Who Review: The Power of the Doctor

The TARDIS crew responds to an attack on a space train. Cybermen want the precious cargo on board, and despite everyone’s best efforts, they succeed in making off with it. Meanwhile, in 1916 Siberia, Rasputin is acting very strangely–even more strangely than usual. He instructs the Tzar and his family to take a long holiday, leaving the palace in his care. Mesmerized by Rasputin’s hypnotic eyes, the Tzar agrees. Back in 2012, a couple of the Doctor’s old companions are investigating strange occurrences: paintings being taken down for restoration they clearly didn’t need, and disappearing seismologists in Romania. How are these all connected? What is the strange cargo the Cybermen need? And what’s the meaning behind the miniaturized Cyberman one of the old companions received? The stakes are high as the Thirteenth Doctor faces her final showdown against her darkest enemies…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those who haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

The opening to this story takes us back to the first time we met the Thirteenth Doctor, crashing through the roof of a train to rescue the passengers from a strange alien creature. This time, the incursion onto the train was planned, and the alien threat recognizable, though now they refer to themselves as “Cyber Masters.” (Remember what happened on Gallifrey during the last Cyberman encounter? Okay, that was the “Timeless Child” story and I don’t blame you if you’ve erased that fiasco from your memory. To sum up, The Master gave the Cybermen Time Lord “powers”… which basically means they can now regenerate.) It turns out the precious cargo is a child who is beamed off the train with the Cybermen… masters… whatever.

After the encounter on the train, Dan decides he’s had enough. He was nearly killed by the Cybermen, and he thinks he should go home and get his life in order–something he feels better equipped to do after his time with the Doctor. They say their goodbyes (well, Yaz does–the Doctor hates goodbyes) and I breathe a sigh of relief. I never liked Dan as a character, and it only bodes well for the episode that they got rid of him early.

Of course, Rasputin isn’t really Rasputin… it’s the Master in disguise! But what’s his cunning and nefarious scheme this time? Surely sending the Russian Tzar and his family away in 1916 could be seen as an attempt to save their lives. Why? Is he trying to change history? No, he just needs the use of the palace. Why? I’m not exactly sure. Perhaps it was explained and I missed it. Otherwise, this seems like an excuse to claim Rasputin wasn’t really the mad monk of history but the Master using his powers of hypnosis to control the rich and powerful. Chibbers would never do something as nonsensical as that, or have the Master play Boney M’s “Rasputin” in the palace. That would be ludicrous!

Sidebar: Have you grown a little weary of the mad, manic Master? This isn’t a criticism of either John Simm or Sasha Dhawan. Both are fine actors and do a great job. It’s more a criticism of the direction RTD and Chibbers took the character, making him a victim of mania and extreme mental illness, and downplaying the civilized veneer he had in Classic Who. In this regard, Missy, my least favorite incarnation of the Master, is actually more like the original Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley versions. Sure, Missy was as looney tunes as all the Masters before her, but she concealed this under a dignified and cultured persona. It would be nice to see a return to a more Delgado-like Master in future incarnations. What do you think?

Being the Thirteenth Doctor’s last story and the last story before the 60th Anniversary specials coming in November 2023, there had to be some Classic Who callbacks. The Master, the Cybermen, and the Daleks are all there. Trailers for the story also revealed the return of Tegan (Fifth Doctor companion) and Ace (Seventh Doctor companion). It was nice to see them have full roles in the story, too, not just walk-on cameos. Their first encounter with the Thirteenth Doctor was a rehash of the “Why didn’t you come back for me?” or “Where have you been?” complaint, which made a lot more sense with Sarah Jane (see “School Reunion”) than it does here. After all, Tegan left the Doctor of her own volition (“Resurrection of the Daleks”), and the last we saw of Ace in the Classic series was her walking off arm-in-arm with the Doctor at the end of “Survival” in 1989. The Fourth Doctor ditched Sarah Jane after he got a call to return to Gallifrey claiming he couldn’t take her with him (“Hand of Fear”). It would be reasonable for her to expect he would come back for her. As far as we know, Tegan and Ace parted with the Doctor on mutual terms. Why would he hunt them down for a cup of tea and a catch-up? Surely they knew better than that.

Tegan and Ace are in the employ of UNIT, working under Kate Stewart as “freelancers.” The miniaturized Cyberman Tegan received shows it’s true purpose when it decompresses, becoming not only a full-sized living Cyberman but also a “Russian doll” creating a troop of Cybermen/masters to invade UNIT HQ. Tegan and Ace separate with Tegan helping Kate to fend off the Cybermen while the TARDIS drops Ace off in Bolivia where she is to stop the Daleks from flooding the Earth with lava from triggered volcanic eruptions. It seems they have a base under a volcano in Bolivia from which to execute this scheme. Sure. Why not? Have Bolivian volcanoes been in the news recently? Just curious why Bolivia.

No sooner has she arrived at the underground base than Ace runs into Graham–one of the Thirteenth Doctor’s companions from her first two seasons. Graham shows her psychic paper which reveals to Ace that he’s Graham and concerned about the Daleks and the attempted drilling that will disrupt the Earth’s tectonic plates. I guess out of this deep concern, he just hopped on a plane to Bolivia and made his way down to the Dalek underground base armed only with psychic paper. As you do. At least Sarah Jane had Mr. Smith and K-9 to help her in her post-Doctor life. Graham is armed with… psychic paper?! This is by no means just a contrivance to shoehorn an old “fam” member into Thirteenth’s last story. Chibbers would never do that. We roll our eyes and move on.

A more interesting storyline that is left unused is the fact that the Doctor was tipped off about this Dalek invasion plan by a rogue Dalek who is unhappy that the current Daleks perpetuate the Dalek race, not the original Kaled line. This Dalek would love to see these second-class mutants wiped out of the universe so the pure, original Kaled line could persist. The Daleks have always been quasi-Nazi racists, and this would be worth developing as a Dalek story. But no, not on Chibber’s watch.

What’s the Master’s grand plan this time? He wants to destroy the Doctor, of course. But not simply by destroying her and removing her ability to regenerate. This time he wants to use Time-Lord regeneration power to become the Doctor. He wants to take over the Doctor persona so the Doctor as a person no longer exists. As the Doctor, he would then ruin her reputation on Earth and throughout the universe. How would he pull this off? To his credit, Chibbers doesn’t pull a deus ex machina to make it work. He uses concepts and technology already introduced: the captured girl, a strange planet outside of Earth’s orbit in 1916, the Cybermen/master’s ability to regenerate, and the Daleks who capture the Doctor and bring her to the Master. The scheme is appropriately convoluted for both the Master and writer Chris Chibnall, though I think previous showrunner Steven Moffat would have approved.

In a scene reminiscent of Superman II (the 1979 movie with Christopher Reeve–arguably the best of the four movies he made), the Doctor goes into a chamber where, using regenerative power drawn from the Cybermen/masters and power from the strange planet, the Master becomes the Doctor. His Rasputin figure slumps lifeless while his clean-shaven, short-haired self occupies the Doctor’s clothes. That’s right, it’s not simply a mind transfer–Thirteen’s body with the Master’s mind–but a total body-and-mind take-over. Which, strictly speaking, isn’t really a regeneration, is it? I’m not convinced this really counts, but for plot purposes, it doesn’t matter. Call it what you will.

Is this it? Is the Doctor dead? Of course not! Her consciousness is at the brink of death, the point on the precipice of regeneration where the old becomes the new. This is visualized for us with the Doctor at a literal cliff’s edge where she encounters some of her previous selves explaining where she is and encouraging her to fight back. Is this where the Tenth and Twelfth Doctors were in their final stories when they tried to resist changing? This time she needs to succeed.

It was a pleasant surprise to have cameos from the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctors, as well as David Bradley returning to play William Hartnell as the First Doctor. I gather Tom Baker would have come back as the Fourth Doctor, but his schedule didn’t permit. This is sad, and to me would have been worth rescheduling the shoot to make it work. Tom hasn’t appeared as the Doctor in an episode of Who since he left in 1981 (“The Five Doctors” doesn’t count since they used footage from “Shada”) and the chances of it happening get fewer as the years go on. I also wonder why they couldn’t find good look/sound-alikes for the Second and Third Doctors. It might have been fun to get Sam Troughton and Sean Pertwee to fill the roles. I guess we’ll have to see what RTD has planned for the 60th Anniversary.

Five and Seven also make holographic appearances to Tegan and Ace thanks to some shock-type sciencey-magic the Doctor used when she reunited with them back at UNIT HQ. This is an opportunity for encouragement from a familiar face, and for the two ex-companions to make their peace. The Fifth Doctor telling Tegan, “Brave heart” was a nice touch.

With help from her friends (Ace uses “Nitro-999” on the Dalek base, an enhanced version of the Nitro-9 she used back in the day) the Doctor returns to form. She has the creature that was converting the planet’s energy for the Master to use that energy to destroy the planet. However, as the Master staggers to his demise, he turns the creature on the Docter, striking her with a fatal blow. Yaz takes her limp form back to the TARDIS where she recovers, but the process of regeneration has begun.

The idea that the Doctor can regenerate was a stroke of genius that enabled the show to continue when William Hartnell quit in 1966. It came with a flip-side, however: If the Doctor can regenerate when he dies, his life is never truly in peril. He can risk his life knowing the worse that will happen is he’ll change. As far as I can recall, the first story to suggest a regeneration could fail was the first Fifth Doctor story, “Castrovalva”–though it was never explained what would happen if it did fail. Would the Doctor die? Or would he regenerate again, hoping the next one would be more stable? “Mawdryn Undead” also considered the idea of regeneration, where Mawdryn and his fellow scientists had tried and failed to simulate the Time Lord’s regenerative ability, leaving them in perpetual pain, unable to die. Only the Fifth Doctor’s regenerative power could free them, but it would ultimately kill the Doctor. In the Fifth Doctor’s final story, “The Caves of Androzani,” he and Peri, his companion, are poisoned by spectrox. The Doctor manages to fend off the effects long enough to find the antidote. In the concluding scene, he struggles back to the TARDIS carrying Peri only to find there’s just enough antidote for one. He gives it to her and allows himself to succumb to the poison, unsure whether it will kill him or trigger a regeneration. “Is this death?” he ponders as his previous companions flash before his eyes.

More recently, the Tenth Doctor resisted regeneration as long as he could. “I don’t want to go,” he says as his resistance crumbles. This introduced a different approach to regeneration: the Doctor doesn’t want to change because he likes the person he is. There’s more he wants to see and do in his current incarnation, but he knows when he changes he’ll be different, look different, with a different personality–one he may not like. While that’s fine, it seemed to me a bit selfish.

This is why I think the regeneration scene at the end of this episode is one of, if not the best of the entire series. The Doctor knows she’s going to die, and even though she will regenerate, it’s still a death. The Doctor as we know her will cease to exist. To his everlasting credit, Chibbers treats regeneration like a terminal illness. The Doctor has one final moment with Yaz, the last of her companions remaining with her, sitting on top of the TARDIS eating ice cream while looking down on the Earth. She then tells Yaz she needs to do “the next bit” on her own. Her dying wish is to watch one last sunrise, which she does from the edge of a cliff somewhere on Earth. As the regeneration energy overcomes her, she says, “Tag, you’re it” and she’s gone. Chibber’s tenure as Who showrunner is notable for the number of bad stories, terrible characterizations, and few highlights. For his sake, I’m glad he was able to show us that he can write great and memorable Who moments. It’s a shame he left it to the very end.

Another touching moment I enjoyed came when the Doctor dropped Yaz off on Earth. She immediately hears Graham’s voice, and he and Dan take her to a meeting he’s organized of all the Doctor’s past companions–at least the ones he could find. As well as Graham, Dan, Tegan, and Ace, there’s Mel, Jo, and, perhaps best of all, Ian Chesterton, one of the First Doctor’s companions from back in 1963.

To sum up. This was a good story, one of Chibber’s best, with an excellent ending but still with some of the elements that cursed previous Chibber stories, such as too much exposition (telling, not showing), an over-convoluted plot (you don’t have to cram so much into a story to make it fill 90 minutes), and pointless audience pandering, such as using Graham as an assistant to Ace which she didn’t need, and the Master playing “Rasputin” in the Tzar’s palace, which was probably the worst most cringey part of the whole story. Nevertheless, it was good, entertaining, and worth watching.

Yes, I know I haven’t talked about the Fourteenth Doctor. We were all expecting Thirteen to change into Ncuti Gatwa, but no… BIG surprise! I will credit Chibbers and RTD for that shock ending. A great set-up for the anniversary specials. What’s more to say?

What did you think? Did you watch this story? Do you agree with my critiques? What did you think of the regeneration scene? Leave your thoughts and comments below!