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| Remember when Doctor Who was locked in a booth and regenerating, like in 2010? |
That is, to say, a version of myself from around May of this year. Specifically the me who wrote this leading up to watching Quantum Leap, trying to explain how I was coming into that show by just revealing the sheer psychic bile which lurked within me. I was civil enough not to hope Chibnall burns in flaming torment for his take on the show, but I still look at a line like "GIVE THIS SHOW I LOVE THE GODDAMNED HEIMLICH MANUEVER ALREADY BEFORE IT FUCKING DIES FROM ITS OWN DISGUSTING NOSTALGIA-BAITED BILE!!!" and I see the same creature that this Twitter user was revealing to the world. All the venom and psychic damage I sustained from shitty lore television, all that hurt and hate that I exorcised by sitting down with Scott Bakula all summer and mellowing out? I got to stare it in the face again, in the form of one hyperbolic angry fan who was kind of the main character of Doctor Who Twitter on Saturday, just before watching this. I completed the exorcism, and this fucked-up hydra that mirrored me is what I was faced with. It was a sobering and introspective experience to go through.
With that in mind, a new approach. Ready? I did not hate The Power Of The Doctor. I lay on my couch for 2 hours and did not hate what I sat through. It was, in the end, a colorful romp through space and time with exciting set pieces and monsters shooting shit everywhere and all sorts of recognizable Doctor Who iconography. If you, as some Marvel fans have suggested, "turn your brain off"? You can have a good dumb time with this thing. It seems a lot of fans of the era enjoyed this swansong and I don't wish to take that from them. If you somehow came to this and you loved it, I'm happy for you. Please do not take my critique as a personal attack on you. We all have our pet eras, and yours just went away so I know you're feeling a lot right now. Be kind, that's all. I do have a lot to critique, however.
You see, on the other hand of everything I just said... Well, let me just highlight another succinct tweet I came across. That really sticks with me, and I like the thought of having cultivated a personal aesthetic that comes through in my writing and expresses the type of media watcher I am and what sorts of things either resonate with that aesthetic or do not. One of those fun facts about me is that I am wholly put off by excessive references to other things in a piece of media. Even if I get the reference, all it's done is remind me of a better thing and hasn't actually made the media in question better by invoking it. This is an unfortunate stance to have in these modern times where damn near everything is a continuity-laden reference fiesta, and Power Of The Doctor is no exception.
I sincerely hope I'm not undercutting that point by making another citation, but please forgive me because I will build upon this framework. Elizabeth Sandifer, in her TARDIS Eruditorum entry on The End Of Time Part 2, made this metaphorical observation on the extended end sequence of visiting every companion:
"Every story can be a Doctor Who story, and Doctor Who never ends, and so at last the inevitable happens: Doctor Who becomes the only thing on television."
I offer a twist on that metaphor, to explain Power Of The Doctor in a succinct manner. A new inevitability has happened within the realm of Chibnall's era: Power Of The Doctor is every Doctor Who story. This is what being the centenary lead-in to the 60th anniversary means now: as many references to Doctor Who as is possible to cram in 90 minutes. I could not possibly list them all, but let's try a quick rapid-fire list of elements: Daleks, Cybermen, the Master, Tegan, Ace, Kate Stewart and UNIT, Vinder, Graham O'Brien, David Bradley, Jo Martin, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann. That's not even counting all the little lines that reference other stories, and I will not even try to count all of those. Some of them, like Tegan and Ace getting to talk to old hologram versions of their Doctors, have a little emotional heft to them. I am not immune to propaganda, and so Ace and McCoy talking for a bit did hit part of a feeling. Some of the other references, though? So forced that it made me a little mad, just an OH COME ON at the screen.
Doctor Who becoming a reference fiesta is not the worst sin this episode does, though. If that were all I could bounce off it fine in my new mellowed out state. No, it's the sensibilities of the Chibnall era come back for one last time that lower things. All of those loose threads that dangled last year, that tempted and teased us back, are not pulled on and just cut loose because this is the end. The Chibnall era, its characters and resonances and merits... they are all just the rough framework for the big continuity reference party. Nowhere is this more apparent than the companion departures. Dan, after nearly dying in the exciting pre-credits scene, just leaves and isn't seen again until the ending. This does not hurt as much as Yaz's departure, though. Yaz, who spends the second half of this episode as a Doctor in her own right, piloting the TARDIS and recruiting allies to stop the evil schemes of all the antagonists. Yaz, the longest-serving Doctor Who companion, the woman who has been here for four years. How do you deal with a companion departure like that?
The Doctor just wants to go regenerate alone, and Yaz agrees with this and leaves. Even her departure is swallowed up by the reference fiesta, as she joins a support group for ex-Doctor Who companions which exists to give some more of these old faces from the classic series one more cameo. This is how Yaz leaves. Practically kicked out and then has her final scene stolen up by references to old episodes of a TV show made before her actress was born. This is the ugly final secret of the Chibnall years, the terrible evolution. Last year I yelled about the Timeless Child resolution; how, when Doctor Who got her watch back, she dropped it down a memory hole in the TARDIS. How it felt less like she chose to forget about the watch and more like Chris Chibnall chose to forget about the watch for her. This approach is, horrifically, applied to the companions in this story. They don't leave because they chose to. They leave because Chris Chibnall said it was time for them to leave. It's shallow and insulting, and you could easily cut like four or five of your references to classic Who to make an actually poignant and decisive choice to leave with character agency. But, no.
This is what Chibnall did, what he always did. He was terrible at resolving anything, only dangling the loose threads in front of you and enticing you with the hope that something would happen... and here we are, and there's nothing here. Nothing except the conga line of callbacks, and then the ultimate callback. It's poetic, in a way. Since 2020, the Chibnall era (and the Doctor Who brand at large) have been obsessed with referencing the status quo of Doctor Who circa about 15 years ago. There's something almost tragic about the fact of Chibnall's replacement; having referenced the RTD years to death over his last two series and change, finally they just say "fuck it" and actually get RTD back for another go-round in the showrunner's chair. And of course, we have to talk about our "new" Doctor. I don't mean Ncuti Gatwa, who is in the 2023 trailer and so is probably involved in next year a little more than just showing up at the end. No, I mean him.
Somehow I called the regeneration. Of course it would be a retro-regeneration into David Tennant for some unexplained reason, but I called the exact parameter of what happened after. I called it because it's the most low-hanging fruit callback that could be taken. David Tennant going "WOT? WOT? WOT?" just like he did on the RTD show! The low-hanging fruit. That's where we're at now. God help us, this is what we've collapsed into. Yes, we all have more faith in RTD than we did in Chibnall to have this be more than just a desperate attempt to remind us of 15 years ago, but still. I am wary going forward. That's the end of the Chibnall era, then. Did I like it? Not really. The past four years have saw the show I love become a show I do not love, and that's depressing in its own way. I did not love this era of the show, and can count the episodes I did truly enjoy and resonate with on one hand. It's done now, though, and it's degenerated back to one simple base statement, one Chibnall reflected over and over in his swansong but with every possible date and time of Doctor Who history. It's become a bit of a meme among my friend circle, but it's the only way I can lead into what's to come and close the book on Chris Chibnall. One thesis statement for David Tennant 2.
Remember 2008, when the show was good?
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