Story by Morgan Grana
Staff Writer
Rate: 4/5
With the fall season finale of Doctor Who less than a week away (and with it the end of the Doctor’s time with the Ponds), Whovians gathered together once again last Saturday to watch the show’s most recent episode, The Power of Three.
This episode took an unexpected turn from what fans of the show have come to know as normal action-packed adventures with everyone’s favorite bow tie loving alien, instead taking place on the home front; namely, the Ponds’ apartment.
The Power of Three centers on the contrast between the two lives of the Ponds: real life and “Doctor life” and how Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) are beginning to realize that they have lives and responsibilities away from the Doctor and are slowly drifting away from him.
The episode provides excellent character development for the Doctor’s companions and does a great job at setting up their departure in next week’s episode, The Angels Take Manhattan.
The Doctor (Matt Smith) is used more as comedic relief than as a main protagonist in this episode. Whovians watch through tears of laughter as he is driven up the wall by boredom during his stay with the Ponds, trying to busy himself through trivial tasks like playing soccer or painting a fence or playing Wii Tennis. His inability to sit still for long periods of time, while funny, also shows the underlying dilemma of the Doctor becoming too dependant on his companions to keep him sane and entertained.
Understandably, this episode has received mixed reviews. The entire “mysterious black cube” plot was underdeveloped and the resolution felt rushed. Everything came to fruition in the last five or ten minutes and left quite a few plot holes. What was the point of the hospital staff taking random humans onto their ship? What were the Shakri planning on doing with them? It didn’t really seem to fit into the whole “destroy the human race” plan they had going for them.
Overall, this was an okay episode, which would have been better had it been entirely focused on the relationship between the Doctor and his companions, sans-cubes.
