Bitey The Bullet

Closing Time is an... interesting episode. There's a lot of good stuff in there to be fair. However there are also certain elements in there that I have personally gone on record several time railing against. Indeed, after the first time I watched it I came away feeling a little disappointed. Rewatching it I came to realize that much of this dissatisfaction came from my own expectations and preconceptions. It's silly to judge on episode on what it wasn't rather than what it is. After all, even if it isn't good it's still bad.

Luckily, for all it's faults, this is no Fear Her. But still, what was the problem?

Well, there's two major problems (plus a side serving of fridge logic, but we'll get to that later). Firstly of course there is the way in which the threat is resolved

WILL YOU PLEASE STOP IT WITH THIS DISNEY SHITE.

If nothing else this is really doing the Cybermen no favours as a villain. You remember when they first came back in the new series? And everyone was going on about how they wanted to take them away from the silly vulnerabilites of their later appearances where they'd fall over if you waved anything gold in their general direction? Well, now we're right back there, only now they blow up if you emote to hard at them. This is, in a word, bullshit. I think the idea of attacking the Cybermen through the emotional inhibitor is a fairly valid one, but I'd like to see something a little more involved than them self destructing over a basket of kittens or whatever. Hell, if you do it properly you could get a whole episode just out of a shutting down the inhibitor and seeing what happens.

The second problem I suppose is with the Cybermen themselves. Put simply, they're barely in it and wholly irrelevant to the actual plot. This is the main problem with the episode I had the first time around. I'd seen the promo photos of these awesome, beaten up looking Cybermen, and my brain was geared up for a wanting a really good Cyberman story. Because, let's be honest, we haven't really had a GREAT Cyberman story yet. We've had okay Cyberman stories, but nothing that really stands out as.... definitive. Which I think is a shame, because there is great potential in the Cybermen as villains. But here it doesn't really MATTER that it's Cybermen. The alien menace could have been pretty much anything, because it's not really the focus of the story. Once I'd worked that much out I was able to sit back and enjoy it a lot more.

Having said that though, there is at least one favour that the story does, both for the Cybermen and the fans. And that's bringing in Bitey the Cybermat.

Bitey is awesome fun. If there are no radio controlled Cybermat toys (with Bitey action!) in the shops by christmas then there is no justice. A wicked piece of design that by all rights should be chasing little sisters around the nations living rooms.

So, if the story isn't about the Cybermen then what is it about? Well, it's a fun rompy bit for the Doctor and Craig, and one of those coming of age / bonding / proving your worth bits for Craig and his baby. Which, naturally  makes little sense as the baby doesn't actually witness his eventual triumph over the Cybermen at all. But then if the Cybermen are going to take the trouble to build a big explosion containing box around their ship so in the case that everything does go horribly wrong they don't disturb the locals that's a minor point.

As a bit of light hearted fun this episode works quite well, and it's all very funny. And then suddenly we're at the end and crashing into the prequel for the final episode. The Doctors off to die, Rivers getting ambushed by The Silence and stuck in the suit and suddenly everything's got serious and exciting and awesome.

I think the way they've gone about structuring this series has made for a good change overall, as things had become rather standardised. But it does rather mean that this particular episode quickly becomes reduced to 40 minutes of smegging about before 5 minutes of build up to the main event. Not exactly an enviable position to be in.