We speculated last week that the run of superb stories in the second segment of Doctor Who’s 2011 series might be in jeopardy; that there might be something disappointing and clunky skulking around the corner. Guess what? We were right.

To call ‘Closing Time’ – in the words of the Doctor himself – ‘grossly sentimental and overly simplistic’ – would be unfair, because it’s not that bad. It’s very funny in places and it contains some wonderful lines from writer Gareth Roberts. Yet it’s dogged by an air of knockabout inconsequentiality which it only really shakes off in moments of introspection which veer from the merely melancholy to the mawkishly maudlin.

In previous episodes, such as ‘The Girl Who Waited’ and ‘The God Complex’, the emotional highpoints have been cleverly and carefully built up to amid the action and adventure going on around them. Here, the Doctor seems to spend most of his time wallowing in wistfulness which only occasionally matches the high standards of poignancy set previously – and a size zero story situated on the set a rebooted Are You Being Served? does little to bolster things.

On a farewell tour en route to his own death, the Doctor visits Colchester to see Craig (James Corden), of whom he was the eponymous tenant in last year’s ‘The Lodger’, also written by Roberts. What starts off as merely a social call on an old mate and his infant son, Alfie – or ‘Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All’, as the baby prefers to be known – ends up as a chase through the Sanderson & Grainger department store, taking in the lingerie section, a teleport in a lift (continuing the elevator-related theme of the series) and a huge poster of Amy Pond as the face of Petrichor perfume before the Doctor realises that the Cybermen are, for the zillionth time, planning to rebuild their race and take over the world.

Ah yes, the Cybermen. Whether it’s because they’re not much more than Daleks with legs and an even less impressive catchphrase, or because they were created by Trigger from Only Fools And Horses, they simply don’t work in modern Doctor Who, and ‘Closing Time’ is no exception.

After their first appearance, looming, blank-faced and alarming, from behind a curtain or plastic sheet, all they can do thump their chests and witter on about assimilation. In the end, after Craig has narrowly avoided becoming the Cyber-Controller (and thus escaped the indignity of bursting out of his bonds, Darth Vader-style, bellowing ‘Nooooooo!’), the simple concept of emotion makes their heads explode like overinflated balloons filled with sick. Even their pet robotic rodent (‘It’s not a rat, it’s a cybermat’) is rubbish; the scene in which first Craig and then the Doctor grapple with it on the kitchen floor is like something out of Chucklevision.

But, like we said, it’s not all bad. James Corden is as surprisingly impressive as he was in ‘The Lodger’, demonstrating that he’s still a decent comedy actor when not submerging himself in odiously unfunny characters like Smithy. Lynda Baron gives a decent turn as Val, the shop assistant convinced that the Doctor and Craig are partners, and even Holli Dempsey as sub-Catherine Tate-horror Kelly gets to deliver a laugh-out-loud line when confronted in the lingerie section by Craig: ‘He’s a pervert, look at him!’

There are plenty of other zingers, both funny (‘It’s not his fault he doesn’t have mammary glands’) and touching (‘Don’t worry, it’s just a little light going out’), but the latter tend to get submerged in the schmaltz as the Doctor broods endlessly on his imminent demise.

Eventually, cowboy hat and blue envelopes in hand, he heads off to America to meet his fate at the hands of the Impossible Astronaut, while at the Lunar University (Lunarversity?) in the future, River Song is kidnapped by Madame Kovarian and the still-scary Silence (take a note, Cybermen), who pop her in a spacesuit and plonk her in Lake Silencio, Utah, to wait for the man she was bred to kill.

The last episode of the series looks, from the trailer at the end of ‘Closing Time’, like a stunning conclusion to what has been – mostly – a superb season. We’re glad that if there had to be a clunker, it was this week rather than next.

Aired at 7.10pm on Saturday 24th September on BBC One.

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