The Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall era of Doctor Who has come to an end with the 90-minute-long special “The Power of the Doctor.” It was a special that was a fan service ladened event to celebrate the BBC’s centenary.
The Doctor sees some of her greatest threats uniting. The Cybermasters have been terrorising space and captured a child from a space train. On Earth many of the world’s most famous paintings have been defaced, leading UNIT and the Doctor’s former companions, Tegan and Ace to investigate. The Doctor also receives a message from a renegade Dalek who warns The Doctor of a new Dalek plot and offers information about how to destroy the Daleks.
The Chris Chibnall era has been divisive, to put it mildly. The series suffered from poor writing that included thin characterisation, relying on exposition instead of visuals, having overly political content even if they didn’t fit in a story (i.e. “Orphan 55”), and episodes simply being boring. The best episodes of this era were either written by the staff writers or co-written with another writer. Many of the episodes written by Chibnall as a solo writer were poor.
Chibnall attempted to go in the opposite direction with “The Power of the Doctor” by throwing everything at the wall. It was a special that featured the big three villains of the franchise teaming up, brought back two companions from the classic series, and was filled with some crowd-pleasing cameos. It was red meat for long-time fans and it would be hard to deny it was fun to see some of the previous Doctors appear again onscreen.
Chibnall was repeating what he did with “The Halloween Apocalypse” for “The Power of the Doctor.” The Series 13 opener was an ending that moved at an incredible pace and had multiple plot strains. It was an opposite problem that usually afflicted Chibnall’s writing because there was no explanation and felt like things just happened.
“The Power of the Doctor” was a sprawling episode because it took place in multiple locations across space and time. The episode goes to St Petersburg during the Great War, an artificial moon orbiting Earth, modern-day London, and under a volcano in Bolivia. The plot was also all over the place since it featured the Daleks, Cybermen, and The Master all teaming up with the Daleks causing seismic activity across the globe, the Cybermen having a cybernetic moon, and the Master wanting to take The Doctor’s identity. Some of these ideas don’t even lead anywhere like when The Doctor regenerated into the Master since the Master didn’t have a chance to cause damage to The Doctor’s reputation. The idea of forced and focused regeneration seemed to be done to justify the twist at the end. The episode was so convoluted that even Steven Moffatt would have blushed.
Whilst “The Power of the Doctor” did suffer from Chibnall’s overly complicated writing, it wasn’t boring. The special opened with a fun sequence where the Cybermen raided a train and the reveal of Cyberman acting like a Matryoshka doll felt like it came from the Russell T. Davies or Steven Moffatt eras. The twist at the end did come as a massive surprise.
For an episode that was meant to be the big send-off for Jodie Whittaker, she does disappear in the middle. The Master forced her to regenerate and it led to Yaz becoming the hero of the piece. A bold and unfortunate choice since other Doctors did go down swinging like Christopher Eccleston fighting Daleks, David Tennant sacrificing himself to save Wilfred, and Matt Smith protecting the people of Trenzalore.
To many fans of Doctor Who, the end of the Chibnall era was a relief, not a triumph and that’s a fair description for “The Power of the Doctor.” This was far from the best the show had to offer, even within the Chibnall era, but it was a passable special.
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