Doctor Who: Square One

You know, if six years ago I had thought that Chris Chibnall would be a decent showrunner after Moffat slings his timey-wimey-hooky-wookie, I probably would have got my good friend and hashish addict to shoot me through the face with his flintlock pistol. Nowadays? Well, the thought of anyone instead of Gatiss has huge appeal, but Chibnall has been particularly fine this year - a year, one should remember, he's written more Doctor Who episodes than Moffat himself. And they've been, on the whole, very good. Above average, indeed.

And The Power of Three really does show up the Grand Moff - his last attempt to evoke the RTD era was an episode that Moff wishes he could retcon out of existence (The Beast Below - it just strikes that there were two eps that year with the initials TBB, maybe that's it). Chibnall meanwhile gives us glorious undiluted Welshman - UNIT in the tower of London, domestics, celebrity cameos, cynical alien concepts, running around hospitals, wormholes, zombies... even his laudable (though ultimately doomed) attempt to bring back Wilf in the form of Brian Pond! About the only thing missing is a doomed Prime Minister and mentions of Torchwood. There was even a Bad Wolf reference!

In truth, I'd say this could be the weakest of the season - the last bit on the spaceship has been hacked away, leaving us with questions like... what the hell were those dudes with the cubes in their mouths? What happened to the android girl? What happened to the cubes? Why were they taking patients? The annoying thing is we know, we JUST KNOW, that all the answers were in the Director's Cut... and probably would have been shown in Doctor Who Confidential if the world were rich enough to pay for it any more.

So.

Yeah.

Chibnall for the next showrunner!

But not Cumberbatch for the next Doctor. No. No, don't do that. No, no, no, no.

No.