Doctor Who - The Power Of The Doctor

The
Regeneration
Game

Doctor Who
The Power Of The Doctor
Airdate: 23rd October 2022
BBC 1

Warning: All the spoilers.

Well this one was a bit hit and miss.

I’ll start off by saying I quite enjoyed the new Doctor Who special The Power Of The Doctor (more so than anyone else in the house, that’s for sure) and thought it was fast paced and fairly entertaining for a feature length episode of the series. I don’t think it was too hard to understand in terms of story... some people seem a bit stumped by it. I think a lot of the stuff which people are asking questions about at the moment are dead ends rather than loose ends in the plot... they weren’t supposed to be that clever and you should just take things like the ‘significance’ of the missing paintings (there isn’t much, it would seem) at face value.

Now, a friend of mine told me today, an hour or so before I watched it, that none of the dangling plot ends everything has been building up to get resolved or answered in any way. And I found that hard to believe but, it’s true. Following on from the overreaching story arc from a couple of seasons ago... we still don’t know much about the Timeless Child and why The Master went a bit mad and burned down Gallifrey, it seems to me. Hints and clues were pointing to the fact that maybe The Master was just a different life-cycle identity of The Doctor, memory blocked versions of each other but... I guess we’ll never know now. That part of the story seems to have been forgotten and, I suspect, be dropped completely from future stories (as many unanswered plot threads have been over the last ten or more years of the show).

Similarly... the pregnant mother reunited with the father of her child from Flux was somehow highlighted in a way that made me assume we’d find out the child inside her womb was The Doctor (and by extension, The Master, if my theory was correct) but, yeah, even though her other half is present in this adventure, it’s not even mentioned. So... no, none of it really tied up anything, it has to be said and, the emotional sub plot of the ‘burgeoning romance’ of The Doctor (played brilliantly again by Jodie Whittaker) and Yas (played wonderfully by Mandip Gill) wasn’t even tackled at all.

But the story, such as it was, kept moving a pace and never really got boring... so there’s that.

There were some nice, if corny shout back jokes such as the Master/Doctor forced regeneration incarnation wearing Sylvester McCoy’s jumper (still got mine), Peter Davison’s stick of celery, Tom Baker’s scarf and playing Patrick Troughton’s recorder. And... well... The Master Dalek Plan anyone? Long term watchers of the show like myself may have chuckled lightly at that one, I guess (yeah, okay, so maybe I did, briefly).

And there were some nice surprises in it too. I mean, we knew from the trailers that Janet Fielding was back as fourth/fifth Doctor companion Tegan Jovanka and seventh Doctor companion Sophie Aldred was back as Ace and... they did very nicely back in their respective roles, for sure. It was great seeing them again. But there were more surprises too. John Bishop’s companion Dan’s quick exit from the show early on was unexpected, for sure. And... not so much surprises... were the return of David Bradley as the first Doctor (reprising his recreated role of William Hartnell’s original take on the Timelord), Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor, Colin Baker as the sixth Doctor, Sylvester McCoy as the seventh Doctor and Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor. Now, I know why they were all showing their age... but that wouldn’t happen to the Doctor since he doesn’t age, he regenerates. I was surprised they didn’t CGI them as younger versions of themselves, since they were a kind of post-regeneration guardian/illusion (take your pick).

More interesting surprises were Bradley Walsh as Jaz co-companion Graham, Katy Manning as third Doctor companion Jo Grant, Bonnie Langford as sixth/seventh Doctor companion Melanie Bush and William Russell as first Doctor companion Ian Chesterton... although I was disappointed as to how brief those last three companion cameos were.

The one thing which didn’t surprise me, however, was who Jodie Whittaker regenerated into at the end of the episode. We’ve been hearing David Tennant would be returning to the role in some capacity and a few weeks ago I said to at least one friend that I didn’t think Jodie would be regenerating into the new Doctor just yet. Either she would perish off screen or possibly regenerate back into Tennant and, well, at least one of those two theories was proven right I guess. So, yeah, we have a very bemused Doctor at the end of the story, wondering just why she has changed back into the tenth Doctor (or eleventh if you rightly count The War Doctor as number ten). Even so, just because I was expecting it, I wasn’t disappointed by it... it was kind of what I was hoping for, to be honest.

Another big surprise is that the episode didn’t look dirt cheap. The effects work was quite good with some interesting shots and visual compositions. The acting from everyone was superb. Yeah, the script was weak and perhaps Sacha Dhawan’s version of The Master was a little over the top and irritating but, that’s fine, he’s the villain. He’s supposed to be irritating. But Jodie really shone in the role again and I was grateful that she went out in a blaze of glory, so to speak.

That being said, I did find one shot in the thing very strange. When Yas picks up The Doctor’s damaged body, we get a quick shot of the ground where she had fallen. Well... there seems to be nothing extraordinary about the ground and my guess is it was originally supposed to have shown some CGI blood there, to show audiences the seriousness of The Doctor’s wounds. Instead, perhaps it was deemed there would be no pool of blood in a family show and so the blood was either removed or not added. I’m just guessing here but, either way, it seems strange to have a shot covering a small area of ground for a second or two, for sure.

Another thing that niggled was...  if The Master inhabiting the body of The Doctor transplanted his personality and attitude into The Doctor, instead of triggering a new personality, then does that mean that the forced regeneration from the second to the third Doctor at the end of The War Games also meant The Doctor’s personality was erased or sublimated? I wish the writers, especially when they are the show runners, would be more careful when it comes to putting new angles on Timelord history, to be honest.

And that’s me pretty much done with The Power Of The Doctor. It’s not the best swan song for an incarnation of The Doctor but it’s not the worst either. Overall, I really hated the Chibnall era of Doctor Who (but loved Jodie Whittaker in the role) and, although the scripts were better, I didn’t have much love for the Moffat era either. I really enjoyed the Russel T. Davies era on the show but, now that he’s come back and hinted at what the future has in store for the character, I can’t say I’m looking forward to his return either, if I’m being honest. In fact, I suspect that he’s only been brought back to stabilise the show and I reckon if he hadn’t taken the job to come back and rescue it, the show might have been cancelled at the end of Chibnall’s run. Still, as ever, we shall see what we shall see when The Doctor returns for his sixtieth anniversary show in November of 2023. Until then, I shall be slowly working my way through those Blu Ray legacy sets so... plenty more classic Doctor Who reviews will be going up before then.

Doctor Who - Warriors Of The Deep

Fifth Deep Sixed

Doctor Who - Warriors Of The Deep
UK Airdate: 5th to 13th January 1984
BBC Region 2

I really liked Peter Davison, even before he took on the role of the fifth TV incarnation of The Doctor.

I was very much a Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker Doctor Who fan at the time but I’d been familiar with Davison for a while by then, playing the role of Tristran on the James Herriot TV show All Creatures Great And Small, and I was pretty sure he’d make a great version of the role. Which he certainly did, making the pain of the departure of Tom Baker’s domination of the role quite surprisingly palatable at the time. However, after a brilliant first season for Davison, followed by a not quite as good but okay second season, things got very bright and then very dark for Doctor Who. 

The Brightness? Well, of course, that was the November 23rd 1983 broadcast of the shows 20th Anniversary story The Five Doctors. That was truly a good time for all the fans and it brought many good things to the table, including Jon Pertwee’s first (and last) encounter with the cybermen... at the time he was the only one of the five incarnations who had never shared a story with them.

The darkness? Well, I’m not too sure exactly when the rot began to set in but I can tell you that it could perhaps be seen very clearly by taking a look at this truly terrible production. This was supposed to be a special story but politics got in the way and due to Maggie Thatcher’s announcement of a parliamentary election, the show's usually stupidly inadequate deadlines were even further compressed without much warning, due to studio time needed for coverage of that (or some such thing). And the horrible results are here for all to see.

Now, you have to put yourself in the head of the 16 year old teenage version of myself, who was geared up to watch this show. This was the first story of the new season, coming about six weeks after the stupendous The Five Doctors. Also, this story saw the return of, not one, but two foes from The Doctors past. It was only the second appearance of both The Silurians and The Sea Devils and neither of them had been seen after their initial appearances against Jon Pertwee more than 20 years before (read my reviews of both by clicking on the highlighted titles). I still remembered The Sea Devils scaring the life out of me when I was a kid, so this was something I was really looking forward to. Plus, I think this was the first time two villains had been teamed up in the show at the same time, barring that anniversary special which, to be fair, had all the villains working separately. If memory serves me correctly, this wouldn’t happen again until the cybermen and daleks fought each other in the David Tennant era... so this was all good stuff. And much looked forward to.

So imagine my disappointment. You had a brilliant cast including such alumni as Ian McCulloch (see my review of his film Zombie Flesh Eaters here) and Ingrid Pitt (see my review of her movies The Vampire Lovers here  and Countess Dracula here). You also had Mark Strickson as Turlough (who we all hated but that’s okay, I think we were supposed to and certainly it’s a sign of his skill as an actor that we all did) and Janet Fielding, continuing her role as Tegan (who I was besotted by at the time, obviously). And along with Peter Davison as The Doctor, who was always nothing less than excellent in the role, you had an almost perfect recipe for some fine British television.

But it was terrible, it has to be said.

The script has some nice moments but there are also some horrible continuity problems with it, partially because of the monsters the show chose to use, and I really just can’t fathom why, to be honest. The main problem, of course, is that the Silurians (who are nothing of the sort in terms of pre-historical terminology, by the way) and their marine cousins the Sea Devils, were both referring to themselves by those very names when, in fact, this was a name invented by the human race for them and which these two races couldn’t possibly know about unless they’d happened to read something like that handy reference guide, The Doctor Who Monster Book (which presumably the writer had, at least). Even worse than this are things like Peter Davison having a conversation about what to do about the Sea Devils when his character hasn’t in any way been exposed to them in the story for him to know about their reappearance yet. It’s all pretty dire, to be honest.

But not as dire as the “not-so-special” effects and the costumes, to be sure.

The original Sea Devils wore string vests. When they come out of hybernation here they are apparently now wearing warriors armour, presumably to disguise the fact that only their heads have been manufactured. They now look less than frightening and more, I dunno, bewildered or startled than anything else. Certainly not the underwater menace they were back in Pertwee’s era. The Silurians aren’t quite so bad, it has to be said, although the design is a little more stylised and... well... a little more rubbish (but, to be fair, not as bad as the silurian designs introduced in the Steven Moffat era of the show). Both Silurians and Sea Devils alike still suffer from the classic “bob the head around a bit when you are speaking” syndrome too... since their faces are completely immobile and therefore an indication is needed for the viewer to be able to tell which of them is talking at any one time.

Both of these monstrosities, however, pale before the unbelievable rubbishness of the Myrka, a big sea monster that invades the underwater base which The Doctor and his companions find themselves on. Seriously, it looks like a big pantomime horse. It really is that bad a costume with one guy in the front and one in the back. I was going to say it reminds one of the comical pantomime horse which was a regular of that children’s television classic Rentaghost at the time but, when I watched a short documentary on the making of this show, it turned out that it actually was indeed the same two “motion actors” who played the pantomime horse in Rentaghost after all. Wow. Mind blown. The Myrka was truly a let down and, next to this thing which really did look like a pantomime horse and, for all intents and purposes, actually was one, the Sea Devils and Silurians maybe came off looking better than they actually were. But when the Myrka bashed a wobbly polystyrene... um... sorry, steel door which pinned down Tegan, there’s no way you can actually feel that The Doctor and Tegan are in any way in danger, I’m afraid.

So yeah, there’s a definite lack of peril in this episode, and that’s a shame because some aspects of the script, including the very last shot and line, which Davison delivers with far more gravitas than can be expected from a man who’s recently battled a pantomime horse and lived, are actually quite meaty. However, the “in no way special” effects and the lack of decent costumes, direction and editing really let this show down and this definitely contributed to me losing interest in the show to the point where I stopped watching for a bit at some point soon after.

Looking at the documentary on the DVD, I don’t feel too guilty about trashing this one, I have to say. Everybody else seems to be laughing about how bad it was on there too, including the main actors and the special effects department. This was far from Doctor Who’s finest hour and whenever I give the newest incarnation of the show a bad time, I might be well to remember just how bad the show got before its resurrection back in the Russell T. Davies era. Recommended only for people who want to see the Silurians and Sea Devils again. Generally though, best to steer clear of this one.