The Power of Three

It's slightly harder to imagine this one as a full-blown movie, but the penultimate Pond does do a good job of exploring the tension between Rory and Amy's need for domestic security and the lure of the inter-galactic thrill-ride offered by the Doctor. There's more than a dash of Peter Pan about this too. Amy and Rory find themselves excited by the notion of sleeping in their own bed, connecting with friends, being good at their jobs. The Doctor refuses to grow up and settle down; in fact, he can't even sit still for ten minutes without experiencing a manic episode and creosoting the fence. Is he drawn back to the Ponds because they are maturing and he's desperate to get the most out of them before they become intolerably dull? "I'm running to you," he tells Amy, "before you fade from me." He is, however, conflicted, it seems, and leaves longer and longer gaps between his visits - deep down he knows the end of the Ponds is coming. But he still can't leave them alone.

It's curiously selfish behaviour from the Doctor. When in the past he has seemed to indulge himself, he has been scheming, or satisfying a private agenda: taking Ace to Gabriel Chase, for example, or Amy to see the Flesh - but his ulterior motive has always been to try and help somebody other than himself. Here that's not the case, but it does mean that he ends up being around for the slow invasion.

The Cubes are a great plot device. They look great (strangely cute for inanimate boxes) and they offer lots of opportunities for gags, moments of mystery and twists. The world's initial collective head-scratch is nice, and Mark Williams is again smashing as Brian, sat there staring at the cubes, dogged and diligent - until he dozes off. The boys laughed a lot during this one: at the Doctor playing keepy-uppy and Wii, at Rory in his pants, and the various idiosyncratic tricks the cubes get up to later on.

Jemma Redgrave is a nice addition as Kate (Lethbridge-)Stewart; it's lovely to have her around, both to provide an ongoing connection to the show's past and to give a (hopefully) long-term face to UNIT. But her scenes are just a tiny wee bit over-sentimental - there should be poignancy, absolutely, but it would be nice for there to be a bit of a spark as well, some light sparring perhaps. Lovely, and increasingly mellow, as the Brigadier was, I enjoyed his avuncular gruffness more because he and the Doctor would disagree, and because the Doctor would bamboozle and frustrate him. In contrast, his daughter seems to be in total sympathy with UNIT's erstwhile Scientific Advisor, and the Brig himself, we are told, had seemingly rolled-over, telling her repeatedly "science leads". I'd like Stewart to show a bit more steel in future appearances.

The story only really begins to gain traction when the cubes wake up. The countdown is a nice touch and looks good, the numbers seemingly suspended inside, but the final scenes are odd. The look of the alien ship is very effective - there's a real sense of the stillness of space pressing in through the windows, and there's more than a dash of the Emperor's Death Star throne room about the set. And, unsurprisingly perhaps, Steven Berkoff gives a suitably bonkers and chilling performance as the Shakri. It's just a shame that this all turns up right at the end, without any preceding glimpses or hints (no, the box-mouthed nurse twins and the spooky droid girl do not count), and then vanishes - literally in the case of the Shakri who, it turns out, wasn't even there, but just a hologram or something. The actual story (stopping/re-starting hearts) makes some sense, but it is all happening way in the background on grainy monitors and doesn't have the impact it should have had. And, sorry to be dull, but what about all the people who were driving, swimming, mountain-climbing, massively old and so forth when their hearts were stopped, eh?

All in all, a pleasant but ultimately frustrating episode. It's initially fun in an absent, meandering way, then it looks like it is going to be terribly exciting - and then it just sort of flops to the ground. And then it has the nerve to finish on an utterly irrelevant - and therefore nonsensical - pun; why not just have called the episode something else?


NEXT TIME...