The Lodger (TV story)

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The Lodger is the eleventh episode of Series 5 and was a companion lite episode.

Synopsis

A mysterious force locks the TARDIS - with Amy inside it - trapped in a materialization loop, and it's up to the Doctor to work out what that force is, or Amy could be lost forever. As he investigates, he learns of a house on Aickman road, with a staircase which people walk up but never down. To solve this mystery, the Doctor must pass himself off as a normal human being and share a flat with Craig Owens.

Plot

The TARDIS materialises in a park in Colchester and the Doctor is thrown out. The TARDIS then dematerialises with Amy still inside leaving the Doctor behind. A day later, a young man enters a house to help an elderly gentleman and enters the top floor.

Meanwhile, in the flat a man called Craig and his friend, Sophie, discuss their plans for pizza and TV tonight but Sophie has to leave as her friend is upset over a recent break up, but not before discussing a rot on the ceiling in the corner. Craig begins telling himself to confess his love for his friend when the doorbell rings. Believing it to be Sophie, who has forgotten her keys, he opens the door saying "I love you", before realising it is the Doctor. The Doctor greets Craig with a euro kiss, which he incorrectly believes to be how humans greet each other, possibly due to him recently observing van Gogh doing it, and claims to have seen an opening available as a lodger.

The Doctor walks in and gives Craig a paper bag containing a large amount of money as rent, later revealed to be three thousand pounds. The Doctor then proceeds to explore the house and eventually cooks an omelette, warning Craig to avoid touching the rot, claiming to be an expert in rot, and tells Craig that he will fix it himself. After finishing the meal, Craig asks the Doctor where he learned to cook to which the Doctor replies Paris in the 18th century. The Doctor eventually corrects his mistake after saying the 17th century and finally the 20th claiming he is not used to doing them in the right order. He is given his keys and the Doctor contacts Amy to discuss what is going wrong. The TARDIS begins shaking violently and the Doctor tells Amy how to fix it. Meanwhile, Craig is talking to his friend describing the Doctor and she worries he is a dealer.

The next day, the Doctor is showering and Craig goes upstairs after hearing a loud bang. The Doctor panics and fears Craig is in danger, so grabs Craig's toothbrush in mistake of his sonic screwdriver. After finding Craig safe, the Doctor meets Sophie. Craig then says there is a problem in his pub football league and his team lack a player. The Doctor volunteers but later claims he believes football to be the one with the sticks.

The Doctor discovers he has mistaken a toothbrush for his sonic screwdriver

At the football match, the Doctor shows how unfamiliar he is with the game but immediately shows his skill and talent scoring many goals. While celebrating their win, another of Craig's friends says that with the Doctor's help they can annhilate another team which the Doctor misinterprets as killing and claims to be "the Oncoming Storm". He then understands his misinterpretation while Craig and his friends get stuck in a loop of opening a beer can, while the TARDIS shakes violently and another person enters the upstairs flat. This eventually subsides, however but the Doctor states he is worried that Amy could be lost in the TARDIS forever.

Back at the flat, Craig asks the Doctor to keep out of Craig's way while he is with Sophie so he can profess his love for her. The Doctor however interrupts asking where the on button is for a regular screwdriver. The Doctor convinces Sophie that she can do anything and encourages her to work with Orangutans like she dreams. The Doctor is revealed to be building a scanning device in an attempt to discover the nature of the threat on the second floor. Later that night, Craig touches the rot only to pull his hand back in pain.

In the morning, the Doctor prepares breakfast for Craig only to find him nearly dead. The Doctor hits Craig to get him to breathe and then makes a remedy out of teabags for Craig to drink. Craig claims there is a business meeting he needs to go to but is told to rest. In the afternoon, Craig rushes to work to find the Doctor at his desk insulting a rude client. His manager then says he was useful at the meeting, upsetting Craig. Craig becomes jealous of the Doctor for being better than him and is worried he could lose the woman he loves.

Later, at the flat, Craig asks the Doctor to leave after discovering the Doctor's scanner and sees him talking to a cat. The Doctor headbutts Craig and reveals his history telepathically and then repeats it with what he is doing in the flat as well as showing a note from future Amy telling him to go to the flat. Sophie walks in to help a girl upstairs and the Doctor and Craig race up the stairs to save her. Amy then reveals using the building plans that there is no registered top floor. Opening the door, they find a space ship.

Sophie is then seen being pulled towards a console but is suddenly stopped. A man appears and is revealed to be a hologram that is an auto pilot. It states the ship crashed and the pilots are dead and as such the program began testing humans to find a suitable replacement. However, the humans aren't able to handle it and are burnt up. The program begins forcing the Doctor to touch a console to which the Doctor says will blow up the solar system. He realises Craig was not wanted as he wanted to stay at the flat to be with Sophie because he loves her and the auto pilot wanted people who sought to leave. Sophie says she loves him too and they kiss while touching the console. As they wanted to stay here, the ship complied but began to implode. Fleeing, they notice the ship vanish along with the entire top floor which no one else notices due to a perception filter.

The space ship revealed on the roof of Craig's flat

The Doctor tries to sneak away but is caught and given keys to the flat as a thank you. In the TARDIS, Amy looks for a red pen to write a note to tell the Doctor to go to the flat, but instead finds her engagement ring from Rory while a crack in space appears in Craig's home.

Cast

Production crew

to be added

References

The Doctor

Craig Owen's fridge
  • The Doctor uses a regular screwdriver and asks where the on switch is.
  • On Craig Owen's fridge is a postcard to the Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay
  • When the Doctor rushes out of the shower in fear of Craig's safety he grabs Craig's toothbrush rather than his Sonic screwdriver.
  • The Doctor knows how to play football (although he initially confused it with Cricket, which the Fifth Doctor was good at).
  • After the Doctor 'shares' his knowledge with Craig, he sees brief flashes of: the Doctor's first, second, third, fourth, eighth, ninth and tenth incarnations; Cybermen, Rose Tyler, an Ood, and a Weeping Angel. He also describes himself as "Eleventh" to explain himself to Craig.
  • The Doctor shares a psychic connection with a cat.
  • The Doctor introduces himself to the alien timeship as "Captain Troy Handsome of International Rescue. Please state the nature of your emergency", referencing both Thunderbirds (International Rescue is the name of their organisation) and Star Trek: Voyager ("Please state the nature of your medical emergency" is the first thing Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram - also, coincidentally, referred to as "the Doctor" - says on boot up).

Foods and beverages

  • The Doctor makes himself and Craig an omelette with cheese, ham, mayonaise and other ingredients.
  • The Doctor does not appear to enjoy wine, as after drinking some, spits it back into the glass.
  • The Doctor uses tea to cure Craig after he is poisoned by the rot on his wall, stating that it would 'reverse the enzyme decay'.

Locations

  • Craig was offered a job in London, which he turned down. This may be a reference to the fact Moffat is keeping the fifth series away from the sterotypical setting in London.

Technology

  • After gaining the Doctor's knowledge, Craig realises that his scanning device is based on the "non-technological" technology of the Lammasteen.

Story notes

  • This episode was mistakenly entitled Reality Check and Don't Go Up The Stairs.
  • "The Lodger" is also a comic strip story by Gareth Roberts. Roberts has confirmed this story is an adaptation of the basic premise of the other, however he has stated that they differ quite a lot in that the comic was written for different characters (the Tenth Doctor and Mickey Smith) and focused on the "domestic set-up" while the TV story involves "something at the top of the stairs".[1] This isn't the first adaption on the TV series, NA: Human Nature being a previous example.
  • Several previous Doctors appeared in brief flashed when The Doctor knocked heads with Craig.
  • This is an Amy-lite episode, similar to the Donna-lite episode DW: Midnight and in the vein of the Doctor and Rose-lite episode DW: Love and Monsters and the Martha (and Doctor)-lite episode DW: Blink. However, Amy features throughout this story, when in Midnight, Donna was completely absent, apart from the beginning and the ending.
  • This is the first time in the new series that the Doctor has definitively stated how many incarnations he has had — he tells Craig he is the eleventh.
  • The Doctor wears a football kit, playing for Craig's pub team, the King's Arms. He wears a jersey with the number 11 on it when playing a football match, both referencing him being the Eleventh Doctor and this being the eleventh episode of Series 5.
  • The Doctor playing football in the episode is a coincidental reference to the fact that Matt Smith originally wanted to become a professional footballer before a back injury, causing him to focus on acting instead. However writer Gareth Roberts has stated that the football scene was always going to be carried over from the comic story and he began writing it prior to the casting of Smith [2].
  • The 2010 FIFA World Cup England vs USA match kicked off just as The Lodger finished, on a rival channel (ITV), the timing noted by writer Roberts as a "happy accident" [3].
  • The Doctor making Craig an omelette may be a reference to Gavin and Stacy, the series which James Corden starred in and wrote, in which the only food Stacy's mum ever seemed to cook was omeletts.
  • The Doctor wears only a blue bath towel for one scene, incidentally Matt Smith appears similarly in the show Secret Diary of a Call Girl as one of Billie Piper's clients. An online stir was caused when many viewers claimed that Smith briefly 'flashed' the camera when his towel fell, however the BBC and Smith have denied he was completely naked for that scene [4].
  • Gareth Roberts, the writer of this episode, revealed in an interview in Doctor Who Magazine Issue 423 that he had planned to return the classic enemy Meglos in this story, but decided against it after the similar-looking aliens the Vinvocci made an appearence in DW: The End of Time. The magazine also showed an early draft of the script which showed the meeting of the Eleventh Doctor and Meglos in which Meglos remembered the Doctor but the Doctor didn't remember Meglos.
  • The set in the house is remarkably similar to that in Fear Her.
  • When the Doctor hands Craig the bag of money, he tells him "Don't spend it all on sweets." The Ninth Doctor said the same thing to Adam when he gave him the credit stick in DW: The Long Game.

Ratings

Offical viewing figures was 5.98 million viewers.

Rumours

  • It is rumoured that either the Timoreen, the Ha'rik, or the Skarkish will appear – primarily because these were all listed as "new aliens" to appear in Series 5. None of them appeared
  • This episode will be the one that features the Blue Peter Competition TARDIS console. The design itself did not appear, but another ship console design did.
  • As this episode is before the finale, it most likely will have a foreshadowing (like in DW: Fear Her and DW: The Waters of Mars) or link right into the finale (like DW: Utopia and DW: Turn Left). This was proved true.
  • It is likely that this episode will lead directly into the next as Claudio played by Marcus O'Donovan is listed to appear in both this episode and the following one, DW: The Pandorica Opens. The episode did not directly lead to the next, but it did have something very related to the next episode. (However Claudio did not appear in this episode).
  • Amy will remember, or begin to remember, Rory by the end of the episode. Although she never remembered him enough to say it, she did find her wedding ring in the Doctor's coat.

Filming locations

to be added

Production errors

  • When giving Craig tea through the spout of the teapot, the angle from above the Doctor shows the liquid to be clear, much unlike tea, and unlike some of the liquid which dribbles from Craig's mouth.
  • After cooking the omelette for Craig and himself the Doctor is shown licking his thumb, but in the next shot his hand is positioned differently and he is wiping his mouth with his finger.
  • Near the end of the episode when the alien hologram says "the correct pilot has been found" and it cuts to Amy in the TARDIS she says "he means you Doctor, doesn't he?" her lips don't seem to quite match what she is saying.
  • A cameraman's reflection can be seen in the painting hanging on the hallway wall when it is shown during a conversation later in the episode.
  • When Sophie looks up the stairs towards the girl, the door behind her seems to open itself. The shot then changes to show Sophie looking up at the camera as if it was upstairs. When the shot changes back to behind Sophie, the door appears to open again.
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

Home video releases

BBC Video - Doctor Who Series Five - Volume Four will feature Vincent and the Doctor, The Lodger, The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. It will be released on Monday 6th September 2010 (UK Only) on DVD and Blu-ray.[5]

File:S5v4.jpg
Official Volume 4 Cover

See also

External links

to be added

Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/06/10/“the-lodger”-interview/
  2. ↑ http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/06/10/“the-lodger”-interview/
  3. ↑ http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/06/10/“the-lodger”-interview/
  4. ↑ http://www.digitalspy.com/cult/s7/doctor-who/news/a226815/matt-smith-wasnt-naked-in-doctor-who.html/
  5. ↑ DWM 421, Page 18

Template:Series 5

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