Last night’s episode of Doctor Who, “The Power of Three”, felt like a really long segment of the season seven prequel Pond Life with a bit of The Twilight Zone thrown in for good measure. But it didn’t really pan out that well. I wanted this to be a good episode, but I don’t think it was.
A lot of this happens
This episode was written by none other than Chris Chibnall, and for those playing at home, you know him as the guy who wrote the second episode of this season, “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” as well as the aforementioned prequel Pond Life. He also did other things, but I covered that in my “Dinosaur” review and I hate repeating myself. And though this differs from his stock of dinosaurs and spaceships on a crash course themes, it continued to play with the theme of what exactly happens to the life of a companion with mixed results.
Let’s review, shall we? “The Power of Three” opens with an Amy voice over talking about living the life of a part-time time travelling companion of The Doctor and being a normal linear progression of time person with a job, with friends and family, with a life. This is set to a greatest hits collection of clips of their adventures. Then a little black box shows up on their nightstand as they reaffirm their love of their normie lives.
Let’s bring in this week’s titles.
Now on Minecraft
Rory’s dad, Brian, shows up at 6:30 in the morning doing his best Wilf impression to announce the arrival of the cubes en masse around the world. The world promptly freaks out while going on about their lives calm as can be. Stiff upper lip and all.
The Doctor monocles the boxes remarking that they are all the same down to the molecular level. Someone on the tele says that no Earthly mind would have knowledge of the cubes, so of course now is the perfect time that a SWAT team of soldiers in black, who I so so so, wanted to be Torchwood, breach the Pond’s residence.
Turns out: not Torchwood. *sigh* Turns out: it’s UNIT! *kind of a yay* So, new UNIT, headed by new blonde lady person, Kate Stewart, located the tachyon particles or chrono resonance or something of the TARDIS and have come to consult with The Doctor. They’ve got a new base under the Tower of London now.
The new head of U.N.I.T., Kate
The Doctor informs them of the very-little-to-nothing he knows of the boxes and then waiting. Which is what most of this episode is, them waiting for the cubes to do something. The Doctor can’t take standing still so he heads off in his TARDIS and leaves the Ponds to stay on Earth watching their cubes and living their lives. This was in July.
Amy agrees to be a bridesmaid and Rory gets hired on full time at the hospital. Brian keeps a video log of the cubes. Sometime in December a vacant eyed little girl sits in the waiting room of Rory’s hospital stroking a cube while here and there patients disappear at the hands of hexagon mouthed twin nurses. Now it’s June of the next year, cubes still litter the Earth, but no one really cares anymore. Amy and Rory are at a party when The Doctor pops back in to take them on a wedding anniversary adventure to 1819. They return the same day they left but seven weeks older. Here Brian corners The Doctor about what happens to the people that travel with him.
I actually did think this episode was a bit more entertaining than “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”, but I agree with you on all other counts. I’ll admit to never having been as attached to The Ponds as I was to Rose or Donna, but I do really like them. Or at least I did. Where I was really worried about their send off next week and all the doom and gloom quotes we’d heard from Moffat before the show aired…now I’m just kind of ready for them to be gone already. These past few episodes have just made me ready for them to move on, because I’m not a big fan of this popping in and out of their lives storytelling. I like my over-arching stories, and this doesn’t lend itself to that.
Plus, I really just want to know what’s up with Oswin or whatever Jenna-Louise’s character is going to be named. Time to move on, and all these episodes are telling me is that the writers are bored with The Ponds now too.