Doctor Who:
The Power of Three
By Chris Chibnall
“Actually, it's you they can't
give up, Doctor. And I don't think they should. Go with him. Go save every
world you can find. Who else has that chance? Life will still be here.”
Here we are with the penultimate
story with The Ponds before their big goodbye in the next story. Well The Power of Three was the one story
that we did not know much about at the time while we knew quite a bit about the
other four to make some good assumptions.
Finding out that Chris Chibnall wrote it I did have very strong
reservations about The Power of Three and was hoping he would redeem himself from
the second story of Series 7, which he wrote, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. Yes, I was truly hoping for something far
better than that abomination to one’s eyes and mind.
Well first off I give the
production crew high props for attempting something different. Here we have a light hearted story that tells
the life of the Ponds for the better part of a year in their normal lives. A year that is also shared with the Slow
Invasion and why there are black cubes all over the world. Well the black cubes are only minor and seem
to be an afterthought at times. This
story was mainly about the Ponds and what they more or less do when The Doctor
isn’t around.
For the most part I thought this
story was entertaining with some good moments in it. For one I liked the reintroduction of UNIT
and the introduction of Kate Stewart. I
thought this was a nice nod by Steven Moffat to introduce her as a character to
help bridge the gap made vacant by the passing of Nicholas Courtney. Glad they kept her around and we had more
stories that include UNIT as was evident in the 50th Anniversary
Story.
With that said I think I enjoyed
the stuff featuring the Ponds the best.
Well mainly the mad dash year where they go off with The Doctor and have
adventures and then come back. That to
me was the best part of the story. I
like the Henry the 8th stuff and the part in passing about the
Zygons seemed like it would have made a better story. I found those sequence’s to be pretty good
and the strong point of the story.
What was really poor and pretty
disappointing was the whole reveal of the villain and the reason behind the
cubes and how easily they were dealt with.
It appears the main villain was the Shakri who The Doctor thought was
only a bedtime story creation by Timelord parents. Apparently he is working for the
Tally and has to eliminate the humans before they get too powerful and
contaminant the universe. Ok, sure, but why take a year? Why send down the cubes to only give people
heart attacks? Why have a countdown on
the cubes at all and then why have them open up to reveal nothing at all? Couldn’t they have just send out a signal
without all that fanfare? This story had
me scratching my head at times especially with the orderlies with cubes in
their mouth. What was their purpose and
why were they kidnapping patients? Got
me, wish that was explained a little bit better.
What I did have a big problem
with is how easily The Doctor saved the day with the sonic screwdriver. Please can we have the Doctor save the day
the old fashion way by using his wits and rewire something or appeal to the bad
guy’s human side? It just seems so easy
for the writer to just use the sonic screwdriver as the answer. To me it just smacks of laziness and is a used
to much as the solution to problems. In
fact it is used way to much lately and I know these writers are cleverer than
that to use that crutch.
So far series 7 has been
mediocre. We had a pretty good start with Asylum of the Daleks and a really
crappy story with Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
We had a decent story with A Town Called Mercy and now we have a story
in The Power of Three which could have been better. I’m sure the next story will be better, the
farewell to the Ponds, but you know there is going to be that one big
embarrassing Moffat scene in there that he will think is great and we will be
shaking our heads at.
So The Power of Three while
enjoyable was not a well written story that had too many plot holes in it that
could have been thought out better. Let’s just hope Chris Chibnall doesn’t
write anymore for Doctor Who but I have a sneaky feeling the guy who wrote the brilliant
Broadchurch will be back for Series 8.
Grade C+
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