Closing Time (TV story)

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Closing Time was the twelfth episode in the sixth series of Doctor Who. It marks the return of Craig Owens and the Cybermen.

Synopsis

In the last few days of his life, the Doctor pays a farewell visit to his old friend Craig Owens, and encounters a mystery. People are going missing, a silver rat scuttles in the shadows of a department store, and somewhere close by, the Cybermen wait.[1]

Plot

It starts in a department store, where a worker is checking the changing rooms for customers before they close. She hears something in one of the changing rooms. It is a Cyberman. She screams.

About the same time, Sophie leaves her house after making sure that Craig can cope with their son, Alfie. Craig hears a knock on the door. It is the Doctor standing on his doorstep who says hello and then turns to leave, until he sees the power flickering on Craig's road.

The next day Craig finds the Doctor working in a shop, searching for the cause of the electrical problems. People have been vanishing, and the Doctor is sure there's a connection to the flickering power. When the Doctor tries to get Craig and Alfie out of the shop in a lift, they arrive in the Cyber-Ship, where a Cyberman stomps towards them. The Doctor reverses the teleportation before they are discovered, disabling the teleporter in the process. He tries to get Craig to leave him so he can investigate, but Craig refuses and stays on to help him. He believes the safest place to be for his son is by the Doctor's side.

The Doctor gossips with his co-worker, Val. She believes Craig to be his romantic partner and Alfie their child. He learns that a "silver rat" has been sighted in the store. The Doctor silently observes Amy and Rory shopping, and finds that Amy is featured in the print ad for a perfume. That night, Craig and Doctor hide in the store and capture a Cybermat. It has been causing the power fluctuations by siphoning power to the Cyberman ship, but the Doctor is surprised by how little power it is drawing. The Doctor survives an attack by a Cyberman; it was made from malfunctioning spare parts. He is at a loss to explain how it could have returned to the store so soon.

The Doctor returns with Craig to his home to work on the Cybermat. When Craig leaves to get milk, the Doctor tends to Alfie's cries, telling the baby he will die the next day. The Cybermat becomes active and attacks the Doctor and Craig, but they subdue it.. The following morning, the Doctor returns to the store on his own with the reprogrammed Cybermat. Craig soon follows with Alfie. The Doctor discovers that the Cyberman ship is not in space; rather, it crashed on Earth centuries earlier and is now buried beneath the store, connected to it by a secret door in a changing room. The power lines installed for the store supply power to the ship, and the crew of six plan to convert the entire human race when there is enough power. The Doctor is captured by the Cybermen.

Craig leaves Alfie with Val and follows the Doctor into the tunnel. He too is captured and put into a conversion machine. The Doctor reveals his own impending death and urges Craig to fight but the conversion appears to be complete--until Alfie's cries over the closed-circuit television echo in the ship. Craig fights the conversion, sending the rest of the Cybermen into overload as they feel the emotions they have repressed. The Doctor and Craig teleport away as the ship explodes. The Doctor slips away unseen, but Craig returns home to find that the Doctor has used time travel to clean the mess from the previous night. The Doctor tells Craig that Alfie now has a much higher opinion of him. and leaves just before Sophie returns, aquiring a set of Tardis Blue envelopes from Sophie's stationary drawer and a Stetson hat from Craig as parting gifts . Craig tells Sophie that nothing out of the ordinary has happened, but Sophie becomes suspicious when the baby utters the word, "Doctor".

Nearby, the Doctor mails his letters and tells the TARDIS this is his last trip in her and offers some parting words to a small group of children. In the far future, River Song, a new Doctor of Archaeology, reviews eyewitness accounts of those children, and also notes the date and location of the Doctor's death. She is interrupted by Madame Kovarian and agents of The Silence; Kovarian tells River that she is still theirs, and will be the one to kill the Doctor. They place her in an astronaut's suit and submerge her in the lake to await the Doctor.

Cast

Crew

General production staff

Script department

Camera and lighting department

Art department

Costume department

Make-up and prosthetics

Movement

Casting

General post-production staff

Special and visual effects

Sound



Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.


References

  • The Doctor mentions that a robot dog is "not as much fun as I remember"referring to K9.
  • While talking about name tags, the Doctor suggests he often forgets his own name. Madame de Pompadour previously suggested the Doctor's real name is a mystery to him. (DW: The Girl in the Fireplace)
  • When the Doctor tries to deactivate the Cybermat and discovers it has shielding, he says to Craig "Don't worry; I have an app for that", parodying the slogan used by Apple to advertise the iPhone's versatility.
  • Craig asks if the Cybermen's teleport is like "beam me up" from Star Trek.

Story notes

  • Given that in The Impossible Astronaut the different versions of the Doctor give their ages as 909, and 1103, and all subsequent episodes occur within a short time for Amy Pond and Rory Williams, this episode takes place approximately 200 years (from the Doctor's perspective) later than The God Complex.
  • Part of the nursery rhyme from DW: Night Terrors is sung by Madame Kovarian, with some new lines added.
  • Closing Time is the first episode produced by Denise Paul who has been Associate Producer for several Eleventh Doctor stories.
  • This is the first time since the series revival in 2005 that episode 12 has not been part of a multi-part story written by the head writer, although the end of this episode does set up the series finale.
  • This is the first television story to feature a cybermat since the Fourth Doctor story DW: Revenge of the Cybermen.
  • This is the first single-parter episode in which River Song appears, and her first appearance in an episode not written by Steven Moffat.
  • This is also the first regular-season episode since the series revival in which the Doctor does not have a regular companion with him at some point.
    • Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill were, however, credited in the opener as they had been during the rest of the season. This marks the first time in the series that any actor's name has appeared in the opening credits for less than one minute of on-screen appearance.
    • The BBC America and Space broadcasts also retained the opening sequence narrated by Amy Pond.
  • The "app" for disabling the Cybermat used one of the "bonus sounds" found on the toy version of the Eleventh Doctor's sonic screwdriver, unheard on the show until now.
  • During one of the scenes, BBC Radio 1's Greg James was visible by Craig. Greg James named his character "Carlos".
  • Again like DW: A Good Man Goes to War, it is unknown if the Cybermen in this story are the Cybermen from Mondas or from Pete's World. However, given that the ship crashed sufficiently long ago to have been buried below utility level beneath London, it probable that the ship crashed during the events of The Pandorica Opens.
    File:GREGJAMES.png
    To the left of Craig, BBC Radio 1's Greg James.

Ratings

  • UK Overnight: 5.3 Million

Myths

Filming locations

to be added

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

Continuity

Timeline

For the Doctor

For River Song

For Amy & Rory

Home video releases

The episode will be released on DVD and Blu-ray shortly after the airing of episode 13.[4]

External links

to be added

Footnotes