In the last few days of his life, the Doctor pays a farewell visit to his old friend Craig Owens, and encounters a mystery. People are going missing, a silver rat scuttles in the shadows of a department store, and somewhere close by, the Cybermen wait.[1]
Plot
In a department store, a worker checks the changing rooms for customers before they close. She hears something in one of the changing rooms. It is a Cyberman. She screams.
About the same time, Sophie leaves her house after making sure that Craig can cope with their son, Alfie. Craig hears a knock on the door. It is the Doctor standing on his doorstep who says hello and then turns to leave, until he sees the power flickering on Craig's road.
The next day Craig finds the Doctor working in a shop, searching for the cause of the electrical problems. People are vanishing, and the Doctor is sure there's a connection to the flickering power. The Doctor tries to get Craig and Alfie out of the shop in a lift, but they arrive in the Cyber-Ship, where a Cyberman stomps towards them. The Doctor reverses the teleportation before they are discovered, disabling the teleporter in the process. He tries to get Craig to leave him so he can investigate, but Craig believes the safest place for his son is by the Doctor's side. He refuses to leave.
The Doctor gossips with his co-worker, Val. She believes Craig to be his romantic partner, Alfie their child and a "silver rat" has been sighted in the store. That night, Craig and Doctor hide in the store and capture a Cybermat. It has been causing the power fluctuations by siphoning power to the Cyberman ship, but the Doctor is surprised by how little power it is drawing. He survives an attack by a Cyberman; it was made from malfunctioning spare parts. He is at a loss to explain how it could have returned to the store so soon.
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, telling the baby he will die the next day. The Cybermat activates and attacks the Doctor and Craig, but they subdue it. The next morning, the Doctor returns to the store with the reprogrammed Cybermat. Craig soon follows with Alfie. 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, accessible by a secret door in a changing room. The power lines installed for the store supply power to the ship. The crew of six plan to convert the entire human race when there is enough power. They capture the Doctor.
Craig leaves Alfie with Val and follows the Doctor into the tunnel. He too is captured 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 Cybermen into overload as they feel the emotions they have repressed. The Doctor and Craig teleport away as the ship explodes. 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 him. and leaves just before Sophie returns, acquiring a set of TARDIS blue envelopes from Sophie's stationery drawer and a Stetson hat from Craig as parting gifts. Craig tells Sophie that nothing out of the ordinary has happened, but Sophie becomes suspicious when the baby utters this first word: "Doctor".
Nearby, the Doctor tells the TARDIS this is their last trip and offers some parting words to a small group of children. In the far future, River Song, a new Doctor of Archaeology, reviews eyewitness accounts by 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.
Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.
When the Doctor tries to deactivate the Cybermat and discovers it has shielding, he says to Craig "Don't worry; I have an app for that", parodying the slogan used by Apple to advertise the iPhone's versatility.
When the Doctor is flying the toy helicopter, he says "It goes up-diddley-up, it goes down-diddley-down." This is a line from the theme song of the movie "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines".
Craig gives the Doctor a Stetson as a parting gift. The Doctor is later shown wearing this in DW:The Impossible Astronaut when he brings everyone together in America before his death.
Craig is unfamiliar with the Cybermen, suggesting that either the Battle of Canary Wharf was erased by the cracks and doesn't exist post-Big Bang Two or Craig simply didn't see the Cybermen like Donna Noble.
Craig asks if the Cybermen's teleport is like "beam me up" from Star Trek.
Theories and concepts
Posters seen by the Doctor in the department store indicate that Amy has taking up a modelling career. She is seen advertising a fragrance named "Petrichor".
Story notes
Given that in The Impossible Astronaut the different versions of the Doctor give their ages as 909, and 1103, the Doctor has lived for approximately 200 years between these two episodes.
Part of the nursery rhyme from DW: Night Terrors is sung by Madame Kovarian, with some new lines added.
Closing Time is the first episode produced by Denise Paul, who has been Associate Producer for several Eleventh Doctor stories.
This is the first time since the series revival in 2005 that episode 12 has not been part of a multi-part story written by the head writer, although the end of this episode does set up the series finale.
This is the first single-parter episode in which River Song appears, and her first appearance in an episode not written by Steven Moffat. Her appearance, however, does link directly into the next episode.
This is also the first regular-season episode since the series revival in which the Doctor does not have a regular companion with him at some point.
Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill were, however, credited in the opener as they had been during the rest of the season. This marks the first time in the series that any actor's name has appeared in the opening credits for less than one minute of on-screen appearance.
The BBC America and Space broadcasts also retained the opening sequence narrated by Amy Pond.
Arthur Darvill (Rory) doesn't have any lines in this episode.
The "app" for disabling the Cybermat used one of the "bonus sounds" found on the toy version of the Eleventh Doctor's sonic screwdriver, unheard on the show until now.
During one of the scenes, BBC Radio 1's Greg James was visible by Craig. Greg James named his character "Carlos".File:GREGJAMES.png
To the left of Craig, BBC Radio 1's Greg James
Ratings
UK Overnight: 5.3 Million
Myths
Craig Owens may travel in the TARDIS.[2]This proved false.
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
Craig recalls his previous alien encounter with the Doctor. (DW: The Lodger)
The perfume "Petrichor" bears the slogan "For the girl who's tired of waiting", a reference to Amy and has been referenced across several stories. (DW: The Eleventh Hour, DW: The Girl Who Waited)
The Doctor takes some "TARDIS blue" envelopes from Craig's house, and Craig gives him a Stetson as a parting gift, which sets up events for DW: The Impossible Astronaut.
Aware of his impending death, the Doctor goes on another "farewell tour". (DW: The End of Time)
Craig successfully throws off the conversion process. Mercy Hartigan also did so shortly before her death in DW: The Next Doctor.
