13.32: The Power of the Doctor

In which Doctor Who visits the Friend Zone.

And so, the end is near… I mention this just in case you are one of the no doubt many hundreds of people who've been reading this and always meant to get around to chucking a few pennies in the jar for all my hard work, and just never quite got around to it. Alternatively, this might be a good time to sign up to my other, non Doctor Who substack, the Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything.

The Power of the Doctor

Broadcast: October 2022

Watched: November 2023

“Daleks! On the same day as the Master and the Cybermen!” Alternatively: “Okay. Don’t get cocky.”

I finished my run through of All Of Doctor Who in time to watch this immediately afterwards. At the time it felt like an utterly incoherent mess, only saved by a few moments that could have been written specifically for those of us who’ve been fans for decades, and to hell with the modern audience. On a second viewing it, well, still feels like that. But I can see what it’s *trying* to do.

It is quite clearly an attempt to do the Biggest Ever Episode: Cybermen invading UNIT HQ! A mysterious message from the Daleks! The Master trying to take the Doctor’s place! All three teaming up! Eight different doctors! So many companions I’ve lost count! A thing that looks like a death star in the sky above Siberia in 1916! 

It feels, in an observation shamelessly nicked from my friend Steffan, like the carnivalesque Five Doctors to Day’s more focused Three Doctors. (Also, LOL that someone clearly went: “Shit, what worked in a special before? I know: paintings!”) Word is that Chibnall wrote it not knowing if the show would continue, and that would make sense since it does make a fair stab at being the last ever episode. It’s just unfortunate that it does so with all the lack of logic, characterisation or craft we’ve come to expect from the man.

Okay, good things first: the opening sequence on the space train is lots of fun, and does something with both the cyber/TIme Lord hybrid things and the regulars. Fair play to Dan for going, “Yeah actually I don't want to die so I’m going home.” Making it possible for companions to quit because they’ve just had enough once again might be one of Chibnall’s better contributions to the show.

Ace and Tegan machine gunning Cybermen is cool. Sacha Dhawan, as ever, is the best thing in it, having the time of his life: the bit where he dances to Ra Ra Rasputin goes on for a whole minute, literally to the second, in a way that makes me wonder if this was the maximum they were allowed to licence. (LOL at the Dalek and Cyberman sharing a glance at his behaviour.)

I quite like that the traitor Dalek *isn’t* lying to the Doctor, that it really is betraying his species but that they’re using him as a lure. Love that they then lock the Doctor in the traitor’s casing: pretty neat inversion of the cliffhanger from Village of the Angels. “I was just thinking we could call this... The Master’s Dalek Plan,” says the Master, in a clue we are in for an absolute avalanche of Stuff For The Fans.

All this is fine, in a dumb Chibnall kind of way. But around this point on broadcast, when I was about five minutes behind, a friend started texting me stuff like “OH MY F*CKING GOD” because he was watching live and a load of past Doctors had just shown up and to be fair that was pretty much my reaction too. The Guardians of the Edge bit feels a bit like the mindscape from Timewyrm: Revelation, or the memory TARDIS from Tales of the TARDIS, or various weird stuff like the first Doctor in his garden: an idea that previous incarnations live on somewhere if you need them. I’m not sure this will make much sense to a normal audience, but, y’know, screw those guys. 

Because I am not the normal audience, and for me it was f*cking brilliant. McCoy and McGann bickering. The 5th Doctor saying “Adric” on television in 2022, and the emotion he gets into that one word. McCoy and Aldred finally getting a goodbye scene. (Davison is quite obviously the best one, although McCoy runs him very close.)

And then the other surprise, the companion support group. I always said if William Russell appeared as Ian in Doctor Who again I’d cry, thinking I was joking, and what do you know, I was right: has a fictional character ever returned after 57 years off screen before? (Maureen O’Brien might have just beaten him by returning as Vicki for Tales of the TARDIS, but that wasn’t broadcast, so.) It might also be Chibnall’s biggest legacy – bigger than the timeless child stuff or Division – because it’s  a very useful trick if you want to bring back any companions in future without explaining very much (ooh look, here comes Mel). The thought occurs that one of the striking things about Day of the Doctor was how it doesn’t do the obvious “The Doctor really needs his friends!” story, which this really, really does. There’s even a bit where the Doctor makes them all press buttons in the TARDIS like Journey’s End.

So, yes, loads to enjoy! Against that, though, it all gets a bit Chibnall.

The plot is extremely hard to follow, if not completely meaningless. I entirely missed the setting up of the Daleks trying to blow up a volcano in Bolivia, we were suddenly just there. The way the Master appears in two different guises in two different time zones while his TARDIS is somewhere else means for a while I was convinced we were watching two different versions of him, but no it doesn’t make sense unless he’s nipping between the two, somehow, adding or removing a beard as he goes.

Characters just appear in the narrative and we’re expected to know who they are and what they mean. Vinder flies out of nowhere. Ace and Tegan show up after literal decades, with very little set-up and what there is is as subtle as a brick (“Just cos it’s only three decades for me”). And oh look it’s Graham trying to fight Daleks under a mountain. Of course it is.

It’s also very Chibnall that there’s a mysterious child who has absolutely nothing to do with the other mysterious child we’re all waiting for some plot resolution on, but is a previously unsuspected life form with a Q and an X in its name.

I was going to put the Doctor regenerating into the Master into the meaningless/”FFS, Chibnall” box, but actually I’ve been turned around on it. Okay, the technobabble is nonsense, it’s not that clear what’s going on. But I quite like the idea that this is the end point of his obsession: that he wants to occupy the Doctor’s place, that he’s basically trying to make it *his* show, complete with the mash up, old school Doctor outfit and a companion of his own. (There’s a bit like that with the Monk in the OFFICIAL 30th anniversary story No Future – “I’ll make Ace my companion! I’ll make her love ME!”) So this bit gets a pass.

The thing that really annoys me though is that, even in her last story, the Thirteenth Doctor is just... passive. When one of her other selves says, “Quite the strength of character, this incarnation”, it really annoys me because she’s just walked into an obvious trap and now has to be reminded not to just give up. There’s no strength of character on show. 

There’s no resolution of Thasmin, either: when she’s being forced to regenerate the Doctor screams Yaz’s name, and later Yaz saves her life, twice, but then she just... dumps her? She all but says “Oh yeah there’s a new production team, they want a blank slate, sorry.”

Jo Martin appears for one scene, walks in and owns the place in a way Whitaker very rarely did. I just feel like this team cast the first female Doctor and then wasted her.

Oh well. Other things:

• There’s loads of travel by captions. (Siberia, 1916! London, 2022! Naples!) One last time, eh, Chris?

• Ashad is alive again because the Master cloned him something something.

• The Master literally taunts the Doctor by copying the TARDIS and making the sign read, “Hahahahahah”. It’s hardly the end of Turn Left, but nonetheless, fun.

• “Last time I saw you you were half cat.” “A man’s allowed to experiment.” I enjoyed this line enough that I don’t even mind it sort of screws essentially every other version of Ace’s fate from the tangle of wilderness years continuity.    

• Forced regeneration is the ultimate Time Lord punishment, like in The War Games. Cool. Also the Master mocks the Doctor for not knowing how many times it happened to her, just like Chibnall mocks us by not telling us. Talking of which:

• Jo Martin’s last lines are “I guess that’s me done. See you around.” FFS Chibnall.

• “That’s why you manifested here – to remind me, there’s always a way, things always work out” bloody hell Doctor is that all you’ve got?

• The Doctor passes the hologram AI implant off as static. So many people implant things in companions in the Chibnall era without permission that it feels like one of his big themes.

• The bit where the Jodie hologram takes on the faces of all the others is bloody nightmarish.

• Kate nearly ends up a cyberman. Just like her old dad.

• Yaz saves the Doctor’s life and can fly the TARDIS, and the Doctor still dumps her. Threatened, I assume. Wild to think she’s now the longest-running companion.

• Ace and Graham flirting. Eww. 

Huh. I’ve just realised I didn’t even mention the regeneration. It happens for a rubbish reason, it takes ages, and then it’s the Doctor, but possibly not the one you were expecting.

And we’re done.

Well. I might at some point write up the Cushing movies (one of which I watched last year and hated so much it put me off the other). I almost certainly will do the new episodes, or some random thoughts. But after something absurd like 356 of these posts that is, basically, that.

If you want to go round again, though, some crazy kids have launched a podcast...

“The Who Watch Podcast is an attempt by two physically young yet mentally weatherbeaten fans to watch every episode of Doctor Who. Each week, Beth Axford and David Chipakupaku dissect a story, and find all the fun, silly, and camp things within it. They’ve just begun season one (1963-64), so you can join them on their ride through time and space if you’re a newbie, or a seasoned vet.”

I have listened and enjoyed it very much. But then, I would, wouldn’t I?