The Power of the Doctor is a weird one, because on the one hand I thoroughly enjoyed myself for the whole 70 minutes but on the other hand I’m pretty sure that was entirely due to all the classic Who callbacks and cameos rather than the actual story of the Thirteenth Doctor’s regeneration, which the lead up to was classic Chris Chibnall in that it touched upon some interesting storylines but refused to end … pretty much any of them. Oh well! At least I enjoyed it!
The Review:
I’ll try and keep this to “things shown in the trailer” so I can at least talk about parts of the story before the Spoiler Section. Sacha Dhawan’s excellent version of the Master creates a planet-sized Cyberman factory with his CyberMasters and plans to use its power to steal The Doctor’s body and remaining regenerations (TV Movie style!) but The Doctor is assisted by not just Yaz (Mandip Gill) but also Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Tegan (Janet Fielding) in stopping his plans. That’s the basic gist anyway. Jodie Whittaker does well in the role for one last time but once again I can’t help feel she didn’t get to do much, though in this case she was pregnant while filming so I can excuse the lack of many big stunts! What I mean instead is that at lot of the time the attention was on Yaz with The Master, or Ace and Tegan teaming up with Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) and UNIT to fight off the Cybermen. All good fun, especially Ace and Tegan getting to talk about their last known interactions with The Master, but this did seem a bit harsh on Jody.
The Master reads the below paragraph where I don’t talk very positively about Chris Chibnall…
Then there’s a nice list of dropped Chibnall storylines that make their presence known just so you can go “oh yeah, that… that never went anywhere” and then they… continued to go nowhere. You’d think this finale would be used to tie them up, like Steven Moffat’s infamous exposition dump during Time of the Doctor, but nope. Dan (John Bishop) just ups and leaves fifteen minutes into the story because he just now realised being with The Doctor is dangerous, like Chibnall thought he had two episodes left and had to squeeze his exit story in quickly before getting on with the rest of the episode. Ashad the Cyberman returned despite him being the only story that had been finished, The Master admits to having killed him but cloned him or something… so pointless, just keep the CyberMasters, there was no need to bring Ashad back at all. Vinder (Jacob Anderson) also returns but does little to nothing and clearly just returned for the hell of it. Basically all the stuff original to him is the weaker parts of the story, it only appealed when something fun appeared from the classic series, which thankfully there was plenty.
Basically, good performances all round but the story was a celebration of mostly 80s Doctor Who first, the big regeneration reveal second, then the Thirteenth Doctor’s swansong third, and that’s a shame but sadly on course given how this era has gone…
The Continuity:
Tegan and Ace fire machine guns, just like the old days?
Not mentioning the stuff I can’t mention yet (though to be fair, there isn’t that much there, specific-story-wise, anyway…):
Lots of callbacks to “Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children” with The Master, Ashad and the CyberMasters all coming from that story, as well as a few more brief mentions of the Timeless Children story arc in general. As mentioned Vinder returns from the Flux series of stories as well… no mention of how most of the universe returned, but never mind eh?
The Master taunts Tegan about her Aunt Vanessa in a reference to her debut story “Logopolis” while Ace mentions the last time she saw The Master he was part-Cat, being her final TV story “Survival”, though in books and Audio she met The Master several times after that, but hey-ho. The Master also uses his “dress for the occasion” line from “The TV Movie”, which is always nice to see, plus as mentioned his plan does bear a strong resemblance to the one in that story (and “The Deadly Assassin” as well, to be fair), he also mentions the Second Doctor’s forced regeneration at the end of “The War Games”.
Overall Thoughts:
Been a while since I ended a Doctor Who review with a regeneration shot! It may not be part of the “Regeneration Marathon”, but may as well keep up the pattern!
The Power of the Doctor was a really fun 70 minutes… if you’re a classic Doctor Who fan. If you’re just in it for the Thirteenth Doctor’s finale you may leave disappointed, unless you went into it expecting to see the usual potential dropped by Chris Chibnall. Oh well, I guess it’s time to look a head for the Fourteenth Doctor’s, um, seemingly short run, the 60th Anniversary and the Fifteenth Doctor’s debut all before the end of 2023… Better get those banners and thumbnail templates going!
So the big thing, at least in my eyes, was The Master actually succeeds in stealing The Doctor’s body for a while, during which the Thirteenth Doctor walks across her own mental landscape and meets a manifestation of her own subconscious that takes the form of David Bradley’s First Doctor, Peter Davison’s Fifth, Colin Baker’s Sixth, Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh and Paul McGann’s Eighth, all switching and occasionally bickering. It was fantastic, extremely fanwanky, but fantastic. Then later Tegan and Ace have to take down some Cybermen and Daleks respectively (the Daleks were trying to set off all the volcanoes on Earth, for… reasons) and the “holo-projection” of The Doctor they were using switches to an image of the Fifth for Tegan, who gives a “brave heart, Tegan” when she says about the Cybermen reminding her of Adric’s death; and the Seventh for Ace, the two finally making up for all the manipulation and stuff he put Ace through. They were really sweet scenes, and regardless of their, um, advanced age it was great seeing them in their old costumes.
If you’re only mildly familiar with this blog you’d have known I was going to put an image of the Eighth Doctor here. I mean he’s had so little screen time as it is!
Then at the end of the story we see Yaz hold something of a support meeting for ex-Doctor companions who were still on Earth and we see Jo (Katy Manning), Mel (Bonnie Langford) and Ian (William Russell), the latter making it into the Guinness World Records for biggest gap for the same actor playing the same character. It brought a massive smile to my face. Then that was followed by the Regeneration which saw none other than David Tennant get revealed as the Fourteenth Doctor, though reportedly only for three TV specials before the already announced Ncuti Gatwa becomes the Fifteenth. Either way it’s going to be fun seeing him back in the role and written by Russell T. Davies to boot!
So that was all the fun call backs, but what about Jodie Whittaker’s swan song? Well, she does regain her body, obviously, but Tegan and Kate sort out the Cybermen in UNIT HQ and Ace and the returning Graham (Bradley Walsh) take out The Daleks, so really it’s mostly sorted by returning guest characters! The Doctor does head to the weird Cyber-Moon and stop The Master’s plan there, but gets fatally wounded along side The Master, leaving Yaz having to carry her into the TARDIS and drop everyone off, because she can pilot the TARDIS now, apparently.
David Tennant IS the Doctor! … Again! Not a very well kept secret if you follow the fan scene even only slightly like I do, but fun reveal nonetheless.
This is where we get one of the many Chibnall teases that go nowhere as Yaz and The Doctor’s love tease is dropped as The Doctor tells her she “probably doesn’t want to see this” and Yaz just returns home, doesn’t even give the new Doctor a chance or wants to help her apparent love during a hard time, she’s just done. At one point The Master is distracted by a false projection of Jo Martin’s Doctor, which was a nice reminder of the “Timeless Children” storyline that was similarly dropped with no resolution, and yes it was given no such end here either. It was like whatever the reverse of a “greatest hits” is. Oh well, the actual regeneration was one of the better ones of recent memory as there was no grandiose speech or fourth wall breaking monologue, she just stood out of the top of a cliff and regenerated with the great final line of “tag, you’re it!”.
So there you go. Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor will always hold a bit of a special place in my heart as I covered her announcement, debut episode and subsequently every episode of her run on this blog as they aired, even if this particular review ended up going up a few weeks later than I’d have liked. That being said her run was incredibly varied, with good stories and bad, sadly more of the latter, especially when the episode is penned by the showrunner himself. Still: goodbye Doctor 13, you’re at least the first Doctor (not including the Eighth or War) to have all their TV stories up and reviewed!
Hogan Reviews 