The Whittaker-Chibnall Era Comes to a Clustered Close
By Tom Hill Jr. | Observer Designer
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) turned 100 years old on October 18, 2022. To celebrate, they released “Centenary Specials” of some of their various television programs, and one such program that was given the Centenary treatment was the long-running science fiction show Doctor Who, with a 1 hour and 28-minute special: The Power of the Doctor. A lot was riding on this special for many reasons, but for me, it didn’t quite meet the mark.
First, some brief background; Doctor Who began in 1963 and centered on the adventures of an alien known as the Doctor who travels through all of time and space in a ship called the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space). It appeared as a 1960s Police Box that was larger on the inside than the outside and served as the Doctor’s home. The Doctor gathered a constantly rotating cast of companions over the years, as well as various enemies, which are usually alien monsters that threaten the safety of Earth.
The main trick to the show’s long life (and especially relevant to The Power of the Doctor) is the long life of the main character, supported through the nifty narrative tool of regeneration. When the Doctor is mortally wounded, they can “regenerate” every cell in their body at once, extending their life but simultaneously changing their appearance and aspects of their personality. This allows the story of the show to run continuously while also freshening things up with a new actor in the main role every few years.
The actor portraying the Doctor in this story is Jodie Whittaker, who has been the “Thirteenth” Doctor since December 2017. This episode was directed by Jamie Magnus Stone and written by the now-previous series showrunner Chris Chibnall.
I say “now-previous” because The Power of the Doctor was Chibnall’s final episode as showrunner, as well as Jodie Whittaker’s final outing as the Doctor, with her regenerating into another actor at the end of the special (I told you it was relevant).
This leads us to one of the reasons I feel this episode fell short; not only was this special intended to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the BBC, but it was also the audience’s goodbye to this incarnation of the Doctor, this era of the show, and the various companions and side characters that have been introduced therein.
As if all of this wasn’t enough, the special also had the job of leading up to Doctor Who’s 60th-anniversary specials, which will air with the new Doctor and new (returning) showrunner Russell T. Davies throughout 2023. So, I can appreciate the weight this episode carried and that there was probably a lot of pressure to perform better-than-usual on the entire cast and crew, and I have taken this into account during my viewing.
Now, you’d think that with all of this riding on the episode’s shoulders, the writer may want to try for a simple story that would present a big threat (to make the special feel “special”), wrap up any hanging story threads for the incoming showrunner, and ultimately give closure to the characters and their journeys. Simple, focused, special.
What we got instead was what felt like an overcrowded sample platter of story ideas that would have made for a pretty neat season of television but instead are chopped up and reduced to pointless hints of wasted potential. Add to this an overly complex plot riddled with inconsistencies, dialogue mostly devoted to exposition as opposed to character progression, as well as traditional anniversary trappings (references to old stories, cameos by old companions and Doctors), and you have a recipe for a clustered mess.
As an example, with only minor spoilers attached, the main plot of the special revolves around three of the Doctor’s most famous adversaries, the Master (a Time Lord like the Doctor, only bent on dominating the universe), the Daleks (mutant alien squids in robot tanks obsessed with racial purity), and the Cybermen (humans that have replaced enough of themselves with machinery that they have lost their humanity) teaming up to destroy the Doctor and her legacy, as well as the Earth. Sort of. Each of the three have their own motivations for joining together, and at least two of them are diametrically opposed to one another.
The Master has promised the Daleks that they can destroy the Earth and wipe out all humanity but has also promised the Cybermen that they can take over the Earth and convert humanity into more Cybermen. Why would these two work together when they will clearly just be in each other’s way?
A better script may have had the Master keeping the Daleks’ and Cybermen’s involvement secret from each other and had the Doctor using this to her advantage to turn them all against each other. However, because this story is balancing what feels like twelve other plot points, this discrepancy is never mentioned and ultimately proves pointless to the overall resolution.
This is the main plot, not even going into all of the side stories, which kind of sums up my main issue with not just this special but this era of the show as a whole: plot points and characters are introduced but never followed up on, no matter how interesting their potential, in favor of introducing other plot points and characters to create an overstuffed mess.
Despite all of this, there are bright spots in the special. The Doctor’s last goodbye with her companion Yaz is a nice simple moment, there are some good interactions with past Doctors and companions, and most of the performances are fairly strong, especially considering some of the material they are given. A particular standout is Sacha Dhawan as the Master, who, despite not being my favorite take on the character, has given it his all in every appearance and provides a performance that is truly mesmerizing. I’d also be willing to say that there is some rewatch value to the episode, given how overstuffed it is, so I guess that’s both a blessing and a curse.
So, a mixed bag, to say the least, but that’s one of the reasons I love the show so much. It can be anything it wants, which means it won’t always mesh with your particular interests, and that’s okay because maybe it will mesh with someone else’s, and you can both take solace in the fact that something new will always be waiting around the bend. In the end, I guess I would call The Power of The Doctor a fitting end to its era, though maybe not in the way it was intended to be. All we can do now is look forward and see what awaits us around the bend in 2023.
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