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

A Town Called Mercy review [Toby Whithouse]

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in the wild west where electricity is brand new (although ten year early), a gunman is at large (and he's a cyborg) and a doctor helps keep a community alive and well (but he caused the deaths of millions on his home planet).

When and Where: Amy asked the Doctor to come back for her and Rory a few months into their future, so this is presumably a number of months after Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Tea, but the strong stuff. Leave the bag in."
• "He shoots people's hats!?"
• "Two alien doctors! We're like buses."
• "His name's Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices."
• "Oi! Get out of it."
• The Doctor leaving Solomon to die seemed very uncharacteristic, particularly of the new series Doctors. In this episode, however, he has more of a reason to because giving Jex up to the Gunslinger will save lives in addition to avenging the millions whose deaths he caused, whilst nothing was to be gained from killing Solomon other than as retribution for a few thousand Silurians. Both are understandable but the latter is entirely un-Doctorlike and here his actions present a moral quandary and are challenged rather than just being accepted as they were in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
• The Gunslinger is a villain that feels genuinely powerful and threatening, mostly because of his appearance, his gun design and how heavy he sounds when stomping around. We only see him kill two people (and one of them was accidental) but he still manages to be a domineering presence throughout the episode. Him getting a purpose and protecting the town is an unexpected but fitting ending to the story. His self-destruction would have been far less satisfying.
  
• Jex is an interesting parallel to the Doctor, both having committed atrocities during wartime and trying to make up for it afterwards by saving people. Interesting, then, that the Doctor's first instinct is to throw Jex to be killed by the Gunslinger.
• Matt Smith's performance in this episode is absolutely stellar: the comedy, the anger, the difficulty he had watching Jex's records... By the end of series 7 he's mostly a jumble of quirks, but this is the Eleventh Doctor at his absolute finest.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "You're a mother, aren't you?" Surely women can be kind without having had children.
• "The fact that I'm both bewilders you."
• I heard that Amy and Rory were leaving in The Angels Take Manhattan, but it seems that Rory's already left. He contributed very little to the plot and wasn't given the opportunity to explain more fully why he believed that Jex deserved to die.

This Reminds Me...:

• Amy confirms that she's a mother.
• The Doctor wore a stetson in The Impossible Astronaut.
• The Doctor mentions the victims of the Master and the Daleks.

This Doesn't Remind Me... even remotely of The Gunfighters. Thank God.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: A scary villain, an ethical dilemma and an excellent performance from Matt Smith make this an episode to remember. The Doctor doesn't often get to go through any real development, so it's good to see him learn a lesson. It's sort of like Boom Town with a budget and set to eleven, pun intended, and is a highlight of the Matt Smith era. This episode is a masterpiece, and that earns it an A*.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship  |  A Town Called Mercy  |  The Power of Three

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone review [Steven Moffat]

"Didn't anyone every tell you there's one thing you never put in a trap? If you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow, there is one thing you never, ever put in a trap." - The Doctor

Answering a twelve-thousand year-old message from archaeologist Dr River Song, the Doctor and Amy Pond join an expedition into the site of a crashed space-liner; a Maze of the Dead filled with hundreds of statues and one very patient Weeping Angel.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
  
• "I didn't escape, sir. The angel killed me too."
• "I absolutely trust him." / "He's not some madman, then?" / "[Pause] I absolutely trust him."
• Whilst the Delirium Archive and the Doctor using museums to "keep score" aren't very interesting and the set too plain, the cold open of The Time of Angels is perhaps the best of series 5. We met Professor Song as a sort of "cool aunt" archaeologist in Silence in the Library and we return to her as Dr Song, a female James Bond who is more overtly sexual than in her old age. The sequence isn't entirely necessary to the story but is an exciting start to the episode, reintroducing us to River and in a light we didn't see much of in series 4. There are hints in the TARDIS of an almost Fourth/Romana I relationship between her and Eleventh, with River doing her environment check on the scanner and the Doctor simply poking his head outside.
• You would never have guessed that this was the first story of series 5 to be filmed given how comfortable Matt Smith seems to be in the role (especially given that he seems far more unsure in The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks). He's given the chance to show off a wide range of emotion in Flesh and Stone. Where was all this certainty in Victory of the Daleks? He won't let River lie to Amy about her dying to make her feel better. Karen Gillan is fine as Amy.
• Why are the Daleks boring? Because so few new things have been tried out with them. Moffat avoids that pitfall and tells us plenty new things about the Weeping Angels, emphasising the fact that the angels we saw in Blink were starving scavengers. The Byzantium angel is the real deal. That which holds the image of an angel itself becomes an angel; you shouldn't look into an angel's eyes as it's the doorway to the soul; angels are able to communicate using the voices of the dead... These are all new powers that don't feel like they've come completely out of the blue, but instead make them more formidable and scary. 
• A Weeping Angel hiding out in a series of caves full of statues is a genius idea. The statues being angels themselves is even better. 
• Rather than continue giving us a glimpse of a crack in time at the end of every episode (as there was in The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks) a crack becomes a significant part of the resolution to the plot and brings up more questions - like what's the significance of the date of Amy's wedding? Series 1 had the Bad Wolf meme; series 2 had Torchwood; series 3 had Mr Saxon; series 4 had the missing planets, the 2009 specials had "he will knock four times"... None of these really had much, if any, effect on the plot nor any exploration or answers given until the end of the series. Moffat has chosen to go further than that, having the mystery of the cracks revealed bit by bit. We know now that they were caused by an explosion, apparently on the day of Amy and Rory's wedding. This is a far more interesting take on a story arc than having to wait until the end of the series for any explanation.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "He thinks he's so hot when he does that." - River
• "Ooh, Doctor. You sonicked her." - Amy
• "I don't need you to die for me, Doctor. Do I look that clingy?" - Amy
• Amy stopping the angel by pausing the recording at just the right time was clever, but she's very self-satisfied and barely shaken immediately afterwards.
• "You're good," River tells Amy after she asks if she is the Doctor's wife. Is she really that good? It's obvious in the way she speaks to him and we the audience have already had major hints from Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, so complimenting Amy on her sharpness feels undeserved.
• "So you don't know who I am yet." Of course he doesn't. If the Doctor knew her then so would Amy.
• Iain Glen is a wonderful actor but, whether it's the acting or the script, Father Octavian doesn't make much of an impression. The clerics at least have function but Octavian is there to interact with the Doctor and River, yet he fails to interest.
• The final scene with Amy forcing herself on the Doctor is uncomfortable to watch and not remotely funny, especially when one considers what uproar there would have been if their genders had been reversed. Amy hasn't been the most engaging character since her debut in The Eleventh Hour, but here she proves that she isn't only a companion it's difficult to empathise with but also a morally corrupt individual. She's so undignified as to have a one night stand with a man she barely knows on the eve of her wedding, one of a number of cruel things she will do to her fiancé/husband in the course of her run. Perhaps like Gwen's affair with Owen in series 1 of Torchwood, this was supposed to show her feelings being stuck in a boring world and not being able to share her extraordinary adventures with anyone else. However, even if this was the intention it doesn't come off, with Amy not seeming to have any doubts in her mind. Wanting to get away from Rory in a moment of cold feet might make sense, but her wanting something that isn't "long-term" shows that this isn't the case.
• The fear factor with the angels is that you never see them move so, although a tense scene Amy's walk may be, it was never a good idea to show the Weeping Angels moving. 
  
• In the first part, we had the creepy Maze of the Dead and, whilst the revitalised angels aboard the Byzantium in the second part are threatening (at least until the Doctor escapes from them so easily) this episode lacks the same horror element.
• In Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, River played a considerable role. In this two-parter, however, she's somewhat superfluous. Yes, she followed the Byzantium and brought in the Doctor in the previous episode, but she had no real effect on the plot and no role in the resolution. She's something of a bookend, beginning the story in The Time of Angels with a superb scene that highlights her character and then ends Flesh and Stone by cryptically referring to events to come. Also, what happens to the sympathetic and comforting woman seen in the forest with Amy between here and the psychopath in The Husbands of River Song?
• The eeriness of the voice of one of the angels' victims speaking from beyond the grave through a walkie-talkie is one thing, but hearing the voice come from an angel is another. A far less eerie nother.

Stray Facts:

• River knows how to write Old High Gallifreyan. 
  

This Reminds Me...:

• The Tenth Doctor encountered the Weeping Angels in Blink. The Fifth Doctor fought them earlier still in Fallen Angels but already knew about them.
• The Doctor tells River that the TARDIS isn't a taxi service, something he said in his fifth incarnation to Adric in Earthshock.
• "You, me, handcuffs," River says. In Forest of the Dead the Tenth Doctor had been handcuffed whilst River sacrificed herself. "Must it always end like this."

I'll Explain Later:

• Do the Rani and the Master leave their breaks on as well? Their TARDISes make the same noise as the Doctor's during (de)materialisation.
• Surely if the clerics in the forest were wiped from existence, other clerics would have been sent in their stead? The cracks in time don't, strictly speaking, make much sense.

The Inquisitor's Verdict: Without a doubt the best story since The Eleventh Hour. Matt Smith is excellent and Alex Kingston makes a welcome return as a River Song just as good as in her debut. Amy is a loose end but the presence of River, the setting, the menace of the angels and the little twists and turns make up for her. The second episode in a two-parter always has the pressure of whether or not it can wrap the story that's been built up in a satisfying way and whether it can continue the quality of part one on the way. Flesh and Stone certainly does, being just as entertaining as The Time of Angels despite one or two missteps (the moving angels and lusty Amy). Overall, this two-parter has been a worthy successor to both Blink and, with respect to River, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead. This is undoubtedly River's best story in the Moffat-era. A*

Doctor Who (Series 5)

Victory of the Daleks  |  The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone  |  The Vampires of Venice

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