The Power of the Doctor

Chapter the 298th, where it's getting, it's getting, it's getting kind of hectic.

Plot:
All this written down in order is going to seem like the fitful dream of a kid who's gone to bed after eating too much sugar, but here goes anyway: The Doctor, Yaz and Dan battle against Cyber-Masters (regenerating Cybermen made from dead Timelords, with the collars and everything) on a floating train in space. The Cybermen kidnap the train's cargo - a wibbly energy creature disguised as a child. With this, the Master - allied with the Cybermen and the Daleks, and posing as Rasputin in the court of Tsar Nicholas II in 1916 - sets up a planet-sized Cyber conversion machine in orbit around Earth. Dan leaves to go back to his ordinary life, finding the Doctor's adventures a bit too dangerous after he nearly got killed on the space train. The Doctor's old friends Tegan and Ace have been recruited into UNIT by Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and investigate some missing seismologists and missing paintings respectively. Tegan receives a package supposedly from the Doctor containing what looks like a toy Cyberman, labelled as a Russian doll. The TARDIS tracks the Cyber-Masters to the Cyber-planet in 1916, and finds the Master's TARDIS disguised as a police box. Kate calls in the Doctor; the Doctor and Yaz arrive at UNIT HQ and meet Tegan and Ace. The Doctor seems socially awkward meeting them, and somehow gives them both a static electric shock (which also happens later with Yaz). All the missing paintings have been altered to feature the Master as Rasputin, and the Master has sent a message inviting them to a location to attend his "keynote address" on seismology. When our heroes arrive, they find the missing seismologists all dead, shrunk by the Master's tissue compression eliminator.

Taken into custody and imprisoned in the UNIT building, the Master taunts Kate, Tegan and Ace. Following coordinates sent by a rogue Dalek, the Doctor takes the TARDIS to the inside of a Bolivian volcano. The Daleks capture her. In UNIT HQ, the Russian Doll Cyberman - which turns out to have been sent to Tegan by the Master - grows to full size and splits open, then troops of Cybermen emerge led by Ashad (a clone copy made by the Master before he killed the original). Kate is taken to be Cyber-converted, Tegan stays in the building to help Kate, and Ace escapes by parachuting from the roof. Vinder, on a mission to rescue the wibbly energy creature (remember that, from the beginning?) crashes onto the Cyber-planet. Yaz tracks the Doctor down in the TARDIS; she's been taken to Russia in 1916. After doing some disco dancing, the Master uses a process called forced regeneration to make the Doctor regenerate into a copy of him. Yaz arrives, and the Doctor-Master coerces her into joining him in the TARDIS. He goes off causing mischief, trying to ruin the Doctor's reputation. The Doctor (in her Jodie Whittaker persona) appears in a realm of consciousness and meets manifestations of old versions of herself - the Guardians of the Edge - who tell her there's a way she can reverse what the Master's done. Yaz manages to escape in the TARDIS, stranding the Doctor-Master on an asteroid somewhere in space. A holographic AI version of her Doctor appears before Yaz, implanted by the real Doctor earlier who passed it off as static electricity. With that guidance, Yaz is able to pick up Vinder and Ace. The latter is dropped off at the volcano to stop the Daleks, the former hides in the TARDIS as Yaz goes back to collect the Doctor-Master.

Holo-AI Doctors (looking like the Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy versions) appear to Tegan and Ace too. Ace meets Graham, who's also investigating the volcano. The Daleks set the volcanoes all over the world to erupt. With help from Vinder and the holo-AI Doctor, now looking like the Fugitive Doctor that was hiding out in Gloucester, Yaz manages to reverse the forced regeneration process. Tegan rescues Kate and they both escape UNIT HQ, just before it is blown up (Tegan having sabotaged the Cybermen's equipment with help from her holo-AI Doctor). Ace and Graham set Nitro-9 charges in the volcano. The TARDIS comes and picks everyone up, and the Daleks are all blown up. With the extended fam's help, the Doctor stops the eruptions by Cyber-converting the lava, turning it into steel. She sends Vinder back home, and then asks the wibbly energy creature (it's still hanging around) to destroy the Cyber-planet. The dying Master is still on the planet, and uses the creature's power to zap the Doctor, fatally wounding her. Yaz returns everyone else home, and has one last moment with the Doctor, the two of them sitting on the TARDIS roof eating ice cream while it floats in orbit around planet Earth. The Doctor tells Yaz she has to do the next bit alone. After being dropped off, Yaz immediately bumps into Graham and Dan - they are on their way to a support group that Graham has set up for friends of the Doctor on Earth. The meeting includes Kate, Tegan and Ace as well as some other old friends Ian, Mel and Jo. The Doctor regenerates atop Durdle Door, regaining a familiar set of teeth...

Context:

In the 1980s, episodes that were longer than Doctor Who's usual 25 minute duration (The Five Doctors feature 20th anniversary length special, for example) were sometimes chopped up for repeat or overseas showings, with new credit sequences shoved in to make them fit the majority pattern. I'd had a passing thought when I was writing the Deeper Thoughts section of The Krotons blog post in 2023 about whether any fan had created such edits of new series shows. Remembering this, I decided to experiment with my watching of The Power of the Doctor. I watched it, on my own from the BBC iplayer, over four nights in April 2024, stopping at the end of each approximately 22-minute long quarter. Like those stories in the 1980s, the arbitrary cliffhangers were a little more pedestrian than usual, but none were as bad as the ones in The Five Doctors (the Master walks down a short staircase - woo!). My Power of the Doctor episode one ended with the Doctor seeing the defaced paintings and declaring "That's not Rasputin, that's the Master", the second ended just after the forced regeneration, with the Doctor now in the Master's form at the door of the TARDIS threatening Yaz; episode three ended with the eruption of the volcanoes around the world. That's not too bad, I don't think; each section fell into an episodic structure in line with those older Doctor Who stories: episode one is about the set up of the mystery, ending with the Doctor's discovery of the main adversary; episode two sees the plan develop and ends at the Doctor's lowest point; episode three throws in the curveball of the Guardians of the Edge; episode four wraps it all up.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. As well as finishing 24 of the 39 seasons to date (at the time of writing), I have also watched almost all of the specials that came in between seasons for anniversaries, festive periods, etc. With The Power of the Doctor now covered, there is only one special left to blog (The Giggle from 2023), though there will be at least one more Christmas special shown in 2024, and - one hopes - another annually thereafter.

First Time Round:

There was a period of only approximately 18 months between my writing this blog post and originally watching The Power of the Doctor, but it seemed like a lot longer looking back. I outlined my initial reactions to the story in the Deeper Thoughts section of the contemporaneous blog post for Orphan 55, which I published two days after the Jodie Whittaker finale was first shown. It was a time of upheaval in the UK; we had in short order got ourselves a new monarch and a new Prime Minister (I'll touch a bit more on this in the Deeper Thoughts section below). The change of Doctor happening at the same time felt like it might destabilise us completely, but thankfully things have been a bit more static and calm for old Albion since then under the firm and strong leadership of David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa.

Reaction:

Brace yourselves, but - as outlined in this story - the power of the Doctor is the friends she made along the way. Yaz has a line of dialogue that pretty much says this verbatim, and the action involves a lot of people coming together to save the day who all have in common that their lives have been touched by the Doctor. It then has a resolution scene at the end bringing even more of the Doctor's old friends together to look after each other, and most importantly to look after the latest in the long line of ex-companions Yaz, adjusting to her post-TARDIS life. The friends she made along the way - it's so hackneyed that its gone beyond cliche and into meme, but the story doesn't for a moment let the commitment to this theme slip. Even the antagonist is driven by the misguided desire that he wants to become the Doctor and travel the universe with a companion; like everything in the story, this is nicely aligned with the history of the series. There's always been something of the inferiority complex about the Master, living in the Doctor's shadow. The plan also involving mucking about with Daleks, Cybermen, volcanoes and paintings is less resonant to this theme of course, but is still in keeping with The Power of the Doctor's hectic style in trying to cram in as many returning characters and elements as possible. In total, and including the regenerated fourteenth Doctor with a new old face, there are seven returning Doctors. No less than six companions return, seven if you count Dan who leaves at the start of the story but returns at the end (three are cameos including one of the very first stars of the show from 1963, William Russell as Ian Chesterton).

There's two recurring guest characters (Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Vinder) and the top three on the Doctor Who villainy chart are represented, including the latest incarnation of the Master and a recent recurring Cyberman villain, Ashad. It has clearly been written with an understanding of its place in the canon of multi-Doctor stories; weaving in all those Doctors, companions and foes almost out-Five Doctors The Five Doctors; the missing paintings and involvement of UNIT is reminiscent of The Day of the Doctor. The story was an extra commission from the BBC to form part of the Corporation's centenary celebrations (which aside from this special Doctor Who story were rather muted in the end), so perhaps it was irresistible to include a lot of the programme's history (it having endured for nearly 60 of the Beeb's 100 years by then). It's not just a multi-Doctor celebration story, though, it is the final send off for Jodie Whittaker's Doctor - was there not felt to be a risk that her swansong would be overshadowed by all these returning elements? I doubt writer and executive producer Chris Chibnall was planning to have Whittaker regenerate at the end of a Sea Devils story; Legend of the Sea Devils looks to be the story that had been hastily added to the schedule at the last minute to bump up the numbers. As far as I can see, though, it has never been confirmed exactly how much of Power's planning and scripting had been done before the request came in to provide a centenary special.

My guess is that nothing was forced upon him, and Chibnall always planned such a story to write out his Doctor; it's a bold move, and it pays off. The character of the thirteenth Doctor has always been one that surrounds herself with a large 'fam', so the gang show approach does not jar. Whittaker doesn't suffer too much from a lack of screentime, and her presence - and her absence - dominates. It's a story of what it's like to be with, or be without, the Doctor. Making it seem effortless, Whittaker embodies the Doctor in the abstract and the specific, and everything else in the story is in orbit around her. Considering all the disparate elements to be combined in the final narrative, the plotting hangs together well. The only bit I'm still scratching my head over is forced regeneration; I understand it conceptually, but the visual of it doesn't align with the intention of the character. If the Master wants to be the Doctor, shouldn't he force a regeneration on himself, making him become her, not the other way round? This would have given Whittaker a chance to do something different, playing the evil villain for a part of the running time, and would have upped the ante when the Master is trying to destroy the Doctor's reputation: anything evil he did would have been done by someone who looks like our Doctor. If he wants to travel the universe looking like Sacha Dhawan accompanied by Yaz, then he could just kill the Doctor and steal her TARDIS, after all. Of course, this story is the swansong of Sacha Dhawan's Master too, and depriving viewers of even a second of his colossal, fantastic, unhinged performance might seem like sacrilege. He'd still be indelibly stamped onto the history of Doctor Who just for the Boney M scene, mind: the Master throwing shapes and Cossack dance moves to the 1978 Euro-Disco hit Rasputin, while a Dalek and a Cyberman look on askance.

There's also the wonderful conceit of the Master using famous paintings as a calling card - the visual of a Rasputin-disguised Master in The Scream or Girl with a Pearl Earring is a joy to behold. Rasputin's historical reputation (mesmeric powers, can't be killed) makes him an obvious choice as a Master alias; what's startling and perhaps genius about this is that there is no need for him to be disguised at all (in fact it would make much more sense for all the action to happen in the present day rather than split between 1916 and 2022) - the Master presumably just thought it would be funny. Again, this is in keeping with the character's actions in the history of the show. Apart from the Master's unnecessary disguises, the other two major returns from 1980s Who are Tegan and Ace. For everyone like me, who first got into the show when Peter Davison became the Doctor, this is every bit as exciting and important as Sarah Jane Smith coming back in School Reunion, only double. The script nails the older versions of their characters perfectly. Any fan would have to have a heart of petrified steel lava not to get a bit emotional seeing both reunited with holographic versions of their Doctors. The Guardians of the Edge sequence allows some more fun cameos - David Bradley, Colin Baker, Paul McGann! Fans of a more recent vintage would be well served too; Vinder and Ashad come back, having appeared in recent seasons. Then Graham pops up. Seeing people from different eras working together is pure, distilled Five Doctors juice ("I'm Ace", "Yes, you are" says Graham). Just when you think the story might be cameo-ed out, there's Jo Martin being the Doctor one last time too. Once the story's almost over, you get another few for good luck: Katy Manning as Jo Jones, Bonnie Langford as Mel, and - I'm getting a bit emotional again - William Russell as Ian Chesterton.

With David Tennant appearing at the end, that's at least one returning face from every decade of Doctor Who's existence; if you aren't charitable enough to give it anything else, that's an almighty triumph of logistics at least. The story seems to me to be more of a piece with the three specials in 2023 than the ones preceding it in 2022. Taken together, the four stories from The Power of the Doctor to The Giggle are the ultimate celebration of the show's history and set-up for its future. Even small details like the blowing up of UNIT HQ ("I'd only just signed the lease") fit nicely, allowing Kate-Lethbridge Stewart to move into Tony Stark's Avengers Tower the following year. Also distancing The Power of the Doctor from the rest of 2022 is that there's nothing in there about Yaz's feelings for the Doctor, which had been highlighted in both of the previous two specials. I can just about buy that they've both made their peace with things after the conversation in Legend of the Sea Devils, but I still think that it should have been Yaz's decision to part from the Doctor before she changes into someone new, rather than the Doctor essentially telling her to sling her hook. The emotional arc of the piece is restored by the 'companion's anonymous' scenes at the end, though: we know Yaz's is going to be looked after. Finally, there's the most beautiful regeneration sequence in the history of the show thus far: the Doctor atop Durdle Door with energy shooting far, far out in every direction. Then, we're off again, zooming into a bright, shiny future...

Connectivity:

Despite their broadcasts being separated by 35 years both The Power of the Doctor and Paradise Towers feature the Doctor played by Sylvester McCoy, and Mel played by Bonnie Langford. Echoing the action in the 1980s story, the UNIT building escape in the 21st century story involves heroic characters travelling to the highest floor of a skyscraper building in order to escape metallic killers (these adversaries move a bit faster, though).

Deeper Thoughts:

Two Yorkshire women with blonde bobs leave their job in the same week: Fit the Second. (Note: for Fit the First, of which this is the late-following sequel, see the Deeper Thoughts section of the Orphan 55 post from October 2022  - link in the First Time Round section above.)

The UK's politics was so turbulent in 2022 that the wikipedia entry that comes up when one searches on 'UK government crisis October 2022' has a link at the top that says - I kid you not - "This article is about the crisis that ended Liz Truss's premiership. For the crisis that ended Boris Johnson's premiership, see July 2022 United Kingdom government crisis", emphasis mine. In the UK, it was the year of three prime ministers, and - with Whittaker turning to Tennant, and it being common knowledge that Gatwa was waiting in the wings - the year of three Doctors too. After Johnson and Truss came Rishi Sunak; it's not that Sunak was exactly competent, but just by not being a clown car on fire he managed to usher in a period of relative stability. Was that local political turbulence followed by relative calm echoed somehow in the world of Doctor Who at the time? A lot of fans are very critical of the run for which showrunner Chris Chibnall was responsible, the stories from 2018 up to 2022 and The Power of the Doctor. Putting aside any subjective judgements about the quality of the stories (and there were times in those years reading fan discussions on the internet that I hoped like hell that people would put aside their subjective judgements about the quality of the stories) the production of the show did face more challenges than at any other time in its history. For a start, the world outside the show, that at some level needed to be reflected in the stories - Doctor Who always counterpointing its far-out space action with the recognisable and the grounded - was changing very rapidly.

This can clearly be seen in the story Revolution of the Daleks, a festive special shown on the 1st January 2021. The story was made as part of the series that aired a year earlier, with filming happening in the autumn of 2019, and the script was presumably written a while before that. The character of politician Jo Patterson, played by Harriet Walter, is ruthlessly fixated on public order and then becomes prime minister, so has too many things in common with Theresa May to be coincidental. May, though, had been out of power for nearly 18 months by the time Revolution of the Daleks got to an audience. As we saw above, May was just one of three prime ministers during Chibnall's time (with only a hair's breadth from it being four), so it was hard for scripting to keep up with real life; perhaps connected to some of that governmental instability was the biggest impact to the making of the show in this period, the Covid-19 virus. No matter what else was depicted in the story, it couldn't have predicted lockdowns, mask-wearing, vaccines and Joe Wicks TV workouts. It feels a bit unfair of fate that Chibnall didn't get to make more Doctor Who when the restrictions were eased, but he left at a time of his own choosing, and went out with a bang with The Power of the Doctor. It's a story in which you'd be hard pressed to discern any compromises indicative of it having been made in the aftermath of a pandemic. That he made any Doctor Who at all after Revolution of the Daleks, let alone such bold and brash and visually impressive fare as Flux and the 2022 specials, is a source of wonder to me. Once he'd left and Russell T Davies had taken up the showrunner job again, though, the money really started to flow and even greater things became possible.

Imagine if Chibnall were to comment publicly during Davies's period in charge, talking loudly and constantly about how he could do better? He'd never do such a crass thing, of course, and probably never want to do it. The world of television production seems to be more polite and honourable than the world of politics, because no such restraint exists there. In April 2024, Liz Truss - one of those quick-changing 2022 prime ministers and architect of one of the aforementioned 2022 crises - published a book with her plan to "Save the West", and was on the interview circuit expounding on said plan. Liz Truss was prime minister for 50 days. For a chunk of that short time, party political activity was suspended because of the funeral of the monarch, otherwise it might have been even shorter. She crashed financial markets and lost control of her own MPs in the space of a very few weeks, and her tenure ended in utter failure. With that track record, for her to have the sheer gall to lecture anyone on how to run anything is another source of wonder to me. I'm not equating her dismal record in any way with Chibnall's; whatever you think of the quality of his work, though, you know and I know that he's never going to publish a book on his plan to save Doctor Who, and will only ever say positive things about his successor. I sense a part of online Doctor Who fandom wants the Truss approach, however; and that, base and lowest common denominator as it is, she's scratching a similar itch in politics fans on a certain stripe.

If you like one showrunner more than another, it can get pretty tribal in the rarefied atmosphere of social media sites. When Steven Moffat took over from Davies, I read a lot of posts by people who imagined that Moffat was sneaking in references in his stories that took pot shots at the previous house style. They were convinced that he was in some way critical of Davies, even though there was no evidence of this in any of his public pronouncements. Moffat has hopefully, finally, put that to bed by agreeing to come back as a hired hand (he's writing the third story in Davies's first Ncuti Gatwa season, Boom). For anyone that might be imagining that Davies has any issues with his immediate predecessor, I'd direct you to the comments he makes in Doctor Who Magazine issue 603 about the controversial Timeless Child plotline that Chibnall introduced to Who and which Davies is developing further in Gatwa's episodes: "That's a gift handed to me by my predecessor... it's an honour to take it on from him" and "There's so much story in it!". Maybe we could all take a lesson from this interconnected and respectful approach when it comes to Doctor Who and to politics. Liz Truss knows that she's unlikely ever to hold high office again, but she will have seen from certain UK populists of recent times, who have made a living of sniping from the sidelines while not having the responsibility of any direct power, that this doesn't mean she can't have influence. It is telling that a lot of the interviews she gave in April 2024 were aimed at the hyper-partisan US; without extreme polar opposite tribes, who possibly don't represent the nuanced reality that sits between the poles, many negative things - including online Doctor Who flame wars and Truss's book - might not need to exist.

In Summary:

The Power of the Doctor was inside of us all along!

Eve of the Daleks

Chapter the 289th, it's recursion all over again.

Plot:
New Year's Eve in a storage facility in contemporary Manchester; owner Sarah is on duty because her colleague Jeff has let her down. Her only customer Nick comes in just before midnight as he does every year; he clearly has a massive crush on Sarah but she hasn't realised. The TARDIS materialises in the building, and the Doctor, Yaz and Dan leave it to rebuild itself after the ravages of the Flux. A Dalek arrives and exterminates Nick, Sarah and the three time travellers. They then all find themselves alive again; it's eight minutes to midnight and they are back where they started with major déjà vu. Despite their efforts to avoid it they all get exterminated again, and find themselves alive again at seven minutes to midnight. It's a rapidly deteriorating time loop caused by the TARDIS rebuilding itself, the next loop starts at six minutes to midnight, then five, then four, and so on. Two more Daleks end up materialising in this temporal fold in later loops, as they learn how to navigate it: they want to kill the Doctor because they blame her for the Flux destroying millions of Daleks. There's a Dalek forcefield around the building to prevent escape. Through the different loops, the Doctor and friends find lots of contraband items Jeff has been storing including a big pile of fireworks, and an alternate exit not covered by the forcefield. The Doctor's plan involves tricking the Daleks into shooting at the fireworks to cause an explosion that allows their escape and ends the time loop. A passer-by sees the firework display and thinks it's just been laid on for him. Sarah realises that Nick likes her, and that she likes him too. 

Context:

This one came up randomly towards the end of the year, but I held it back to watch on the afternoon of December 31st 2023. The majority of the episode is set, as indicated by the title, on the last day of the year leading up to midnight fireworks, so it makes more sense to watch it on a New Year's Eve rather than New Year's Day as it was initially broadcast. I viewed the story from the iplayer, starting off on my own; but, one by one, each of the children (boys of 17 and 14, girl of 11) came in and started watching alongside me.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. Eve of the Daleks is the final one of the four Jodie Whittaker episodes / specials shown on New Year's Days between 2019 and 2022 to be covered for the blog. With this story, and recently having blogged The Snowmen and The Church on Ruby Road in quick succession, I have completed all the Doctor Who festive specials as at the time of writing. Another such special is planned this year, though, already having started production in late 2023, so - presuming I haven't run out of stories by the end of 2024 - this won't be the last time the blog visits the Yuletide period.

First Time Round:

I watched this go out live on its BBC1 broadcast on January 1st 2022 accompanied by the same people as eventually joined me for this latest watch, i.e. all the kids but not the Better Half who still didn't take the opportunity to see the story this time despite my encouragements that she'd like it. I remember enjoying the story very much at the time, but there was one minor thing that I do remember everyone commenting on back then, and indeed they also repeated their comments this time: nobody knew who the bloke at the end watching the fireworks was. Both times, everyone assumed that it was Jeff, the unseen employee of Sarah's storage company who is mentioned many times in dialogue. That would make more sense than who it actually turned out to be, and I needed to look it up online to find out who that was: Karl, a fairly minor character from the first ever Jodie Whittaker story. I guess it's nice to know that he's still out there somewhere, albeit wandering the streets of Manchester alone on New Year's Eve, but it didn't feel particularly necessary or apt.

Reaction:

I'd very much enjoyed Flux, the season-wide story that preceded Eve of the Daleks, running from October to early December 2021, and which I'd just rewatched over the holiday period that year (I covered it in a bumper blog post published on December 31st, the day before the Eve of the Daleks was broadcast). With this Dalek festive special only a few weeks later, it felt like Chris Chibnall's version of Doctor Who was on a hell of a roll. Alas, it only had a couple of stories left, but the era built to a high point. Eve was probably my favourite story of the Whittaker years; no major pyrotechnics, but a good, simple idea well constructed and well realised. The series had featured time loops before, but never made one the sole focus of a story (Heaven Sent doesn't really count, as it features a spatial prison, time is still passing even if the Doctor isn't immediately aware of it); it has also featured comic and romantic subplots before, but had never properly done a full-on rom-com plot either. Combining the two makes something unique for Doctor Who. It may not at first glance look unique in the wider world beyond Doctor Who; the time loop romantic comedy is a reasonably well established subgenre, certainly since the movie Groundhog Day (which is namechecked in a funny moment where it's Dan's go-to phrase to explain the situation he finds himself in). Around when Eve of the Daleks was likely being written, and it may or may not have been an influence, there was a different take on the same template in the 2020 movie Palm Springs.

What both those movies did though, and what Heaven Sent did too, was forefront the sheer length of time, the number of repetitions, that the characters go through. It's a key point in all three, as they are about being stuck trying and improving before finally achieving a goal. Eve is not like that at all; the time loop deteriorates at a steady, rapid rate, with the characters reliving one minute less before midnight each time; as such, the loop becomes the 'ticking clock' that any action narrative needs, and the story is propelled efficiently through escalations towards its climactic sequence. To do that in 60 minutes and find time to fit in a romance plotline (well, two romance plotlines, more on that in a moment) is some good storytelling. Chibnall got a lot of stick for any writing flaws in his Doctor Who work during his years in charge, so it only seems fair to give him his dues for putting together something so enjoyable. The only even slightly duff note was making love-interest Nick a little too creepy, storing the items left at his place by his many ex-girlfriends. It seems only to have been included to set up the later gag about the therapeutic power of the Daleks for Nick when they destroy all those abandoned possessions (his exs are terminated, geddit?). Even this didn't feel so bad on this watch; the performances of guests and regulars alike are of such quality that their combined efforts sell even that less convincing moment. I really do believe in Sarah's realisation that she cares for the "good-hearted weirdo" that is Nick, and I believe in the echoes that phrase has for Yaz and Dan thinking about another potential relationship.

Given that the story had such a limited set of characters, it's essential that they are cast well, and Eve of the Daleks is cast impeccably. Aisling Bea is phenomenally good in this, a major star turn, but Adjani Salmon matches her. The sudden realisation, after a careless word from her, that he's caused her to be in danger, and his decision to sacrifice himself, is a powerful but understated moment. Nick Briggs's vocal work as the voice of the Daleks should not be overlooked either, he even gets to deliver a couple of jokes (including, in the line "I am not Nick", an in-joke). Even a small role like Pauline McLynn's performance as Sarah's Mammy, who wishes her daughter a happy new year just before midnight (as she's convinced, and won't be told otherwise, that the lines will be busy later), is perfect. The regulars are on top form too. Yaz's feelings for the Doctor have been such a slow burn across the previous three years that to have them suddenly acknowledged by Dan was almost shocking. It was great to have both the characters prompted by Dan face up to their long-term denial. It nicely sets up the episodes to come where this is explored in more depth. That those later episode's slightly fumble the emotional arc of their relationship shouldn't reflect badly on Eve; it should also be remembered that this episode, as well as those in Flux that proceeded it and the following two specials of 2002, were made under the most difficult circumstances of any modern Who, with ever-changing Covid restrictions impacting everything.

I think that the stories in 2023 have tied things up neatly and retrospectively fixed any loose ends of the Doctor and Yaz subplot, anyway. Clearly the Doctor is restless and needs to be constantly moving, and has concerns about how this may impact any close relationship; she explains this to Yaz in Legend of the Sea Devils; after that, she wants to regenerate alone to protect Yaz from the loss of her Doctor, and that regeneration starts a process of healing. By regaining an old face, the Doctor knows that he has to go back and fix another relationship that didn't get closure, and in doing this and then going through bi-generation, the restlessness and constant movement can stop and the Doctor is able to sort their mind out and have some settled time, with friends rather than in a romantic relationship. This then allows the fifteenth Doctor to be free of any baggage. It's a shame for Yaz, of course, but she has the ex-companion network from The Power of the Doctor to help her get through it. It wasn't perfectly presented, but as an emotional arc crossing multiple stories, multiple showrunners and multiple Doctors, I think it is pretty amazing (but maybe I'm just a good-hearted weirdo). Eve of the Daleks kicks all that off, and also has action and comedy and some wonderful emotional moments ("Not many people would have done that - some close friends and family included, actually" "I've never told anyone... not even myself"). Lovely.

Connectivity:

Both Eve of the Daleks and The Church on Ruby Road are festive specials of the 2020s set in a city in contemporary England.

Deeper Thoughts:

Time Travel: back and forward. The last couple of years, I've had a go at predicting what will unfold in Doctor Who's year to come, as well as validating how well (or how badly) my predictions turned out for the year just gone. This post early in 2024 covering a New Year story seems like a good place for this exercise. If you want to play along at home, my guesses for 2023 were in the Deeper Thoughts section of the Robots of Death blog post here. I started strong, as I was bang on the money in predicting that the Doctor Who festive special would return to Christmas day. Perhaps it looks like a fairly obvious move with hindsight. Doctor Who had trialled being a Sunday night heritage brand for the whole of Jodie Whittaker's time playing the Doctor, and its festive specials moving to the first of January slot fit with that. Bringing back Russell T Davies suggested, given that it was something he'd done with much fanfare before, a return to Who as a shiny Saturday night and Christmas day proposition, and so it has come to pass. There have been some grumblings online about the overnight ratings not being as good as they should be for Ncuti Gatwa's Christmas special, but it nonetheless did very well, with the consolidated weekly ratings even better - I can't see it being moved from Christmas Day in 2024. I didn't make many other predictions about the content of the 60th anniversary specials as most of it had already been heavily rumoured (the Meep, the Wrath Warriors and the Toymaker were all spoilered in 2022). The one thought I had would be that any other returning elements would likely be from stories in the era from 2005 onwards rather than the 20th century stories. I was completely wrong there; the only other significant return was from Bonnie Langford as Mel who is resolutely classic era (bar a brief cameo in Jodie's last story).

For 2023 home video releases, I didn't predict (nobody really predicted) the return of missing episode animations, which had seemed to on indefinite hiatus from reports in 2022. Only one - The Underwater Menace - came out in the year, but this was one more than expected. William Hartnell story The Celestial Toymaker, backstory of the third of the 60th anniversary specials The Giggle, is slated for release sometime in early 2024. The different animation style seen in the animation's trailer suggests it is not being worked on by the same team as Underwater Menace, so I would hazard a guess that they'll have moved on to another story - I'll take a punt and suggest this will be the long-awaited version of Patrick Troughton Cyberman story The Wheel in Space (a short section of one episode was animated as a test years back, and it would be good to have the whole thing done). There was also a 2023 newspaper article in the UK that reported rumours of two stories being animated, The Celestial Toymaker and another Hartnell, The Smugglers. If the report was right about the former, could it also be right about the latter? Another thing that nobody predicted for 2023 was a completely new range of classic stories: colourised and re-edited versions of older stories. The Daleks in Colour is also slated for release early in 2024 after its broadcast and iplayer debuts in 2023. It's been confirmed that another story is being worked on; my guess would also be a Patrick Troughton Cyberman story, The Tomb of the Cybermen. I predicted three Blu-ray collections sets for 2023, but only two were released, perhaps because there's less room in the schedules with all the other stuff mentioned above. My guesses for the specific seasons were 6, 13 and 20 - only one of the three being correct.

As well as the 20th anniversary year set, there was also Jon Pertwee's third run, season 9, to enjoy in 2023 Blu-ray glory. I'll assume two sets for 2024 too; I'm the least well-connected fan ever, but I have heard a whisper that season 25 (Sylvester McCoy's second year) is imminent, so I'll go with that for one; for the other, I was going to pitch season 13 (Tom Baker's second year) for the third year running - I've got to be right sooner or later - but then a rumour circulated that it's going to be season 15 next (Tom's fourth year) so I'll have to go with that instead. What about predictions for new Doctor Who on the box? Another curve-ball that's been thrown at anyone trying to predict 2024's new broadcast content is the possibility of spin-offs. There's a persistent rumour about a spin-off with an eight word title (I'm not going to reveal it here), but aside from the probable potential for one old monster to feature the stars, structure, number and length of episodes are a complete mystery. Not much more is known about Ncuti's first series, either. I don't know why, but I'm getting a feeling that the stories are going to accentuate the new. A new UNIT 'family' has now been developed including Kate Lethbridge-Stewart as played by Jemma Redgrave, Ruth Bradley's scientific advisor Shirley Anne Bingham and the aforementioned Mel; I would guess there will be a couple of stories back on Earth where one or all of those characters appear. Will we see old monsters too? Davies has hinted at further supernatural threats, which might allow for creatures with some built-in brand recognition (like Goblins, say) without them having to be from Doctor Who's heritage. I doubt it will be too long, though, before Ncuti gets to face the Daleks or the Cybermen or both. That's about enough guesswork, I think - check in back here in a year or so to see how well I did!

In Summary:

Eve of the Daleks. Of the Daleks. The Daleks. Daleks! 

Legend of the Sea Devils

Chapter The 227th, is as up-to-the-minute a chapter as you could possibly have, it's some shiny new treasure.

Plot:

[There's spoilers to come; I've restricted the plot synopsis to the wording from the press release that was published long before the story aired, so you're probably safe here, but some details had to creep in below - be warned.] The Doctor, Yaz and Dan land in 19th century China, where a small coastal village is under threat – from both the fearsome pirate queen Madam Ching and a monstrous alien force which she unwittingly unleashes. Will the Doctor, Yaz and Dan emerge from this swashbuckling battle with the Sea Devils to save the planet? [I mean... Yes, yes of course they will; I don't think it's a spoiler to answer that.]

Context:

Believe it or not, this story came up randomly. As soon as the title of a new Doctor Who story is announced, I add it to the spreadsheet I keep to track my progress with this ongoing endeavour; this has happened 46 times since I started the blog as new seasons keep coming (would have been 51 times, if I counted Flux as six stories rather than one). Thereafter, it's fair game for selection whenever I run the random number generator. I don't think it's ever happened before that the latest story's number has come up, though - it's usually been a conscious decision to blog a new one, the randomiser being overridden, so to speak. I still had a week to go before Legend's broadcast when selection was made, so had to get the blog post for The Green Death done and dusted as quickly and efficiently as possible. I re-watched the Jodie Whittaker story on the BBC iplayer the following day after its debut broadcast, taking notes not on a pad of paper as usual, but direct into blogger on my laptop. The idea was to get the post up as early as possible after the Easter Sunday broadcast. You, reader, will know exactly how successful I was in doing that, from the date near the top of this web page.

First Time Round:

Watched live on its debut BBC1 broadcast on the evening of Sunday 17th April 2022 with all the children (boys of 15 and 12, girl of 9); the Better Half is still making a point of sitting Doctor Who out, though she did put her head round the door briefly to say she wan't interested in anything that transpired. By the time of the Coming Soon trailer for the final special after the story proper, everyone apart from your humble blogger had started to wander out of the living room, leaving yours truly to be the only one making the requisite excited squeaks. I don't want to spoil it, so will adjust my increasingly high-pitched monologue, but it went something like this: "Ohmygosh, it's [Redacted] and [Redacted], how did they keep that quiet?!!! Ooh [Redacted] and the [Redacted] are in it, and there's that [Redacted] [Redacted], and I wasn't expecting [Redacted] - ooooh!". I got everyone back in the room and played the trailer again, but they were more bemused than excited by this orgy of fan service, despite my best attempts to engage them ("Do you know who that is, and that? It's [Redacted]!!!!!!!!!").

Reaction:

The situation this particular story finds itself in is rare for a Doctor Who story. The lead actor has finished filming, and publicly bowed out, with still a few stories for their era yet to air spread out over a long period of time after the last full series. This is the penultimate one, i.e. not the one to look forward to with all the revelations and changes, wrapping up an era, but just another adventure, unhitched and floating free from what came before and what will happen next. It therefore has the potential to be a not-very-special special. Peter Capaldi didn't have a penultimate special, and Matt Smith's penultimate one was also the 50th anniversary special, so was fairly well insured for audience engagement. The only true precursors to Legend of the Sea Devils are the two David Tennant specials from 2009 in between his last series and Christmas special, and his final two-part regeneration story. Would I find Jodie Whittaker's Easter Special a bit disappointing like Planet of the Dead, or amazing like The Waters of Mars? Inevitably, it's somewhere in between the two. The lead-in to Whittaker's finale was restricted to the trailer that I squeed about above (see First Time Round), without the drama of the final scenes of The Water of Mars, but this fishy tale was certainly more interesting and effective than Planet of the Dead was all those years ago.

The story looks great; first time director Haolu Wang and the crew are very successful in evoking time and place, and like some of the epic parts of Flux, one would be hard pressed to tell that this was shot during a pandemic. There are many stunning vistas, from the rain and mud of the fishing village in 1807 where a sea devil goes on a murderous rampage to various pirate ships, and to the beautiful sequence where the TARDIS lands at the bottom of the ocean (not something we've seen in the series before). The sea devil design and costuming is a perfect update, keeping what worked from the old but tweaking as necessary - their blue glowing swords are a nice new addition. The creatures work well in action scenes, and they and their pet sea monster (I'm going to think of it as a Myrka) are a good fit for the genre. It's rare for Doctor Who to do a historical pirate story (space pirates are slightly more common), and this is probably the best one to date. The big sword fight between the Doctor's motley crew and the sea devils sees all the swashes duly buckled. The pirates depicted are a bit too much on the clean and honourable side, but I'll forgive them that as it's a family show. What's a bit disappointing is that Madame Ching - portrayed very well by Crystal Wu - doesn't get much focus, given that she is the historical celebrity of the story. There's a bit too much going on in the relatively short run time of 47 minutes to do justice to everything, and a bit too much of the final cut contains babble about pole-swapping tech.

The script, by new to the series writer Ella Road plus showrunner Chris Chibnall, does squeeze in some funny moments ("No ship, Sherlock"), and it's very nice to be spending some time in the company of Dan, Yaz and the Doctor again. John Bishop has some fun playing the still newbie time traveller, talked into wearing a silly fancy dress pirate outfit, and also gets an emotional phone call with Nadia Albina's Di hinting that he may be heading for a happy ending. The lion's share of the emotion of this story, though, belongs to Yaz and the Doctor acknowledging their feelings for one another. These scenes were very well performed by Whittaker and Mandip Gill, and made the story worthwhile on their own. That tips the balance and makes the story a pretty special special; without the feels, I think the story overall would perhaps just have been marking time before the big finale of this era ties up all the loose ends and plot arcs. It's apt, though, that a story in a nautical style provides so much material for shipping.

Connectivity: 

Both Legend of the Sea Devils and The Green Death feature green things that were invented during Jon Pertwee's tenure as Doctor Who.

Deeper Thoughts:

Easter's Special Too? Doctor Who had and has a long association with Christmas and New Year, but appropriately - for a series that features regular rebirths - it also has a strong connection to Easter. The series started late in 1963 (the 23rd November, as any fule kno), so missed the season of eggs and bunnies that year; to make up for it, though, a Doctor Who episode was broadcast during Easter weekend every year for the rest of the 1960s. This was by dint of the series being on almost all year round (bar a brief break during the Summer) rather than by any special effort, though. The first story shown then was historical epic Marco Polo, Who's fourth story; the sixth episode, Mighty Kublai Khan, was shown on Easter Saturday of 1964, the 28th March. Unlike at Christmas (but only Christmas Day itself back then, on which Doctor Who fell only once in the 1960s - see here for more details) there was no requirement to make the episode anything out of the ordinary, and certainly the decade didn't see any kind of Easter Special. Stories which had an episode aired during the long holiday weekend in spring during those years were a mixed bunch: The Crusade 4 "The Warlords", The Celestial Toymaker 2 "The Hall of Dolls", The Macra Terror 3, Fury from the Deep 5, and The Space Pirates 5. Any episode of Doctor Who is perfect for the family to watch when off work or school, though; so, I'm sure each of these was a treat in itself for those watching at the time.

Into the 1970s, now in colour with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, the series was on TV for only half of the year; but, as each season started in January, this guaranteed a home on Easter Saturday for a lucky episode each year: The Ambassadors of Death 2, Colony in Space 1, The Sea Devils 6, Planet of the Daleks 3, The Monster of Peladon 4. It's good to see a significant presence for stories written (or in one case rewritten) by Malcolm Hulke, as he was an inspiration for the most recent Doctor Who Easter special; and it's interesting to note that 2022 wasn't the first time that underwater Earth Reptiles the Sea Devils made an appearance at Eastertide. [A quick aside about Hulke's impact on Chibnall; the most recent Doctor Who Magazine had many features about Legend of the Sea Devils, one of which contained his quote "A lot of the stuff that we get accused of being 'woke' about, Malcolm Hulke was doing over 50 years ago ... he was a pretty visionary writer - just look at The Green Death", as if the outgoing Who showrunner believes that Hulke penned said story. Perhaps he was confused as Hulke wrote the novelisation, but the ideas of the story came from Robert Sloman and Barry Letts. Honestly, he calls himself a Doctor Who fan!] Genesis of the Daleks episode 4, broadcast on Saturday 29th March 1975, with Easter Sunday the following day, was the final episode of the classic era to be accompanied by chocolate egg consumption. The shift of the start of each run to autumn, beginning with season 13, Tom Baker's second, meant that Easter was just missed, with each of Baker's remaining seasons ending in the spring a little before the big weekend.

Though in 1982, when Peter Davison took on the role, things shifted back and the seasons started in January again, they were shortened by episodes being shown twice a week, or by there being fewer double-length episodes as in Colin Baker's first full season; so, no run made it as far as Easter. By the final three years of the 1980s, Sylvester McCoy was appearing again when the leaves were turning brown and the nights drawing in. Paul McGann's sole TV outing came a little too late, in another spring Bank Holiday weekend (Whitsun). It was only when Doctor Who returned in 2005 that Easter weekend became not just any weekend Who was broadcast, but the big one. The new series launched on an Easter Saturday, and every season for many years thereafter launched on or very close to that day; the last regular outing was at the end of Matt Smith's tenure, with the second half of his final run kicking off on Easter Saturday 2013. At this time, the show was also putting a Christmas special out on every December 25th, so had both ends of the Catholic calendar sewn up. There was also the very first full-on Easter special in the middle on that period. On 11th April 2009, another Easter Saturday, Planet of the Dead aired; it was set at Easter, featured David Tennant eating a chocolate egg and wishing people a Happy Easter. He also states during the narrative that, as it's at a different time each year, "I don't often do Easter - I can never find it." The show succeeds in finding it more frequently, right up to this most recent story, Legend of the Sea Devils. Only RTD knows what's coming next. Will there be any future outings for our favourite Time Lord at Easter, or even at Christmas? Time will tell (it always does).

In Summary:

Incidentally, a Happy Easter to all of you at home!