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Spoilers The Power of the Doctor grade and discussion thread

How do you rate The Power of the Doctor?

  • Total voters
    68
Since I am still picking holes, might as well get the big silly ones done:

The Master is explicitly coded as gay in the unit scenes. Gay villain trope ahoy.

The Master then explicitly becomes The Doctor (at that time a woman) and takes on her identity whilst hitting on her established same sex female “love interest” and maintains the most feminine aspects of said Doctor whilst doing so.

I mean it’s not up there with “that time the blonde white Doctor sent the dark skinned Master to the Nazi camps” but it’s another of those moments where you have to wonder if either the writers politics are squiffy, or no-one ever quite thinks this stuff through.

Having got the media studies style ‘yeah, those criticisms are a bit of a reach’ stuff out the way, I will try to contain my thoughts to more basic things.

I did well up a bit hearing ‘brave heart’ to Tegan, and the real Professor was magnificent once more, with just the right amount of poetry in his speech. Bet sophie advised as to how Ace departed the Doctor too, since she knows the expanded media around her character very well.
 
Doctor Who just sounds like a mess these days. Hopefully the new showrunners can get it back on course.
 
I cried when I saw Ace and the Sylvester Doctor interact and for her to forgive him. It was *amazing* to see Ace back. It was also wonderful to see David Tennant make a return, though I can tell that he has not acted for a while as his delivery of lines was quite hammy. I was a bit disappointed that they jumped the shark and didn’t show a regeneration in to Ncuti Gatwa. :adore:
 
So, on par with any over the top season, Doctor, or era-concluding episode from Davies or Moffat, i.e., something of a mess storywise but so what. Lots of good moments, even if most of them were fanwank. I enjoyed it.

I look forward to everyone who's been hating on Whittaker and Chibnall moving on with their lives and finding something else to be tiresomely negative about. Something I'm not interested in, I hope.

Timofnine said:
It was also wonderful to see David Tennant make a return, though I can tell that he has not acted for a while
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What? WHAT? WHAT!? David Tennant has been very busy as an actor, including playing the Tenth Doctor in a lot of Doctor Who audio adventures for Big Finish over the last few years.
 
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I think that the soundtrack let the episode down too, it was rather generic. I wanted an epic 80’s synth beat for Ace scenes for example.

If Murray Gold would have scored this it would have added a lot to the episode. Chris Chibnal does not understand the power of music even if he thinks that he understands ‘The Power of the Doctor’ and I think that he skimped on the soundtrack for a lot of his tenure, not just for this episode.

Can someone ask Murray Gold to come back please? He knows how to do ‘David Tennant’ music so maybe he will…:shrug:
 
jaime said:
The Master is more or responsible for the deaths of the Tsar and his family. How tasteless.
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Chibnall's gonna Chibnall. At least this time, it wasn't the Doctor herself directly facilitating one of history's most inspiring atrocities.

I did like the lift from Paul Cornell, with the Doctors past incarnations inside the Doctors mind — but, all the bits I liked are so heavily biased because they remind me of other, better things.
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There were times when I was hoping the Doctor would just throw it back in the Master's face. "Oh, you've gotten the Daleks and Cybermen to team up to erase me from existence? It's been done, I would've invited you along if I'd known you were that invested in seeing it."

Lonemagpie said:
Cool to see Classic Doctors and companions- I wish they'd made more of Ian fucking Chesterton actually showing up! Of course modern fans won't recognise all the familiar stuff, so they'll hopefully enjoy it as a crowd-pleasing spectacle, and I'm going to give the sheer weight of nicked stuff a pass for being an anniversary thing.
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It actually kind of bothered me that there wasn't much of anything from the Modern Era. I appreciated the Classic stuff, some from stray episodes I've seen, some by reputation, some because it's a de facto Modern reference (hello, First and Eighth Doctors!), but they could've crammed in a little more fan service to appeal to the fans who have been with this show for seventeen years. The last two decades are part of the century, too, you know.

Off the top of my head;Namedropping, never a bad time for it. You can't afford Freema to come in for an afternoon, have Kate talk to Agent Jones on the phone for a second. Quote-dropping, the Master finally steals the Doctors body, and not one line about he'd "drezzz for the occasion." I know '96 is considered Classic Era, I'm rolling. Having the Master-Proof prison in the basement of UNIT be the Vault Missy was living in under that university. If you want to be saucy, throw in a line about the Master not recognizing his former home, it'd be a cleaner explanation for why this incarnation is so old-school than "Chibnall didn't watch the last three seasons of the show he was taking over."

Qonundrum said:
I just looked up the scene. Official BBC channel, no less, they're really promoting the finale... sorta...
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The weirdest damn thing about the BBC is that every single episode, they insist on spamming the last scene across social media the second it airs. Makes me really appreciate streaming services at least giving forty-eight hours before they start acting like you've seen the new episode. The BBC can't give you forty-eight seconds. Also frustrating, considering I was barely aware the episode was even coming this week; no promotion, but the second it's done, hype the cliffhanger to hell and gone.

(And, on a related note, though not something exclusive to the BBC, but if you're going to show a preview scene and not just a trailer for the next episode, don't have it be from the end of the episode. "The Expanse" did it too, at least once, but I remember I figured out Missy's entire plan a week before "Dark Water" aired because they showed the second-to-last minute of the episode as a preview. Oh, and those webisodes, released on YouTube with active comments, and the top one was alway "Quote the surprise punchline!")
 
jaime said:
Bad news all round:
She got her costume in a charity shop, and they can’t sell underwear. So she’s either still wearing Capaldi’s duds or went commando.

Thasmin fans can particularly enjoy that concept.
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Or she's changed/donned underwear in the space of a few decades. Probably girl boxers covered in question marks.

David cgc said:
Quote-dropping, the Master finally steals the Doctors body, and not one line about he'd "drezzz for the occasion." I know '96 is considered Classic Era, I'm rolling.
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That line was in there.
 
OK, aside from a lot of fanw--k (which I quite liked) what was the point of it. Why was the Master Rasputin? Why were the Daeks and Cybermen actually in it? And so on..
 
If you play Rasputin you must have that song play

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The Dalek thing is because they have to appear each year or they loose the license to them. I don’t know they can’t just buy them outright from the Estate.
 
David cgc said:
It actually kind of bothered me that there wasn't much of anything from the Modern Era.
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The Master doing a dance number, Jo Martin, all the companions flying the TARDIS.... There was plenty of Nu Who refs.

Quote-dropping, the Master finally steals the Doctors body, and not one line about he'd "drezzz for the occasion."
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He did that line when she meets him in his Rasputin garb.
I was disappointed he didn't make a "size-mologists" gag having shrunk the seismologists... Open goal for a pun there...
 
Lonemagpie said:
The Master doing a dance number, Jo Martin, all the companions flying the TARDIS.... There was plenty of Nu Who refs.
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That's a bit like saying that one tetchy line to Yaz about "We used to be you" and Yaz doing surprised-Pikachu was a callback to "School Reunion."
 
Timofnine said:
It was also wonderful to see David Tennant make a return, though I can tell that he has not acted for a while as his delivery of lines was quite hammy.
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th
 
Thread Creep said:
Might be artistic license, or might tie into some eventual explanation for why this is happening at all. It's a regeneration that obviously doesn't fit the established mechanics.
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Well, it happens with the Tenth Planet regen, but that's actually harder to make out, and I remember it happening with Tom to Peter's boots/shoes, and somehow with Crispy!Master's sackcloth and Tremas's robes merging into the Ainley Master's outfit, but this was way more blatant and in your face rather than a production error- why would you make a big celebration of a blooper? (yeah, Chibnall...) unless you wanted to at least off the chance for the change to be continued as a clue or foreshadowing or plot point or *something*? I hope so anyway.
 
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