Doctor Who (2005): The Power of the Doctor - Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the final part of my The Power of the Doctor review. I'm sorry I had to split this into three parts, it's just that my screencaps tend to get out of hand when I cover something that lasts longer than an hour. Especially when it's as frantic as this. The episode's all over the place!

You can find the previous two parts HERE and HERE.

SPOILER WARNING: This will contain extreme Doctor Who spoilers up to and including this episode.

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Previously, on Doctor Who:

The Master has stolen the Doctor's body, Daleks are about to set off a volcano, Cybermen have invaded UNIT HQ, and it's up to Yaz, Vinder, Kate, Tegan and Ace to save the day! They're actually doing pretty well so far, considering. Yaz successfully shoved the Master out of the TARDIS and stranded him on a mushroom planet. Now she's working with Vinder and an AI hologram left by the Doctor on a scheme to reverse the Doctor's forced regeneration. Meanwhile Kate and Tegan have come up with a plan to blow up their own HQ to crush the Cybermen, and Ace is about to do some BASE jumping from the roof.

And now, the conclusion:

I'm starting to think that maybe UNIT didn't need to build the tallest building in London to use as their HQ.

Also there's something really weird about that parachute Ace's wearing, and I'm not even talking about the canopy. Most parachutes I've seen attach to the backpack in two places, but these ropes all seem to connect at just one point. It makes it look more like she's hanging from a cable, especially with how loose the backpack is.

The Cybermen see her parachuting down through the window and they clearly don't like it as they immediately open fire, punching holes in her canopy. Well, more like burning holes, as the shots don't actually make it through. She starts falling faster...

... and drops right into the TARDIS!

The episode never explains how Yaz knew that Ace was in trouble and where to be to save her. It also doesn't give us a reason why she didn't just pick her up while she was still on the roof.

But there's no time for nitpicking! There's Daleks in a Bolivian volcano and Yaz wants to send Ace on a solo mission to stop them and save the Earth. I'm not sure she knows anything about the woman aside from her being a former companion, but she found her jumping off a building armed with a baseball bat so I can get why she thinks she's the person for the job. Ace draws her bat, smiles, and says "Wicked."

Meanwhile Yaz and Vinder have got an even more dangerous job to: rescuing the Master. Though Vinder's going to be hiding out of sight for the time being.

The Master doesn't kill Yaz for her betrayal, which is pretty decent of him. In fact he tries to convince her that they could have fun together... just a different kind of fun. Then he uses the Doctor's lever to start the TARDIS!

Back in UNIT HQ, Tegan's still trying to make her way down to the basement, when she's startled by a hologram of the Thirteenth Doctor...
 

... which soon turns into the Fifth Doctor! The AI's adapting to her so it actually makes sense that it'd look and act like her Doctor, aged up to match the years since they last met. I love that we're getting this surprise bonus Fifth Doctor cameo, giving us a chance to see him properly instead of just as a wise man in a robe. I have to give Chibnall credit, he didn't just think of a good way to bring the classic Doctors back he thought of two good ways.

The two characters don't say much to each other, but they say the right lines. I'm not sure the AI has any business telling Tegan that the Doctor always remembers her, because it has no way to know that. But it definitely knows about the events of Earthshock and can guess that she's thinking about Adric right now. Plus he says his "Brave heart" catchphrase!

It's a really touching moment between two actors who haven't played these roles together since... whenever their most recent Big Finish audio drama was recorded. Earlier this year I guess. But now Tegan has to climb down a massive ladder to reach the basement.

Then Ace gets a visit by the AI as well. If new viewers didn't get that the Master is wearing a collection of the Doctor's old outfits, this probably tipped them off.

It's another touching scene which doesn't really tell us anything new about why she left the TARDIS. She judged him because she didn't understand the burden he carried, and they fell out. That's all we get. Though she's sorry about what she said and he assures her that they're good. Then she gets on with the mission.

OH SHIT, SURPRISE GRAHAM APPEARANCE!

There's no explanation for why he's inside a volcano in Bolivia, but he hasn't got the hang of his psychic paper yet so Ace is basically able to read his backstory off the thing and realises she's got an ally. Ace offers to show him how she dealt with Daleks in 1963 and he wonders how old she is, like he's new to the idea of time travellers.

She replies that a gentlemen never asks that on the first date, which is the first time my brain started to calculate that these two might be in the same age range! (The actors were both born a little before 1963, but Graham's in his early 60s and Ace is presumably in her early 50s.)

Ashad finds Kate's hiding place but is stopped by the laser shield. They should've installed these things all over the building, they're handy. I like how the VFX artists took the time to have it reflected in the table, that's a nice touch.

Kate offers herself in exchange for all the soldiers that they've captured, and Ashad figures it's a ploy to buy time for the Doctor arrive. He knows that's not going to happen though so he's not bothered, and accepts Kate's surrender.

So she opens up the laser shield and... wait what? Why would she give herself up before they've released her men? Now they've got no reason to do it!

One thing I can say about this episode is that it doesn't stay put. It's jumping to new places and sets all the time. Now it's following Tegan as she climbs the endless ladder hidden behind the building's walls. Unfortunately Ashad hears her, punches his way in with his head and starts shooting!

So she lets go of the ladder and presumably falls to her death. RIP Tegan.

Back in 1916 St. Petersburg, the Master returns to the Winter Palace to find that all his CyberMasters and Daleks are still standing there in a circle waiting for him! Okay I want to like this episode so if it could start making any sense again that'd be cool.

The Master tells the Daleks that it's time for them to destabilise some tectonic plates and set off every volcano on planet Earth somehow, so they teleport away and get right on with that... 106 years later.

Well the volcanos have started, so it's starting to seem like Ace is a bit late in resolving that problem. I don't know if blowing up the Dalek's machine is going to undo this. Also yellow text on a yellow eruption isn't always ideal.

Now that's definitely a fake backdrop this time. It's missing the blue spotlights for one thing.

Yaz tells the Master that he'll never be the Doctor (possibly because he keeps trying to destroy planets instead of saving them), so he decides she's not going to work out as companion after all. He doesn't have any suspicions about why she's grabbing her shoulder like that though... and neither do I. Does that activate the hologram or something?

Oh damn, it's the Fugitive Doctor! I'm always happy to see her, even if I'm a little bit confused.

The Master's confused as well, as he's never seen this incarnation and has no idea who she is. The CyberMasters move to surround her and she identifies herself as the Doctor. So the Master tells his fam to shoot her.

Oops, it turns out that she was the hologram and they all shot each other, like at the end of Day of the Doctor! I guess the hologram must have known that it's a CyberMaster's standard procedure to surround an intruder when they enter a room... as long as they're not busy stealing a Qurunx at the time. Plus they got really lucky that they were all standing exactly opposite each other.

(I'm letting the episode off about them mistaking a hologram for a real person as we've already seen that the AI can turn off the blue glow when it feels like it.)

Vinder sneaks up on the Master and puts a gun to his head, so the companions have basically won. The Master knows that he's bluffing though, as a companion is never going to shoot the Doctor's body.

Good theory, but wrong - Vinder guns him down the moment he makes a move! Man, Vinder's saving the day here! I hope we get to see this guy show up again somewhere down the line. Bel too. Flux was a bit of a mess but we got some good characters out of it.

Yaz explains the moral of the story: the Doctor spent her life gathering friends and she taught them to never give up (unless they get shot in the face). The Master's friends have the ability to regenerate, which is pretty good as well... and it also happens to be something Team Yaz was counting on.

The hologram has come up with technique that even the Master didn't think of: forced regeneration without the aid of a Cyberplanet powered by a Qurunx. Yaz uses the sonic to redirect the regeneration energy of the all the CyberMasters into the device, killing two birds with one stone.

Fun fact: you can apparently use the sonic to kill a regenerating Time Lord!

And we've got the Doctor back! It's a bit of a weird twist for a regeneration story to feature the Doctor deregenerating, but it's cool. I hope she stays dressed like this for the rest of the story.

The Doctor races off to the TARDIS to save the day, just leaving a bunch of dead Cybermen and advanced technology lying in the Winter Palace in 1916. They even leave the Rasputin Master lying there in his pod, even though he clearly got zapped with energy too. Shouldn't they check on him? Or lock him up? Or something?

Now it's Kate's time to sit in the Cyberconversion chair, and the first step of the process is electrocution! I have to be honest, I can't remember what the Cyberconversion process has been like in earlier episodes, so I'm just going along with this.

Now Tegan's in a race against time to blow up the building and save her. Though now that I think about it, dropping a building on her seems more likely to kill her. Hang on, how the hell did Tegan survive that fall? She was as far above the ground as Ace was when her parachute got shot! I guess she must have grabbed the ladder or something. 

The Doctor's hologram reappears and tells her to divert the power from the Cyberconversation unit to give the Cybermen a surprise. I'm a little surprised to see it turn up again like this to be honest. So far it's been acting almost like a ghost, and the Fugitive Doctor had a line about her work being done, so for it to carry on helping after the Doctor's resurrection feels a bit weird. Even though I suppose it has no idea that she's been saved.

Tegan starts doing the thing with the console...

 

... but just as she's about to finish a Cyberman punches through the wall and gropes her!

She apparently needs to grab that wire and pull it out, and now we have to wonder how she'll manage it. Will she come up with a clever idea or just reach her hand out a little further? Okay she just reached a little further.

Doing the thing apparently reversed the power, electrocuting all the Cybermen instead! Tegan got her payback!

I'm not sure this makes any sense and it definitely wasn't part of Kate's plan, but she's happy enough with the outcome.

Meanwhile Ace is smashing up a Dalek's eye stalk with her bat, giving Graham a chance to plant one of her Nitro-9 bombs on it and blow it up. This was apparently the only one guarding the machinery as without it around they're free to plant more explosives and run.

Fortunately they run right towards the TARDIS and the Doctor picks them up before the whole volcano explodes.

A few Daleks try to make a run for it, but they're caught into the blast and annihilated. Ace is really good at making bombs.

Though hang on, didn't every volcano on Earth go off? Why is the one volcano they actually used the machine on still dormant? Never mind, not important. What's important is explosions.

Boom, the whole of UNIT HQ comes down! Is there a reason why two thirds of Doctor Who's 2022 specials end with a woman blowing up her own building to bury the monsters under rubble?

Honestly I'm not going to to miss this place; it's had some of the cheapest looking UNIT HQ interiors I can remember seeing. It is a bit weird though that they still needed to entomb the Cyberman after electrocuting them all.

Okay this isn't what the street right next to a recently collapsed skyscraper looks like.

It's especially not what the street next to this skyscraper looks like, at least according to Google Maps. There is a church next to it, in fact there are two of them, but they don't look anything like this one. I guess when you're stuck filming in Cardiff you can only work with what you've got.

This is one of the rare occasions where the Doctor turns up for a major world-threatening crisis and finds it's already been solved without her. She's impressed! Tegan decides to invite herself into the TARDIS, then the Doctor finally invites Kate as well! Kate actually points to herself in surprise as if to say "Who, me?", it's great.

Oh no, the Doctor's plan to just leave and do absolutely nothing about all this stuff lying around the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg has led to unforeseen consequences! The Master's still alive, his consciousness returned to his body, and he's pissed.

The next part of the Doctor's scheme requires a full crew at the controls, so all the companions get to man the console at once. It's just like Journey's End! Well, okay Ryan doesn't get to join in because he's in Patagonia, and Vinder doesn't either as the Doctor's got something else in mind for him.

Oh, I thought Vinder would be part of the plan but she's just sending him back to his home planet. At least we get to hear a tiny bit of her theme as she fixes his ship! Plus it's nice to see her happy doing something she enjoys.

She goes to the Master's TARDIS and links it up to her own so they can jump the CyberMasters' Cyberconversion planet 106 years into the future. Incidentally, it turns out that the Master's TARDIS is a Type 75, which is way newer and more powerful than the Doctor's antique Type 40. It's not much good now though after he pushed it too far and burned half of it out. I guess he always planned to be walking away with the Doctor's TARDIS after this.

Now that the Cyber planet's been moved to 2022, she uses it to turn the volcanic eruptions into steel, capping them off. I'm no geologist so I'm not even going to question the science of this. I'm not even going to wonder if the lava just wouldn't break through again at the next weakest point.

The Doctor walks outside to talk to the Qurunx and tell it to free itself and destroy the planet, which is apparently something it could've done all along! Incidentally, in its true form the Qurunx looks a bit like a floating bundle of cables, which reminds me of the data-gathering coils in The Woman Who Fell to Earth.

And the Doctor casually sacrificing another one of the TARDIS' sisters reminds me of Revolution of the Daleks!

Unfortunately the Master's teleports up to his TARDIS before she can blow it up. He's in bad shape after transferring his consciousness over and back again, and he's decided that if he can't be the Doctor, she can't be either.

He uses his device to somehow steer the Qurunx's planet-destroying beam right into the Doctor, knocking her to the ground. So the Thirteenth Doctor ends up getting killed by floating cables at the end of the episode after the threat's been resolved, just like Grace in The Woman Who Fell to Earth.

This isn't the first time the Master's been involved in a Doctor's regeneration. He dropped the Fourth Doctor off a radio telescope in Logopolis, he sabotaged the TARDIS causing the Seventh Doctor to walk out into a hail of bullets in Doctor Who: The Movie, he was part of events that caused the Tenth Doctor to get irradiated saving Wilf in The End of Time, and he was working with the Cybermen that shot the Twelfth Doctor in The Doctor Falls. This is the first time he's killed her deliberately out of pure spite though.

Fortunately Yaz rushes out into danger to carry the unconscious Doctor into the TARDIS on her own, Caves of Androzani-style. Yaz is definitely the MVP of this story, and that's so weird to type.

It's a cool looking shot and shows how deep Yaz's feelings are for her, but I'm not sure why the others didn't rush out to help her. I mean if Yaz dies out there they'll all be stranded on the exploding planet. And if the production crew really wanted the scene to look good they should've added some damage to the Doctor's clothes to sell the fact that she just got hit by that energy beam in the background.

I guess this is the final actual true death of the Master too, seeing as he's still lying there in front of his broken TARDIS. Historians really got it wrong about Rasputin's demise. And once again the heroes just race off and leave his body there, like in St. Petersburg. Nothing has been learned.

Thirteen starts to see the faces of her companions, which isn't unusual for a regeneration story. This time though they're really there in the TARDIS with her. She passes out again, and then the planet blows up.

The Doctor wakes up a little while later to find that Yaz has taken everyone back home on her own. Well, to Croydon anyway. Everything seems like it could actually work out fine.

And then Yaz notices that the Doctor's hand is glowing. The Doctor's had a bit of a pre-regeneration nap, but it's definitely coming now. The poor woman's going through a lot of regenerations today.

The Doctor's not happy about it, she wants more time, and I don't blame her. She's only been around for a few decades and the vast majority of that time was spent in prison.

It's just occurred to me that this might be the last ever scene inside this TARDIS console room. Or it might not be! I have a feeling the set got taken apart after this episode but I don't know for sure. (I hope it was).

The Tenth Doctor held his regeneration off long enough to go visit his companions, the Twelfth Doctor had a whole extra story mid-regeneration, but the Doctor and Yaz decide to spend their last few minutes together sitting on the top of the TARDIS eating ice creams. Possibly not the best food to eat while your hand's burning with energy, but she's holding it with a tissue so it's probably fine.

Different incarnations have had different attitudes to regeneration. Nine put a brave face on for Rose's sake, Ten was upset, Eleven was accepting, Twelve outright rejected it. Thirteen's dealing with it pretty well I reckon, mostly dwelling on how much she loved her life and how great her adventures were. 

I like the swirly purple nebula in the background by the way. They've picked a nice place to park.

 

Oh that's supposed to be our sky? Has the VFX team never looked up at stars before?

It's not unusual for a companion to stick around with the Doctor during a regeneration, it happened with One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Nine and Eleven. So it's a bit strange that Thirteen tells Yaz that she has to do the next bit alone.

Man... Dan really wasn't in this episode was he? It's just occurred to me that he never popped up during the story just when they needed his help.

Hey it's Dan!

It's not a coincidence that the Doctor has dropped Yaz off next to her friends. It turns out that Dan and Graham are on their way to a support group for ex-companions, and they assume that's why Yaz is there as well. This is a hell of a way for the Doctor to let her know that she's an ex-companion now!

The scene cuts to inside, with Graham talking about his time with the Doctor in a way that reminds me of him talking about Grace at her funeral in The Woman Who Fell to Earth.

Oh crap, they're really pulling out all the stops with the cameos in this story!

I can't believe I've forgotten the names of the Third Doctor's second companion and the Seventh Doctor's first. I know who they are I just can't recall their names. They're all wearing nametags but they're angled away from the camera so I can't see the damn things!

I can remember Ian Chesterton though! The man who threw an Aztec warrior off a pyramid, who escaped enslavement on a Roman ship, and inspired a civilisation of pacifists to attack the Daleks. The Sarah Jane Chronicles hinted that he and Barbara hadn't aged since the 60s and that's clearly not true, but damn William Russell's looking good for a 96 year old man. In a few years time Doctor Who may get a chance to celebrate his centenary.

All Ian gets to do here is act surprised to learn that the Doctor's a woman now, but that's more than a lot of them do. They're just here to give the episode a cameo bonus really. Which makes sense, as it is an anniversary special. They also give the episode a Guinness World Record bonus, as William Russell reprised his role after a record-breaking 57 year gap.

And then we get the regeneration.

They've broken with tradition here as the Doctor decided to park the TARDIS to look at one last sunrise before she changes. I guess transforming inside and blowing up the console room stopped being fun after it set on fire and she fell out in mid-flight.

Her final line is "Doctor Whoever-I'm-about-to-be... tag, you're it." Which is basically perfect for her character.

 

And then she's David Tennant. So I guessed right! (He even says "What, what... what?") It would've been better to have not been spoiled about his return, but I'm happy enough with this outcome. Turns out they thought of three different ways to bring old Doctors back!

Though why the hell did his clothes change? This episode itself has confirmed twice over that the Doctor's clothes don't change when he regenerates. Because they're clothes, not part of his body. I hope this is a mystery with a good explanation coming up. He seems confused by it at least, so that's a good sign.

This is the iconic Durdle Door arch in Dorset by the way. I suppose if you're going to end with a cliffhanger like this, a cliff's as good a place as any.

Hah!

The sad thing is, the Tennant Doctor we knew would've totally kept travelling with Yaz if she'd been in the TARDIS with him. Now he's going to get into another School Reunion situation in a few years with Yaz complaining to him because Thirteen dropped her off and then he never came back.

There's a teaser trailer for the next episode I could watch right now, but I've really gone off trailers lately so I'm going to pass.


CONCLUSION

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They should've called this The Power of Friendship, because it's the Master's fam that causes all the trouble and the Doctor's fam that fixes it. Amazingly the Master doesn't get betrayed by his allies here, in fact they're happy to just stand around in a circle perfectly still and wait for him. The episode reminded me of Journey's End a bit, with all the veteran companions in action, but this time there isn't a hint of commentary about the Doctor turning people into weapons. The Power of the Doctor is that she inspires and teaches her friends to become competent heroes in their own right. Just like Ian and Barbara taught her all those years ago.

At first I thought it went against the whole theme of the episode to have the companions aided by an AI version of the Doctor instead of saving the day on their own, but the more I think about it, the more it works for me. For one thing the AI Doctor is mostly aiding them in their own plans. Also the episode makes a point of mentioning that it's not a copy of her mind or anything like that. It was trained by watching the Doctor in action... just like her companions. Though it's bad storytelling to have her just randomly decide to implant holograms into her friends hours before an event that makes them necessary. The Master does promise her that she's going to die, but she gets staticky before that scene. Worse, she didn't even know she was going to be meeting Ace and Tegan.

Plus it's maybe not great to take the most passive modern Doctor and then erase her halfway through her own finale! The Doctor's gone for 25 minutes of this story. Then again it's a 90 minute episode, so that's not so bad. Plus to be honest the Doctor and Yaz often shine brightest when they're separated, and this episode is definitely Yaz's time to shine. After years of standing around in the background being fairly useless, Yaz inherits the role of protagonist here and she actually steps up and gets the job done. All the companions do.

There's a lot of people who aren't the Doctor in this regeneration story, but like I said it's a 90 minute episode, so it's fine. It's all about celebrating companions and it does its returning characters justice. It's not a particularly emotional story, but it uses the history they have to create some properly emotional scenes. When I saw the teaser I was worried that Ace and Tegan were going to go down in a blaze of glory, because that's what franchises do to classic heroes these days, so I was genuinely relieved when they survived. All the companions, cameos and callbacks worked for me.

Did I mention that this is a 90 minute episode? Because it didn't feel like it to me. The story flew by, possibly because it did the Flux thing of packing in so many plots that it felt like watching three episodes simultaneously at 1.5x speed. It makes so much more sense though. I mean the script's not air-tight by any means, but it doesn't take any detours through the Dimension of Total Bullshit. And it episode gets away with a lot by just being fun. It relies a lot on Sacha Dhawan's performance as the Master and he's a fantastic villain here, switching between goofy and menacing on a dime and often combining the two.

It's also an expensive looking episode, with all the locations and VFX you'd want in a blockbuster finale. It has the soundtrack it needed as well, though they really should've made more use of the beautiful Thirteenth Doctor's theme. Not just in this, but in all the three seasons. Oh damn we'll be getting a new Doctor's theme soon! I didn't think about that. I hope Tennant's Fourteenth Doctor gets his own music too. I really miss the days when the Doctor's theme would kick in when they did something clever and turned the tables.

I have to admit, I was kind of looking at this episode as something I had to get through to get to the new RTD era. It's not that I was expecting it to be terrible, I just had no enthusiasm for it and I wasn't dying to see what new twists it brought to the Doctor Who mythos. But it didn't actually ruin anything for a change! Plus it didn't bore me, depress me, confuse me or frustrate me. It did surprise me, but only in a good way. The Master stealing the Doctor's body is such a WTF moment, even if the story doesn't really take the concept to its full potential.

The episode definitely doesn't have the intelligence and snappy wordplay of the best stories of previous eras, it doesn't really have a whole lot to say either, and it's got a lot of familiar flaws. But I found it to be a joy to watch and for me it's ended the Chibnall-era on a high note. It's funny comparing this breakneck nostalgia rollercoaster to the far more grounded The Woman Who Fell to Earth as the series has transformed so much since then, but the two episodes are solid bookends to an era that has often disappointed.

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NEXT EPISODE

I can't promise any more Doctor Who this year, though I might do a Chibnall/Whittaker-era review at some point if I find the time. Next on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm finally headed back to Babylon 5, with the seasonally appropriate The Fall of Centauri Prime!

I'm sure you've got your own thoughts about the episode, so I'll point you in the direction of the comments box and leave you to it.