"Because you were the first. The first face this face saw."

         I love the Ponds so much! Their penultimate episode in Doctor Who, "The Power of Three" made sure that we, along with the Doctor, will remember what an incredible pair of companions they are. Their brilliant chemistry with Matt Smith's Doctor, especially Karen Gillan's Amy will be sorely missed, to put it mildly. She's back to being my favourite companion along with her husband Rory and previous companion, Donna. She certainly is the companion I am most fond of, because my journey with Doctor Who started with her as much as with Smith's Doctor.

      Still, I will have to say that "The Power of Three" is probably my least favourite episode of this series so far. It is written by Chris Chibnall, who also wrote "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship". The main plot with the cubes, highly reminiscent of the Russel T. Davies era, is not actually that interesting. However, seeing how fantastic this series is going, the episode had some truly unforgettable comedic and emotional moments.

1. I love the beginning where they show a montage of all the adventures that the Ponds have had with the Doctor so far, with Amy narrating in the background.
2. The cubes have come! I have no idea how many cubes they made for this episode. Also Brian! I love Mark Williams as Brian Williams. Least irritating relative ever (Wilfred Mott was adorbs but gosh he made me cry a lot)!
3. All the news channels talking about the cubes, plus a little Brian Cox, is very RTD. You know how all the episodes have been cinematic till now- well, for me this episode was plainly of the RTD genre. But I suppose it is fine for it to be less cinematic because right now the writers are just making sure that we are completely head over heels in love with the amazing Ponds, so that they can snatch out our hearts and drive a bulldozer on them next week. MOFFAT!! *shakes fist*
4. It's been 10 years of travelling with the Doctor for the Ponds? What? I know we aren't supposed to question the logic of Doctor Who, but still, it is a little hard to believe that it's 2020 for them.
5. RORY IN HIS PANTS! Amy's reaction is HILARIOUS here.
"There are soldiers all over my house and I’m in my pants.”

6. New character! Yaaay! I loved Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. She had such a calmness and wisdom about her. I haven't watched any Classic Who, but she's the daughter of long-time companion Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart who died in the last series.

7. Anyways she's heading UNIT (RTD!) now, and I love it when she says, "With a dress sense like that, you must be the Doctor." BAZINGA! Also then their discussion on how people have taken the cubes home and opened more than a 1000 Twitter accounts for them, the Doctor's reaction is priceless. Almost made me give up Twitter.
8. That of course was only the start. Matt Smith is really funny in this episode. The Doctor's inability to be patient made him, and the Ponds go mad. "Patience is for wimps!" Rory's face here has to become a meme.

9. Anyways the Doctor goes and the Ponds get on with their lives. I like this look into their life a lot. It shows how "normal" people can have such fantastical inner lives, and also how both these existences have meaning for them.
10. Things You Can Do With Extraterrestrial Cubes: Planet Earth Edition-

11. Brian and his patience with the cube almost parallel's Rory's with the Pandorica. Williams is so subtly comic. I wish he comes back later on (yes I *do* know how unlikely that is, but he's just so awesome!).
12. I love how the Doctor tries to do good- like when he takes Amy and Rory to the newly opened Savoy for their anniversary, only to have a Zygon ship under it. Or Amy getting married to Henry VIII on the same day. Poor Doctor.
13. Brian, along with being hilarious, also has a more meaningful role in this episode when he asks the Doctor about what has happened to his previous companions. It is both a painful look back and terrifying foreshadowing. Who knows what fate awaits the Ponds :S Makes one think that as spectacular as it must be to be someone like the Doctor, it must also be infinitely sad.
14. This was my favourite part of the episode-

I'm going to miss Amy so much. She is also the prettiest companion in the new series. Perfect ginger queen.

15. So the Doctor gets domesticated with his bffs the Ponds. There are a lot of throwbacks in this episode, not only of RTD, but also many things from the Amy-Doctor-Rory run. There are the pictures in the poster and then all three eating fish-custard together. I don't think we will ever see fish-custard being eaten again :'(

16. Everything in this episode made me so sad :( :(

17. One day the cubes get activated and all of them behave differently, as Kate points out. I liked this aspect of the cubes, even though it did not really make sense in the big picture. Still, the cube that plays the Chicken Dance music is boss.

18. Another excellent part of the episode comes when the Doctor, exasperated with these elusive cubes, goes out to the river Thames to get some fresh air, since UNIT obviously has its headquarters in the basement of the Tower of London, and Amy goes with him and they have their heart to heart. I can easily imagine this one scene being one of the best, not only in this series, but ever. 
Amy and the Doctor talk about how the Ponds seem to be stopping in their "Doctor life" to get on with their "real life". How it now feels like running away from responsibility, in response to which the Doctor says a new "life quote" as I like to call them, that is just purely inspirational and beautiful- 

"I’m not running away. But this is one corner… of one country, in one continent, on one planet that’s a corner of a galaxy that’s a corner of a universe that is forever growing and shrinking and creating and destroying, and never remaining the same for a single millisecond. And there is so much, so much to see, Amy. Because it goes so fast. I’m not running away from things, I am running to them. Before they flare and fade forever."

By this time I was already in tears, but then Amy asks him why he keeps coming back to her and Rory, and I completely lost it-

I love their relationship. The girl who waited and her imaginary friend, the raggedy man. Obviously this has always been what we thought of their relationship, but it is obvious now that she means a lot to him as well. The Doctor needs the Ponds and his Amelia Pond now more than they need him, and all the episodes in this series have made us understand that. Their exit is going to be deadly.

19. Anyways, back to the cubes now. The power suddenly goes off and then the cubes start ticking from 7 to 0. Then they emit the electrical currents they had absorbed to attack the hearts of the humans, causing them to die due to cardiac arrest. The two-hearted Doctor also gets affected, as his left heart stops due to this. Still, they pinpoint all the seven places these surges of electrical waves are coming from, one of which is the hospital where Rory works.

20. Oh yeah, Rory and Brian were abducted by these weird aliens in scrubs with mouths shaped like gas masks-meet-puffer fish, who took them to the space ship that is connected to the hospital through the portal in the goods lift. Yawn.

21. So Amy, Doctor and Kate go to the hospital, and just as the Doctor finds the little android girl who is the source of the cubes' power in that area, he goes into cardiac arrest again, which leads to another sexy Doctor+Pond moment. The last one was also in a Chibnall episode- remember? Obviously you do. Over here, it is Amy instead who literally rips open the Doctor's shirt to well, give him an electric shock to restart his heart.

God I love this show. Notice how the bow tie stays on.

22. Okay this is where I leave you. The ending is definitely the worst part of the episode, even though there is a very scary-looking villain, a clever observation by the Doctor that humans should not judge other races' bedtime stories because "You can talk -- wolf in your grandmother's nightdress?", more scary foreshadowing, a truly terrible last line by Amy explaining the episode's title, and Brian Williams everybody-

         So yes, as an episode about cubes, "Power of Three" was kind of blah. But it shines in showing us the inner life of two of the longest running companions in new Who, the alien-ness and childish qualities of the Doctor, his poignant relationship with Amy, and a lovely new character in the form of Kate. As I said, it is a set-up for the next episode, "Angels in Manhattan" so that like the Doctor, we are more attached to the Ponds than we have ever been, which will make their farewell truly sad. 

Sob.

"Go, Tricey! Run like the wind!"

        I don't think a better quote could be used to describe the second episode of Doctor Who series 7, "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship". 'Tricey' of course refers to the triceratops that the Doctor, Rory and Rory's awesome dad Brian ride on to escape from bickering robots. Oh yeah... it was that kind of an episode.

      The episode was written by Chris Chibnall and directed by Saul Metzstein. This episode follows the mini-blockbuster movie trend started by the last episode "Asylum of the Daleks". While that was of a creepy horror/family drama genre, this is like Jurassic Park on a spaceship- a total fantasy romp. True it did not remotely reach the standard of brilliance set by the previous episode, but "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" definitely had its moments.

1. The show skips around many places and periods before the credits. This is to show the "team" that the Doctor recruits for this new mission that he has no idea about. We first have Queen Nefertiti, who is into the Doctor and smelling (?) him in some weird way. All I can say, best not let River see you, sweetie. She was played by Riann Steele, who although beautiful, could not save this character from being bland and forgettable.

2) Also Rupert Graves, who plays the adorable Lestrade in Sherlock, was perhaps the worst part of this episode. He wasn't terrible, but his character, Riddell was kind of super annoying, which is a shame because I was ready to fall in love with him Oswin-style. He was rude, misogynistic, "a walking innuendo" (which was just awkward), and no one could understand why the hell the Doctor had befriended him.
3) And now to the good things, namely Mark Williams and David Bradley. Three cheers for the Harry Potter cast!! Williams was born to play Brian Pond Williams. His interactions with everyone, but especially Rory were priceless. The golf balls part was a bit cringe-worthy, but the trowel comment, "What sort of a man doesn't carry a trowel? Put it on your Christmas list" and the drinking tea while watching the Earth from the TARDIS- ah I love him! I want him to be my dad, or a really nice uncle. (I'll get to Bradley in a while).

4) So anyways the Doctor gets all of them (Brian accidentally) to come on a spaceship with *Spoilers- in a River Song voice of course* dinosaurs in it. He has to stop it from its course towards Earth, otherwise it will be blown up with missiles by this really mean Indian lady.

5) Due to teleports, "Well thank you, Arthur C. Clarke," the Doctor, Rory and Brian get separated from Amy, Neffy and Riddell and two teams get formed as a result, both trying to figure out what is happening and saving their butts from dinosaurs- the former from pterodactyls and the latter from baby T-Rexes.

6) It won't be unfair to say that this episode belonged to the Ponds/Williamses. I already mentioned Brian and Rory, and now it's Amy's turn. She gets to play Doctor in her little band, show how knowledgeable she's become in her travels- "Whenever you enter somewhere new, press buttons", fangirl over Neffy and be a total queen.

7) Hey Rory is 31! Who knew? Does that mean Amy is 31 too? Ugh, this timey-wimey stuff is confusing.

8) The other gang in the meantime get chased by pterodactyls into a cave where they run into two bickering robots who are expertly voiced by David Mitchell and Robert Webb. They work for Solomon, played by Bradley, who is an excellent villain. He is greedy and diabolical. I liked that they went with a proper villain like that, especially after last week's conceptual evilness of Daleks and the Asylum. What makes Solomon even more reprehensible is that all his motives are monetary-based, which is why he comes to the ship on the first place as the dinosaurs are very valuable. He even puts a price on the entire Doctor's team, and when he cannot find the Doctor himself on any records, the Doctor responds by saying that he's worthless (heart = broken).

9) Also evil little Solomon orders the robots, who have fantastic arguements with Rory, to injure Brian, but that is a good thing since we, along with Brian, get to see Rory's "awesome nursing skills in action". Oh I love Rory so, but this was still not his crowning moment in the episode.

10) During Amy's snooping, she finds out that the ship was in fact a Silurian ark, as the dinosaurs were being taken to another planet to rehabilitate that. But the nice Silurians were mercilessly killed by Solomon.

11) Of course a very important and the final member of Doctor's team in this episode, one who will forever be known as the Agent Phil Coulson of the Who-niverse (thanks Tumblr!) was Tricey, the golf-balls loving triceratops. Anyways, Doctor, Rory and Brian escape Solomon and the robots while riding him. Geronimo!

12) The missiles are soon launched by evil Indian lady and everyone is getting ready for it. Riddell for once makes himself useful by acquiring "large" tranquilizer guns and Rory tries to help the Doctor with his own companion knowledge. It is at this point that 'The Thing That This Episode Will Be Remembered For Forever" happened-

"Good thinking Rory!"

I was watching this very early in the morning and literally said "What. Just. Happened?" aloud to no one at all. Tumblr obviously died as a result. RIP. Also, a hundred million fanfics came to life.

Still, this little scene is followed by Rory's crowning glory moment, another example to show why he is one of my two most favourite companions-

13) So then Solomon demands Neffy to let the others get control of the ship. He kills Tricey to prove his point *sniff*. She does come, and being a benevolent leader (as shown from history and not this episode) and gives herself up, in spite of Doctor's opposition. But then he gets one of those plans.

14) The plan is that they'll fly the ship away from earth. First this is an obstacle as it can only be flown by two pilots of the same gene pool, but hey! Brian just happened to be there that day- we can either call this contrived or think that maybe, possibly, the TARDIS could have figured something out and thus materialized when he was with Amy and Rory. Whatever. As Matt Smith said, "Never apply logic to Who." Then the Doctor has to save Neffy from Solomon while making the missiles target his ship instead. And in the meantime, Riddell saves them from the danger of oncoming dinosaurs.

15) My favourite moments in Who are always the quieter moments between all this hoo haa. In this episode, it is when Doctor and Amy discuss how his visits are becoming fewer and further in between, which is a real concern to her as she is still the girl who waits. The Doctor assures her that he isn't trying to wear them off and then in a foreshadow-y move that would have made Christopher Nolan proud, he says "You'll be there till the end of me" to which Amy replies, "Or vice-versa." And then they look at each other in this really concerned manner.

16) Okay so that scared me. I have a horrible feeling that something bad will happen to Amy since no one will actually believe Rory dying. Gahhh.

17) Anyways while Amy heads off to fight dinosaurs with Riddle like a man, or well two men, the Williams men fly the ship and the Doctor goes to save Neffy. He does so, and then in a very uncharacteristic fashion, leaves Solomon to die from the missiles. I did think it was odd. This is something the David Tennant Doctor would have never done, but when you think about the genocide committed by Solomon, it is a fair judgement. Just not what we are used to.

18) The ending is as happy as they come. Brian sees the earth from the TARDIS as mentioned above, but then also goes traveling all around it. The dinosaurs get a planet named Siluria. Neffy and Riddell become lovers because she does prefer his innuendos to her boring husband. Only the Doctor looks really concerned. About what though, we can only speculate until Steven Moffat puts us out of our misery ("or vice versa").

         Definitely a fun episode, see! The ship looked pretty cool and the dinosaurs were very believable. It is sad that we have to keep comparing it to the previous episode, but since that was so perfect, it is a little difficult not to do so. Still, with characters like Brian (who will be back for "The Power of Three"!) and the robots and that fateful kiss (Drory forever), this episode will always be remembered fondly.

         Now next week is the episode I am looking most excited for, except for "Angels in Manhattan" of course, though that's more of a scared and anxious excitement. The excitement for "A Town Called Mercy" is pure and unadulterated. Trust Doctor Who to be the only thing outside of a Quentin Tarantino movie to make me excited about westerns. But seriously, this one looks cool. Can't wait!