Doctor Who Review: The Power of Three

When I heard that Chris Chibnall was writing two episodes this series; I was a little worried. His writing efforts before this had resulted in the first two rather mediocre seasons of Torchwood and two not-so-good stories in Doctor Who. And while Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was a lot of fun, it was still a bit of a mixed bag in terms of quality. This week however, the man really delivered. The Power of Three harked back to the Russell T Davies era in the sense of location and scale, but for the most part kept the feel of the newest series. It also managed to be its own story when it shared a central idea with The Lodger from two years back, of the Doctor coming to stay.

There are two main reasons this story works so well and they are very connected. The idea of the apparently harmless cubes and their forcing the Doctor to stay is inspired. They provided a nice slow mystery that we haven’t seen in a while and kept the plot very subdued. This allowed the other reason this story works to shine, the relationships between the Doctor and his companions. Without going into too much detail this is the best episode for Amy and Rory so far this season and their dilemma is one that’s never really come up in the show before and was therefore really interesting. The scene with Amy and the Doctor sitting on the side of the river is one of the best scenes of Matt and Karen’s time on Doctor Who, full stop. For the characters, this episode is brilliant. For the plot, the cubes are very interesting and a good mystery, but it all falls apart at the end. As I’ve said most weeks, the show should be longer, maybe an hour each episode instead of 45 minutes, because the ending of this week was far too rushed. The villains were poorly defined and their plan was poorly reasoned and the Doctor’s fixing of the plan took so little time, it really deflated the tension. A classic case of great build-up and a rushed ending.

I would say the episode is a just a bit over mediocre in plot, but the characters really push it into being good. And the little extra details make it very good. Kate Stewart, while not given a time to shine, seems like a character with great potential, and also appeared in spin-off books before the series, so is a nice nod to those who like the extra worlds of that. The other nods to the Zygons and a possible reference to the K-9 spin-off show really make this a nice treat for fans. And to top it all off, although I’d sick of saying this by now, it looked fantastic. While this week didn’t have the scale of a blockbuster movie, it really had the look of one. So, although the ending is a bit of a let-down, the rest of this episode is top notch stuff and a really enjoyable watch.

4/5