We’re finally here: The final episode of Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker’s run of the show. There have been good episodes here, but it’s been overall underwhelming and disappointing.
“The Power of the Doctor” sees many friends old and new return, including classic companions Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) and recent companions Vinder (Jacob Anderson) and Graham O’Brien (Bradley Walsh). The Doctor (Whittaker) must content with the Timelord Cybermen, the Daleks and the Master (Sacha Dhawan), who kidnap a child off of a space train and eventually attack UNIT.
The Master plans to force the Doctor to regenerate into him, hijacking her body and essentially erasing our hero, which makes for better stakes than most of Chibnall’s finales; he has simply gone too cosmic too many times. The Doctor contending with her own mortality is small and personal, which is why it resonates much stronger than the mess that is the Timeless Child and Flux arcs.
Chibnall does give closure to Ace and Tegan, who haven’t seen the Doctor in decades and who have unfinished business with her. The two console in one another, and they eventually join a companion support group that Graham joins, which I think was a great way to give subtle cameos to past companions that include Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford), Jo Jones (Katy Manning) and Ian Chesterton (William Russell).
The episode also features cameos from the First (David Bradley), Fifth (Peter Davidson), Sixth (Colin Baker), Seventh (Sylvester McCoy) and Eighth (Paul McGann) Doctors, something I wish we got in the 50th anniversary special outside of lazy archival footage. Doctor Who is a massively long show and its fanservice is always mostly welcome and earned.
I thought the Doctor regenerating into the Master was an interesting conundrum the show resolved in a satisfying way, via multiple past companions working together with an AI hologram of the Doctor programmed in the event of her death. I liked how the episode seamlessly incorporated characters from multiple eras of the show in a way that felt organic.
Dhawan’s Master was fine, though I personally don’t care for how his version of the character has overall been written. It’s a drastic retreat from the development and depth the Missy incarnation of the character enjoyed, which makes me think that Dhawan’s version is a prior incarnation. That aside, there also isn’t much to him — he’s an unhinged psychopath that feels like Chibnall asked himself: What if the John Simm Master was more like the Joker?
This is a great sendoff for Whittaker that will no doubt make me look back on her run through rosier lenses. “Doctor Who” was one of my favorite shows growing up, but it lost me in the Whittaker era thanks to its largely incompetent direction and boring scripts.
Now onto David Tennant’s 14th Doctor specials!
“The Power of the Doctor” gets an 8/10
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