The Power of the Doctor Review

The Power of the Doctor

The Doctor in distress

Story 300, Episode 869, 2022 BBC Centenary Special

Doctor: The Thirteenth Doctor

Companions: Ian Chesterton, Jo Grant, Tegan Jovanka, Melanie Bush, Ace McShane, Kate Stewart, Graham O’Brien, Yasmin Khan, Dan Lewis, Vinder

The 100th anniversary of the BBC, the final outing for the Thirteenth Doctor and Chris Chibnall, story number 300, this story had the biggest build up in nine years since the last ‘of the Doctor’ story in 2013. Oh, and it’s a blockbuster 90 minutes. Does it stick the landing? Let’s find out…

The Review

The orange spacesuit, at last!

The Power of the Doctor is a lot of things, but first and foremost, it’s exciting and not overstuffed. The Timeless Children‘s infamous long lore dump gave way to the jam-packed The Vanquishers. Finally, at 90 minutes, Chibnall has time to let the story breathe. It starts off with a quite good sequence as the CyberMasters returning robbing a bullet train in space. It had been eight years since we’d last seen it, but Chibnall gets the Thirteenth Doctor in the famous orange spacesuit as the fourth Doctor in a row to don it. Dan nearly gets killed which shakes his confidence and causes him to depart the TARDIS. It was surprising to see Dan exit so early, but it was a very realistic reaction to TARDIS travel. The good news is the Thirteenth Doctor with just Yaz works really well. For my money, give me one Doctor, one companion any day of the week, the more you add there’s too many characters to keep track of. We then get re-introduced to Ace and Tegan after a long long time off screen, and it’s fun to see both of them, even if it’s a bit of an adjustment to see how the two have aged as we always think of them as looking like their time on the show. There’s no reason to have them here other than fun, which is a valid reason to me.

The Master is Rasputin! I think that just makes sense

So, let’s talk about the plot, which is definitely the weak link of the episode. I expected a full lore deep dive into the Division, the Timeless Child, the Fugitive Doctor, and nope, got none of it. I’m honestly not that upset as I think the episode was better for it but the plot is still kind of a mess. The Master is out for revenge, and had the Cybermen kidnap a Qurunx (classic bad Chibnall name), sentient energy. They make a planet big enough to convert everyone in 1916, while in 2022 the Master is working with the Daleks to blow up volcanoes. Why in two separate time periods, it doesn’t really make sense? Why is the Master Rasputin? It doesn’t really matter though because Sacha Dhawan has a whole dance sequence to the Ra-Ra-Rasputin song which is so over the top it rules. Also, the Cybermen attack UNIT in a generally great sequence carried by Kate, Tegan, and Ace. (Again, in 2022? Why is their planet in 2016? It does not make sense). So yeah, there’s just a lot of stuff going on, the canonical trio of villains in Daleks, Cybermen, and the Master are all here. Now what?

Ace and Tegan back in the show!

The crux of the Master’s plan is that he forces the Doctor to regenerate…into the Master. It’s honestly very disquieting to have the Doctor removed from the equation and the Master going around claiming the title. Yaz shoves him out of the TARDIS and goes to meet up with Vinder who conveniently arrived on the Cyber-planet in a time-ship. Meanwhile, Ashad (well, a clone the Master made of him), leads the Cyber-attack on UNIT. There’s no time for Ashad philosophizing, but he just looks great. The Doctor isn’t entirely gone, she left behind an emergency hologram that adapts to the person listening. This leads to two of the sweetest moments of the episode, the brief reunions between the Fifth Doctor and Tegan as well as the Seventh Doctor and Ace. With everyone involved now being visibly much older, it really lands poignantly and is a standout moment. Meanwhile the Doctor ends up a mind-scape where she is surprised to meet the remnants of her past selves, starting with David Bradley’s 1st Doctor, then Doctors 5-8. It was a joy to see 5-7 get their day in an anniversary special, and any time I hear Paul McGann’s velvety voice I get excited. Here, their aged appearance works to their advantage, it’s brilliant.

The classic Doctors felt perfectly woven in

The Fugitive Doctor makes an appearance in the hologram too to help the Master de-generate back into the Doctor. She is still unexplained, but honestly, I kind of like it. There’s some mystery to the Doctor that doesn’t fit our conceptions. I think it’s far more effective at restoring the desired uncertainty to the character than the Timeless Child which just seems burdensome. We’ve got Ace parachuting off a building into the TARDIS, Tegan getting grabbed through a wall by a Cyberman but just managing to save Kate from getting converted. Overall, you truly have a sense of spectacle here. This episode reminded me a lot of later day RTD finales, the plot is pretty mediocre when you think about it, but the emotional beats all hit. Ace runs into Graham in the volcano, and the Doctor sorts everything out from there. Of course, the Master gets his revenge and zaps the Doctor with the (checks notes) Qurunx as it destroys the Cyber-planet. I swear, when you’re watching, it all flows together well, better than previous Chibnall stories.

One last look at the world

The best part of The Power of the Doctor outside of the classic companion/Doctor reunions in the denouement. The Doctor is dying, but she gets ice cream one last time with Yaz and gazes upon Earth. Yaz knows the Doctor is changing, and decides to let her go as the woman she loves won’t be the same anymore. Graham has decided to start a ‘Companions Anonymous’ group, and in just a few scenes of them talking about the Doctor it is so beautiful. In brief shots we see Katy Manning as Jo, then Bonnie Langford surprisingly back as Mel, and lastly, finally, 97-year old William Russell is back as Ian. If there’s a theme to this story, it is that the Doctor is always changing, but the positive effect and life lessons the Doctor teachers are forever. There’s a version of this story where the Doctor’s power was literally regeneration, that of the Timeless Child, but I don’t think it would have been as successful as the Doctor’s power being friendship. In Journey’s End the Doctor has turned his friends into soldiers, here they’re just normal people inspired to have the courage to do the right thing. I’ll have a lot more to say later on Jodie, but as she gives her last bow, it is with dignity. For a Doctor who loved life so much, it felt like she couldn’t get control of hers in her era. At the end though, the legacy of the Thirteenth Doctor is neatly folded in with all the others as she takes her place among the pantheon of Doctors. Oh, and then David Tennant is back, and they’re trying to convince me he’s the Fourteenth Doctor. Not buying it RTD.

The Power of the Doctor chooses not to be a finale to all the deep lore of Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker’s time on the show, but celebrates the show giving us a glimpse at the impact of the Doctor. For that, I am grateful.

8.6/10: The plot is a bit of nonsense, but considering this as Chibnall’s fourth finale, it’s his best, because as I’ve wanted for years and years, we got those little character building moments.

The Fourteenth Doctor! (…Can we not?)

Silver Nemesis Review

Silver Nemesis

The Cybermen are on the scene

Story 150, Episodes 675-677, Season 25 Episodes 6-8

Doctor: Seventh Doctor

Companions: Ace McShane

It’s the 150th story, and the 25th anniversary of Doctor Who, and we get a breezy story with neo-Nazis, Cybermen, and bizarre references to the Doctor’s secret past.

The Review

Sunday in the Park

I’ve heard a lot of negative things about Silver Nemesis, but for me, this is where the Doctor and Ace relationship really snaps into place. Ace is the Doctor’s apprentice in being punk, heck, the story starts with the two taking in a jam session of jazz music. The plot is at once complex and at once inconsequential, there are four factions, the Doctor and Ace, a group of neo-Nazis out of exile in South America, the cruel witch Lady Peinforte from the 16th century, and a bunch of Cybermen are here too. There’s some fun interplay as the groups play off of each other. I’m a sucker for Cybermen, but they’re really pretty disposable here, the Cybermen don’t feel like a legitimate scary threat but just another alien threat. Still, I like their design here and getting trolled by jazz music is great even though like Remembrance of the Daleks they ignore tons of chances to shoot the Doctor. The neo-Nazis are interesting in how blatantly political it is, but Lady Peinforte takes the cake for most interesting villain.

Lady Peinforte and Richard

Lady Peinforte is a caricature, but I don’t mind, she’s a weird lady from 1638 obsessed with the MacGuffin of the story: the ‘Nemesis’, a living metal comet the Doctor set up. In one amusingly bizarre detour she and Richard are picked up by a mega rich American researching her family past who is incredibly confused by them. The other part of this story is heavily implying the Doctor knew and hung out with the Time Lord founders, and that Peinforte has ‘figured out his secrets’. There’s one shot where McCoy looks like he’ll explode with fury on her, but then he calms down when the Cyber-Leader says he does not care about all that. Even the ending has Ace asking the Doctor who he is and he mischievously shushes her. Really, I enjoyed Silver Nemesis because of how well-paced and plotted it was, and the dynamite chemistry between McCoy and Aldred. This might just be the best Classic pairing, others, Six and Peri especially have shined in Big Finish but not the show, these two are on fire.

It’s a weird story to celebrate the 25th anniversary (complete with the Queen herself making an appearance), but it’s easy breezy fun.

8.5/10 Nothing revelatory, but undeniably a good time.

Welcome to Windsor

Nightmare in Silver Review

Nightmare in Silver

The Doctor vs. Mr. Clever

Story 238, Episode 797, Series 7 Episode 12

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: Clara Oswald

An attempt to make the Cybermen scary again goes awry with an episode that shows Neil Gaiman did not have a lot of time to rewrite.

The Review

The Cybermen

The idea for Nightmare in Silver was simple, the Cybermen weren’t scary anymore, so we’re going to turn to Neil Gaiman to make them scary. Well, it doesn’t work. This story was not meant to originally be where it slots in now, which we’ll get to later, but Gaiman fundamentally goes the wrong direction with the Cybermen. Now they have super speed, can ‘upgrade’ people on the fly with Cyber-mites, detach body parts, swivel their head around, etc. The Cybermen were never a threat because of how powerful they were, it was what they represented: abandoning basic humanity in conquest of technological advance. Starting with the Cybermen housing skeletons of the dead in Dark Water and refined further in World Enough and Time and Ascension of the Cybermen, the new series has learned from this mistake and focused on Cybermen body horror. The super-powered Cybermen here though, still lead to a miss of a story.

Clara with a gun

Gaiman wrote this story for Amy, and once you know that you can’t help but see how Clara’s dialogue would make much more sense coming from Karen Gillan. She’s a lot more aggressive and detached than Clara normally is, and it sticks out like a sore thumb as she only gets this way for good by Series 9. The children she babysits, Angie and Artie, come along, Artie does next to nothing while Angie is an annoying teenager who storms into a barracks demanding entertainment because she’s bored. The Doctor has a mind-showdown with a Cyber-planner called Mr. Clever which gives Matt Smith very fun moments playing a sinister Doctor. Still, isn’t the whole Cyberman thing that they don’t have emotions? Mr. Clever is flowing with them. Warwick Davis is a highlight as the Emperor in disguise, but this leads to a way too easy ending as everybody just gets insta-teleported as the Cybermen are imploded on the planet. Oh, and the whole tonal dissonance of taking place on a ruined theme park doesn’t help either. Don’t get me wrong, Nightmare in Silver is still watchable, but it’s quite disappointing.

Seriously, just read the lines blind and you’d guess this was a story with Amy circa Series 5. The Doctor also says Clara is in a ‘skirt that’s too tight’, which is just uncomfortable for everyone involved.

7.5/10 Still very watchable, but a lot to be desired

Emperor Porridge

Attack of the Cybermen Review

Attack of the Cybermen

Fancy seeing you chaps here

Story 137, Episodes 627-628, Season 22 Episodes 1-2

Doctor: Sixth Doctor

Companions: Peri Brown

The team that brought you Resurrection of the Daleks does it for the Cybermen, and manages to improve somewhat.

The Review

Lytton, the scamp himself

Maybe I was in a better mood for it, but I liked this a fair bit better than Resurrection of the Daleks despite it not being a great story. For one, it relies heavily on your knowledge of 60s Cyber-lore, and still manages to confuse it by the addition of Telos scenes set after The Tomb of the Cybermen. The same actor returned to play the Controller, which is pretty great if the character was at all recognizable. Also returning from Resurrection is Lytton, who I almost forgot about, the cool henchmen of the Supreme Daleks. Turns out he’s gone good, he’s working for the Cryons, the delicate indigenous of Telos in very real danger of extinction. A lot of the first episode is around Lytton supposedly leading a diamond heist, but he’s really hot on the trail of the Cybermen. Unlike the overwhelming hysterics of Resurrection, a slower pace both leads to dull moments and me not intensely disliking it.

Cybermen bossing around the Doctor and Peri

The Sixth Doctor is still overbearing, and again in a baffling decision tries to mix up the TARDIS’ chameleon circuit, because the audience is already not alienated enough after his first story. Peri in the first episode wears a skimpy pink outfit so absurd even the Cybermen step in to get her some proper clothes for the second episode, and we’re all grateful for it. While the first episode has a fair bit of fun with the Doctor and Peri prattling around, the second has a lot of them talking to the Cryons, ice aliens who are just hard to understand. Everything ends rather abruptly too, the Cybermen get blown up with the help of some escaped slaves, and Lytton dies with the Doctor ruing that he misjudged him so badly. The Cybermen don’t even get close to their plot of saving Mondas from The Tenth Planet. It’s just a big bunch of Cyber-lore with not much going on, apart from some fun moments, especially in the first episode.

I will say it is an improvement from The Twin Dilemma, but the Sixth Doctor still is an arrogant ass. Also, landing in Totter’s Lane again for some more nostalgia bait. Maybe the Doctor still is not himself as he calls Peri ‘Susan’, but it’s going too long.

7.5/10 I am a sucker for Cybermen

The Doctor doesn’t hate guns yet

Closing Time Review

Closing Time

Craig and the Doctor on the hunt

Story 223, Episode 782, Series 6 Episode 12

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song

In his last outing before his death, the Doctor decides to visit Craig for a surprisingly uplifting episode.

The Review

Craig inadvertently creating major continuity issues

Maybe it was my dull mood, but The Lodger did not strike my fancy nearly as much as when I had first watched it. Then surprisingly, I found myself really enjoying Closing Time. I think this is because it’s strongest parts aren’t comedy, though the Doctor being able to ‘shush’ any human is quite funny and the repeated assumptions he and Craig are a couple thankfully come off as sweet and not homophobic. The Doctor’s melancholy, his worry that he is putting his friends in situations that will get them killed, it’s all here. Matt Smith plays just straight weird-o excellently, but I like him even better when he’s sadly monologuing about how long he’s lived, how many people he’s lost. In many ways, it’s a sad episode, the Doctor is going to die soon, and he’s chosen Craig as his last visit.

Craig becoming a Cyberman

James Corden is once again excellent as Craig, in the Up All Night prequel we see him and baby Alfie as Sophie prepares to leave for the weekend. He’s really uncertain about being able to cope as a father, and if he can prove himself to Alfie. Yes, it’s pretty cheesy that Craig defeats the Cybermen who have been abducting and converting people because he hears his baby crying and goes into dad-mode, but hey, it’s a light-hearted episode. This is the least consequential the Cybermen have ever been, and the fact that it feels fine is an indictment of their slipping New Who status until Dark Water. The episode ends with River getting set-up to kill the Doctor on Lake Silencio, but the majority of the episode is silly fun with a right bit of melancholy.

No one ever really talks about Closing Time, but I think it is secretly one of the most digestible Doctor Who stories ever. Let’s just ignore the weird snarl with seeing Amy and Rory apparently before The Impossible Astronaut.

9/10 The Doctor in a Stetson randomly telling kids they are welcome for saving the world somehow works.

Tick-tock

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang Review

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

The end of the universe in a girl’s bedroom

Story 212, Episode 768-769, Series 5 Episodes 12-13

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song, Amy Pond, Rory Williams

Never has Doctor Who burst with so much possibility and excitement as in the best season finale in show history, an epic adventure that narratively wraps up Series 5 and leaves tantalizing questions unresolved.

The Review

One of the most sensational speeches in show history

The ‘season finale’ of new Doctor Who is a funny thing. Usually (hopefully) there is some arc going throughout the season, be it as simple as the name ‘Bad Wolf’, or random appearances of Missy. Never before though has every episode in a season felt as completely essential as in Series 5. Everything is paid off. From the start we see Van Gogh, then Churchill, then Liz X. From there the Doctor joins River at Stonehenge in year 102, as the Pandorica, a box containing supposedly the worst monster in the universe is opening. All of the Doctor’s enemies descend on England, but the Doctor (seemingly) tells them all off with just a speech warning them about all the times he’s beaten them before…and wouldn’t they want to see someone else try first? Meanwhile, Rory is back, as a Roman centurion, but Amy doesn’t remember him. It seriously a thrill to see Rory again, and the Doctor not clocking that Rory shouldn’t be here for a full minute is great.

The assemblage of monsters

It all quickly goes wrong. River gets in the TARDIS which takes her to 2010 where she sees an alien broke into Amy’s house, and the whole Stonehenge scenario is dreamed from her mind. Rory, and all the Romans, are Autons, and the enemies were actually here to trap the Doctor in the Pandorica to try and prevent the TARDIS from blowing up the universe. River fails to stop the TARDIS blowing up, the Doctor is imprisoned, Amy remembers Rory just in time for his Auton conditioning to take over and kill her as every star explodes at once leaving only Earth. When we return it’s with young Amelia in 1996 who still imagines stars even though they’ve all gone out. She gets a message to visit the Pandorica in the National Museum, and inside is…herself from the future. The tiny glimpses we get of the 1850 years of Earth without stars are quite fun.

The Last Centurion gets the girl

The Doctor escapes by his future self returning to give Rory his sonic screwdriver. Is it a cheap cop-out? Yeah it kind of is, but it’s done so stylishly we don’t mind. He takes young Amelia’s drink early in her wait at the museum and she later says she’s thirsty so the Doctor goes back and returns her that same drink. It’s Moffat time travel genius at its absolute best. The exploding TARDIS has served as Earth’s sun, and River was stuck within it so the Doctor busts her out. After some shenanigans with him getting nearly killed by a stone Dalek’s gun, the plan becomes clear. The Doctor can ride the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS, which will explode its restoring light across the universe, sealing up the cracks in time. Oh, and I didn’t even mention Rory staying behind those 1850 years to guard the Pandorica, waiting for the Doctor and Amy. The Lone Centurion. It’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done on this show.

Amy wills the Doctor back to life

The Doctor then winds back through the history of Series 5, showing us The Lodger, and then we get the famous scene where the future Doctor tells Amy to trust him in Flesh and Stone. Finally, we’re back at the beginning, with young Amelia having fallen asleep waiting for the Doctor to return in her house. That house turns out to be the key to Amy’s tragedy: why no ducks in the duck pond, where are her parents, why does she live alone in that big house? Because the crack in the wall took them. Now, she’ll have her family, and not need the Doctor. So it goes. Amy and Rory get married, and Amy is overjoyed to meet her parents. With one last little push by River, she remembers the Doctor, and angrily wills him back into existence. Still, what does ‘Silence Will Fall’ mean? Who blew up the TARDIS? Who is River really? Series 5 ties every last episode (yes even Vampires of Venice) into one perfect arc showing how Amy discovered herself and the universe. It’s ambitious, manic, genius, and the show has never felt bigger.

It’s ambitious, incredible, and rip-roaring entertaining. It’s no secret why this season kickstarted the show into an international phenomenon. No finale before or sense has felt quite as satisfying, and left quite as much tantalizingly to explore.

10/10 A true epic of restarting the universe

More River to come. (And the fez was always stupid, the wife is always right)

The Five Doctors Review

The Five Doctors

The titular four Doctors



Story 129, Episodes 602, 20th Anniversary Special

Doctor: The First Doctor, The Second Doctor, The Third Doctor, The Fourth Doctor, The Fifth Doctor

Companions: Susan Foreman, The Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, K9, Romana II, Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough

Doctor Who celebrates its 20th Anniversary in style, bringing back classic Doctors and probing deeper into Gallifreyan history.

The Review

The First Doctor and Susan meet the current team

Anniversary specials are a funny thing. We all want to see our favorite characters from the show return, but also don’t want something that is dumb and stupid. It would be exceedingly difficult to bring as many characters back as The Five Doctors does and come up with some killer emotional story, so it doesn’t really try. For the big reveals we return to Gallifrey and finally meet Rassilon, who for a decade has been spoken of as the legendary founder of the Time Lords. That at least makes the story feel special rather than tossing in characters. First off, we see shots from the unfinished Shada representing the Fourth Doctor and Romana, who we are told are ‘stuck the vortex’. It’s a shame Tom Baker didn’t return, as seeing him and Lalla Ward again was genuinely heart-warming. With William Hartnell having passed, Richard Hurndall is cast as the First Doctor, and he cuts a warmer figure than Hartnell. Susan is also back as a woman now, curiously the Fifth Doctor doesn’t seem too happy to see her. She then twists her ankle, which is honestly a cruel joke played on Carole Ann Ford.

The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane reunited

The Five Doctors smartly gives us some character pairings we haven’t seen in a while starting with the Second Doctor meeting the Brigadier, and the Third Doctor meeting Sarah Jane. Troughton is delightfully and completely himself, and despite his hair having gone completely white Pertwee still has his sharp edge. Sarah Jane doesn’t get as much to do as she deserves, there’s no really interactions with the Fifth Doctor and she falls down a hill. Turlough gets stuck in the TARDIS for most of it, but Tegan does get to hang around with the First Doctor which is quite a fun crossover. As for the Fifth Doctor he gets some time on Gallifrey taking to Lord President Borusa and other members of the high council, trying to figure out who brought them all here. It’s a good narrative structure to have all these pairings and bring them together at the end.

Rassilon makes an appearance at last

We of course get some villains, the Daleks are only represented by a lone entry while we get a lot of the Master and the Cybermen. The Master is tasked with rescuing the Doctor from the ‘Death Zone’ on Gallifrey, where Rassilon’s tomb is, but once again Ainley doesn’t get to do much despite putting in a good acting performance. I don’t know who expected a lot of the Cybermen in this story, but it is fun to see their silver suits out in the foggy Welsh highlands of the Death Zone. Certainly would take them over lots of EXTERMINATE! In the end, President Borusa turns out to the the villain, desiring Rassilon’s immortality, and he gets it as others before him, immortality as stone on Rassilon’s tomb. The First Doctor gets the pivotal line goading Borusa into it, a good decision by the script. As they all leave, the Fifth Doctor is appointed President of Gallifrey, so he jumps in the TARDIS and flees. After all, that’s how it started. Listen, The Five Doctors is just pure fun. We even get illusions of Liz, Yates, Jamie, Zoe to round it out. Classic characters, a good plot, and an ending ensuring the show continues.

It opens with William Hartnell’s monologue to Susan from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and ends with the Peter Davison Doctor running away from Gallifrey. All told, it’s good fun. I just wish the companions other than the Brigadier got more to do.

9.25/10 A great template for future anniversary specials. Give us characters!

The Master in discussions with the Cybermen



Earthshock Review

Earthshock

They’re back!

Story 121, Episodes 572-575, Season 19 Episodes 19-22

Doctor: The Fifth Doctor

Companions: Adric, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka

In a complete whopper of a story, Earthshock delivers two of the most shocking twists in Doctor Who history.

The Review

Trying to solve the conundrum

Despite ruling the Second Doctor era, by the 80s the Cybermen had to have become the stuff of legends: most of their appearances wiped from BBC archives and only appearing for a mediocre story in the 70s. Here they are back with a jaw-dropping first episode cliffhanger. The first episode is one of the best in show history, it is a tightly directed tense affair with a crew of humans encountering the Doctor and evil androids in a subterranean cave. The fact that the three following episodes take place on a freighter is a bit of a let-down, but the pace is kept up all the same. The Cybermen look good, but there is too much emotion in their voices for supposed creatures of logic and logic alone. While that may become a bigger problem later, there’s no such issue here as the Cybermen are clearly a deadly serious threat.

The Cyber-Leader thinking he’s won

The other big twist is: Adric dies. It’s by far the both significant on-screen death in show history, and it is a whopper. The episode starts with the Doctor blowing up at Adric who wants to return to E-Space, but turns out Adric was just bluffing to prove to the Doctor how valuable he is so people stop making fun of him. Davison’s portrayal of the Doctor continues to grow, and he is firing on all cylinders here: he is utterly and completely the Doctor. Their plan to destroy Earth with a bomb failed, the Cybermen now plan to fly the freighter into Earth. In a perfect scenario to use Adric’s math skills, he tries to break through three ‘logic locks’ placed by the Cybermen on the ship. He gets through two, enough to send the ship back in time for some reason, but one last Cyberman stops him from getting the final one after everyone else evacuates. The freighter now becoming the dinosaur-killing asteroid, Adric realizes he’ll never know if he was right as the ship explodes. Having just used his dumb golden math star to kill the Cyber-Leader, the Doctor has no words as he watches Adric die. There’s no bouncy music on the credits, just silence and the shattered star of Adric.

Classic Who almost never reaches the heights of Earthshock‘s ambition. Bringing back a classic enemy in shock fashion, a tensely directly story, and concluding it with a shocking death.

10/10. You know, this story isn’t perfect but it still gets a 10. Why? Because I could watch it again and again, it is a classic in every sense of the word.

Adric’s death was unnecessary, but perfectly in character: and that’s what makes it disquietingly perfect

The Next Doctor Review

The Next Doctor

Merry Christmas!

Story 199, Episode 752, Doctor Who 2008 Christmas Special

Doctor: The Tenth Doctor

The Doctor is without a companion, in a fun story that ultimately could’ve been so much more.

The Review

The Doctors

For really the first time, we saw the Doctor ‘behind the scenes’ so to speak, in-between companions, just flying about. He arrives on Christmas Eve in London in 1851, and quickly meets a guy who thinks he’s the Doctor played by David Morrissey. Seeing his interpretations of the Doctor legend are really funny he has a normal screwdriver that makes noise when you tap it, and the TARDIS is a big hot air balloon. He even has a companion, ‘Rosita’, clearly another Rose call-back. It turns out that he’s actually just a human, Jackson Lake, who is suffering a fugue state where he thinks he’s the Doctor. It’s an entertaining story, but instead of diving into what it means to be ‘the Doctor’, Tennant’s true Doctor quickly takes over as the lead hero role. The setting for this story is good fun as modern-day Christmas episodes apart from not feeling all that Christmas had been a bit worn out. It’s a nice change of pace. The point is that the Doctor still is feeling glum from Journey’s End, but here Jackson leads the citizens of London in cheering the Doctor and he agrees to spend Christmas with him. It all feels a bit too little too late, as we know it doesn’t really fix the Doctor.

I mean a giant steampunk Cyberman is pretty cool

The flip-side is this Christmas we get more Cybermen in the mix, and they are perfectly adequate but don’t do much. They are aided by the malevolent Mercy Hartigan who is getting revenge on all the rich people in the city not doing enough for the poor…or something? She’s mainly just a megalomaniac, and although Dervla Kirwan gives a very memorable evil performance there is not much reason why she is evil. Still, the visuals of the Cybermen walking through a snowstorm in a graveyard and the giant steampunk Cyber-king rising over Victorian London are plenty fun. There’s some stuff about Hartigan overriding the Cybermen with her exceptionally strong intellect, and the Doctor opening her eyes to the horror of who she’s become causing a big explosion destroying the Cybermen. Still, she is underdeveloped and sadly is not the iconic villain she could’ve been. Despite all this, it’s still a fun episode and has a high rewatch score, especially with there being few things that scream Christmas more than it snowing in Victorian London. It’s a good episode, but could’ve been great.

The Next Doctor is a fun comforting capper to Doctor Who‘s biggest year ever in 2008.

8/10 It’s a fun little story.

One of the could’ve been greats

Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children Review

Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children

The most devastating meeting ever

Story 295, Episodes 860-861, Series 12 Episodes 9-10

Doctor: The Thirteenth Doctor

Companions: Ryan Sinclair, Yasmin Khan, Graham O’Brien

Series 12 concludes with the most earth-shattering story in Doctor Who history, completely changing the way we view the Doctor in one story that is so colossal my head is still spinning.

The Review

The Doctor and Ashad having a conversation

Part two was so huge that I want to jump ahead but we do have to spend some time on part one. It starts out with the Doctor and the fam visiting the last seven humanities in whatever galaxy they are in (I’m going to go with Tiberian Spiral and it all lines up well with Nightmare in Silver) to save them from Ashad and the Cybermen. Ryan and the Doctor get separated from Graham and Yaz, who end up on a Cybermen troop carrier, and are visited by Ashad who re-awakens the Cybermen on it. The human’s goal was to get to Ko Sharmus and the mysterious Boundary, supposedly the only way outside of the galaxy. It turns out Ko Sharmus is actually an old man, and the boundary leads to…the ruins of Gallifrey. Out of which the Master drops out, no explanation of how he got away from the Spyfall situation, but we don’t need one of those from the Master.  Ascension of the Cybermen is a good episode thanks to the very real threat of the awakening Cybermen, and Ashad is such a frightening presence that it drives the pace. That said, we don’t really get any answers to any questions about what is going on, nor more hints at the Timeless Child.

The Master and Ashad. “Let’s workshop this.”

Well enough about that episode, it’s time to talk about the episode that contains, I think without a doubt, the most lore ever. See, revealing the truth about the history of the Time Lords is one thing, but revealing truth about the Doctor is another. Our guide throughout all this is Sacha Dhawan’s Master, and Dhawan absolutely nails it throughout this episode. I thought nobody could come close to Michelle Gomez, but Dhawan’s energy and manic charisma is truly something to behold. I can accept that the Master went crazy again, but I would really have liked some in-universe acknowledgement that Missy did end up standing with the Doctor. The Master could reveal to the Doctor that he did choose her side, and that could have further underscored how earth-shattering the Timeless Child story was. He invites Ashad and the Cybermen troop carrier to dock in the ruins of the citadel, and learns Ashad’s final plan: to remove all organic elements in the Cybermen and make them mechanized. The Master is disappointed that Ashad’s plans were just to make them into robots, and I agree. Dumb plan. So the Master kills Ashad in cold blood.

The fam with the anti-Cybermen gear, including a gold particle disperser of course

Let’s check in on the companions. In a story absolutely filled to the brim with Time Lord lore, the companions take a back seat. The pairing of Graham and Yaz was a good one, and leads to a scene where Graham praises Yaz as the best woman he’s ever known. It’s beautiful, but I wish we had seen more of what Graham praises Yaz for throughout the past two seasons. Hilariously, Yaz says Graham is not so bad himself, apparently a love letter if you’re from Yorkshire. Ryan doesn’t do much except for use his basketball skills to throw a bomb to destroy some Cybermen and react just like a guy his age would. I actually feel that Ryan has been pretty well-developed as a character, and Tosin Cole was able to do a lot with not many lines. Graham, Yaz, and the two surviving humans from the settlement disguise themselves in Cybermen armor to escape the troop carrier. The companions have been much more developed this season, and I hope we get a good goodbye to them. One of the surviving humans is a middle-aged woman, Ravio, who I think could be a good match for Graham. They all take a TARDIS back to 2020 London.

Tecteun and the Timeless Child

Ascension of the Cybermen features the story of a boy named Brendan in early 20th century century Ireland, found abandoned as a baby, who becomes a police officer. He somehow survives a gunshot wound and fall into a canyon, grows old, then his un-aged dad and former captain show up and begin brutally mind-wiping him. It turns out to have been an allegory for the founding of Gallifrey as the Master shows the Doctor within the Matrix. Gallifrey’s indigenous people were a group called the Shobogans, which is apparently straight from the EU. One of them, Tecteun, an explorer, found a child that had emerged from a gateway. She brought her back to Gallifrey and tried to find out what she was, but got no answer. One day the child fell to her death and regenerated, and after forcing several regenerations out of her Tecteun found the secret of regeneration. She proved it on herself and distributed the gift to the Time Lord elite founding Time Lord society. That child, of course, was the Doctor (though for a beat I thought it was going to be the Master). So there is a hell of a lot to unpack here.

Brendan, the metaphor Doctor. Ireland was always a cover for Gallifrey.

This is the most info we have ever been definitively shown about the foundation of Gallifrey, and Chibnall has chosen to go down the path of ‘the Doctor is a special Time Lord’ and not ‘the Doctor is a random Time Lord who left Gallifrey and became a hero’. I have to say, I kind of prefer the latter, because it shows that anybody can be special and be a hero. But in Chibnall’s defense, there have been many clues pointing at the Doctor being special, mostly from the Seventh Doctor era but the Hybrid sort of fits that. I was initially excited, then I got pretty down on all of the Doctor is special stuff, but now I’m kind of drawing myself back in. The problem though is that the onus is now on Chibnall to explain everything, and there are several loose ends: Rassilon and Omega, and what became of Tecteun? I assume the two unseen Time Lords that Tecteun bows to are supposed to be them. Was Tecteun the woman from The End of Time? Who is Susan? Her being the Timeless Child would actually make far more sense honestly. Were the Shobogans humans? We never found out if the Boundary always went to Gallifrey or not. Lastly, I see why this was a shattering revelation for the Doctor, but I don’t think it quite ‘laid her low’ like the Master thought it would. Not getting an answer to most of these questions in Whittaker’s era would feel unfinished.

Look at this beautiful boy

Regardless of my hesitation around making the Doctor the pillar of Time Lord history, and leaving us with tons of questions, I am excited about one thing: Ruth. Ruth is heavily implied to be a pre-Hartnell incarnation of the Doctor, working for ‘the Division’, Time Lord black ops. What really excites me about her is Jo Martin’s performance, who absolutely nails it as the Doctor. Still, it rings weird to me that a pre-Hartnell incarnation would call herself the Doctor, let alone have a police box TARDIS. The First Doctor just stole a random TARDIS, and this has been explicitly confirmed. Martin rocks though, so look to see more of her. The Doctor uses all of her history, known and unknown, to break out of the Matrix and we got a montage of all the known Doctors + Ruth and the pre-First Doctor faces from The Brain of Morbius because has Chibnall really waited 44 years to pay off that plot thread? Oh and one last thing, Ko Sharmus destroys the CYBERMAN/TIME LORD HYBRIDS THE MASTER MADE. They are Cybermen in Time Lord regalia, they are able to regenerate, they are amazing. It is weird that the Doctor can’t bring herself to kill them with the DEATH PARTICLE ASHAD HAD but we’re supposed to be fine with Ko Sharmus doing it. Oh, and six and a half years after saving Gallifrey, it and all the Time Lords are apparently super dead. Gallifrey whiplash! I guess Rassilon is still out there…

This story, especially part two, was as narratively dense as anything in show history. For as many revelations as there were, it still kind of worked. Not all of it, but a lot. And finally using the show theme as in-universe music for the Doctor montage was awesome. Got to give credit to audacity. Also loved the Tennant-esque ending with the Doctor getting immediately arrested by Judoon.

9/10 My head is still reeling, but amazing production values, pacing, and performances make this a blockbuster to remember.

The Fugitive Doctor??