Doctor Who: The Power Of The Doctor Review - 5 Ups & 7 Downs

Of all the ways for a Doctor to go out, this has to be the most anti-climatic. The Power of the Doctor seems to blaze through its final act and have Thirteen save the day, only to realise that, somewhere along the way, it forgot to kill off Thirteen.

Enter the climactic scene on disco planet, in which the Doctor convinces the sentient energy beam child to go to town and destroy everything in sight. The episode, at this point, has not done nearly enough to explain what on Earth this thing is, or how it works, and we’re not afraid to admit, we still aren’t entirely sure. It comes as a surprise then that this underdeveloped afterthought is what ultimately kills Thirteen, after the Master flicks a switch and swings a fifty foot, planet-destroying beam straight at the Doctor.

We understand that you can’t have the protagonist of a family show get bisected by a big old doom laser, but would it have killed them to at least give Jodie a few tasteful cuts and bruises, as per normal protocol? The whole scene feels so rushed for such a pivotal moment, and has no thematic significance whatsoever. Nine goes out saving the woman who saved him; Ten, the vain hero, goes out saving a single, insignificant man; and Eleven, the old man in a young man’s body, is the only one to die of old age. Thirteen? Big laser. You see our point?

If only they had already planted a seed for a more satisfying end. Could the forced degeneration (from the Master to the Doctor) have gone wrong instead, allowing Thirteen to return, but at the cost of her degenerating even further? We thought that was where the story was going, to be honest.