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Something is happening in contempo Essex that involves the second-story of this house. It is bad news all around -- people go in and they don't come out -- but more directly for Amy and the Doctor, since this mysterious problem causes the TARDIS to take off with Amy inside, leaving the Doctor stranded. Amy spends the episode "helping" by every now and then talking to the Doctor through some kind of Gallifrey bluetooth, but mostly she's lovable and fun due to not being around that much.
The Doctor knows that whatever's upstairs in this house must be investigated without him doing any science fiction crap that will tip it off, so he spends the entire episode being "normal." Which would be adorable and funny on its own, but he's doing it by posing as the titular lodger, a roommate to the episode's main person, a big fat hottie named Craig (played by the big fat hottie from the surprisingly tender/smart Lesbian Vampire Killers).
Craig's got a crush on his mate Sophie, and she fancies him, but they're British so it's all kinds of complicated. The Doctor spends most of the time close-talking up in Craig's situation, and you pretty much think they're going to make out like the whole time. Eventually the sizzling gay chemistry freaks Craig out so bad he tries to toss the Doctor out onto the streets, but just then Sophie gets eaten by the thing upstairs, so the boys have to rescue her, in the process revealing Sophie and Craig's mutual adoration.
Every scene is funny without being broad, adorable without being saccharine, mature without being boring, light without being retarded... It's the most emotionally realistic the show has probably ever done, which is funny considering the climax is literally people tinkerbelling Craig to "Kiss the girl! Kiss the girl!" But maybe that just shows how unsubtle the show's been up to now.
I do realize that you can't have the Doctor dropping into rom-coms every week -- or walking around with shoes on his ears or whatever alien shtick -- but in a decibel-heavy season of pointless metaphors and unending concepts, between "Vincent" and now this I feel like we've gone from Jackson Pollack to, like, Aubrey Beardsley: From bright careless splashes of color to minutely ornamented, well-crafted story. It's encouraging, is what it is, and the Pandorica's never looked so intriguing. Well done, show.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The Doctor, with Amy's help, quickly identifies Essex as differing from the fifth moon of Sinda Callista, but before they can take off again, a strange gust blows him out of the TARDIS and she takes off on her own. Aw, damn. Amy's scared, but not too scared. He lies on the ground for a bit saying her name, and one assumes he gets a lot of shit done.
day, a mysterious voice is calling people to the top floor of a nearby building, in a very spooky way. They go up, but they don't come down. Downstairs, chums Craig and Sophie are thinking about having a quiet night at home. They're pretty much normal-looking people, cute like on TV but not cute for TV. I've loved Craig for a long time now, and since this episode is basically the story of the Doctor's intensely adorable love affair with Craig, I'm good to go. Oh, also, this is the best episode of this show, maybe since I started watching it but definitely this season.
Home is good, and home is bad. It's a puzzle-box that opens from the inside and a police box that opens onto everywhere at once. The Doctor has seen his home burn; he's watched her born and burnt by the sun. Now she's a little blue box and the little blue world she orbits, and the hearts of the ones he loves. One thing a wizard can do, that nobody else in the world can do, is shatter his heart into a million pieces, stow them all over time and space, and this also is a kind of home. This is the story of just one.
There's a leak coming down from the upstairs apartment where lives, Craig shrugs, "some bloke." They're disturbed by noises from the upstairs mysteries, and talk turns to Craig's search for a new roommate: "One furnished room, available immediately, shared kitchen, bathroom, with 27-year-old male nonsmoker, £400 per calendar month, suit young professional..." Sophie likes the sound of that guy, and tells Craig to find her a man, which before you even see his face you know where this is headed. "Yeah, otherwise you'll have to settle for me!" Oh dear. But she's like, "You'll have to settle for me first," so maybe there's hope. Well, with the Doctor there's always hope. That's the problem.
Phone rings and Soph says she's got plans, Craig, nothing too important, but the girl on the other line is unrelating: "Now she's having a Dylan crisis, on top of the Clare crisis. It could be another all-nighter. I'm sorry, but I really should go." They British out on each other that, hemming and hawing, and finally she gets him to say she can go, so she goes, and he fusses about -- van Gogh exhibit announcement, on the fridge -- and feels very unmanly. "Just tell her. Just tell her. I love you. I love you. Oh, just... 'Hey, I don't know if you knew...'"
Craig spots Sophie's keys, which she's forgotten once again, and takes them to the door to call her name, saying to himself quietly, again and again, "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you!" But the face at the door is not Sophie, it's the Doctor. "I love you!" he shouts, as anyone would in their right mind, and the Doctor grins brilliantly. "Good!" And then he's ready to move in. The Lodger, you see, the eponymous and titular, is the good Doctor himself. Craig's confused, because he just put up the advertisement and didn't even put his address on it.
"Well, aren't you lucky I came along? More lucky than you know! Less of a young professional -- more of an ancient amateur -- but frankly I'm an absolute dream." Ancient amateur. That's wonderful. Craig's not entirely sure about any of this, but you know how long that's gonna last, and tries to snatch back Sophie's keys. Without really acknowledging any of this, the Doctor hands him a big jolly bag full of that pretend money they have over there.
"Don't spend it all on sweets. Unless you like sweets. I like sweets," the Doctor says, giving Craig a big old hello kiss, because that's what men do I guess, when they are alone. And nobody has to know. "I'm the Doctor. Well, they call me the Doctor, I don't know why. I call me the Doctor too. Still don't know why." Manic, insane, touching everything, being wonderful, thirty cute faces a minute, the promise that every roommate story has a shower scene in it, the bounty of it all. Who lives upstairs? Some bloke. Normal looking, very quiet. (So, clearly, like every episode this season, perception filter. Although the Bad Guy in this episode, correct me if I'm wrong, is never actually explained? We'll get there.)
Craig notices the Doctor noticing the ceiling stain and gets defensive, but the Doctor offers to fix it himself. The Doctor, he has not calmed down yet: "I'll fix it. I'm good at fixing rot. Call me the Rotmeister. No, I'm the Doctor, don't call me the Rotmeister." Well, he is good at fixing rot. And compliments. He tells Craig how lovely and impeccable is his parlor, and begs to stay. Craig offers to, you know, show him the room, and the Doctor's like, "The room? My room? Oh yes, my room! My room, take me to my room!"
I cannot think of a person on earth that I would not murder for this shit, in about half the time we've already spent, but somehow the Doctor... Oh, he is just dreamy in this one. And clearly there is something going on. I mean, the manic is just because he's nuts, but clearly there's a reason for him to be here, and a reason he already knows that we don't know, so his lack of interest in the room itself is not only a funny moment but also a clue confirming what we already were probably thinking. Don't you love watching a TV show that allows you to think, and actually watch the story unfold? (Don't you love watching a story unfold that is actually a story?)
So the owner of the building itself was a man named Mark, who used to use the bedroom the Doctor will be using now but he got a large inheritance from an uncle he'd never heard of. (See? Although it's weird to think that, without even knowing good old Craig, the Doctor sent random Mark off on a whole new adventure.) The Doctor flashes psychic paper at Craig, and what it produces apparently includes a reference from the Archbishop of Canterbury, about which the Doctor gleams: "I'm his special favorite! Are you hungry? I'm hungry."
The Doctor whips up some delicious omelets for them both, continuing on as something between a blur and that dotted-line thing that happens in Family Circus sometimes, asking questions about all kinds of things, such as Sophie -- with just enough of a knowing wink that 's barely either; he's clearly got Craig's number this entire time -- and where they work -- a call center, which the Doctor thinks might come in handy -- and Craig starts blabbering about how their business model is totally outdated, and he knows exactly what they should do, but they'll never listen to him, etc. The Doctor assures him, once he winds down, that this happens with him all the time, because of his face. That face he's got. Craig asks where his stuff is, and he can't keep the smile out of his voice for anything: "Don't worry, it'll materialize. If all goes to plan."
Meanwhile, Amy and the TARDIS are not quite on speaking terms.
Craig, deeply satisfied, thanks the Doctor for the omelet, which he says he learned to make in 18th century Paris. "No, hang on, that's not recent, is it? 17th? No, no, no, 20th. Sorry, I'm not used to doing them in the right order." Funny last week, funny still this week. Craig asks if the Doctor has been informed how weird he is, and he looks at Craig like it's a blind date gone terribly right: "They never really stop. Ever been to Paris, Craig?"
The Doctor's unsurprised to hear that he has not: His sofa is not the sofa of a traveler, and Craig's resemblance to his sofa is growing as well. As Craig speaks about how he'd miss Essex, he fondles Sophie's keys; finally the Doctor asks him why. It's cute.
"You're weird and you can cook, it's good enough for me." The Doctor is overjoyed to have his own "keys" that belong to a "door" that means he has his own gaff: "Yes! Me with a key." Craig mentions, sort of out of the side of his mouth, that he and Mark had an agreement about getting scarce if things required it, which of course the Doctor completely doesn't get what he means. "In case you want to bring someone round? A girlfriend, or a boyfriend?" The Doctor is like, "You bet your ass I'll shout if I end up bringing somebody home. Probably, like, I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS!"
It's like the sun coming out, it really is. Tighter writing, funnier gags... It's like a completely different show. Whoever wrote this, hold onto him. The Doctor tells Craig not to touch the rot, ever, and then takes his bluetooth elsewhere, to talk to Amy. So he's set that up at least. How much hopping about is there going to be? This could be delightfully complicated or delightfully simple.
Sophie, between the weirdness and the huge amounts of cash lying around, assumes that "the Doctor" is a drug dealer. Craig is only surprised by that because, as any good guest star on this show knows, once you trust the Doctor you don't go back. Outside, somebody else gets taken by the upstairs... Which the Doctor and Amy have figured out is the reason the TARDIS can't land: She can't quite become real, locked in a "materialization loop." Amy's like, "So go upstairs and sort it!" But it's not that obnoxious. I don't know how long all of this is taking -- the house keeps napping people and they keep yelling at each other over the earpiece as though it's one long conversation, but who knows. If Amy's really popping around up there they could be having this conversation upside down and backwards, right? Like "Blink," but as a neverending phone call.
Outside the room, Craig can only hear gibberish, thanks to the bluetooth, which is the only tech the Doctor can even use, including the sonic. So in addition to living in this random flat, he also has to be common people in other ways, like not having magic things all the time. "Arbuckle rare tarantula on the table," says the Doctor. "Practical eruption in chicken! Descartes Lombardy spiral!"
Amy laughs at him when he says all he's really gotta do is pass for an ordinary human being: "Have you seen you?" She starts in on the bowtie immediately, but you know that shit's not going to fly. I have the weirdest feeling that if she were being this aggressive and they were in the same room, I would find it insufferable, but something about the TARDIS going bonkers with her inside, all alone, makes her hardness sort of loveable. I mean, I guess it's the same rules as the Doctor's unrelenting oddball hysteria throughout this entire episode livable: It makes sense. And they're both so cute and it's so often hard to remember than when they're slogging through the more challenging episodes.
"Bow ties are cool. Come on, Amy, I'm a normal bloke! Tell me what normal blokes do." Telly, football, go down the pub. "I could do those things! I don't, but I could!" There are some matrixy hiccup moments and tiny time loops, but they don't really matter that much. Although given the nature of the thing upstairs, that seems like a clue as well. He tells her to keep an eye on "the zigzag plotter," but to pull it only when standing in a certain way, it's very esoteric and sort of lovely, as far as Amy learning to be a pilot. He steals out by night, bringing home garbage.
The Doctor's taking a shower. No big deal.
He's in there for a way long time, though, without really caring that Craig's outside, but then a mysterious bashing booming sound alerts Craig to the upstairs boarder, and he goes to check and make sure the old guy's okay. Soaking wet, the Doctor realizes that Craig is heading up there, and goes slipping and sliding around on the bathroom floor for awhile, and it's fairly excellent. Then he grabs what he thinks is his sonic, but is actually Craig's toothbrush, and runs out in a towel, hair all a mess. But no prob, because the thing upstairs doesn't want Craig, so really it's just the Doctor running around basically naked, which is totally fine at any time.
The Doctor explains, with zero shame, that he was there to save Craig from trouble. "Well? If I ever am, you can come and save me. With my toothbrush." He could, and he would. Welcome home. Sophie shows up and the Doctor waddles over in his towel and gives her a double-cheek kiss hello, and they go inside. Craig's got some kind of football problem, didn't really follow, but anyway could the Doctor substitute on Craig's team? The Doctor sees no problem with that. I hate to say it but at the very least pants are going to be required here. There's a moment where Craig and Sophie sort of awkwardly discuss her role in his life and this football league, it dies down fairly quickly and the Doctor goes to change into his uniform. That is going to be acceptable.
Soph breaks Craig's heart a bit by acknowledging the Doctor's total hotness, but before that can turn into an ugly bloodbath the Doctor sticks his out again, noting that she let herself into the building, which means she has two sets of keys to Craig's house. Neither Sophie nor Craig find this interesting, and the Doctor hides his smile for a bit later. "You must like it here too," he says sweetly. Getting dressed, the Doctor tells Amy what he's about to do, and she laughs her ass off at him, and then he tries to figure out the difference between soccer and lacrosse. (He calls it "the one with the sticks," but wasn't the last cute Doctor into cricket? So it wouldn't be cricket.)
(I don't know what any of these words mean.)
Craig's nervous about telling the team to call him "the Doctor," but of course none of them question it at all, and then there's a moment of wondering about his skill level -- "Where are you strongest?" Arms? -- before they try him out. He is, of course, a whiz at it, because it's all math + luck + last-ditch awesomeness + looking cute, which is pretty much also what the Doctor equals. Cue cheering for the Doctor by everybody, leaguemates, teammates. Sophie. I mean, eventually they're all just cheering Doctor! Doctor! Doctor! Doctor! Rough.
Not as rough as the lady getting taken upstairs, of course, which is the cue for the Doctor's temporal loop. He gets in the face of the -- What do you call the leader? The quarterback? The chief? Soccer Boss? -- quarterback and yells about how we are not "annihilating" anybody: "No violence, not while I'm around, not today, not ever. I'm the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm... And you meant beat them in a football match, didn't you?" Yeah. And he's down. But then a can of beer explodes in Craig's face, again and again and again, and the Doctor gets out of there so the loop will stop. Amy and the TARDIS vanish for a second and he can't hear her, which he believes suddenly means that the TARDIS has been "flung off into the Vortex," with Amy inside. "You mean that could actually happen? You have got to get me out of here!"
Craig asks the Doctor to get lost so he can reestablish his lack of a relationship with Sophie, but the Doctor doesn't get it/isn't interested, one or the other, and Craig thinks that he's got it down -- will be leaving -- but of course he's not. Fast forward a few and they've decided to stay on the couch, turn off their phones, the rest of it. Craig starts some kind of awkward conversation that Sophie can see barreling toward her from miles away though she's powerless to stop it... Then BOOM! The Doctor pops up from behind the couch and before you know it Sophie's invited him to stay in with them.
Sometime later the conversation has morphed from Sophie inviting him to shut Craig up into actually confiding in the Doctor, just like people always do. And by a stroke of luck, she's happened on his favorite subject: The indomitable human soul and free will and not being boring: "Because life can seem pointless, Doctor. Work, weekend, work, weekend. And there's six billion people on the planet doing pretty much the same." The Doctor mumbles to himself that watching the Craig & Sophie glacial mating dance makes him wonder where all those folks even came from, and then changes the subject before they can nail him on it.
"So, the call center. That's no good? What do you really want to do?" Work with animals. Like there was this orangutan sanctuary on telly that she loved, but -- as Craig almost smugly points out -- she's unqualified for that work. Just when you think it's going to some kind of dark codependent place where Craig might be subtly keeping her down, Sophie brings up the time Craig also refused a job elsewhere, in London. "I can't see the point of London!" he says. The Doctor has sort of had enough.
"Perhaps you'll just have to stay here, secure and a little bit miserable until the day you drop. Better than trying and failing, eh? Everybody's got dreams, Sophie, very few are going to achieve them, so why pretend? Perhaps, in the whole universe, a call center is where you should be?" Sophie is horrified, and with just a little prodding spits it out: "I'm not staying in a call center all my life, I can do anything I want!" He turns on her the most gorgeous, shining grin that ever crept across a face, and Sophie has herself a genuine moment. "Oh, yeah! Right, oh my God! Did you see what he just did?" Craig's like, "Um, you're going to live with monkeys now?"
The Doctor isn't letting them off that easy: "Big old world, Sophie. Work out what's really keeping you here, eh?" They are glum, and stare into space for a bit, before Craig asks the question again, hoping for a better answer... But she has no option but to agree, that there's nothing really keeping her in Essex, because at this point neither of them can actually call the bluff. The Doctor is like, "Good Lord."
Having assembled something brilliant out of bikes and refuse, the Doctor -- with Amy standing by on the bluetooth -- scans the upstairs. But there's nothing really going on up there. "Only for you could too normal be a problem," Amy scoffs. "You said I could be lost forever? Just go upstairs!" The Doctor's feeling cautious, for once, and then realizes Amy can get him the plans, which will reveal that -- much like the house in Ledworth -- there are floors and doors that shouldn't be. Little does the Doctor know that right outside, Craig has decided to touch the rot on the ceiling, muttering "Rotmeister" darkly under his breath.
morning, the Doctor -- knowing how rough last night was on him -- brings Craig breakfast. Craig is not doing so well, having touched the rot, and is near comatose. The Doctor gets incredibly frightened for him, desperate and wild-eyed, and starts yelling: "What's that? An unfamiliar and obviously poisonous substance? Oh, I know what would be really clever, I'll stick my hand in it!"
Home. A little bit of home, dying in front of him. Amy in danger so terrible he can barely admit it. All alone in the world at the bedside of a dying man.
The Doctor works and works, like a doctor, until he can get Craig to breathe; runs out in the kitchen to find stuff to "reverse the enzyme decay" and "excite the tannin molecules," and after a bit longer he's got Craig living again. Of course Craig immediately is off to work, but the Doctor makes him stay down. "It's the planning meeting!" The one that will save him, and the company, and make him something special. His orangutan habitat: "It's important!" he tries to shout, falling back against the bedclothes. "You're important," the Doctor hums, more lovingly than almost anything I can think of him saying this year. "You're going to be fine, Craig."
Hours later, Craig wakes up refreshed... And having missed the meeting by a mile. He goes running into work, screaming at himself and apologizing profusely to his boss, until he notices the Doctor at his desk, on his phones, talking shit to his ruder clients. "Craig, how are you feeling? Had some time to kill, I was curious, never worked in an office. Never worked in anywhere." Craig tries to throttle him, but bossman tells him to be nice. "Leave off the Doctor, I love the Doctor! He was brilliant in the planning meeting."
Craig is nonplussed, but the Doctor claims he was there as Craig's representative, and that in fact the rude clients just aren't that important anymore, now that Craig is winning at life. Sophie brings the Doctor custard creams, and says she's applied as a volunteer already, for a wildlife charity. Everybody is sort of shiny and bright and delighted with themselves, as you can imagine: What if the Doctor came to your work for like one day? That would be the most awesome day! He orders Craig back to bed, and gets weird on the phone some more: "Hello, Mr. Joergensen! Can you hold? I have to eat a biscuit!"
When Craig, upper lip stiff as all get out, returns to kick the Doctor out -- for making his dreams come true, for giving Sophie life, for changing everything -- the Doctor is busy in a meeting of his own. With a housecat.
"Have you been upstairs? Yes? You can do it. Show me what's up there? What's behind that door? Try to show me. Oh, that doesn't make sense! Ever see anyone go up there? Lots of people? Good good. What kind of people? People who never come back down. That's very bad."
Even if he looked like the Doctor, even if he made omelets and changed the lives of all my friends, I'm afraid having weirdo conversations with animals would be something of a dealbreaker. We would need to have a talk. But Craig, he is dunzo. "I can't take this anymore. I want you to go. You can have this back, and all," he says, handing over the rent bag. And why? Because everybody loves him, and the soccer game, and he seems to excel at Craig's job, and now Sophie's all about the monkeys, and what about this bicycle sculpture in the bedroom? (Be honest, that's annoying. It goes on the list.) "It's art! A statement on modern society, ooh, ain't modern society awful?" See? On the list.
The conversation goes on for quite a while, Craig nearly weeping with anger and a sort of pent-up powerlessness, and the Doctor responding by getting weirder and more elliptical with every comment, begging-without-begging Craig to let him stay. Finally, without options and balanced on top of a crazy amount of stuff to deal with, the Doctor just rears back and headbutts himself into Craig's brain. It's pretty amazing. Craig staggers back, full of sudden knowledge: Timelords and TARDISes and regenerations. Something that always came across as deeply intimate, like with Reinette, pub hooligan style: Brilliant. Just amazing. Welcome home.
Another headbutt, and Craig learns about the upstairs, and Amy in the sky and time, and the window adverts -- where, sometime but not yet, Amy will star the correct one and add a better address -- and then Craig gets a bit ahead of us: "That's a scanner! You used non-technological technology of Lammasteen!" The Doctor is like, "Chill, chill, chill."
But he shouldn't worry, because the upstairs -- this time a little girl -- is busy eating somebody else. Somebody named Sophie.
The Doctor radios to Amy -- whom Craig instantly remembers, and understands their language, entire new worlds in his head; really nothing so different than what the Doctor did to Amy last night -- and lets her in on what the cat said. "I know he's got a time engine in the flat upstairs. He's using innocent people to try and launch it. Whenever he does, they get burnt up, hence the stain..."
And then it all goes a bit mental. Craig gets stuck in another little loop, as the upstairs claims Sophie -- "People are dying up there! People are dying people are dying..." They snap out and run upstairs, figuring out that it's Sophie. Of course, Amy finally gets ahold of the plans, informing that there's no upstairs. There's never been an upstairs.
"The time engine isn't in the flat, the time engine is the flat! Someone's attempt to build a TARDIS..." Craig's not sure, and the Doctor explains about perception filters, most notably how they affect memory. What's there now? A sort of TARDIS-y kind of thing, with buttresses and spots you can put your hand on if you want to get all burnt up. Deadlocked inside with it, the Doctor and Craig are helpless to do anything but chat the Bad Guy up, with no small amount of charm.
"The ship has crashed. The crew are dead. A pilot is required." It's a hologram, a simple crash program, that's been bringing people up to see if they can run the engine -- never figuring out that humans can't do it, no matter how many people it burns out on attempt. The program figures out that the Doctor can help, after seventeen murders, and gets very excited. Essentially Wall*E is a serial killer and the Doctor is like the ultimate possible pilot. It begins to reel him in. "I'm way too much for this ship," he hisses at Craig. "My hand touches that panel, the planet doesn't blow up, the whole solar system does."
He swears to the program that it's wrong about this too, and then realizes that Craig is the only holdout. It didn't want Sophie, although now it does: What's the difference? Sophie isn't afraid of leaving anymore. And the Doctor, he's pretty much made out of leaving. Then there's Craig, who is turning into a sofa. The machine wants people who want to escape. The Doctor tells Craig that -- ...Gets a bit ropey here, but I don't mind. It's pretty much required by this story -- all he needs to do is touch the engine and, instead of thinking about the desire to leave, think about all the things he wants to stay for. All the ways he'd prefer stasis over change. Home over adventure. Sophie. "And I don't want to leave Sophie! I can't leave Sophie! I love Sophie!" Well, you know me. Sophie admits she's in love with him too, and it's all very sweet, and then actually in order to break the spell this damned show goes so far as to have everybody yelling, "Kiss the girl!"
So he does. I don't have it in me to be exhausted by this, not in such a well-formed episode. If that's the worst thing this episode shares with the others, that is fine. Kiss the girl, I don't care. God knows if boys didn't kiss girls all the time the world really would end. Just ask any boy.
So. Top floor's gone, and cuteness reigns: "So have we spoiled our friendship, then?" Totally ruined it. "And what about the monkeys?" Ah, who cares. They spin out every scene of the episode, between them: "I could see the point of Paris if you were there with me," more kissing, the Doctor being all appalled and the like. The usual stuff.
Before the Crack reappears behind Craig's refrigerator, before Amy and the Doctor go back through the story leaving themselves clues and rewriting wills for Mark, before Amy finds her engagement ring hidden in the Doctor's pocket, before the Cracks begin to open, before Silence and Song, before the Pandorica opens:
Craig grabs the Doctor before he can sneak away, and orders him to hold onto those keys. To have a home. Craig knows, has walked the ramparts and the hallways, Craig knows the Doctor won't come back.
It doesn't make a difference. That's not what home is for.
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