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YeonchiDoctor Who 2022 Centenary Special Review: The Power of the DoctorAir date: 23 October 2022 Way back in April, there was an apparent leak stating that the title of this episode would be called The Lives of the Doctor. That turned out to be a hoax fabricated by some people from the Doctor Who Discord server, but the name we have now is close enough to be similar, even though we already went through an “X of the Doctor” phase in 2013 for the 50th anniversary. Well everyone, we have finally made it. After over 4 years (of which 2 years and 8 months consisted of EXTREMELY prolonged hiatuses), Jodie Whittaker’s final episode as the Thirteenth Doctor has finally aired. After that, we’re getting another EXTREMELY prolonged hiatus of 13 months until the 60th anniversary. Before I make my final verdict on Jodie Whittaker’s tenure as the Doctor and by extension, the Chibnall era of Doctor Who, let’s jump into the final episode and see whether any loose ends will be tied up. Here is my spoiler-free thought for this episode and the final one for the Chibnall era: “Oof, Yaz favouritism overload.” Nah, it’s the final episode, we can do better. “Sometimes, rumours can come true and sometimes, things don’t always turn out the way you predicted.” MAJOR spoilers continue after the break. Year-long hubbub This section was written before this episode was aired just to see whether this prediction comes true. People might be wondering why they didn’t see Ncuti Gatwa debut as the Doctor and I can speculate a few reasons as to why. The filming for this special took place from 23 August to 15 October 2021. The news of Russell T Davies returning as the new showrunner was announced on 25 September 2021 and the crew were only notified of this the day before. Ncuti Gatwa was cast as the Doctor in February 2022 and the announcement was made on 8 May 2022. With these timeframes, it would have been impossible for Ncuti to have made an appearance in the Centenary Special, unless some strings were pulled to allow for this. Also, I totally predicted back in the review for Legend of the Sea Devils that this episode would premiere on 23 October (as part of the BBC’s centenary week of programming that started on 22 October). I honestly wonder what it would have been like had the Centenary Special not been commissioned; would this episode have taken the place of the Easter Special (albeit a bit shorter), or would the Doctor have successfully sacrificed herself to stop the Sea Devils without Ji-Hun to take her place? I guess we’ll never know. TV Zone revealed the air date for this episode on 2 October before the BBC released the trailer for the episode a week after. It’s really telling of the care factor that went into the promotion of the series (amongst other things regarding production) when an unofficial source revealed the air date of the episode before the BBC did. Maybe the air date was kind of predictable given that it is the BBC Centenary (and, as I stated previously, the Chibnall era seems to like putting episodes on Sundays), but fans should have gotten confirmation at least four to six weeks before the air date. For the record, the title was revealed in Doctor Who Magazine 582, released 15 September, over five weeks before the air date. Apparently the marketing got messed up due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the official title reveal got pushed to 21 September. Grab onto the waves of time space Somewhere in space, a train- oh great, they’re finally doing a DenLiner. Nah, not really, it’s a space train, not a time train, plus, if I had to pick between the TARDIS and the DenLiner, I’d pick the TARDIS. That’s the reason why Den-O got replaced with an original Rider in my personal project. Anyway… Somewhere in space, a train belonging to the Torajii Transport Network makes an emergency transmission after it has been hijacked by Cybermen- no, Cyber-Time Lords- no, CyberMasters. The Doctor receives the transmission and heads down with Yaz and Dan. During this, they are confronted by the CyberMasters and one of them shoots a hole in Dan’s helmet, causing him to float away, though Yaz manages to hold onto him as the Doctor deactivates the electromagnetic roof, causing the CyberMasters to float away. The Doctor, Yaz and Dan head into the train. While Dan uses the sonic screwdriver to take control of the train, Yaz helps one of the personnel with a wound while the Doctor goes to confront the CyberMasters, who manage to teleport away with some cargo the ship was carrying, namely- The Timeless Child? Nah, not really, we’ll come back to them, but that’s the first thought I had when I saw them. After this, the Doctor takes Dan back to Liverpool in time for his date (presumably with Diane), but as he leaves, he stops and turns to tell the Doctor that she doesn’t have to come back for him, deciding that he doesn’t want to push his luck any further after the accident he had earlier. I honestly thought he’d stopped upon hearing that there was a child to be rescued, but I can understand why he would decide to leave. The Doctor and Yaz see Dan off before they head back into the TARDIS. You know, I’m pretty sure the Doctor picked Dan’s house up after it was shrunk by Karvanista’s trap, so you’d think she’d be able to find a way to restore it, but oh well. That’s the last we see of Dan for this entire special. You know, you’ve got to admire his dedication for Diane, a woman who considers being ghosted worse than being kidnapped amidst a crisis threatening the universe. Also, remember what Jack Harkness said to Yaz in Revolution of the Daleks? “Being with the Doctor, you don’t get to choose when it stops. Whether you leave her, or she leaves you.” I think Dan’s departure is an exception in that he actually got to choose when he left the Doctor. He could have not said anything and the Doctor would pick him up again 24 hours later, though given what’s about to happen next, I suppose he made the right decision. Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen At an art gallery in 2022 London (not really the National Gallery, Somerset House maybe?), Ace learns that a painting has been taken down for restoration work after it was restored only two months prior. Yeah, I bet it was those climate protesters, who oh so conveniently came back when the pandemic was all but over and most of the world got vaccinated. Anyway, Ace contacts Tegan Jovanka over video chat and tells her that 15 paintings over the world have been taken down with no explanation. Tegan, who is in Romania, tells Ace that three seismologists she was looking for (among others) have disappeared while investigating a nearby earthquake near a volcanic chain. On top of that, Tegan discovered a package upon arriving at her cabin; inside was a Russian doll toy box with a card saying that it was from the Doctor and a doll, specifically the doll of the shrunken Lone Cyberman, Ashad. In 1916, the Master, in disguise as Father Grigori Rasputin (who could ever have known) is called urgently to the Winter Palace from Siberia. As he compels the Tsar and his family to take some time away, the TARDIS lands on an extra planet in the shadow of Earth, where all the organic life has been converted into metal - let’s call it a Cyberplanet. They discover an extra TARDIS there, which is later revealed to a Type 75 belonging to the Master. Upon discovering another energy source on the surface, the Doctor and Yaz investigate and discover that the child has been tethered to the Cyberplanet alongside the Master’s TARDIS. The Doctor undoes the consciousness shield and discovers that the child is merely a visual filter for the quaranx, a rare source of sentient energy capable of powering planets and civilisations, now being used by the CyberMasters to power mass Cyber conversion. As more CyberMasters appear and shoot at the Doctor and Yaz, they run back into the TARDIS to find a message from Kate Stewart calling them to UNIT. Upon arriving at UNIT HQ, the Doctor meets Tegan and Ace after so many years. Kate shows them all the situation; it is revealed that the paintings were taken down because they were defaced with the Master’s face. The Master has also left a message inviting the Doctor to the International Seismology Memorial Conference in Naples near Mount Vesuvius. Before she and Yaz leave, the Doctor greets Tegan and Ace with a touch on the shoulder, inadvertently shocking them with static electricity. The Doctor and Yaz head to the conference to confront the Master, who has compressed all the seismologists with his TCE. The Master warns the Doctor to leave Earth or her existence will be erased forever, but UNIT troops come in and arrest the Master. The Doctor has one of the soldiers give Yaz a gun as they intend to take the Master back to UNIT HQ in the TARDIS. Meanwhile, Vinder comes through a wormhole in search of the missing quaranx and crashes on the Cyberplanet, resulting in him being stranded as a result of the damage to his ship sustained by travelling through the wormhole. He decides to use the device the Doctor gave him to contact her. After the Doctor drops the Master off at UNIT HQ, she leaves Tegan and Ace with Kate to guard the Master while she goes in search of a jaded Dalek who contacted her with an offer to destroy his kind and a warning that a Dalek invasion of Earth is imminent. Yaz gets a static shock from the Doctor during their conversation before they land inside a volcano in Bolivia. The Doctor and Yaz go their separate ways; the Doctor meets the jaded Dalek to extract the information he is offering her while Yaz discovers more Daleks attempting to harness the volcano’s power. Yaz makes it back to the TARDIS as three more Daleks find the Doctor; the jaded Dalek is exterminated while the other Daleks use its shell to capture the Doctor, leaving Yaz to set off in the TARDIS alone just as she receives Vinder’s call. Back at UNIT HQ, Tegan and Ace notices that the Lone Cyberman doll is on the ground. As the Master confronts them through the camera system in his bunker, the doll expands to its normal size, revealing that he was the one who sent it to Tegan. The doll opens up and out come a group of Cybermen, including Ashad, who was apparently cloned. Tegan and Ace try to shoot the Cybermen with gold bullets but it fails, resulting in them having to run upstairs. Ashad kills all the soldiers in the bunker and releases the Master from his imprisonment. The Master recovers his TCE and teleports away. In the Winter Palace, the Master brings the Doctor before him, the Daleks and the Cybermen, where we see the Master dancing to Boney M’s Rasputin in something that could only rival the Master dancing to the Rogue Traders’ Voodoo Child or the Scissor Sisters’ I Can’t Decide during the Series 3 finale two-parter. Meh, if I was the Master in that episode I’d be singing along as well plus including some ad-libbed dance moves from tokusatsu to zhuzh it up. The Master then makes contact with the TARDIS and has Yaz watch as he uses the Cyberplanet to force the Doctor to regenerate into him; or to put it a better way, I think he forced the Doctor to regenerate so he could hijack the regeneration and take over her body. Yaz lands the TARDIS in the Winter Palace and the Master, now in the Doctor’s body, proceeds to commandeer it. Landing on an asteroid (presumably), the Master heads outside to see the Earth and what I think could be the Cyberplanet (but judging how the other planet doesn’t even remotely resemble it, I think it could actually be Mondas) firing missiles at each other. The Master, intending to tarnish the Doctor’s name, tells a news camera drone that he (meaning the Doctor) caused this, but that is all he could do as Yaz pushes him out of the TARDIS and sets off. All we need is “DRIVE” The Doctor finds herself within her own consciousness at the Edge of Existence, where she meets a man sitting next to a telephone pole, namely the First Doctor, played by David Bradley, with his last appearance being in Peter Capaldi’s final episode, Twice Upon a Time, in 2017. During the sequence, the man is also shown becoming the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Fifth Doctors- wait, Fifth? Peter Davison? Didn’t he get cancelled back in 2017 for claiming that Jodie Whittaker’s casting meant that the Doctor would no longer be a role model for boys? Eh, I suppose people forgot about it even though he really meant no ill will towards the decision or the people involved in it. (For the record, I think that the Doctor has been a role model for ALL genders, as they say these days, and women have seen the Doctor as a role model even before Jodie Whittaker’s casting, just as some men may still see the Doctor as a role model now.) The Doctors claim that the Thirteenth Doctor refuses to pass through the Edge of Existence, though they acknowledge that the Master has taken over her body and that they can’t let him permanently hijack their existence. The Thirteenth Doctor realises that there is always a way before she finds herself alone. Back in the TARDIS, Yaz sees an AI hologram of the Doctor, activated through a nano-implant which was inserted into her, Ace and Tegan when they got static shocks from the Doctor. Yaz then goes to pick up Vinder from the Cyberplanet before telling the Doctor hologram about her forced regeneration, at which point she switches between faces as she tries to adapt to the new information. At UNIT HQ, Kate locks down the building while Ace and Tegan prepare to jump off the roof, but Tegan decides to go back down and help Kate. As Ashad and the Cybermen proceed to convert the UNIT soldiers, Tegan meets back with Kate, who tells her to head to the basement and find the manual override for the structural termination system. Tegan heads off while Kate distracts the Cybermen by giving them an offer. Ace jumps off the roof and lands in the TARDIS just as Cybermen are shooting at her parachute. Yaz drops Ace off inside the volcano in Bolivia before she has Vinder hide as she goes to pick up the Master from the asteroid. Tegan’s hologram activates, but her emotional memory causes the hologram to become that of the Fifth Doctor, who gives her some reassuring words before she opens a panel into the lift shaft. Inside the volcano, Ace’s hologram activates and she reconciles with the Seventh Doctor after apparently having a falling-out offscreen. Ace sets off after this and runs into Graham, who is having trouble with his psychic paper, though I could pass it off as being ineffective on previous companions of the Doctor. The Master takes the TARDIS back to the Winter Palace, where he orders the Daleks to activate volcanoes around the world. With help from a hologram of Ruth (the Fugitive Doctor) and Vinder, the CyberMasters are defeated and Yaz forces the Master back into the machine before harnessing the CyberMasters’ regeneration to degenerate the Doctor’s body back into her previous self and return the Master back to his body. The Ruth hologram disappears and the Doctor, Yaz and Vinder return to the TARDIS. Ashad and the Cybermen find Kate, who allows herself to be taken for conversion. Tegan climbs down the lift shaft, but Ashad hears her and the Cybermen shoot through it, forcing her to let go and drop to the basement. Tegan manages to stop Kate from being converted, while at the same time causing Ashad and the Cybermen to be shocked. Meanwhile, Ace and Graham manage to blow up a Dalek and the disruptor pulse system before they escape in the TARDIS, the Doctor having flown in to pick them up. The bombs detonate, taking the volcano and the Daleks with it. Tegan and Kate escape from the building as it is destroyed (a building that size you’d think would cause more destruction) and the Doctor picks them up as well. Come on and feel the Nexus Future As the Master stumbles out of the Winter Palace, the Doctor heads back to the Cyberplanet and puts Graham, Yaz, Tegan, Ace and Kate around the TARDIS before heading out and fixing Vinder’s ship. She then goes into the Master’s TARDIS and links it with her TARDIS, transporting it to 2022 while Vinder leaves through the wormhole. The Doctor then uses the Cyber conversion systems to freeze the lava into steel, quelling the eruptions. The Doctor heads out and tells the quaranx to disintegrate the Cyberplanet before freeing itself. She is about to head back to her TARDIS when the Master, whose body began failing from the previous ordeal, teleports back to his TARDIS, using the TCE to aim the quaranx’s energy at her before collapsing. Yaz picks up the Doctor and takes her back into the TARDIS before leaving as the Cyberplanet fully disintegrates and the quaranx goes free. The Doctor regains consciousness after Yaz took everyone else home (or rather, Croydon, but don’t worry, with transport being so advanced in London these days, plus Ubers being a thing, I’m sure they managed to get home easily). As the Cloister Bell rings, Yaz and the Doctor discover that the latter is regenerating. The two of them enjoy a final view of Earth over some ice cream before the Doctor decides that she must be alone and drops Yaz off, presumably in Sheffield, and leaving without a goodbye. And they never got to kiss lol. Yaz encounters Graham and Dan, a month having passed since Dan’s return, and they take her to a Doctor’s Companions Anonymous meetup, where they are joined by Tegan, Ace, Kate and additionally, Jo Jones, Melanie Bush and Ian Chesterton. The Doctor takes the TARDIS atop a cliff, and after some final words, she regenerates (with her clothes as well?) into… David Tennant? I mean, we know he’s coming back for the 60th, but this is honestly just fan-wanky and admittedly, this is something I’d expect from fan theories. Well, now we know that RTD isn’t rebooting the franchise, but continuing it, albeit sweeping the Timeless Child revelation under the rug. Also, this was kind of expected given what I mentioned earlier about the next Doctor not being cast yet at the time of filming. Random expectations So over the past year, I’ve seen rumours about this special here and there and I want to address some random things. Yaz was apparently going to be shown back with the police, which would be a serious regression of her character because she barely went back to the force ever since she started travelling with the Doctor. It was for the best that Yaz quit the police given these circumstances. I’d read somewhere that the Doctor was going to have to wipe Yaz’s mind (along with Tegan’s and Ace’s) because her travels were affecting the stability of the timeline (hence the static shocks in the episode) and in doing so, it would give the Thasmin stans the kiss they were looking for. Frankly, if this was the case, it would be an insult to her character (and possibly Tegan’s and Ace’s) because it completely negates her journey and what little character development she got (and on top of that, destroying more Doctor Who canon established by other people over 30 years ago). This would be like when the Doctor wiped Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan’s minds back in Spyfall Part Two, but a hundred times worse. The only time a memory wipe was justified was with Donna Noble in Series 4. Given what little information we got about the 60th Anniversary, some people (including myself) presumed that it would be a reboot and that this episode would end on the Doctor’s regeneration with a fade to black. In fact, given that the production didn’t know about RTD taking over as showrunner until a month into filming the episode, I think that it would have been the case had it not happened. Honestly, I’m kind of glad that they at least got David Tennant back for it because it’d end up being a situation where others would have to address a missing regeneration somewhere down the line. Also, if the teaser we got at the end of the episode was any indication, the RTD2 era is going to continue with the Univisium 2:1 ratio instead of going back to 16:9 widescreen. Not a big problem in the end, but still. So, the BBC has confirmed that David Tennant is now the Fourteenth Doctor (in addition to being the Tenth Doctor) and that Ncuti Gatwa will be playing the Fifteenth Doctor. Three specials are due to air in November 2023 before Ncuti’s first episode is expected to premiere “over the festive period” in 2023 (please there be a Christmas Special, please). With this, I would also like to announce that I intend to continue reviewing new Doctor Who episodes in the RTD2 era and hopefully beyond, even if only for the content. I’ll explain this in my final wrap-up post for the Chibnall era, but RTD’s return has given me a renewed hope in a series that has seen better days. Anyway, that’s beyond the scope of this review series for now. Let’s quickly wrap up the review. Other general thoughts Like many others, I was surprised to see all the previous Doctors returning for this special. If it weren’t for Ruth’s introduction and the Timeless Child arc, I’d have the Eighth Doctor in place of Ruth for that scene in the Winter Palace. He honestly deserves more screentime if the BBC won’t give him a mini-series. They changed the font used for the locations again. It’s not that jarring, I’ll give it that, but the thing that’s even more jarring is that they couldn’t be consistent with their fonts for four years. Ryan is mentioned to be in Patagonia after the Doctor picks up Graham. Such a shame he couldn’t return for at least one more appearance. When the Doctor sees the Dalek appear in her TARDIS, she tells it that it is “the first Dalek to ever mean that”. Has she forgotten Rusty already? “The Master’s Dalek Plan” is also the name of a Big Finish audio featuring Derek Jacobi as the Time War Master. I feel like Sacha Dhawan could have gotten the opening titles credit instead of John Bishop given how Dan leaves the TARDIS soon after. The Master gives himself a gold star and a sticker upon seeing the destruction between Earth and the other planet (probably Mondas). If I had to really count it, I’ll just assume it’s 20 points. Such a shame the Doctor stopped giving out points. In the Doctor’s Companions Anonymous scene, there is an extra chair with an iPad on it, as someone on Twitter pointed out. In the replies, someone thought that it was meant to be for Ryan, while another thought that it could be for Polly Wright. Fun fact, Anneke Wills, who played Polly, was invited to reprise her role for this scene but she declined as she wanted to tend to her garden instead. Also, Chris Chibnall mentioned to the Mirror that Tom Baker was also invited for a cameo but he presumably declined due to his age. Amusingly, some people mentioned that the iPad belonged to Dan and amusingly, in the quote tweets, I found a link to a Twitter for Dan’s iPad. Whoever runs that page made the next Evil Dan, I swear. Earlier in October, Bonnie Langford, who played Mel, was announced to be reprising her role, but we didn’t expect to see her in this episode. I assume that she would be returning in the RTD2 era and I hope that’s still the case. The way that Tegan and Ace were reintroduced in this episode is quite weird. They state that it has been 30-40 years since they last saw the Doctor, though this disregards all the times they met the Doctor again since their departures, whether it be through Big Finish audios or prose. This is particularly the case for Ace as it is assumed she continued travelling with the Doctor after the classic series ended in 1989, though the 2020 book, At Childhood’s End, written by Sophie Aldred who played Ace (and also shows Ace meeting the Thirteenth Doctor and her fam), acknowledges all her adventures as being possible futures. That story also apparently explains the origin of Ace’s falling-out with the Doctor, though the Seventh Doctor Big Finish audio Dark Universe, also released in 2020, could come in at a close second. I won’t blame Chibnall that much for not doing his research, but if I were writing the episode, I would have read the wiki and found a way to acknowledge the adventures in the extended universe(s). Fun fact unrelated to this episode but related to the classic series: Tegan, an Australian companion, was introduced as a way to make Doctor Who more attractive to the ABC in an attempt to get them to invest in Doctor Who, though they were not interested in a co-production deal in the end. She was also introduced as a replacement for Romana when the actresses for Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) and Leela (Louise Jameson) were unable to reprise their roles. Oh, an additional fun fact; I knew someone in primary school and high school who was named after Tegan and her younger sister was named after Nyssa. Summary and verdict Well, I’ve got to hand it to Chibnall. Admittedly, he promised an epic episode and we got an epic episode, though that can be said for a lot of finales. This feels like one of his better episodes even with the memberberry nostalgia baiting or the fanwanky ending, but I’m not forgetting what he did to this series so easily. It feels on par with an anniversary special, but it’s basically just The Day of the Doctor on another scale so it would kind of feel shallow if this was the actual 60th Anniversary episode. This could have premiered on 23 November for the 59th Anniversary and it would still have the same effect. Dan left the TARDIS 10 minutes into the episode and the leaving companions near the end felt a bit rushed, but Graham’s reappearance in the last half-hour and the Doctor’s Companions Anonymous meeting really make up for it. Yaz got some time to shine, even without having much in the way of character development. Ruth makes an appearance as well which is good, but we get no resolution to the Timeless Child arc or Ruth’s place in the Doctor’s timeline after Chibnall pussied out of the double-down at the end of Flux. Kate gets the screentime and involvement she deserved after lacking it in Flux, plus the returning companions and Doctors were a really nice touch. I came into this episode with the expectation that I would have to give it a negative score, but it got subverted because it didn’t mention the Timeless Child at all. It’s almost like you don’t have to disrespect nearly 60 years of canon to tell a good story. I just wish we got this quality of writing over the last five years instead of what we got. Rating: 7/10 Series 13 cumulative total (with Legend of the Sea Devils): 11/80 (14%) Series 13 cumulative total (with The Power of the Doctor): 18/90 (20%) Hypothetical total: 47/90 (52%) Conservative total: 27/90 (30%) I wanted to give Chibnall credit for all the memberberries, but I don’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt given how I said I’d be reviewing this series more critically last year. And so, we have finally reached the end after 4 long years. There won’t be any new episodes until the 60th Anniversary Specials in November 2023, but I’ve still got Doctor Who-related things lined up for this blog, such as Kisekae Insights and Doctor Who 10 for 10 (which has had to be pushed back to next year because I’ve been so busy this year finishing off Kamen Rider Zi-O for my personal project). In the meantime, I have one final post in the works to round off the Thirteenth Doctor Reviews series, so stay tuned one last time as I bookend this series with a recap of my reviews and my closing thoughts on the Chibnall era of Doctor Who.

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