Every life is made up of glimmering moments in time. Those that seem the most insignificant when we are traveling through them can gleam like beacons in the dark when we look back. As the Doctor discovers in The Power of Three, each second we spend with our loved ones is precious the ones we race through at break-neck speed, adrenaline racing, hearts pumping - and the ones we stumble through simply and slowly. This penultimate episode to Series 7a, and prelude to the fall of the Ponds, opens fittingly with a fantastic montage of scenes from Amy and Rorys glorious life with the Doctor. We then cut to life at home, with its dreaded out of date yogurt and mundane reminders that aging never stops, at least for humans, and reading glasses are waiting. Very early, on one of those quiet, uneventful mornings we are all so accustomed to, a most unusual thing happens. There are cubes. Everywhere from the Ponds typical suburban street to the grand environs of the Taj Mahal little black boxes have suddenly appeared. Awakened by Rorys father Brian, the companions make their way downstairs only to find the Doctor already examining the evidence. The nature of the cubes, however, remains elusive. Though Brian offers an abundance of admirably creative suggestions, the Doctor is unable to determine what the cubes are or where they came from. When our heroes remove themselves to the kitchen to do a little lab work, or cube cooking, Rory realizes he needs to head off to work. The Doctor is unaware he even had a job. Is the Doctor really this self-absorbed? Or is his supposed disinterest in events that dont involve him really a way of maintaining distance? The less he knows about the outside world of the Ponds, the easier it is to pretend that his involvement with them will go on forever. Our mortality shines most brightly in the quiet, mundane moments of our lives. The Doctor is probably quite relieved when UNIT (Unified Intelligence Task Force) a military organization assigned to combat extraterrestrial threats surrounds the house with a ridiculous amount of saber rattling and posturing. Emerging from this cloud of testosterone is Kate Stewart, UNITs head of scientific research, a calm and reasonable countermand to military might. Kates inquisitive nature, rationality, obvious intellect and aura of respect elicit a warm response from the Doctor and they immediately begin working together. She is also kind enough not to mention that Rory is in his underpants.
Four days later, the cubes have done nothing though their monotonous presence is certainly having an effect on the Doctor. His boredom and frustration is driving everyone around him insane. He leaps about like an untamed child, racing from one task painting fences to another fixing or perhaps destroying the car - practicing his football moves sweeping the carpet trying to bleed off some of that inexhaustible time lord energy. Unfortunately hes only managed to kill about an hour. He cant take it of course and sprints for the Tardis - where Brian is sitting having spent the last four days thoughtfully observing the cubes. Brians steadiness, reliability and thoughtfulness are a gorgeous counterpoint to the Doctors frenetic anxiety. Brian really is a pond waters still and deep. The Doctor is a raging river who sometimes has the tendency to race over and through when he should be running alongside. The Doctor invites the Ponds along on another adventure but when Brian points out that he is disrupting their everyday lives the Doctor resorts to petulance and selfishness, disparaging Rorys job as unimportant and insignificant. When Rory maintains that his life as a caregiver is extremely important to him the Doctor reacts with defensiveness and annoyance. For a being with two hearts, the Doctor often has a very hard time getting out of his head. Distancing himself at this point is a good thing because everyone needs to stand back and take a hard look at the fundamental interactions that are occurring within this group. They are a family and familys squabble. But families fall apart when respect is not maintained. While the Doctor is away, Brian diligently and exhaustively records that absolutely nothing is happening with the cubes and the Ponds embark on a new and what is to them a quite exciting kind of life. They reconnect to their planet, their home, spending quality and for once quantity time with their work, family and friends. They make commitments. They discover they like it. Unbeknownst to Rory, something sinister is taking place in the hospital he works in. A haunting little girl with glowing eyes is hanging around clutching a cube and a patient is attacked and carried off by two monstrous orderlies with faces deformed so that their nose and mouth are replaced by cube-ish hexagons. Medical settings in Doctor Who, as in real life, are often fraught with paradox. Hospitals are places of succor or torture or both. Violation and invasion of the body is a universal human fear a fact both showrunner Stephen Moffat and writer Chris Chibnall are well aware of and exploit accordingly.
The months tick by and the cubes, having shown no signs of much of anything at all, are simply accepted as part of everyday life they become paperweights and bookends and coasters common objects that are so ubiquitous as to go unremarked, unobserved. While the Ponds are enjoying life at home their love for the Doctor has not wavered and they do miss him. Amy is angry when she feels like he is avoiding them and she and Rory are overjoyed when the Doctor shows up at the party for their wedding anniversary. They jump right back into life with him, which begins as a lovely anniversary gift of a night at the Savoy Hotel in 1890 and predictably ends with Zygons and Henry the Eighth. After seven weeks of traveling they return to the party almost at the moment they left. The ever observant Brian notices they are wearing different clothing and corners the Doctor to find out what happens to all his companions. Some of them leave him. Some are left behind. Some die. The Doctors sober eyes fill with the memory of past love and loss as he confesses to Amy that he misses her and Rory and asks to move in again so he can observe the cubes. With some trepidation, but moved by this admission, Amy agrees. True to his promise the Doctor is better behaved this time though I think it is fortunate for all concerned that he has discovered the Wii. Then, on an ordinary summer day almost a year from when they appeared the cubes finally reveal themselves. Their actions are puzzling at first as they all seem to do different things take blood samples, shoot lasers, rattle around. Rory is called into work as the hospital is inundated with casualties from cube attacks while Amy and the Doctor are summoned to the Tower of London to meet up with Kate Stewart and UNIT. Amy and the Doctor head outside away from the turmoil and insecurity to find a clear place to contemplate things. Like the cubes, they finally reveal themselves. The Doctor is afraid of losing his (current regeneration) life-long friends and doesnt understand why they cant both travel with him and maintain their home life. He looks into Amys eyes with utter bewilderment and yet the difference here from his earlier callousness is he is trying very hard to understand. What we sometimes forget is that we are as alien to the Doctor as he is to us. But arent we all like this really? Are we all not ultimately alien to each other, never truly knowing what another is thinking or feeling? We must force ourselves to reach out into the dark and trust a hand will be there. We may not ever be able to truly understand the heart and mind of another being but the hope and the gift is in the trying. When Amy and the Doctor learn to open up to each other at last they risk a searing vulnerability but only now can they forge a true path to understanding and acceptance.
As the Doctor and Amy return to the tower the cubes begin counting down. The Doctor isolates himself in a room with one until the countdown reaches zero. In the first few moments after the cube opens nothing happens. This small beat is significant as it sums up what has been happening throughout this entire episode. This is just what life is like. We all go about our merry way, ignoring the important things, obsessing over the inconsequential, but in the back of our minds we are always and ever waiting for the other shoe to drop. We know our lives are ultimately tragic, we just choose to ignore it so we can get on with the business of living without going mental. Time that languid line weve been following for so long - abruptly transforms itself into an oncoming bullet train. People die - cubes are short-circuiting human hearts with an electrical current. The Doctor himself is in cardiac arrest but since he has two hearts he is able to function even though one of them is no longer working. He and Amy rush over to the hospital where Rory works as they discover it is a locus for cube activity. The Doctor collapses and quick thinking Amy grabs a defibrillator and restarts his failing heart. Racing down corridors, they discover a wormhole in a freight elevator and waltz through, finding themselves onboard an orbiting ship. Rory and Brian are laid out on slabs with some of the hospital patients having been captured by the nightmarish hospital attendants earlier. The Doctor awakens them and orders them out of the way as he turns to face a nightmare from his childhood. The Shakri were a myth used on Gallifrey to frighten the young. But like most myths the stories were based in truth and now the Shakri have come to Earth to rid the universe of the human plague. Once again in this series we are faced with the consequences of judgment and self-righteousness. The Shakri are incapable of entertaining another point of view. They are so set on their course that they cannot hear the cries of the suffering they themselves have caused even as they accuse their victims of the same thing. The Doctor rather conveniently solves this with much waving of his sonic screwdriver, turning a second wave of cubes into a sort of defibrillator engine that restarts the hearts of the first wave of casualties. Suspended disbelief aside, one hopes that the Shakri will be revisited, and their devotion to the Tally explained in more detail. The Power of Three, however, isnt about Shakri or cubes. Its about heart. We are utterly alien to each other but the heart wants what it wants. It aches for connection, even as it braces and breaks us. Steadfast, resolute, brave Brian is the one who finally fully understands this, urging Amy and Rory to go with the Doctor, letting go of the ones he holds most dear in order to give them the strength to follow their own hearts. What is life anyway but a series of soaring highs and heart shattering lows with a lot of sitting around in-between? Seize your opportunities while you can - hearts flare with the force of a thousand suns but fade all too soon.