The Power Of The Doctor sees the Chibnall Era end as it lived: messily

There’s a fascinating dichotomy at the heart of Chris Chibnall’s time at the helm of DOCTOR WHO, an irreconcilable, Jekyll and Hyde-style division between who he is and what he can do. On the one hand, he’s still that pedantic continuity nerd with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the show’s minutiae and an even larger “self-published” almanac of shoulda-woulda-coulda footnotes covering all the contradictions and continuity errors he feels compelled to rationalise and exposit into flawless order[1]. On the other hand, he’s apparently a science fiction writer and showrunner who’s pathologically incapable of tying off his own plot threads, themes and arcs, leaving things unresolved or, more often than not, irrelevant or inconsequential. THE POWER OF THE DOCTOR brings both sides of his bifurcated persona together to deliver a bombastic romp through the show’s lore, both recent and archaic.

Opening with a cyber-heist, a sequence that ostensibly exists to introduce one of the McGuffins that will drive the story but in reality, is an action-packed way of acknowledging that the character of Dan (John Bishop) has been superfluous since somewhere in the last third of FLUX, THE POWER OF THE DOCTOR benefits, ironically, from the impending end of its author’s tenure. Freed of the burden of expectation and the obligation to deal with any consequences, the outgoing showrunner decides that he might as well raid his notebooks and throw every half-formed and abandoned idea for an episode at the screen at the same time. It’s an epic TV movie put together using the lyrics of the opening song of THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER as a screenwriting template.

With the credits out of the way, we’re introduced to two of the time periods the story will straddle, 1916 and present-day 2022 where one companion, Dan, is deposited and vintage pair are reintroduced – Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Dorothy “Ace” McShane (Sophie Aldred) – along with a couple of what will become many plot threads involving Rasputin (The Master, of course) at the Winter Palace and famous paintings being removed from exhibition in the present day. Meanwhile, while still on the trail of the regenerating Cyber Masters and their ill-gotten heist loot, the Doctor gets not one but two booty calls with both Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and a renegade Dalek calling her to summon her for a meeting. It all comes perilously close to breaking the fourth wall when the Doctor laments that she’s “a bit busy at the moment”. Try being a viewer, Doc.

Knowing that if he lets it pause, even for a second, the whole artifice of contrivances, coincidences and occasional outright contradictions will come crashing down, Chibnall keeps the pace frenetic and the fan service fulsome as we barrel into UNIT headquarters alongside Ace and Tegan to learn that there’s something going on amongst the world’s seismology community and that the Master is somehow involved, as are the Daleks oh and, by the way, Tegan has unwittingly facilitated a Cyber-invasion of UNIT HQ, led by Ashad (Patrick O’Kane).

So, the Daleks are in present day Bolivia planning to destroy the Earth by erupting every volcano simultaneously, the Cybermen are in present day UNIT HQ and 1916 St Petersburg (along with a few Daleks) and The Master is, um, also in present day and 1916. The criss-crossing continues as the Master’s real plan is revealed: he intends to steal the Doctor’s body? Identity? Existence? It’s not quite clear but it’s certainly a step up from previous plans he had to steal the Doctor’s remaining regenerations. With a little more levity, this could have been a workable “bedroom” farce but instead we’re treated to Sacha Dhawan overacting as usual to make up for the fact there’s not really much more to his incarnation of the Master (although given his recurring role on THE GREAT it is fun to see him – albeit briefly – as Rasputin).

It does have to be said, though, that as a BBC Centenary special, THE POWER OF THE DOCTOR finds some innovative ways to honour the storied history of the series. For one, it’s nice to see so much quarry use, especially for the CyberPlanet (*cough* Unicron *cough*) and we get the now obligatory reappearance by some classic Doctors too. Shall we take Tom Baker’s no-show as a sly nod to THE FIVE DOCTORS, do you think? Anyway, there’s a little bit of Chibnall’s pleading to the fans in the way the First Doctor (David Bradley) makes a point of repeatedly praising the characterisation of Jodie Whittaker’s incarnation. It’s not subtle but then the entire 90 minutes is a confirmation that Chibnall’s cloth-ear for dialogue remains unrivalled. The Doctor’s inner dialogue with her past selves (well, five of them at least. Can we assume Ecclestone, Smith and Capaldi were asked and passed?) is fun – their bickering with each other is even better – but the closest this closing chapter of the Thirteenth Doctor comes to really tugging at the heartstrings is when it finds a way to bring Tegan face to face with the Fifth Doctor and Ace and Seven back together again. They’re brief scenes, but pretty potent. Unfortunately, they’re shown back-to-back which diminishes the impact of Seven and Ace’s rapprochement (a rapprochement that resulted from an estrangement that’s not actually canon in terms of the TV series. Tsk, tsk, Chibbers – what a mistake-a to make-a). Likewise, Tegan’s resentment towards her Doctor feels a little misplaced too, given she claims to have been abandoned when anyone who’s seen RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS will recall that Tegan left the TARDIS voluntarily, if a little abruptly. Who abandoned Who, Miss Jovanka?

THE POWER OF THE DOCTOR is an adventure which, much like the Master’s incarnation of the Doctor, dresses in borrowed robes. There are shades of LOGOPOLIS here and shades of BAD WOLF there and more than a dash of THE STOLEN EARTH sprinkled throughout. Perhaps, though, the most egregious thing it does it hastily discard a lot of the sweeping changes Chibnall at one point considered his enduring legacy. The regenerating CyberMasters? Drained, in a knowing nod to SUPERMAN II.

It even takes pains to back off from the concept of pre-Hartnell Doctors, with The Master casting some doubt on its veracity as he discusses forced regeneration. Yes, the Renegade Doctor appears – her best appearance to date, in fact – but her existence is more easily retconned into established continuity than into a new pre-Hartnell orthodoxy thanks to her Police Box TARDIS shown in FUGITIVE OF THE JUDOON and it all feels a bit like fan-service, a humiliating climbdown from the plot’s previous status. It’s the final capstone to all of Chibnall’s plot failings: nothing ever matters.

Once all the dust settles, nothing that’s happened really amounts to much. The Cyberman plan is foiled by releasing their captive, the Master’s plan is thwarted and he’s returned to his own body and the Daleks are blown up in their own volcano. Vinder’s involvement is as tacked on as it is convenient (although I’ll admit that Vinder actually shooting the Master is a great bit of subversion) and there’s absolutely no explanation of how or why Graeme (Bradley Walsh) ended up in a Bolivian volcano much less what the point of him being there at all was story-wise. It’s especially odd given he could have just showed up at the end in the “Companions Anonymous” coda anyway.

Having spent most of the runtime on action, there’s barely a few minutes left to address the longstanding ‘Thasmin’ thread and Yaz becomes another in a long line of companions to depart the TARDIS just because there’s an imminent regeneration, one of the new series’ most irritating conventions, but also symptomatic of Chibnall’s seeming desire to erase rather than embrace a legacy and leave the series largely as he found it, albeit in a fundamentally weakened position in the pop culture firmament.

The trailer-like pacing and lurches of logic may make it more Marvel comic than marvellous drama, yet there was far too much happening for this hypercrammed send-off to be dull. The real POWER OF THE DOCTOR will be the show’s ability to reinvent itself once again and recover from the missteps of the Chibnall era.

Come on Russell, you have work to do.

• [1] You know, the kind of behaviour that drove SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY to clumsily try to reconcile the “12 Parsecs” line from STAR WARS or a showrunner who can’t let THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS rest so takes a sledgehammer to established continuity to address a near three-decade old production error.