you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast
each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or audio
and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion
hello and welcome to another episode of fusion patrol i'm eugene and i'm simon and tonight we're
looking at the final episode of the era the 13th doctor entitled the power of the doctor and when
i say the 13th doctor i am talking about doctor who just in case we fail to mention that in case
in case you've seen self-evident tv series with at least 30
doctors in it yes yes yes all right casual yeah yeah there you go or uh er probably uh
all right uh episode synopsis buckle in people took me a while to write this one and i hope you
enjoy it the enhanced time lord cybermen are attacking a train in space carrying some very
special cargo a small child the doctor yes and dan do some daring do and rescue the train but
fail to stop the
cybermen from taking the child in 2022 earth tegan and ace are now working for unit ace is
investigating some missing paintings while tegan is investigating missing seismologists tegan reports
to ace that she found a present from the doctor a russian nesting doll with a miniature cyberman
doll inside it returning dan to earth in time for his date dan says don't bother to pick me up bye
and then there was but one companion well yes says goodbye to dan a doll like appears
in the tartis asking for help and offering a way to destroy the daleks in 1916 russia we learned that
a mysterious second moon has arrived at earth and the master is actually rasputin and that he has
hypnotized the czar and the czarina to do his bidding the tartis has traced the missing child
back to that very same moon which is actually a cyber planet with another tartis on it and the
child isn't really a child it's a crunks which is just an energy mcguffin powering the cyber planet
the cybermen arrive and the child is actually a child and the child is actually a crunks which is
and the Doctor and Yaz escape back to the TARDIS just in time for Kate Stewart from UNIT to call
the Doctor back to Earth for an emergency. The Doctor is not happy at being called in for a few
missing paintings and seismologists, is uncomfortable meeting Tegan and Ace, and Yaz is shocked to learn
that she's neither the first nor the last of the Doctor's special friends. The Doctor's interest
is piqued when she learns that the paintings had all been defaced with the face of the mad monk
himself, Rasputin, and it turns out Rasputin looks a lot less like the fourth Doctor and a whole lot
more like the Master. Cybermen, Daleks, the Master, can't all be a coincidence, can it?
The Master delivers a message. He's holding a seismologist convention near Mount Sosuvius.
They've all been killed in signature Master fashion, of course, and after warning the Doctor
that today is the day I erase you from existence, they take him prisoner and return him to Unit HQ
for imprisonment.
Meanwhile, Vinder is also looking for the Karunks and crashes onto the cyber planet.
Ace and Tegan stay at Unit HQ to help monitor the Master while the Doctor and Yaz go to a volcano
in Bolivia to meet with the Turncoat Dalek. The Turncoat is legit, but unfortunately the Daleks
were onto him and used him to capture the Doctor. Yaz escapes in the TARDIS. At Unit, the doll left
behind for Tegan turns out to have been from the Master, not the Doctor, and it is a compressed
vehicle for a Cyberman assault force led by a clone.
of Assad, the lone Cyberman. Assad rescues the Master while the Cybermen capture Unit and start
converting the soldiers. Kate makes plans for Tegan and Ace to escape the building. In 1916 St.
Petersburg, the Master reveals that he's teamed up with both the Cybermen and the Daleks to defeat
the Doctor, and now he's going to force her to regenerate into him. Or he's going to regenerate
into her. It really makes no difference what's happening at this point. It's all just words on
a page. Anywho, the TARDIS has managed to trace the Doctor, and Yaz arrives just in time to see
the Master be regenerated into the Doctor. The Master appears to die, and the Doctor has become
the Master. The Master says he's the Doctor, but of course he's really just the Master in
ill-fitting clothing. Heading off in his TARDIS, he takes Yaz along as a companion, and he
demonstrates his brilliant plan. As the Doctor, he's going to cause lots of mischief and death,
and ruin the Doctor's legacy. Yaz leaves him stranded on a desolate
planet. In the after-regeneration life, the Dead Doctor meets previous Dead Doctors 1, 5, 6, 7,
and 8, and they're all metaphysical about falling off cliffs and unfinished business. Aboard the
TARDIS, the Dead Doctor appears to Yaz in the form of an AI hologram programmed by the Doctor.
With the AI hologram Doctor's help, Yaz manages to respond to Vinder's call for help and picks him up.
They hatch a plan to unforce-regenerate the Dead Doctor. Next, Yaz goes and saves Ace from certain
death.
The Doctor's mission is to get the Doctor to the
At Unit HQ, Tegan has stayed behind, feeling responsible for letting the Cybermen in.
Kate puts in action a plan which sees Tegan try to blow up the building,
entombing the Cybermen. Kate surrenders herself as a distraction. The AI hologram in the form of
the Dead Fifth Doctor appears to Tegan, and they have a touching moment during which Tegan seems
to forget that she's the one that left the Doctor, and not vice versa.
In the Bolivian Volcano, Ace meets the AI hologram Doctor in the form of the Dead Seventh Doctor,
and they have a touching moment talking about Ace's departure that we never saw on screen.
Using Enhanced Nitro-9, she plans to blow up the Dalek drill, but first bumps into Graham, who is...
there?
Yaz returns to pick up the Master, who pretends to be the Doctor acting like the Master, and takes
him back to 1916 Russia, where he decides to launch the Volcano attack in 2022, plus kill Yaz.
Now, the AI hologram Doctor in the form of the imaginary Dead Fugitive Doctor shows up and fools the Cybermen
into recreating the final scene of Blake 7 and killing all the Cybermen.
Being Time Lord Cybermen, they begin to regenerate, so Vinder and Yaz force the Master, who pretends to be the Doctor, acting like the Master,
back into the cabinet, where they use the Cybermen's regeneration powers to un-force regenerate the Master, who pretends to be the Doctor, acting like the Master, back into the Dead Doctor and reviving the Dead Master.
Time to sort this mess out.
Tegan gets help from the AI hologram in the form of the now-not-Dead Doctor, but...
that doesn't know they're no longer a Dead Doctor, on how to destroy the Cyberconversion Devices, save Kate, and blow up the building.
Ace and Graham's sabotage blows up the Daleks, and the whole gang is now aboard the TARDIS.
But not Dan.
They return to the Cyberplanet. The Doctor fixes Vinder's ship and sends him away.
They use the Doctor and the Master's TARDIS to move the Cyberplanet forward to 2022, using its power to turn the erupting volcanoes into steel.
Finally, the Doctor convinces the K'ruks,
to destroy the planet and go free, which it starts to do.
But the Master shows up and makes the K'ruks spin wildly out of control, blasting the Doctor with its planet-destroying power.
Yaz rescues the unconscious Doctor. They escape.
The Doctor is unconscious for a long time, so Yaz dumps all the others off somewhere so she can have some alone time with the Doctor, but that will be short-lived.
The Doctor is regenerating.
The Doctor takes the time to make sure Yaz realizes she's no more special than any of the countless other companions.
They have ice cream, and then the Doctor dumps Yaz off too, where she meets up with Graham and Dan on their way to meet up at Compananon,
a support group for former companions, including Ian, Joe, Teagan, Belle, Ace, Graham, Dan, and Kate.
The Doctor heads off for one more sunrise before regenerating, clothes and all, into a noticeably aged tenth Doctor.
Everybody, all together now, say it with me:
What? What? What?
The end.
Could you say that again?
I could, it's written down, but I might need a break first.
So, Power of the Doctor, what do you think?
Well, I had a blast. I absolutely... I had a great time.
I think... I just wasn't... I don't know, I wasn't expecting a story...
I know they build this as being like...
I wasn't either. I wasn't expecting a story.
This was the 100th anniversary of the BBC, but I just thought that was a pretext.
I just thought that was a pretext for why you're scheduling a Doctor Who special in a year when, you know, we're basically only going to get three episodes.
So, you've got, yeah, Christmas time, Easter time, and then something.
But actually, there was just so much kind of fan-pleasing stuff in here.
And I think normally I would... normally I would be very kind of...
There can be a tendency when a show does that to become very inward-looking.
And for it to become a bit kind of self-indulgent.
And that's what I expected with the day of the Doctor.
But, you know, again, I think this just... it was... it was nicely judged.
It was very nicely judged. There were good surprises.
You know, there were bits that I was looking forward to that I knew about, like Ace and Tegan.
But there were a whole bunch of things in there that I didn't expect.
And, yeah, so from that point of view, it surprised me.
It also...
And I'll sort of go into the details of why.
But it also, as a regeneration episode, there were a lot of things I liked about this.
And that's particularly in comparison to other regeneration episodes,
which, certainly in recent years, have not been my thing.
It didn't kind of follow in the footsteps where, you know, some of those...
The way some of those episodes kind of went, sort of, tonally.
And in terms of saying goodbye and the balance of looking backwards and looking forward.
I thought there were things about this that we can talk about that I thought it did a lot better.
There is... for all my positivity, there is one big thing in this that I thought was very...
didn't really work or didn't really get explained properly.
And a couple of little things that I wondered about.
But overall, my feeling was just, wow, I wasn't expecting to enjoy that anything like as much.
Well, I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as you.
I will say that it was superior to...
We could throw a caveat slightly out here, but I'm going to go with it and I'll explain why.
It was superior to anything in the Flux or the subsequent Dalek and Sea Devil specials.
So that was a pleasant surprise.
Honestly, having been made as part of that block of garbage, I am genuinely surprised how much better this was than I expected.
It's not better than...
I'd go...
Go ahead.
I was just wondering what's going to be better.
I've got rankings of where this story sits in various kinds of categories.
But one of them is the ranking of Chibnall episodes.
And this, for me, I'd just... I'd go further than that and just say this is the best Chibnall episode of Doctor Who for me.
You mean Chibnall as Chibnall as showrunner or Chibnall as things he's written?
I mean written.
Best episode of Doctor Who written by Chibnall.
Oh, I'm still going to have to...
I don't know.
I'd have to look at that list, but I'm pretty sure I'd still go with dinosaurs on a spaceship.
But in context, what I said where there's one debatable...
We both, I think, liked Village of the Angels or the Weeping Angels.
That's it. Yeah, yeah.
But its ending was so awful, non-existent.
I like the ending.
Just nothing happened.
Okay.
It's over and we can just dispose of this.
We're done.
Which I think...
I thought it was the best cliffhanger in Who for ages.
Yeah, except that the cliffhanger relies on the resolution, which was nothing.
And it was all built up for nothing.
But that wasn't in Village of the Angels.
Absolutely nothing.
No, but I...
You know, it's kind of hard when they've stretched it out over one story to do that.
It's like, well, you've built a great little foundation here and then you absolutely ruined it in the squandering at the end.
And yes, that's not in that episode, but that episode becomes utterly inconsequential because of it.
And that's really the reason that I don't...
But as I say, the actual minute-by-minute operation of Village of the Angels was really, really good.
High above the standard of the Tribunal era.
But it got knocked...
A long way down because of the ending.
So therefore, I would put this as higher than that because...
Whereas on a minute-by-minute basis, it's not better.
But as a whole, it's...
There are definitely some things I would do to it if I had a big pair of scissors and perhaps a rewrite gun and perhaps, you know, a stamp that said, "What? Really, Chibs? Try again."
Which I could, you know, stamp on a few places on the script.
But I was, as I think many people were...
I don't know.
I'm not spoiler-reverse like you are, but I'm not also actively seeking it.
I was unaware that the previous Doctors were showing up.
I knew David Tennant was going to show up.
But...
Yes.
You know, we all knew David Tennant was going to show up because they've been shooting him and Donna running around Wales or wherever the hell they're shooting him for ages.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But...
I wasn't expecting the previous Doctors to show up.
That was a complete surprise to me and a real delight.
I thought it was done very well.
And I was even, you know, when Bradley turns up first, I was even like, I was ready to forgive.
Because, you know, I'm not a fan of...
The recasting.
Yeah, having a recast.
So...
But it made sense within the context.
But then, you know, to have Colin Baker suddenly appear was just terrific.
And I thought McGann's performance, I mean, there wasn't much of it, but blimey, he was really, really good.
Was there any logic?
Please tell me whether there's any logic to the bit about him not wearing the same clothes or variation of the clothes of the others?
I mean, apart from the throw line, well, I just, you know, I go my own way or something.
Like, was that a thing that the audience was supposed to get?
Or they just couldn't find the...
They didn't fit the costume to him in time when they were shooting his scenes or something.
He recorded them sitting somewhere in New York or...
No, it has to have been deliberate.
It has to have been deliberate.
But I mean, I don't think there was any deep significance to it.
I quite liked it.
I think had that line been Christopher Eccleston, I would have completely understood it.
Because the big deal about Eccleston's performance is that he's a great actor.
And the big deal about Eccleston's costume was basically that it wasn't a costume, wasn't it?
Even though it was kind of a costume.
All right.
Yeah, so in that respect, I wasn't...
I don't hate it.
I had problems, but I didn't hate it.
But my notes are really disjointed.
So you feel free.
What points have you got?
So, okay.
I mean, take a few things.
One of the things, since you've just been talking a bit about...
Flux and the, you know, the kind of...
The immediately preceding episodes of the show.
And I came into this with the kind of expectation that...
Well, I came into the series of specials with an expectation that some of the elements of Flux would be resolved within...
Resolved?
Those specials.
And...
Well, wrong there.
That's because they left some quite sort of big hanging...
Including kind of like Dan.
Because in a way...
Construction of the universe.
It made sense to me that you just kind of leave Dan behind at the end of Flux.
Because I was never quite clear why you need him, to be honest.
And that...
Dan at least did get resolved in the sense that, you know, he got poochied at the start of the episode.
And that worked for me.
I mean, there were lots of companions in this.
So we definitely didn't need a spare one.
And it was done quite nicely.
But I mean, I just mean in terms of other things.
I said, right.
Kate Stewart has to come back and unit have to come back in this.
Because we had all of that kind of unexplained timey-wimey unit stuff in Flux.
Well, Kate Stewart came back.
A unit came back.
And there was no explanation of the timey-wimey Flux.
You, I remember, said that there should be something that...
Or there would be...
I mean, I felt the Bell and Bender story was over.
But you said, no, no, no.
They're definitely going to pick up on that.
And...
They did, but they didn't.
I was avoiding spoilers.
But I knew Bender was coming back.
So I did know that was coming back.
And I expected you would be proved right.
That that would be some kind of explanation of who the baby was or some nonsense like that.
Something.
Nope.
It was just Bender coming back.
I mean...
Why?
Why did Bender come back?
Well, I think...
They could have used Dan for that.
For all he did.
He could have done.
But I thought Bender was a better...
A better, more enjoyable character.
So I thought for me that...
For me, all of this...
Did he have more than ten lines?
There isn't lots of continuity.
And the fact that, you know, when they get to the cargo in the train in the cold open,
which, by the way, I thought was a fantastic cold open.
My instant reaction was...
Well, exactly.
But my instant reaction was the special child is a timeless child.
I guess it could have been Bender and Bender.
I think so.
But I don't think it was a timeless child.
Well, maybe it is.
I would not have enjoyed it getting all bogged down in that.
Hold on.
Maybe it was.
Because think about this.
Well, no, it wasn't because the showrunner has now left.
It was a Krunks.
However they pronounced it.
But...
And that was perceived by the doctor to be a child and Bender was chasing it because
it was perceived to be important.
And so maybe Bender and Bell's child turned out to be a Krunks and that is it.
And that's why he's chasing it.
I mean, it could be all sorts of stupid things.
But of course, they just dropped that whole thing like a hot potato and won a...
I have to say one thought did cross my mind.
I pictured the scene when I saw this cold open.
I pictured the scene where Chivers is sitting there in his office and somebody comes in
and he goes, "I got this great idea.
I'm going to make a train in space."
And the other person looks at him and says, "Done that.
Mummy on the Orient Express."
And for a second, he looks crestfallen.
He goes, "Oh, it's canon then.
Let's go with it."
And off he goes.
But I couldn't see much point of it.
Well, once you establish there are trains in space, then you can set another story on
a train in space.
I definitely...
Yeah.
But I thought the point of the Merde Orient Express was that it was a train.
It was like a tourist thing.
It was like an experience.
Yeah.
Like we have heritage...
This looked to me like...
Yeah.
This looked like...
Yeah.
This didn't look like that.
This just looked like a passenger train.
This was a service train.
Yeah.
We have those too.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
But why would you?
I don't know.
It just...
All right.
It was amusing in Mummy on the Orient Express.
Here, it was like...
Yeah, okay.
You've gone there.
All right.
Bye.
I thought everything about the train was highly enjoyable.
Doing the kind of classic landing on the train roof like something out of the Steven Seagal
movie.
Yeah.
You liked that episode of Firefly too.
Well, indeed.
Yes, absolutely.
And I enjoyed it in that.
And the only kind of knit I would pick if I was forced to pick a knit would be that
the interior of the train appeared to be...
Everyone in there could breathe.
So it was obviously a sealed environment.
And when they unsealed the train, it didn't depressurize or anything.
And yet on the outside of the train, Dan had to wear a helmet.
And when it got shot, all his air got sucked out into the vacuum of space.
And I couldn't...
I was just sitting there going, I can't work out why this is happening.
But that's just me.
I just wanted to know.
Yeah.
I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about your experience
with the train.
I think that's a really good question.
production.
Thank you.