the Doctor and his flat mates more than then the villain in the end.
Amy finding Rory’s ring was an excellent touch I thought, two episodes back it landed on the floor and there wasn’t a shot of it being picked up by anyone. A miss beat that would have been great to see then, but the rifling of The Doctors pockets is fine in the end.
Overall, with the season now down to the final two episodes, I think Matt Smith and Karen Gillian have gelled quite well.