I’m going to miss The Ponds when they’re gone. I love Amy and Rory. I love them separately, but I love them even more together, and Chris Chibnall, both in the “Pond Life” series of minisodes and in this week’s episode of Doctor Who, “The Power of Three,” does an amazing job of showing just how wonderful Amy and Rory are as a couple and how, when joined by the Doctor, there is nothing that can stop them.
“The Power of Three” begins at a period of time when Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) rarely see the Doctor (Matt Smith). They’ve since gone on about their lives, Rory accepting a promotion at the hospital and Amy having become a travel writer (that woman loves to change careers, doesn’t she?), and are beginning to wonder whether they should give up their Doctor Life entirely to put more focus on their Real Life. Out of nowhere, these small, black cubes appear all over the world. At first, humanity — and the Doctor — is concerned. However, after weeks of inactivity, the cubes become a fact of life and people get used to them, taking them into their homes and using them for mundane purposes like paperweights and decorations. Bored with the inactivity, the Doctor leaves Rory’s father, Brian (Mark Williams) in charge of watching the cubes with Amy and Rory.
As the Doctor continues to pop in and out of Amy and Rory’s lives over the course of a year, cubes begin to start doing things — moving, glowing, flying — and the Doctor meets the new head of UNIT, Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), daughter of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Together, they discover that the cubes were sent to Earth by an alien race called the Shakri, whom the Doctor only knew as a Gallifreyan legend before now. The Shakri, acting as “pest control” for the Universe, wanted to prevent the human “contagion” from ever getting powerful enough to explore the stars. So, they sent the inactive cubes to Earth, waited until people felt comfortable enough with them to incorporate them into their lives, then used them to give every human in close proximity of one a heart attack. Once on the Shakri ship, the Doctor reverses the signal being sent out by the cubes, restoring everyone who’d been given a heart attack, and causing the Shakri ship to explode. The Doctor returns Amy and Rory home, and as he’s about to leave, Brian insists that they go with him. Now that he’s got the travel bug, he can’t imagine how they can pass up traveling with the Doctor.
Amy and Rory
The wonderful thing about “The Power of Three” is that it gives us a deeper look into what life is like as a Doctor’s companion during the times when the Doctor isn’t around, and I love that Amy and Rory actually enjoy their normal lives, too. A hallmark of New Who has been the Doctor traveling with people who hated their mediocre, underachieving lives and wanted more (with the exception of Martha). That might have been where it started with Amy, but as she’s gotten older she’s come to understand that with the right person by your side, even the most mundane days can be a wonderful adventure. Amy and Rory share a love of traveling with the Doctor, but they love each other more, and they are both people who appreciate the simple things that make human existence wonderful. They are also both capable of looking at Doctor Life in a very matter-of-fact way. In both “The Power of Three” and in “Pond Life,” it’s great to see Amy and Rory accept everything they experience with the Doctor in stride. It’s like, as long as they have each other, who cares that there’s an alien invasion? They are each other’s constant and anchor, which allows them to deal with anything the Doctor throws their way.
Chibnall did an excellent job of showing us how Amy has matured in a beautiful scene where she speaks from experience and counsels the Doctor that he might be running away from things. Amy’s journey from guarded girl with trust issues to a woman capable of facing her emotions head-on has been a fascinating one to watch, and it was lovely to be able to see her be so confident in counseling the Doctor as a friend, or communicating openly and honestly with Rory in this episode.
Team TARDIS
“The Power of Three” also does a great job of reminding us what a great team the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are. I loved the use of the Earth getting “cubed” as a metaphor to demonstrate the power of three. In Amy and Rory, the Doctor has companions who, while they respect and admire him tremendously, call him on his crap, because they aren’t dazzled by him. At one point, when the Doctor assumes too freely that Amy and Rory will be coming with him, Rory says, “What you do isn’t all there is.” Rory has never been too overly impressed by the Doctor to speak his mind, and Amy even at her most deferential has always been a powerful conscience for the Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor has saved their marriage on countless occasions, seeing that the strengths they have individually with regard to him are exactly what make them so perfect for each other. They make the Doctor better, the Doctor makes them better, and they are best as a team.
Yay, Humanity!
In addition to the examination of the relationships above, “The Power of Three” was also about the strengths and weaknesses of the human race in general. Something that is both a strength and a weakness in people is our ability to move on to the next thing. This is great in that it’s how we often recover from our big tragedies, but it was interesting to see it used against us in this episode, by having the Shakri incorporate the way people adapt and get used to/get over thing into their plan. Using the cubes the way they did was a genius move in that the Shakri knew that if they waited long enough, humanity would simply get used to having the cubes there and let their guard down. However, what saves humanity from being weakened is the Doctor’s faith in them; the Doctor knowing that it’s that resilience and determination in the face of a “slow invasion” that makes them excellent candidates for sharing the wider Universe. Humanity has a champion, but that champion continues to save them because they’re already amazing.
The Script
The use of a “slow invasion” to give us a chance to see The Ponds in their natural habitat was a wonderful idea, providing an undercurrent of danger even as people were ignoring the cubes and going about their days. The dialogue was crisp and funny throughout, and there were some wonderful moments of drama in lines like the Doctor telling Amy, “Yours was the first face this face saw,” that made me tear up. The entire episode made me tear up, actually.
The Performances
This is the most relaxed and in-the-moment I’ve ever seen the main trio, which makes sense when you consider that “The Power of Three” is actually the last episode Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill shot. Though we’ll be saying goodbye to The Ponds next week, it is “The Power of Three” that is the culmination of all of Gillan and Darvill’s brilliant etching of these characters and hard work over the years. Their Amy and Rory were beautifully effortless and lived-in this week. Matt Smith, too, was grounded and completely present this week, even as he had a bit of a Tennant-esque moment (“Welcome back, Lefty!”). His chemistry with Gillan and Darvill is undeniable. Mark Williams was absolutely charming as Brian, and I can only hope that they work out a way for him to do a bit more traveling with the Doctor in the TARDIS. Williams also did an wonderful job playing his character a bit like Rory, showing us that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. And Jemma Redgrave was a breath of fresh air as Kate Stewart. Not since The Brigadier and Sergeant Benton have UNIT personnel been warm and approachable, but Redgrave’s performance brings us back to that warmth.
“The Power of Three” is a simple, but powerful episode where the plot of the story wasn’t intricate, but the character relationships were.
Doctor Who’s fall half-season finale, which is the farewell episode for Amy and Rory, airs Saturday, September 29th at 9PM ET on BBC America.
Teresa Jusino is going to order tea like a cowboy next time she goes to a bar. Her Feminist Brown Person take on pop culture has been featured on websites like GirlGamer.com, Al Dia, ChinaShopMag.com, PinkRaygun.com, Newsarama, and PopMatters.com. 2012 will see Teresa’s work in two upcoming non-fiction anthologies, and she is also a writer/producer on Miley Yamamoto’s upcoming sci-fi web series, RETCON, which is set to debut in 2013. For more on her writing, get Twitterpated with Teresa, “like” her on Facebook, or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.
I’ll be so sad to see the Pond’s go, but they’ve had a good run. Love them dear. Will be good to see River again though!
Btw, did you notice that ‘A Town Called Mercy’ takes place during the middle of this episode? In the sequence where Rory & Amy are travelling with the Doctor we see them in Henry VIII’s bedchamber. At the start of ‘A Town Called Mercy’, the Doctor is berating Rory for leaving his phone-charger behind when they visited Henry VIII.
I really liked this episode, and I absolutely loved Brian. Everything he did was wonderful. (Though it did make me wonder if Rory has a mom, and where Amy’s parents are in all of this.)
@RobHansen, I didn’t put the Henry VIII part together, but while I was watching it, I kept thinking it made sense for ‘A Town called Mercy’ to be during this episode. I kept looking for Amy and Rory’s outfits to line up with what they wore in the last episode. I didn’t catch if they did, so I wasn’t sure, but it could be I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
I have to say, I absolutely adored Amy working as a travel journalist. It just makes so much sense for her character.
Amy’s work as a kissogram and as a model never struck me as being a career that she really cared about. The job was there. It paid the bills. She did it well. But she took the job because it was there, it paid the bills, and she knew she had the looks and ability to do it well. Those jobs never struck me as her passion, or as something she enjoyed doing.
But travel journalism. That’s Amy. Because she’s very much been with the Doctor for the sake of travel. Rather than seeking out adventure, or wanting to solve problems, or trying to escape her life. From the time she was seven, she’s someone who wanted to travel, and could have her suitcase packed and be ready to go in five minutes. “Can I come?” The lure of a trip is enough to make her forget the scary crack in her bedroom wall.
She’s also been very much about stories, and creativity. All the pictures she drew, and toys she made. Play-acting “Travels with the Doctor” with Rory as children, making stories as a game. So combining the joy of travel with the joy of writing up a good story really fits her.
And it also solves a second problem. With their intermittant trips with the Doctor, Amy and Rory have unexplained gaps in their lives. We now see how they’ve made it work.
At the start of the story, Rory is working as a nurse, but he’s clearly part-time or a temp. Good enough that his employers want him to work full time, but he keeps telling them no.
And now we know the reason he gives for why he’ll only work part time. His wife is a travel journalist. And they like to travel together for at least some of the trips that she takes in order to write her articles.
The fact that these trips may be two weeks traveling Earth to gather stories for Amy to write, plus one day spending several weeks or months traveling with the Doctor is a minor detail that can be left out of official explanations.
Probably my favorite episode of the current season so far. It was pretty deus-ex-machina’d together at the end there, but as another reviewer has pointed out, the “plot” is only important insofar as it’s a hook to hang the story of the Doctor and the Ponds off of; their relationship is the real story here.
Also, I literally burst into tears at the reveal that Kate was the Brig’s daughter. Three and UNIT were my first DW serials, what can I say?
I will certainly miss the Ponds, but although I like Rory, I will miss Amy the most. She has a way of always looking gorgeous even when she is in trouble. That hair (I’m a ging myself), those legs but most of all those eyes, my god she can steal any scene with those eyes, they have a promise of pleasure, passion, mischeif all roled into one. What a gal!!
Love to Amy
xxx
Definitely thought this was the best episode of the season so far. LOVED the inclusion of the Brigadier’s daughter, and I really hope we see her again! But while I love the Ponds, I am glad they’re leaving. It’s time for Eleven to have a new companion, and I was rather fond of the way Oswin and Eleven interacted with each other. I’m also curious to find out exactly how brilliant Oswin actually is, given that the reason she was better than the Doctor at hacking into the hive mind and the Daleks’ security systems was that she was a Dalek herself.
Also, passing thought–does Rory’s dad know he’s a grandfather now? Given that he knows about the Doctor and the timey-wimeyness of Amy and Rory’s lives, shouldn’t he be told that he has a granddaughter? I had the distinct impression that he didn’t know that his granddaughter had been kidnapped and brainwashed into attempting to murder the Doctor because of how unconcerned he was about urging his son and daughter-in-law to continue traveling with the Doctor. I can’t imagine that he’d be so calm about it if he did know.
A brilliant, heart-warming and heart-wrenching episode. I’m missing the Ponds already, even though we still have an episode left!
And I’ll be giggling about “Zygons at the Savoy” for days.
The sentimental parts of the show worked well, but when the saving of the human race becomes a toss-off B plot, it indicates a loss of perspective on the part of the writer. When the Doctor’s problems and relationships are more important than the fate of the planet, the Doctor has indeed become “too big.” And knowing that the end of the Pond’s journey is coming right around the corner kind of undercuts the power of their decision to keep on “companioning.”
But that being said, it was an enjoyable episode.
On the one hand, I have issues with how New Who has dramatically intensified the emphasis placed on the companions and their role as companions, and that was the foundation of this episode. I especially don’t like how some companions are made out to be “more special” than others, which comes up mostly regarding Rose and Amy.
On the other hand, it’s interesting to see the Doctor have to face a set of companions who finally outgrew him, as opposed to his just leaving them behind somewhat unwillingly. Amy and Rory have been an unorthodox take on the Doctor-companion dynamic from the start. And I suppose I can buy the explanation for why he’s latched on to Amy in a way that he never has to any of his other companions before. That said, it’s a take on the dynamic that I think they shouldn’t attempt to replicate. Ever.
The entire ending, from the time the Doctor began to disable the Cubes and on, was cheap and too easy. But the rest of the episode was well-written enough for me to disregard that. I can say I liked it, but I can’t say I consider it a great Doctor Who episode. However, it was certainly a very key Eleventh Doctor episode.