Gareth Roberts gives us Closing Time, and it felt more like Closing Time on Doctor Who’s credibility. The penultimate episode leading into the series finale was more like watching 45 minutes of a comedy double act with Smith and Corden.

Early on, as soon as the Doctor begins working in a toy shop and shoving Yappy the toy dog in Corden’s face, I knew something wasn’t quite right. We quickly flash from scene to scene in what seems like a whirlwind of nonsensical goofy one-liners, with Smith and Corden bouncing off each other like Abbot and Costello on acid. We’re informed early on by the Doctor that he is in his last days as he edges closer toward his destiny on the beach and his meeting of death with the mysterious astronaut, yet here he’s acting not unlike a child on a severe sugar overdose. Perhaps he’s taken some kind of drug, because I can think of no other explanation as to why someone—anyone—would act in such a manner whilst on their way to meet their maker. It’d be like a prisoner on Death Row heading toward the electric chair with the glee of someone who’s just won millions on the lottery.

The Doctor is less relatable here than anyone I’ve ever watched on TV in my life, and that’s saying something. Occasionally, in amongst this clown-like behaviour, we catch a glimpse of a man stressed out by this impending knowledge of his own demise, but it’s not enough, and not balanced out in any kind of way that makes sense with the comedy to easily digest that this is even an attempt to merely “look on the bright side.” What comes to mind is how the Doctor was portrayed in Logopolis. Similar scenario, but a thousand times more believable in how it was handled. Even Tennant in the run up to Journey’s End had better material to work with. This was just insulting.

The Doctor speaking to the baby all the way through has to really be the highlight of the lows. We’re expected to believe that the baby—a human child mind you—has given itself a name because the Doctor says so. It seems purposely left ambiguous as to whether the Doctor is joking about this aspect or not, almost as if it’s an attempt to pass it off as a real possibility while simultaneously deflecting any future accusation by anyone with an active single brain cell that this is just not possible. It’s been touched upon a couple of times very briefly in prior episodes, I assume to warm us gradually to the idea. But here it’s outright in our faces, for most of the episode, and it just comes across as ridiculous, pre-prepared or not.

If all this isn’t hard enough to digest, we get another classically unexplained and amazing coincidence when the Doctor spots Amy and Rory in the same department store, in the same aisle no less. With these kind of silly flukes going on, it’s amazing how the Doctor hasn’t yet bumped into Adric and Turlough working on a hot dog stand at the entrance to some intergalactic football stadium in the year 10,021. Perhaps next series then…

We learn early on that the Cybermen are back and sending a Cybermat scurrying around like a ferret, and are treated to a totally contrived scene in which Craig is wrestling with this thing on the kitchen floor. I’ve seen this kind of thing before, and it may have actually been in some early morning children’s show. Or a comedy routine completely played for laughs. You know the one, where a hand, or toy or suchlike, with absolutely no means of propulsion, attacks someone in mid-air, and the victim is trying to push the thing away, when the object in question has absolutely nothing behind it driving it forward but thin air. It always looks totally unbelievable, and impossible, which makes it funny under the right circumstances. Here, meant to be part of a gripping moment, it just looks completely daft.

Later on, after some more furious romping about, the Doctor and Craig find themselves on the Cybership, with Craig about to become “assimilated.”  In fact, the Cybermen actually begin to achieve this, removing Craig’s emotions completely. But lo and behold, the baby starts crying, and upon this, the now supposedly emotionless Craig hears it and suddenly gets all his emotions back, then totally manages to completely reverse the Cyber conversion. Even the metal leg, arm and chest plates just fall away like dead skin?! Not a very good conversion process you guys got going on there is it? How about next time, cut someone’s arms and legs off, a bit, you know, like the Borg used to do? Then watch them try to escape!

After the Cybership blows up, we then have Craig uttering the most cheesy line I’ve heard in an episode yet: “I blew them up with love.” Please, spare us! But you not only did that Craig, you’ve just proved to the whole of the galaxy how easy it is to beat these unthreatening, silly metal numbskulls!

And so the Doctor drops Craig off home to the usual whimsical and sickly sweet happy ending, and buggers off to begin the real brooding he should have been doing this entire episode. When he comes across a few kids in the street and announces that he is the Doctor, and that he was here to help, suddenly the mood of the chow completely changed, and jarringly so, and I found myself wishing that the last 43 minutes or so hadn’t just happened. This new idea of going from comedy to serious in a flash just isn’t working. It can work if handled right, but it’s not being done right here.

And so we end yet another review of yet another poor episode of Doctor Who. It’s a shame, because I actually loved The Girl Who Waited, and The God Complex. But to follow on with something as awful as this, and right before the series finale, I’d be surprised if thousands haven’t just thrown their remotes at the TV in disgust, vowing to boycott their viewing of next week’s episode. But of course, that won’t happen. Well, at least not in the thousands, because many loyal followers know that Doctor Who these days is a real mixed bag, and the next one could be as great as the bad ones are terrible.

But why on earth does it have to be that way? Is consistency something that forever eludes the production team of Doctor Who? For now at least, it seems that way. But like many others, I’m forced to concede that the odd good episode is at least better than no episodes at all.