Doctor Who - The Power of Three - review.

Arthur Darvill, Karen Gillan and Matt Smith in The Power of Three.

Chris Chibnall has always been a favourite of mine when it comes to his Doctor Who scripts. In 2007, he gave us the tense claustrophobic '42' and then Moffat brought him back in Series 5 with his Silurian two-parter, 'The Hungry Earth'/'Cold Blood'. For Series Six he was absent but this gap has been filled in by his two episodes for Series Seven. The first episode was episode two, 'Dinosaurs On A Spaceship', and looking back I have to say I enjoyed it. It was rather fast but still a good old Doctor Who romp and I was delighted at the turnout of Brian Williams, Rory's dad. His second episode, 'The Power of Three' to me looked like it had so much potential. It featured the return of UNIT last seen in the David Tennant 'Specials' and mysterious black cubes. From all the pictures, clips and general publicity of the episode, I had high hopes and besides, its written by Chris Chibnall. What the episode delivered was severely disappointing. It was the Pond-centred episode of the series and perfect for the couples' penultimate episode. From the opening monologue to the end, it was a 41-minute Pond homage. This means that it has to unfortunately dump the other 'stuff' - e.g the villains, the plot, the supporting characters. All it left space for was Doctor jokes. I like a 'Doctor joke' as same as the next Who fan but the jokes given in 'The Power of Three' were forced and at times extremely unfunny. The only two characters that leapt out the screen for me were Brian Williams and Kate Stewart. Stewart is the now head of UNIT, taking over from her father, the late great Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicolas Courtney). Jemma Redgrave (niece to Vanessa Redgrave) portrays the scientific head of research and does it superbly, if Moffat does not bring her back, I'll be pretty annoyed RAGING. From her first scenes she steals the show, even outdoing Matt Smith's acting (which in his case is hard to do). Unfortunately Chibnall is too busy zooming the camera in on Amy and Rory to actually give the character any development other than she likes the Doctor. 
Normally in a Doctor Who review, you'd concentrate on the villain quite a bit. I would of course do this had the villain not have had twenty seconds screen time. From promotional photos all we could see was cubes. The cubes play a large role in the episode and there is about fifteen minutes worth of "oh my God, there's cubes. Woah! Look, loads of cubes. Can you believe there are cubes!" Yes, talk about stating the blooming obvious! Finally in the climatic scenes in the Shakri ship, the cubes are stopped. You'd think they would be stopped them with love or reasoning or they would realise the error of their ways (all of which have unfortunately been used as plot lines). No, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to zap some controls and effectively deactivating them. By now, dear reader you will be wondering what the cubes did, well they gave people heart attacks for the simple explanation that the Shakri (bald, wrinkly guys) want to stop humans colonizing. Why do they want to stop humans colonizing? Haven't the foggiest. There is so much that confuses me even now - the strange pouting fish-like men that seemed to do nothing? And why would Brian go to the hospital to help when he's spent over six months watching the cubes and then when they move, he goes off to the hospital? The Shakri hologram just lets Amy and Rory evacuate their drugged prisoners while its still in the room? When the Doctor is complaining he's bored, he goes out, plays football, paints the fence - the Doctor would never do this, he'd just hop in the TARDIS and go to the next galaxy. When he says he's bored he doesn't mean, "lets watch TV" bored, he means "lets save the universe" bored.

NEXT TIME:
Its the Ponds' final episode, Weeping Angels, New York and River. Said to have you crying by the end, I really am not looking forward to saying goodbye to the Eleventh Doctor's companions.