4 Years Ago, 'Doctor Who’s Biggest Failure Was Just the Beginning of the End

Whittaker deserved better than what she got

As the longest-running sci-fi show in history, Doctor Who has always placed a tremendous responsibility on whoever takes on the role of the Doctor. For Jodie Whittaker, who debuted as the Thirteenth Doctor in 2017, that responsibility carried extra weight: she was the first woman to play the Doctor, a milestone that immediately stirred up the internet’s worst grifters.

With so much at stake for Doctor Who’s creatives, including showrunner Chris Chibnall, the pressure to deliver makes Whittaker’s final episode feel like an even greater betrayal — not just of the show’s future, but of Whittaker herself and her time as the Time Lord.

The Power of the Doctor fails everyone involved

“The Power of the Doctor” is the finale of a multi-episode arc that follows the Doctor as she fights the Daleks, Cybermen, and the Master — all of whom want to destroy humanity. The Master disguises himself as the historical Russian figure Rasputin and places himself in Russia in 1916. From there, the Master plots with the Daleks and the CyberMasters (a new race of Cybermen who constantly regenerates) to trigger volcanic eruptions worldwide. However, the Master has a clever twist: he plans a body-swapping regeneration to forcibly turn himself into the Doctor.

As expected, the Doctor foils the Master, Daleks, and Cybermen — but not before a defiant, defeated Master mortally wounds her with a laser beam, forcing her to leave her old companion, Yasmin Khan (Mandip Gill), and regenerate into David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor. This transformation signaled the return not only of a familiar face but also of familiar showrunner Russell T. Davies, who wrote the episode's final moments.

On its own merits, “The Power of the Doctor” is easily one of the best of Chibnall’s era. It puts the Doctor up against insurmountable odds, and it’s a joy to watch the Time Lord figure out how to do the impossible. Unfortunately, as the finale of an era with more misses than hits, “The Power of the Doctor” can only highlight the shortcomings of Chibnall’s writing and direction.

Throughout Chibnall’s four-season run as Who’s showrunner, one of the most common complaints was his woeful overreliance on monologue over story, his overt nostalgia, and his failure to develop the relationships between the Doctor and their companions. The first issue is somewhat forgivable, given how much Doctor Who episode lengths have varied over time, and because he had to rely on specials rather than full-fledged seasons.

By the time “The Power of the Doctor” arrives, however, it’s hard to ignore Chibnall’s focus on replaying old hits by revisiting the Doctor’s greatest enemies and storylines rather than focusing on the core relationships of the cast. This combination leaves Whovians with a lackluster finale that ends not with a bang but a whimper.

Beyond time travel and fighting bad guys, the relationship between the Doctor and their companion(s) is ultimately the heart of the show. Chibnall’s decision to include classic Who companions like Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) to reunite with returning Doctors like Fifth (Peter Davison), Sixth (Colin Baker), Seventh (Sylvester McCoy), and Eighth (Paul McGann) suggests he recognizes the importance of the Doctor-companion relationship.

However, while these reunions are beautiful, Chibnall’s choice to keep Thirteen and Yaz — who has been with Thirteen since the very beginning of her time in the TARDIS — always felt odd. After all, this is Thirteen's last episode.

What makes this choice worse is that, while Yaz’s growing confidence in herself and her choices has been rewarding, we never see that confidence pay off in her romantic relationship with the Doctor before it is tragically cut short. Given that this is the first same-sex relationship we’ve seen the Doctor in after more than 50 years, Thirteen and Yaz’s would-be romance feels insulting in its lack of substance compared with the Doctor’s heterosexual relationships with companions like Rose Tyler, Clara Oswald, and River Song.

What ultimately makes “The Power of the Doctor” a flat swansong for Thirteen’s adventures is that it fails to center on the Thirteenth Doctor, largely because it reintroduces David Tennant. Whittaker gives a breathtaking performance when she realizes she won’t get to spend any more time with Yaz, but Tennant’s return just a few moments later feels like Chibnall and the BBC threw in the towel. Rather than go bold and attempt anything new, they instead retreated to safer waters.

Tennant’s return inevitably paid off: his brief stint as Fourteen made Doctor Who more popular than it had been in years. But to us, “The Power of the Doctor” marked the end of a Doctor Who willing to take risks — a loss that would fundamentally haunt Davies over his next two seasons as showrunner, eventually leaving the show on extremely shaky ground as it waits for someone with fresh, bright ideas to save it from extinction.