C+Q - The Lodger (2010)

This is the one that solidified just how different Matt Smith is from the previous New Who Doctors. I couldn't imagine Tennant in this story (ironically, considering this was originally a comic story about the Tenth Doctor staying with Mickey). The Ninth and Tenth Doctors are weird people, but they're not as incompatible with normal human life as the Eleventh. Watching the Doctor interact with regular people without a companion there as a social filter is basically all the fuel this episode needs.

James Corden is just the perfect foil for Smith. He's a down-to-Earth normal bloke to make the Doctor look even stranger, but he also has a likability that stops him blending into the background. Normal doesn't have to mean boring or bad after all. He gets on so well with the Doctor, you can't help but wonder what he'd be like as a full-time companion, but if nothing else I'm glad we see him again in Series 6. Amy doesn't do much in this episode given this is our annual Companion-lite adventure back when we had annual Companion-lite adventures. Usually I like to see the Doctor and their companions together as much as possible but it's occasionally nice to mix things up.

The alien menace in this episode isn't that special - just a cool background threat for the Doctor to be investigating while doing all the fun foreground comedy stuff. Thing is though, this episode's monster has retroactively been made kinda important by the reveal that the Almost TARDIS is actually a Silence ship. I do love how the entire Eleventh Doctor era is one complete story arc, but some of those strands are more neatly tied up than others. This feels like it was just a reused set they then decided to justify with dialogue, and eh, it's okay. It works. The whole Silence thing doesn't fully click into place until the 'confessional priests' line in The Time of the Doctor. Which admittedly does explain a lot, like why the Silence wanted Amy to "tell the Doctor" in The Impossible Astronaut. Anyway, here, in The Lodger, it's just a cool ship. Nothing fancy.

I'm really glad Matt Smith's first series had this episode, because it's so clearly tailored to his Doctor. It even has a bit where he's impressively good at football. Into the Dalek did the same for Peter Capaldi - showing the stark contrast between this incarnation and the ones that came before - but The Lodger is more subtle about it. Not to say it's better or worse, but it's certainly less shocking than "top layer if you want to say a few words". I think it also benefits from coming later in the run, once Smith was more settled in the role and there was a clear idea of who the Eleventh Doctor is.

The Lodger is a nice smaller-scale episode and a fun breather before the heavy finale stuff starts. There are a lot of modern-day Earth episodes in Series 5, considering this is a show that can go anywhere in time and space, but 'Doctor Who in a normal setting' is kinda the point here, so this one gets a pass.