The Power of the Doctor

The Power of the Doctor marks the end of Jodie Whitaker’s tenure in the TASRDIS (boo) as well as Chris Chibnall’s (yay). She went out with a 90 minute spectacular timed to mark the centenary of the BBC, and spectacular it was.

I have, pretty consistently, disliked what Chibnall did with the cannon of Who. I am not saying it’s a sacred cow, unable to be touched - the Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi regeneration broke one such long-held rule of the Whoniverse and while it’s not my favourite Eleven story it broke the rule in a way that worked and made sense of a dilemma that had to be addressed sometime and was neat within the general bounds of the series. That part, 10/10 in an otherwise maybe 7/10 episode. Then Chibnall rewrote The Doctor’s history so all of that particular history was superfluous and meh. He did that several times and, seemingly, without caring. It landed, as you might guess, like a damp squib. Not just with me, but certainly here. Fortunately in the last few specials he’s focussed more on telling stand-alone stories that are clearly set in the Whoniverse but they’re that exciting Christmas party, or the fun time we saved the world (again) rather than striving to rewrite the cannon. Although it pains me to say it, he actually does a good job of this, shame he didn’t do it more often!

In this story The Master lays a suitably convoluted plan to attack Earth with two of The Doctor’s most consistent foes, the Cybermen and the Daleks, in two different time periods, our present and 1916. This is a front to capture The Doctor and impose a Time Lord punishment on her - forced regeneration into another, thus obliterating her, once and for all. Now, I have some issues with this as a plan - we know that The Doctor is not actually a Time Lord - and The Master, this particular incarnation of him in fact is the one that revealed that to her. Why is he stupid enough to assume it would work? No surprises to learn that, although it appears to be working for a while, The Doctor has planned for unspecified extreme emergencies and, with the help of Yaz, is able to defeat the plan and reverse it. Because we knew in advance this was Jodie’s last episode the fact that The Master caught her in an energy beam of fatally wounded her wasn’t exactly a shock, although who she regenerated into certainly was. In the Whoniverse 14=10 and Ncuti will be 15.

I have a sideline on not liking this particular incarnation of The Master, not because of the actor but because of the writing. The Master, to my mind, works best when they’re an opposite to The Doctor in more ways than “I’m evil and want to undermine what you’re doing, bwahahahahah.” The John Sims Master worked well against Ten because he was charming, insane and highly emotional, whereas Ten was largely driven by rational motives, he always promoted reading, study, thinking. Missy was great against Twelve because he was a grumpy, introverted, old man and she was a happy, sensual, extroverted woman. There was a redemption arc for her, with him encouraging her because he was a bit further along his own that also worked for me, rather than the classic good v evil dichotomy there. But Thirteen and the Sacha Dhawan Master are both relatively emotional incarnations and it’s too much of the same thing for my taste. It’s a shame, because many of the moments of this Master have been good and I would liked to have seen him against a different Doctor, or bring some of those moments out of a different background, one where he’s the calm, calculating one. But that just circles back to not liking Chibnall’s writing.

All that said, the story overall was decent. And there were so many great moments. The Master was disguised as Rasputin, and danced to the Boney M hit. It shouldn’t have worked but it was amazing. Yaz running to The Doctor after she’d been zapped and carrying her back into the TARDIS, awesome. Their last date, tinged with sadness because The Doctor had started leaking regeneration energy and they both knew about it - it made me cry then, and describing it later to a friend made my cry again. Loads of past Doctors, good. Loads of past companions, amazing. The heavy involvement of Ace and Tegan, nearly all brilliant. Rewriting how Tegan left the TARDIS, lazy. See my previous comments about playing with the cannon without thought. We had a throwback to 10’s mates flying the TARDIS, but it was all companions, which was nice, but Yaz flying it on her own was great.

Chris Chibnall has always had the ability to write these moments that really land well. The thing he’s done in these specials is cut out the real lows. We’re oscillating between ok and awesome rather than terrible and awesome.

There’s a lot of speculation about why David Tenant is back. I suspect that will be solved when we see Ncuti in season four of Sex Education - an agreement reached to have specials for the Dr. Who golden anniversary without involving Ncuti and all the conspiracy theories I’ve seen are rubbish. Of course I might feel that way because so many of them seem to root their arguments in a mixture of misogyny, racism and homophobia, openly or otherwise. When the arguments go, in essence, they’ve brought back a straight, white man to right the mistakes of having a woman doctor and to stop the ROG before we have a black, gay doctor.. sometimes I despair.

I wish Chibnall had handled writing Dr. Who better. Despite some truly awful stories, I’m really pleased not only that we’ve had a female doctor, two in fact with Jo Martin, but we had Jodie Whittaker play her. And that she and Mandip played their personal burgeoning friendship as an onscreen romance to the point it became cannon. Shame Chibnall was too oblivious to write it in earlier when the fans were looking at it from much earlier on and seeing the subtext… While A bit of me can’t help wonder what could have been, I’ll be forever grateful for what was. And at least it finished strong.

Bechdel Test: Pass. It’s not true to say there aren’t men in this episode. The former Doctors for example, but they’re in a tiny number of scenes. Dan leaves early. The Master is in isolation for most of the time. And we have The Doctor, Yaz, Kate, Tegan and Ace doing most of the talking. Rarely it’s about men.

Ko Test: Pass. Yaz, obviously, easily passes. Dr. Jo is here but not in enough scenes to pass.

Russo Test: Pass. Whatever I feel about how it was written, Yaz loves The Doctor, has declared her love and it’s obvious that her feelings have not gone away. The pair of them eating ice cream on top of the TARDIS felt like a last date when life is separating two people very much in love. The Doctor may not have returned Yaz’s love in the way she wanted it to be returned, but she did love her back. Damn, I’m crying again thinking about that scene. Even though it’s strictly a woman-loves-time lord romance, it sure looks like a wlw one.