Closing Time (TV story): Difference between revisions

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, revealing privately to the baby that he knows he will die the next day. The Cybermat becomes active and attacks the Doctor and Craig, but they are able to subdue it, though making a mess of the house. The following morning, the Doctor returns to the store on his own with the reprogrammed Cybermat, but Craig soon follows with Alfie. In the store, 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 via a secret door in a changing room. He realises that the power lines installed for the store have helped to supply power to the ship, and the crew of six have been drawing power slowly and plan to convert the entire human race when there is enough power. The Doctor is soon captured by the Cybermen.

Craig leaves Alfie with Val and follows the Doctor into the tunnel, but is also captured by the Cybermen 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 painfully experience the emotions they have repressed. The Doctor and Craig escape via the teleporter as the ship explodes, the blast contained by the cavern. 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 his dad. The Doctor leaves just before Sophie returns. Sophie is pleasantly surprised by how well the weekend appears to have gone for Craig and Alfie. 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 tells the [[TARDIS]] he knows this is his last trip in her and offers some parting words to a small group of children. In the far future, [[River Song]], recently made a Doctor of Archaeology, reviews eyewitness accounts from 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.

*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 amount of time for [[Amy Pond]] and [[Rory Williams]], this episode takes place approximately 200 years (from the Doctor's perspective) later than ''[[The God Complex]]''.

*''Closing Time'' is the first episode produced by Denise Paul who has previously acted as Associate Producer for several Eleventh Doctor stories.

*When the Doctor thinks that Craig has redecorated, he says that he doesn't like it, similar to the [[Second Doctor]]'s comments to the [[Third Doctor]] about redecorating the [[the Doctor's TARDIS|TARDIS]] in [[DW]]: ''[[The Three Doctors]]'' and again when the Second Doctor saw [[UNIT HQ]] in [[DW]]: ''[[The Five Doctors]]''. The [[Fifth Doctor]] similar expressed dislike for a TARDIS redecoration on [[DW]]: ''[[Time Crash]]''.