Doctor Who: The Lodger

This will be a very short review, because I don't have much to say about this episode. Honestly I am kind of over these silly one-parters, and I want to get to the finale already. I haven't particularly enjoyed any of the one-parters since The Beast Below, much as the two-parters have been AMAZING. Clearly this is evidence that the season should be almost entirely two-parters?! There have been some good one-parters (i.e. in all of NuWho), but they're usually the ones that aren't so formulaic, like Blink (with the plot centred around time travel), or Midnight (with everyone being confined to the same room) or Turn Left (which essentially showed us scenes from an alternate history). The fact that there are SEVEN ONE-PARTERS EACH SEASON is far, far too much. There are not that many good plots for one-parters. And one of the one-parters I liked from this season, The Beast Below, would have been about 10x better as a two-parter so the fact that I liked it doesn't mean that it was a one-parter that worked. It was a one-parter I liked despite it seeming ridiculously truncated.

This rant is relevant because The Lodger, for all that I giggled at it, is still a formulaic one-parter with an illogical plot. It reminded me so much of various one-parters from the 2006 season -- things like Fear Her and The Idiot's Lantern due to the setting in a typically English townhouse (er you know, the houses that are joined at the sides to other houses) and, oh yeah, the villain that was generally a big "wtf this is dodgy" for all involved.

That said, I did giggle at it a fair bit, so it's not like it was a bad episode. I did cringe a fair bit, but I think that was the intention ;)

( More, and more spoilery, stuff this way! )