The Power of Three review [Chris Chibnall]

Amy and Rory awake to find that the world is littered with perfect cubes that have appeared overnight. It's an invasion. Of course it's an invasion. But why do they do absolutely nothing?

Previously on Doctor Who...: Not even remotely required to understand this episode, but Kate Stewart was first seen in Downtime, where she was living on a canal boat as a single mother with a son called Gordon. She had grown estranged from her father but reconnected after helping him and Sarah Jane Smith fight against a group of students controlled by the Great Intelligence.

When and Where: Don't ask when this takes place. Kate meets the Doctor for the first time but The Day of the Doctor takes place in 2013 (which we can work out thanks to Class) and this could only take place between 2016 and 2020. Bear with me here. Amy and Rory are married in June 2010, watch the Doctor die at Lake Silencio in April 2011 and travel with the Doctor before being returned after A Good Man Goes to War. They stay on Earth before rejoining the Doctor in Let's Kill Hitler at the end of summer 2011. In The God Complex, they are returned to Earth in April 2011 for some reason (which we know because we see them and a newspaper bearing the date in Closing Time). The Doctor visits them at Christmas two year later in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (making it December 2013, i.e. post-The Day of the Doctor). Pond Life takes place from April to August 2014 and then have their divorce almost finalised in Asylum of the Daleks. Divorce in the UK tends to take roughly ten months, so it's June 2015 at the very earliest given that they might not have started divorce proceedings immediately after Amy kicked Rory out. The pair return home and are picked up ten months later in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (making it April 2016 at the earliest), then return to Earth for a few more months (whilst Brian is abroad travelling) before A Town Called Mercy. This makes it June 2016 at least, although it was presumably more than two months. The Power of Three begins in July. This could be July 2016 or 2017. Perhaps even later, but given that Amy says that it's been ten years of travelling with the Doctor for them but not for the rest of the world, it's before 2020.

To conclude, The Power of Three takes place from July 2016-2017 at the earliest and July 2019-2020 at the latest. We have to assume that, for some reason, Kate is pretending not to know the Doctor to maintain the timeline or something. It's impossible to reconcile this with the Clara-era, because The Day of the Doctor was 2013 and Clara was dead by 2016 (which we know thanks to For Tonight We Might Die). Damn you, Class. Without the Class date, The Day of the Doctor could have been post-The Power of Three, but that would mean that Clara travelled with the Eleventh Doctor for at least four years, which clearly isn't the case.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
  
• "I want them vulnerable with a nice Achilles' heel."
• "What happened to the other people who travelled with you?" / "Uh... Some left me. Some got left behind. And some, not many, but some died. Not them, Brian. Never them."
• We've seen the Eleventh Doctor in an ordinary setting living an ordinary life before, in The Lodger and Closing Time. This is definitely the best of the three because it's not the selling-point of the episode. It's funny to see him trying to pass the time and it's sweet to see him try because he misses Amy and Rory.
• This is the first appearance of Kate Stewart since Downtime, this time played by Jemma Redgrave with a convincing dye-job. At the time of writing (between series 10 and 11) I find this to be Kate's best appearance. She's got a humility and vulnerability to her that's completely excised by Dark Water/Death in Heaven when she's delivering sassy dialogue about having the Doctor on the payroll and throwing Cyberman heads. She has a tender moment with the Doctor when they discuss the Brigadier and she's delightfully warm and chatty when they first meet. She loses these aspects and becomes a steely, stolid leader, which is the version we got in Extinction and the rest of UNIT: The New Series.
• In Asylum of the Daleks, Amy and Rory have been away from the Doctor for at least ten months and Amy says that she's missed life-or-death situations. In Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, another ten months have passed and, after the adventure, Amy asks the Doctor to come back for them in a few more months. The struggle between the two lives continues in A Town Called Mercy and comes to a head here, where the couple have started making long-term commitments and have started to lead and enjoy a normal life. It's been interesting to watch this little arc unfold and seems to be leading to the Ponds choosing to settle down and say goodbye to the Doctor once and for all. As Amy says, there was a time in her life when she needed the Doctor, but she doesn't anymore. They want to have friends and jobs and a normal life together. Unfortunately, the way that this arc concludes is in the section below.
  
• Series 5 (to a lesser extent), 6 and 7 have all been more cinematic and Hollywood than the Davies era was. The show under Moffat is less quintessentially British, which was part of his plan to gain traction with the US. In The Power of Three, we get a dose of Daviesness. There are the news reports and the appearances of British pop culture like Professor Brian Cox and Sir Alan Sugar. Even something like the Doctor playing on the Wii would never have fit in with series 6 or the past three episodes. Overall, I prefer the tone of the Davies era and I enjoy having the Eleventh Doctor and his companions exist in this sort of world.
• The Tenth Doctor's heart stopped working in The Unicorn and the Wasp. David Tennant gave an embarrassing and excessive performance in a scene that I truly despise. I like to think that Matt Smith saw it and made sure to do it so much better.
• I don't have much to say about Brian Williams, but he's an endearing character that (as I said in my review of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) really should have been introduced sooner. He's nothing groundbreaking and is somewhat reminiscent of Wilf but he's played very well by Arthur Weasley. A shame it's his last appearance and that we never get any closure for him after Amy and Rory disappear.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• I was so sure that this episode was going to score an A. (I'm reluctant to give an A* to anything but Heaven Sent. How amazing is Heaven Sent?) Then it got to the final ten minutes. The Shakri are uninteresting characters with an uninteresting motivation that might have worked in another episode, but not here where they're tacked onto the end. The cubes were such a great idea and I loved the rest of the episode, so it's a massive shame that the conclusion is so disappointing with the Doctor saving the day with his sonic screwdriver (but more on that below). Whoever it was that sent the cubes should have remained anonymous and unseen. After the cubes are made harmless, the Doctor should have theorised about why someone might have sent the cubes or if they even ended up here deliberately. It should have been ambiguous.
• Well, once again everybody lives. A third of the population is killed - a third! - and then the Doctor brings them back with a buzz of his screwdriver. It's bad enough that the amount of death that happened wasn't emphasised enough when it's even more than were killed in The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords, but to have them brought back in so mundane a way is very disappointing. Fewer people should have died and then Kate and the Doctor should have found a way to stop the signal and stop further people from dying. The dead would stay dead and the cubes made harmless.
  
• Amy and Rory have had their struggle juggling their two lives and are being increasingly magnetised towards their lives on Earth. The only thing keeping them from the lives that they now want is the Doctor, who decides at the end to leave them to their ordinary lives. It's a satisfying end to their little journey this season. But then Brian says that they shouldn't give up the Doctor and should travel with him and that their lives will still be here when they want to return. That's not satisfying at all and means that their journey has had no conclusion. They decide to continue travelling with the Doctor and return to Earth between adventures? That's what they've been doing all this time. This isn't a conclusion and is deeply unsatisfying, just like the marriage troubles plotline that existed only in the confines of Asylum of the Daleks.
• Amy writes travel articles for magazines now. What was the point in us being reminded of her modelling job from Closing Time in Asylum of the Daleks? Has this writing job been thrown in to make Summer Falls and Other Stories more believable?

I'll Explain Later:

• Was Brian really in the TARDIS for four days, without food, water or knowing where the toilet is?
  
• How could Rory tell that the man on the stretcher at the far end of the corridor was his dad?
• The bad guys just happened to pick the hospital that the Doctor's companion works at?
• Did we ever get an explanation for the hospital kidnappings?
• The Doctor mentions his hovering tin dog. Did he ever see K9 hover?
• What happened to the red berets? Were they too camp? I liked them.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor tells Brian what happened to his previous companions.
• Some left him, like Ian, Barbara, Vicki, Steven, Dodo, Ben and Polly, Victoria, Liz, Jo, Harry, Leela, Romana, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, Hannah Bartholomew, Erimem, Evelyn, Mel, Chris Cwej, Hex, Sally Morgan, Izzy, Fitz, Mary Shelley, Mickey and Martha.
• Some got left behind, like Susan, Sarah, Thomas Brewster, Flip, Bev Tarrant, Lysandra Aristedes, Charley, Jack, Rose (in a way) and Donna.
• Some died, like Katerina, Sara Kingdom, Oliver Harper, Joshua Douglas, Adric, Kamelion, Peri (sort of), Roz Forrester, Gemma Griffin, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly, Sheena (well, she was erased from time) and River. Clara is the next to die.
• In addition to this, we also get a mention of K9.
• The Doctor says that he hates not knowing things. The Twelfth Doctor will later agree with and then contradict this.
• The Doctor suffered the tediousness of living life in the slow lane in Vincent and the Doctor.
• We see the Doctor, Amy and Rory in Henry VIII's bedroom, where the Doctor said that Rory left his phone charger in A Town Called Mercy.
• As already mentioned, the Tenth Doctor had a heart stop working in The Unicorn and the Wasp.
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Flawless is a word that I could use to describe most of The Power of Three. I've never been a big fan of Amy and Rory but they've been pretty good in the buildup to their departure and its great to feel that we're growing closer to them by seeing them living their normal lives (even if their emotional arc was organically leading towards them choosing to leave). Kate Stewart isn't only a sweet nod to the Brigadier but a lovely character in her own right who doesn't have to be sassy to be a strong woman (although this does become the case) and provides the reinvention of UNIT that we need after having them be mostly faceless throughout New Who. Until the last ten minutes, The Power of Three was well on its way to earning an A*. Unfortunately, given the villain and the resolution this story can get no higher than an A.

Update: I can't do it. I'm giving it an A*, poor ending be damned.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

A Town Called Mercy  |  The Power of Three  |  The Angels Take Manhattan

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship review [Chris Chibnall]

It's all there in the title.

When and Where: A Silurian ark. For Amy and Rory, this is ten months after Asylum of the Daleks. It's been quite some time for the Doctor as well.

The Doctor's Case:

• A time-travelling nurse who collects bits of medical technology from the future to help during his adventures. It's a shame we never got to see Rory as the main or sole companion because one throwaway line made him more interesting than he's ever been. It's easy to forget that he's a nurse and it's good to see him away from his wife, teamed up with the Doctor and his father. Amy was terrible in series 5 and improved dramatically with series 6, but it's nice to see her as such a pleasant person in the build-up to her leaving.
• We've had Jackie Tyler, Wilfred Mott, Sylvia Noble and (considerably less successfully) Francine Jones, but in Moffat's era we've been missing out on the companions' family members. Amy's parents were rewritten into reality in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang and we've not seen or heard anything of Augustus or Tabetha Pond since, nor Amy's aunt and legal guardian Sharon. At last, just as Amy and Rory are about to leave, we meet Rory's father Brian, who's something of a Hobbit in that he's a normal man with a few old-man quirks who opens his eyes to the wonder of adventure. Brian Williams would have been a great part of the series if we'd met him early on. We could have learnt of Rory's feelings towards Amy through him and had a connection to Earth's invasions... Still, better late than never.
• The dinosaurs are very impressive for a BBC TV series. They're used sparingly but always look great, even when the pterodactyls attacking the Doctor and the Williamses could have looked like Birdemic.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Dad, I'm thirty-one. I don't have a Christmas list anymore." / "I DO!"
• Ancient Egypt, the ISA, the African plains, London, a spaceship... Moffat first did the jumping thing in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, where it was fresh and new and exciting. Then we saw it in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, where it effectively drew together the previous stories of the series by having a number of previous guest stars return across space and time. Then we had Day of the Moon, where it was unnecessary but quite the spectacle. Now even the other writers have started doing it. It's become quite tiresome and is no longer the awe-inspiring thing it once was.
• The Doctor's never needed a gang before. How lucky he happened to bring one made up of the perfect people for the story of the week. Brian's needed to pilot the ship because he shares genes with Rory, Riddell is a game hunter who proves to be good at shooting dinosaurs and Nefertiti is valuable and allows Solomon to move the plot along by kidnapping her. Brian allows us to see a little more of Amy and Rory's life before they depart (and until now we've only seen Amy's parents and only briefly), but the other two are entirely unnecessary.
• Ever since the Eighth Doctor and Grace Holloway, the Doctor has become more and more a romantic character. He fell in love with Rose, slept with Queen Elizabeth I and kissed (or was kissed by) Reinette, Christina de Souza, River, Joan Redfern, Donna, the TARDIS (in Idris's body), Astrid Peth, Cassandra (in Rose's body), Martha, Captain Jack and Amy. With Moffat, he's become increasingly sexual a character and here we have Queen Nefertiti lusting for him and Riddell telling us of two disappointed dancers. It's gross. Not only is it gross, but it's pointless and does absolutely nothing for the character other than confirming Clara's later claim in The Bells of Saint John that the TARDIS is his snog box.
• It's ten months later for Amy and Rory and they're living as happily as ever, in which case the divorce drama from Asylum of the Daleks was not only forced but entirely inconsequential. There was absolutely no point to that subplot.
• Solomon deserved to die, yes, but the Doctor wouldn't really leave him there knowing he'd die. He's not a Dalek, after all. He's a man. 
• The robots aren't funny.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor disagrees with Solomon selling dinosaurs but is friends with a man who hunts down and kills animals?
• Why ride the triceratops? Running would probably be quicker given how slowly it seems to move.
• If the Silurians had space-travel technology as advanced as the ark, why are there small pockets of Silurians still on Earth? Why didn't they all take to the skies to wait it out?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor had an adventure with dinosaurs in his third incarnation (Invasion of the Dinosaurs).
• Amy and Rory met Silurians early on in their travels (The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood)

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is one of the worst Doctor Who story titles around and, whilst it's not the worst Doctor Who story, it's not very good. Nothing really lands - the robots aren't funny, Nefertiti and Riddell feel like they've both been cut from another episode so they decided to get it on this one, and Solomon is a villain who's become retroactively memorable because he's played by David Bradley (AKA, the third First Doctor). The plot isn't incompetent but it's just not very good and a big step down from Asylum of the Daleks. This episode is very bad and that earns it an E.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

Asylum of the Daleks  |  Dinosaurs on a Spaceship  |  A Town Called Mercy