11.33: The Power of Three

In which we wonder how it was supposed to end.

Broadcast: September 2012

Watched: January 2022

“The cube upstairs just spiked me and took my pulse!” “Ha! Really? Mine fired laser bolts and now it’s surfing the net.” Or more damningly, “Why is there nothing inside? It doesn’t make any sense.”

This one is great, except for the ending. Which sucks. But even that feels more forgivable than I’d remembered. 

The stuff that works: this is sort of a spiritual successor to The Lodger or Closing Time, about the Doctor living a normal life, during which he gets bored, paints a fence, mows a lawn, plays on a Wii, etc. There’s also a load of stuff in there about outgrowing the Doctor: Amy and Rory increasingly want their normal life, to have jobs, etc. (Tempting to see more of Chibnall’s urge to ground the series in some of this.) 

All of which means that the companion role continues to evolve. Now they just drift in and out of the Doctor’s life, popping off from a party to go out for some adventures. The Doctor taking them away as an anniversary present is actually quite sweet: LOVE the joke about Zygons under the Savoy, and the clips of unseen adventures.

The result is a sort of inversion of Amy’s Choice: that was about how you can have both adventure and normality if you choose wisely, this is about how you eventually have to grow up. Which weirdly renders the big dramatic ending in the next episode that means THEY CAN NEVER SEE THE DOCTOR AGAIN kind of unnecessary.

The bit that doesn’t work is the A-plot. The idea of the cubes showing up and then just sitting there for a year, being sinister but not otherwise doing anything, is lovely. The way they all do different things is great (the Birdie Song one made me laugh out loud).

But my god does it all turn to nonsense. Sinister things happening in a hospital! A sinister little girl! Sinister twins, kidnapping a random man! An ending that doesn’t make sense and is never properly explained because the actor playing the main villain refuses to read his f*cking lines!

Also, if the invasion is global, then what are the odds one of the seven signal points being Rory’s hospital? Also, it is incredibly Chibnall to have an episode called The Power of Three (yes yes cubes, I know) in which the significant number seems to be seven (the number on the countdown, the number of signal stations, the number of kidnap victims too, I think, even the number of galaxies Doctor’s smelling salts banned in).

Also: Kate says the cubes may have killed a third of the population *of the world*... and then the Doctor just uses some technobabble to turn them back on? It really feels like this really ought to be a bigger deal.

All of which is a shame as it’s a really fun watch, loads of good bits in it. Again: if this was the Chibnall we got in 2018 I’d have been delighted.

Other thoughts:

• Another episode kicked off by a female voiceover, this time from Amy. 

• Funny how the Doctor has suddenly developed the ability to land exactly when and where he wants, so he doesn’t visit the Ponds out of order? Also there’s a suggestion that the 11th Doctor maybe has other companions who we don’t see on TV (“Because you were the first”).

• Amy is now a freelance journalist. “We think it’s been 10 years. Not for you or earth, but for us” – hang on Rory was 31 two episodes ago, surely that means it had been 10 years for him then?

• Actually, I’m wondering if the episodes this season take place in a different order from the broadcast one, as this week we see Henry VIII’s ensuite, which Rory mentioned in Dinosaurs.

• Let’s talk about UNIT! Love that when soldiers invade Amy and Rory’s house we know it’s UNIT because they keep referring to each other as things like “Trap Three”. They’re now in the Tower of London, which makes a change from “round the back of St Pancras” or whatever. It remains hilarious that the TV show canonised a character from Downtime. [The Brigadier’s daughter Kate was invented for a ‘90s fan video, which was novelised as a missing adventure.]  

• “I’ve run restaurants” The Crystal Bucephalus is canon guys! [Another missing adventure book, this one by the lovely Craig Hinton, who died, tragically young, in 2006.]

• I’d totally forgotten the cameos: the Apprentice clip, Brian Cox being baffled. Also, that we get a return of RTD’s recurring joke that Slade means it’s Christmas.

• I’m not sure Rory taking his dad to work in a crisis is actually very helpful. Still, nice to see another lift that’s actually a portal to a spaceship (see also Closing Time). Funny how often that happens.

• It’s sort of ignored that Brian is completely right to worry about his family’s safety. The bit where he encourages them to go off on adventures, and the Doctor asks him to join them, like a proto-Graham, is lovely... but then he says, “Just bring them back safe”, and the Doctor doesn’t. He must feel like a right prick afterwards.

• The final triumphant “the power of three” speech would be more powerful if the three of them had actually done anything as a team to fix this mess.

• Why does nobody tidy up the cubes?