First broadcast 12 June 2010.

The thing about stunt casting – dropping a particularly famous face into a production to build publicity and attract attention – is that it only works if the casting in question is known to the audience. In the case of “The Lodger”, the 11th episode of Doctor Who‘s fifth season, the inclusion of actor James Corden probably generated quite a lot of attention with British viewers. For this reviewer, watching the episode without having previously seen Corden’s popular series Gavin & Stacey and well before Corden rose to fame as a talk show presenter on American TV, the casting did not mean a thing. In all honesty, and having seen much more of him over the intervening 15 years, James Corden is an often-times grating presence in film and television. I am glad I got to see his performance here before any of that, since it freed me to appreciate and enjoy it on its own merits – and enjoy it I did.

Amy (Karen Gillen) is trapped in the TARDIS after it ejects the Doctor (Matt Smith) and gets caught by an unexplained force. Stuck in modern-day Colchester, the Doctor is forced to rent a room and become the housemate of the unsuspecting Craig Owens (James Corden).

“The Lodger” is a strange little episode of Doctor Who that largely sees the Doctor trapped in present-day England and forced to pretend to be a normal human being for several weeks. The episode does have a science fiction plot at its core, but it is almost an arbitrary one. The bulk of the episode consists of Matt Smith trying – and failing – to look and act ordinary and not arouse any suspicions. It is messy, but also enormously likeable.

It also really serves to showcase Steven Moffat’s personal approach to the Doctor’s character, and how it differs from the style Russell T Davies employed for his two preceding incarnations. Much has been made over the years about how the 11th Doctor is played like an old man in a young body, but honestly not enough about how Smith expresses him like a genuine alien fidgeting inside an ill-fitting human suit. Social cues and expectations that came to earlier Doctors like second nature are now seem unfamiliar and confusing to him. It really drives home Davies’ idea of regeneration just before the 11th Doctor was introduced: that it’s a different person every time, grown from the ashes of the last version and lacking any continuity of personality at all. Smith’s Doctor is enormously effective, and rather funny, but it is difficult to imagine Christopher Eccleston or Jon Pertwee’s version of the character in there, somehow peering out.

While “The Lodger” plays to Moffat’s agenda, its script is written by former Doctor Who novelist Gareth Roberts. It handles the comedic elements of the episode marvellously. This was Roberts’ fourth episode of the series, following “The Shakespeare Code’”, “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, and “Planet of the Dead”. Personally I think it’s easily his best. Neither of his scripts following this episode come close to matching it. Catherine Morshead directs, with a strong grasp on the episode’s eccentricities and with a tone quite separate from her earlier contribution in “Amy’s Choice”.

There is a central storyline about a mysterious stranger in an apartment upstairs and a string of people going missing, but as far as plots go it is about as light as one can feasibly make it. Even the climax is a bit of fluff created just to further the relationship of Corden and fellow guest star Daisy Haggard (his best friend Sophie). The storyline does not even really get resolved so much as stopped, with an awkward explanation shoe-horned into the following season. Hardly satisfactory.

That leaves the bulk of the episode’s time to the Doctor’s attempts to be normal, Craig’s attempts to tolerate and understand his new houseguest, and a weird sort of mis-matched friendship buddy story. It works wonderfully. It plays on Matt Smith’s strengths, not only as an actor but as a footballer. It gives James Corden a surprisingly dramatic – and romantic – part to play, which does so in an engaging and sympathetic manner.

As a comedic buffer between the emotive “Vincent and the Doctor” and the climactic “The Pandorica Opens”, “The Lodger” is both well placed and well played. It is far from essential viewing, but does pull off being a charming, small-scale and rather distinctive Doctor Who episode. There really hasn’t been an episode like it before. There is an attempt at a sequel in Season 6, but it really doesn’t work anywhere close to as well as this does.