The Power of Three

This week Doctor Who gave us the invasion of the small cubes and the time the Doctor came to stay. There’ll be spoilers so if you haven’t seen the episode yet you probably want to avoid this post- basically, run!

This episode felt like a Russell T Davies era episode: an invasion of Earth, rolling news coverage and very character driven. It’s the first invasion of contemporary Earth story we’ve had in a long time. The plot consisted of millions of small cubes landing on Earth and then not doing anything. The Doctor was forced to come and stay with the Ponds as they are in the process of deciding whether they should keep travelling with the Doctor.

Seeing the Doctor come to stay is good fun and provides most of the many laughs from the episode. He has no patience and can’t sit still and do nothing. He did loads of keepie-uppies and played on the Wii. My favourite scene which I think summed up the whole episode was when the three characters were sat watching The Apprentice (with the real Lord Sugar putting in a cameo) and the Doctor talks about inventing the Yorkshire pudding. That is perfect TV.

The episode also did a fantastic job at referencing classic Who but did so in a way that it didn’t matter if you don’t get the references. The Doctor mentions past companions dying (Adric!), how his metal dog used to hover (K9) and there was return of sorts for classic monsters the Zygons, hidden under the Savoy hotel. Perhaps the best classic reference was in the form of character Kate Stewart, the person now in charge of UNIT. Kate is the daughter of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, the former leader of UNIT and the character that met the most Doctors (Two, Three, Four, Five and Six). Kate fitted in perfectly with the show and Jenna Redgrave had her character nailed. I really hope Kate Stewart becomes a semi-regular character in the future!

I did have a few problems with the episode, though they are fairly minor niggles. The resolution of the plot felt a bit rushed. If Doctor Who was an hour long this episode would have been perfect. However, I loved the cubes and really want one. I liked the way that they all did different things, from squirting water to playing the Birdie Song really loudly. My other problem was the massive coincidence that meant one of the seven locations across the world just happened to be the hospital Rory works in. That was handy.

Still, I do think this was a great episode and Chris Chibnall has really proved himself as a writer. And this episode sorted a problem I had back when I was talking about Asylum of the Daleks. Amy is now working as a journalist as opposed to a model, which seems a much more likely thing a TARDIS traveller would do!

On a completly unconnected note, I was wondering how old the Doctor is now. We could follow his age fairly easily until series 6. Something like 200 years went by for the Doctor between episodes and as he’s been doing lots of travelling without the Ponds it seems likely even more time has gone by. Just how old is he now? I’d like that to be cleared up please.

The horrible thing is now that there’s only one more episode left and it will be the end of the Ponds. This is the point where we have to speculate wildly about what might happen. For one thing Christmas has been mentioned in every episode of the series. I suspect if that’s more than coincidence it’s actually to do with this year’s Christmas special, where Oswin will return. A more important thing to note is how the titles to each episode are getting darker. There’s also been quite a lot of flashing lights and lights turning off in the episodes so far. Given what happens when lights flicker and the Weeping Angels are around this could be a sign of things to come. Maybe.

It’s worrying that it’s the Weeping Angels that the Doctor has to face next week. He’s not really defeated them properly yet. Sure, he beat four of them in “Blink” but that was only four. “The Time of Angels” was only resolved because of the crack in time which sucked the Angels in. Can the Doctor defeat a whole city’s worth of Angels? And how will the story of the Ponds end?