Doctor Who (2005): The Power of the Doctor - Part 1

Episode:

871

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Writer:

Chris Chibnall

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Director:

Jamie Magnus Stone

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Air Date:

23-Oct-2022

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching all 90 minutes of the Doctor Who BBC Centenary special, The Power of the Doctor!

It's the last episode of the Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall era, which means it's also a regeneration story! Oh damn, I should've covered all the modern regeneration episodes first! Why is that only occurring to me now? Never mind, I wouldn't have had the time to do it anyway.

I have to be honest, if I'd known that this was going to be 90 minutes I wouldn't have been so quick to tell everyone it was going to be my next review. For whatever reason I can cover a 45 minute episode in a normal-sized review just fine, but a 90 minute story usually means three times the work. So if this seems a bit more rushed, scruffy and downright inaccurate than usual, that's because I'm racing to get it finished. It's going to have some real first draft energy.

Oh right, the SPOILER WARNING. Can't forget that. I'll be going through the whole episode scene by scene so if you want to experience its surprises properly I'd strongly recommend watching it first. This is an anniversary special so I'll probably be talking about stuff from a bunch of other episodes too.

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First thing we see is a space train, so the first reference in the episode is to Mummy on the Orient Express! I don't know if the episode is actually going to be doing deliberate callbacks to earlier stories, but if it is, then this a good one to start with.

This particular train is currently free of any ghost mummy infestation, though it is being raided by Cybermen.

Actually before I go any further, I want to make a guess at how the episode ends. I already know that David Tennant's getting a special after this, so it seems that there are three ways this could go: the Doctor regenerates and we only see the first part, the Doctor regenerates into Ncuti Gatwa, or the Doctor regenerates into David Tennant. Personally I'm thinking she's going to regenerate into Tennant, and I reckon he's going to say his "What? What? What?" catchphrase.

Anyway there's Cybermen breaking in and shooting up the place and things are pretty bad for the passengers. They could be worse though, as this train has a surprising amount of weapons on board and the crew are putting up a pretty strong defence considering that they're backed up against a wall with practically no cover.

Is it just me, or is there something weird about the colour in this scene?

I've noticed that blue LEDs and digital cameras don't always play well together, and you can end up with the glow being darker than the surrounding image. The weird thing is that it's happening to the laser blasts as well! They were put in afterwards with a computer, so that dark glow is either a choice or a mistake.

Damn, look at that muzzle flash! How does that even happen? The VFX team must have been as rushed as I am. Either that or they thought it looked cool.

Anyway the train crew actually wins against the Cybermen! So that's a bit unexpected. Their victory doesn't last long though as the Cybermen all regenerate. They're the CyberMasters that the Master created from Time Lords! I would've thought that a regeneration would burn out the cybernetic augmentations and repair their bodies, but I guess not.

I also thought that they could just shoot them again, but then I remembered what happened when someone shot River Song right after her regeneration. These guys probably aren't going down again for a while.

Fortunately help is on the way: three space heroes in very familiar orange spacesuits. I think these were introduced way back in, I dunno, The Impossible Planet maybe? They've definitely been around a while. Also I should've totally written about that episode already.

The TARDIS can't materialise inside the train for reasons, so the Doctor, Yaz and Dan descend via a space rope ladder that uses technology to stay in place even though they're moving very fast in a place with no gravity. The ladder's a little short though, so they have to let go and allow gravity to carry them the rest of the way. Uh, maybe their special boots are already pulling them to the electromagnetic roof even at that distance.

I'm more worried about how they're going to get back up to the ladder afterwards to be honest.

The Doctor starts messing around with some tech in a hurry while the CyberMasters on the roof shoot at them. You'd think those incoming laser blasts would be an issue, but the Doctor helpfully advises her fam to not get shot.

And then Dan gets shot in the face! I think that's got to be a first for Doctor Who.

It turns out that these helmets are tough enough to take a shot, but I'm sure he was wearing that thing for the oxygen and protection from the harsh vacuum of space, and now it's got a huge hole in it. 

Hang on, why is the laser coming from below? The CyberMasters are in front of them, firing towards the back of the train, so the shot should be parallel with the lines in the background.

The Doctor finishes what she's doing and deactivates the electromagnetic roof so the CyberMasters float away! See, I knew this was zero gravity. Fortunately Yaz grabs Dan's leg, saving him from a horrible death. Well, assuming he survives the giant hole in his visor.

Now they're ready for step 2: deal with all the CyberMasters inside the train.

There's something weirdly familiar about the Thirteenth Doctor dropping into a train through a hole in the roof. She's come full circle!

Dan gets to use the sonic to bring the train to a stop while the Doctor goes to investigate what the CyberMasters are up to.

They've come to kidnap a little girl stored as cargo!

The Doctor promises her that she'll save her, but the CyberMasters basically call her a liar and then transmat out. So not a completely successful mission, but she was able to save the train at least!

That's the teaser over, so I get to see the Chibnall-era opening titles for presumably the last time. I'm not going to miss them to be honest. The visuals are interesting but the remixed theme's pretty unpleasant to my ears. In fact I haven't enjoyed the opening music since the Matt Smith era (the best was Tennant's last season). I know Doctor Who's supposed to have a creepy alien theme not a dramatic adventurous one, but I like adventurous themes!

Also the titles spoil that Sophie Aldred and Janet Fielding are main stars, but I guess that couldn't be helped.

SIBERIA 1916

Meanwhile, in Siberia 1916, a man called Father Gregory meets a messenger sent from the Tsarina, who tells him that the Tsarevich is ill. Wikipedia tells me that 'Tsarevich' means the Tsar's son, and heir to the throne, so this is fairly serious.

Gregory throws his coat on and heads out right away, leaving all his lit candles and flammable papers on the table. This is Siberia so he's presumably got a fire burning as well. But no time to worry about any of that, this is urgent!

LONDON 2022

Meanwhile, 108 years later... oh no it's happening again. The episode's jumping around all over the place, introducing new plots just like The Halloween Apocalypse did.

Hang on, that's Sophie Aldred playing Seventh Doctor companion Ace! She's been doing Big Finish stories, but this is her first appearance in TV Doctor Who since 1989, 33 years ago. It's hard to say how old any time traveller is, but Ace was a teenager back then so she should be about 50 at this point. We never actually found out why she left the Doctor, due to the series being cancelled, so maybe this will fill in some blanks.

Right now she's in an art gallery and she's more interested in this empty space than the paintings around it, even taking a photo of it. I would've thought all that blue would affect people's perception of the colours in the paintings, but some actual art galleries have actual blue walls, so it's apparently not an issue. Wait, that wall behind them is entirely blue. There's no way I can just ignore that.

Hey I got a pretty clean outline from it. Sorry, this is the best background I could find in two minutes of searching. Did I mention that I'm in a rush? Oh no, now I have even less time to get this written up!

Anyway she's told that the painting was taken down for restoration work, which she finds curious as 14 other famous paintings have been taken down at the same time.

Meanwhile Fifth Doctor companion Tegan Jovanka is out investigating missing seismologists in Romania! Chibnall-era Doctor Who really likes to show off its scenery. I suppose it's a bit like the Fifth Doctor-era actually, as they kept finding excuses to film in countries like the Netherlands and Spain.

Tegan's on the phone to Ace, so it turns out that they know each other. Also Tegan found a package in her cabin from the Doctor, containing a Russian doll toy box. This is weird for all kinds of reasons. For one thing it didn't even have a Russian doll inside.

It contained a tiny action figure of, uh, whatever the Lone Cyberman was called. Crap, I'm going to have to look his name up. Ashad. In fact it may actually be the guy himself as he was shrunk by the Master. Though he was also blown up right after so probably not.

The other weird thing about this is that the Doctor hasn't exactly been in touch. They use the opportunity to give us some helpful exposition, saying that it's been four decades since Tegan saw them and three decades for Ace.

Anyway this mystery is getting very mysterious so they decide it's time they went back in.

Meanwhile the TARDIS is materialising in the middle of Dan's street. Hey, wait a second, why didn't we get any text on screen saying LIVERPOOL 2022? Everywhere else got text! Well, except for Romania I guess.

I had to check to see if this is still the same location as last time, and yeah they're back on Llanmaes Street in Cardiff, standing in for Rockfield Road. I've criticised some of the other CGI in this episode, but that background replacement is near perfect. If you didn't know this was an effects shot you wouldn't even suspect that Anfield football stadium had been added in behind the houses. Well actually that's a church on the left, but you know what I mean.

They've also done a decent job of removing Dan's house, as it's still missing after Karvanista shrunk it. I suppose he must have been living in the TARDIS all this time as a full time companion.

I wonder how they got this shot though. I mean the only way to get a view like this is for a house to be missing, but this was filmed on an actual street and you'd presume it would have a full set of them. Hang on, I'm going to check Google Maps and see for myself what's here. Ah, there's an alleyway here. So that's one mystery solved.

They only came here to drop Dan off for his date but it turns out he's decided to stop travelling with them because he doesn't want to push his luck. Wow, damn I guess we just lost Dan then. 12 minutes into the episode and we've already lost a companion! That has to be a new record. Though I understand why. I imagine most people would have called it quits after being shot in the face. 

Sometimes the Doctor leaves her companions with a gift, like a house or a lottery ticket, but poor Dan's going to be sleeping on his parent's couch. Though he says he's learned how to attack his life after hanging out with the Doctor and he thinks he'll be alright, so I hope he's right.

The Doctor doesn't handle goodbyes very well, but the episode's too fast paced for her to dwell on Dan's departure, as she gets an unwanted call from a Dalek!

She's entirely hostile and suspicious, but the Dalek very patiently tries to explain that it's had an epiphany and has realised that the Daleks have really strayed from their original purpose of protecting the Kaleds. That's a reference that goes all the way back to the Fourth Doctor story Genesis of the Daleks. Maybe even to the First Doctor story The Daleks that introduced them in the first place.

The Dalek tells her that the other Daleks are about to kill billions of humans but it will give her the key to killing them all if she agrees to meet with it. The Doctor's a bit busy at the moment though, as she's discovered that the child from the train has been taken to a mysterious extra planet in Earth's solar system, back in 1916.

ST PETERSBURG 1916

 

Now we're back with Father Gregory again, better known as Rasputin, as he's finished travelling the thousands of miles to St Petersburg and has arrived at the Winter Palace to meet Tsar Nicholas II. This is a really nice set or location by the way, and huge too. It makes Babylon 5's palace scenes feel like they were filmed inside someone's wardrobe.

I've seen Rasputin show up in other series and time travel stories before, and I've even browsed a Wikipedia page or two about the guy, so there's presumably a lot of Rasputin facts stored in my brain somewhere. Shame I can't remember any of them. C'mon Doctor Who, teach me about history!

Oh wait it's the Master, never mind. This is a weird situation because I can't remember a time in the series where the Master was in disguise and we were supposed to see through it right away like this. It's usually meant to be a surprise.

The guy's also making use of his hypnotism skills, convincing the Tsar to go on holiday and leave the Winter Palace in his care. Man, I feel like this would work so much better for me if I actually knew the historical context. I suppose I could just glance at Wikipedia for a moment...

Okay it turns out that the Tsar and his family didn't live in the Winter Palace and by 1916 it had been turned into a hospital. So knowing the history actually makes these scenes worse. Well, that's... great.

The Doctor and Yaz arrive on the mysterious new planet in search of the kidnapped child and find themselves in a quarry. Nothing unusual about that, though finding a second TARDIS is a bit of an 'oh shit' moment. I hope they remember which is theirs.

Oh damn, that's amazing! Not what I expected to see.

So either this is a weird imitation of the Doctor's TARDIS or a corrupted version of it from the future with a gross paint job. Either way we can guess who's responsible for it: the Joker!

Damn this is a sinister looking console room. I mean those crystal spider legs are creepy.

The Doctor feels like someone's made this look like her console room to taunt her. Now I'm wondering if the Master even knows what Thirteen's console room looks like. The console itself has been wired into the centre of the planet's metal structure, or at least that's what the Doctor thinks after taking a glance down the hole. They're also reading an energy source nearby.

They deactivate a cloaking shield and reveal that the girl they're looking for has been chained down to stop her floating away. There's some interesting imagery in this episode.

Hey, where did her belt go? Did the CyberMasters steal her belt?

Surprise, it turns out that the little girl is actually a Qurunx projecting a image that they'd instinctively want to help. That actually makes a lot of sense. It also helps the audience understand that this is a creature we should care about, and we could use the help seeing as it doesn't talk or do anything.

It's an energy being with enough power in it for an entire civilisation, so now they know why the CyberMasters kidnapped it. Whatever they're up to, a TARDIS alone isn't enough to power it.

Oh right, I suppose it'd make sense that the CyberMasters would also be hanging around, seeing as it's their planet. It's the "Zenith of Cyberconversion" apparently.

One thing I like about Doctor Who is that it's not worried about looking ridiculous. Many science fiction series would be afraid of having actors in ornate robot costumes posing in a quarry because "modern audiences wouldn't accept it", but Doctor Who just goes for it. Also I have to admit that I actually think the look kind of works. Especially considering that it was the Master who designed them.

Unfortunately they have guns, so the Doctor has to make a run for it.

Damn, that looks so obviously fake! I understand why they have to use the backlit backdrop sometimes as compositing in the console room set behind them is a lot of expensive work, but they really shouldn't point the camera right at it like this. It's fine as long as you don't draw attention to it!

Oh. Uh. Well okay it turns out that was the quarry that was fake and they really were running into the actual console set. 

I've got plenty of other things to nitpick though, as this episode has laser blast issues. Like here, where the laser wobbles over and hits the wrong place, and the sparks go off a frame early. I can forgive classic Battlestar Galactica when the VFX aren't always entirely in sync with the on-set pyrotechnics, but the tools have gotten so much better since then and we've seen some fantastic effects shots in other scenes in the episode.

The Doctor's got her hands a bit full with a CyberMaster plot and a Dalek incursion to deal with, so it's a bit inconvenient when Kate Stewart phones up asking for her help in 2022. I can't think of a Doctor who had to deal with so many overlapping threats as often as Thirteen does. Even though she's a time traveller and shouldn't actually need to rush at all.

UNIT is back and they've got a shiny new HQ in the middle of London! Well okay it's not all that shiny and it looks weirdly archaic, but it's definitely huge.

Kate tells the Doctor about the missing seismologists and paintings, and she's understandably underwhelmed by the scale of the threat. Then she meets the freelancers that UNIT's brought in.

It turns out that Kate hired Tegan and Ace because they're the obvious experts in the field of saving the world from alien threats. Personally Tegan wouldn't have been my first choice, considering that she walked away from the Doctor because she was sick of all the violence, but that coat shows that she's here to get the job done.

This scene reminds me of the episode School Reunion, with the Doctor being reunited with a former companion and Yaz getting a glimpse of her own future. Oh damn, that's another episode I should've written about. I should make a list. 

The difference between the situations is that Tegan was the one who walked away from the Doctor. Plus she's one of the few companions to leave and come back after a break, so she already knew she wasn't going to stay in touch! But she's Tegan, so getting pissed off about it is totally in character for her.

It turns out that they've discovered a little more about the incredibly low-stakes painting plot: they were removed from public view because they've all had Rasputin's face added to them. Though the Doctor realises that it's the Master right away. Man, this really is his worst disguise ever!

Hang on, Kate didn't know this was the Master? So she really did call the Doctor in urgently because some paintings had been defaced?

At first I assumed that the Master must have gone back and ruined the paintings in the past but after thinking about it for a second I've realised that would make absolutely no sense. I mean they would've noticed before now!

Just then the Master interrupts with a live message, just like in The Magician's Apprentice, except without the giant head popping out of the screen. The Doctor really needs to upgrade stuff so villains can't just project themselves into the TARDIS or appear on UNIT's big screen without permission or warning. He's inviting them to a Seismology Memorial Conference, so it doesn't sound too good for the missing seismologists.

The Doctor manages to give both Tegan and Ace very suspicious static shocks, does a quick scan with the sonic, and then leaves with Yaz. So that was weird.

NAPLES

Okay that just looks dumb. All the tiny dead seismologists are in casual poses and they're all standing up. I dunno, maybe the Master glued them all to the bench, he is pretty clever. He's also giving a lecture on volcanos to absolutely no one, though he stops when he spots the Doctor and Yaz.

The Master won't tell them his plan and he won't even explain how he escaped Gallifrey. Though he does warn the Doctor that if she doesn't leave Earth she'll die. And he means properly die, get erased from existence forever. Which is basically what Time warned her about in The Vanquishers. The Master's really hyped about the fact that she knows he's not lying about this and he knows she'll just carry on regardless. 

But they're interrupted by the Naples branch of UNIT storming the place and cuffing him. The Doctor tells Yaz to take a gun because just to be extra safe they're bringing him back to the HQ in the TARDIS. You know it's serious business when the Doctor's encouraging her companion to use a gun.

Yaz says she's had weapons training, but it kind of looks like she's got her finger on the trigger there.

The Master reveals that he ate the Cyberium from The Haunting of Villa Diodati, which I totally forgot was a thing, and it's allowed him to plan countless steps ahead of them all. Wait, hold up, so he actually wanted to be caught? Damn, it's been so long since someone's pulled that trope that he might even get away with it.

By the way, I don't think this was a very good idea, having Yaz guard the Master like this. We just saw that he has hypnotism powers and companions aren't immune. Well, except Peri for some reason. He's soon distracted by all the 'getting a message from the Daleks' alarms going off though, which are a bit of a concern to Yaz as well, as she had no idea the Doctor had gotten a call earlier.

This episode's doing a great job of building dread by the way, for me anyway. It's got a real 'How is the Doctor going to get out of this one?' feel and nothing's even happened to her yet!

The music gets dramatic and Inston-Vee Vinder flies out of a wormhole on the trail of the kidnapped Qurunx! Because I guess the story wasn't complicated enough yet. But he goes and crashes his ship, so that's a bit of a problem.

I guess all the CyberMasters are busy right now as no one's shooting at him, even though he's right next to the Master's TARDIS.

Hey they got him to UNIT HQ okay! Now they're taking him to the bunker, which he seems hyped about. He's hyped about everything. Though he does stop to call Kate's dad an idiot, which is a bit mean. I don't think this Master is a very nice person. He also recognises Tegan instantly and asks if she keeps her Auntie Vanessa in a doll's house. That is a pretty damn impressive memory considering that for him the events of Logopolis must have been hundreds of years ago.

Ace has a good memory too it seems, as she points out that the last time she saw him he was half cat. And he points out to her that the Doctor ditched her after an argument, which is interesting new information. She seems to have forgiven her though. She even calls her 'Professor!' as she leaves with Yaz in the TARDIS.

Tegan's memory isn't the best however, as the Master just reminded her than he shrinks people and actually mentioned a 'doll's house'. Wasn't there something she wanted to ask the Doctor about?

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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NEXT TIME

Next time, I'll be writing about the middle third of The Power of the Doctor! With any luck I'll have something there for you to read, though I apologise in advance if I run out of words halfway down the page. I'm in a bit of a rush here.

You can write about the episode yourself if you want, just use that comment box below.