Doctor Who Series 7, Episode 4

Doctor Who Series 7, Episode 4: The Power of Three

Rory and Amy have come to the conclusion that they have to decide between living a normal life and living with the Doctor. Their decision is not an easy one: no matter how much they enjoy their fast-paced adventures with their Time Lord friend, they equally enjoy the simple aspects of everyday life on earth.

The episode revolves around something called ‘the slow invasion’, which entails a seemingly harmless worldwide invasion of little black cubes. The Doctor seems particularly shocked that people carry these boxes with them everywhere, even creating twitter accounts for them!

The Doctor’s lack of action and inquiry was somewhat irritating in this episode. He idly ‘observes’ the cubes for four days! Rory’s dad takes this task to extreme, but the fact that he has been staring at a cube in a trancelike state for four days doesn’t seem to ring any alarm bells. It doesn’t even occur to the Doctor until later that they should have collected the cubes and kept them away from the population at large.

Surely the Doctor should know better than to have allowed the cubes to live with them and observe them? It’s not a surprise when all the cubes suddenly activate at the same time, scanning everything and everyone that lives on the earth.

Once the boxes have finished scanning, a countdown begins. Ominously, once the countdown reaches its conclusion it seems like nothing has changed. However, we soon discover that once the little boxes open, they cause mass heart attacks all over the world, and even the Doctor is not exempt from their effects.

Meanwhile, it seems that the hospital that Rory works in has something to do with the invasion of the cubes. One creepy little girl holding a cube while in a trancelike state becomes particularly disconcerting. Rory soon discovers a portal in a service elevator, and it leads them to the spaceship orbiting the earth that is responsible for the invasion.

The Doctor and Amy soon follow Rory through the portal, discovering that an alien hologram on the ship has been given the task of “erasing the human contagion before they colonise space”. The aliens that sent this ship consider themselves the pest controllers of the universe, depositing slug pellets all over the earth in the form of the black boxes.

Miraculously, the Doctor manages to save the day and use the cubes to turn people’s hearts back on again. If only that was possible in real life!

It is clear that soon Amy and Rory will leave the Doctor to carry on with their beloved normal lives, but for now they still strongly believe in the power of the three of them together in the face of adversity.

Next week is the return of Doctor Who’s best baddies, the weeping angels! They are wonderfully terrifying, so get your pillows ready to hide behind!