4. The Power of Three
Who to Blame? Chris Chibnall Judging by the official poll taken by yours truly from data ascertained from some of the people I know this episode was totally ruined by a poorly pulled off ending. In all fairness to it it did try to do a brave thing. Until now the penultimate companion stories have been dark, 'Fear Her' for Rose, 'Blink' for Martha and 'Turn Left' for Martha but 'The Power of Three' tried something new. It went bright. Po3 was a celebration not only of Amy and Rory's time on the TARDIS but of the show going back through to Series 1. It reflected the style of the old Russel T. Davies epics going through certain tropes like the star cameo appearances and the shots of the aliens all across the world. The problem is just that ending though... 'The Power of Three' promises so much yet delivers so little. The whole episode is based on the premise of the 'long invasion'. These alien cubes have come to earth for unknown reasons. Overnight they appear in every country in their thousands and the Doctor spends the next year (or 30 minutes if you are viewing at home) observing the cubes and finding out as much about them as he possibly can. Meanwhile, at the hospital in which Rory works, a creepy girl sits in the same chair unnoticed and mysterious men in surgical masks kidnap sick patients. It's all a really good set up. A new concept of the long invasion drives the plot and the sinister surgeons are perhaps the creepiest monsters of series 7 but but then we get the final scenes of the episode. The function of the cubes is that each will do something different and ascertain what the response of the nearest human is... or to do something to the humans like take a blood sample and ascertain the best way to kill them. And they needed to wait a year to do this? Yes, apparently because in order to they needed to be near to the humans who needed to trust them and take them into their homes. Its absurd, why on earth did the humans need to trust them? And seeing as how they got onto earth originally by appearing everywhere at once why on earth did they need to get inside peoples' homes? They were already there! Oh and those surgeons? Not mentioned in the dialogue once. And after the cubes give a third of the population heart attacks the Doctor just reverses it with his Sonic Screwdriver. This really is the worst way to end an episode, by ruining all that came before. Such a disappointing anti-climax.