Doctor Who-The Power Of Three

                         While contemplating leaving behind their life of space/time adventure with the doctor on the TARDIS,Amy and Rory find their private lives interrupted by the arrival of identical black cubes all over the planet. The doctor of course is already investigating-agreeing to stay with the Ponds and Rory's father Bryan while they investigate the situation further. As humanity struggle in the media to find meaning to these mysterious objects,the doctor leaves the Earth for a time to investigate on his own. Returning as the Ponds have elected to make commitments to in their own lives,the doctor returns to investigate further. This time the cubes have begun to move,one even penetrating Amy's hand to take its pulse. Meanwhile,patients at the hospital Rory works in have suddenly been disappearing. The Ponds home is then chanced upon by Kate Stewart of UNIT-now a more scientifically based organization seeking to investigate further. None of their experiments have been able to harm the cubes. Having taken some of the cubes into custody,each react in a different in a totally different way. And each have begun counting down.

                      The doctor volunteers to remain confined with one cube as it counts to to zero. When the cube opens Stewart,now realized as the deceased Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart's daughter-along with Amy and Rory notice on the monitors that anyone near the vicinity of a cube,all seeming to land en mass near seven important electrical power installations word wide,have all began to suffer cardiac arrests and starting to die. One of the doctors hearts begins experiencing the same effect,though he is able to stay focused enough to deduce that the cubes were actually advanced scanners-designed specifically to short out human cardiac functions. He manages to localize an electrically charged portal that leads he and the Ponds to an orbiting spaceship where the vanished patients,including Bryan,and subject to the mercy of the Shakri. A race understood by Galifreyeans to be a myth,the Shakri are using the cubes to destroy humanity-seeing them as an infestation according to their own personal mythos. The Shakri they meet up with is only a hologram luckily. And the doctor is able to feed back to control the cubes to reactivate the cardiac functions of all effected humans. Before departing Earth again,the Ponds return on their journey's with him with the kindly encouragement of Rory's father Bryan.

                     While an excellent story on many levels,including the introduction of the Brigadier's daughter Kate as a story element with UNIT along with Bryan Williams again as a temporary companion,the main thrust of this story is synergy. The Ponds are debating within themselves which is the more productive life for them: the breakneck speed at which their lives move in the company of the doctor,or their relatively mundane life as regular human citizens. The doctor meanwhile faces up to the fact that he has actually developed a closely intimate friendship with Amy and Rory-much as he had with Sarah Jane Smith many regeneration's before. In their mission to solve the mystery of the Shakri cubes,they of course all end up saving the world. Yet its the sometimes slow journey to that which makes all the difference-especially for the doctor. He is forced to slow down to the (in his eyes anyway) plodding pace of average human existence-resorting to household chores and even a few Wii games to alleviate boredom. By elevating a tale essentially about the intensity with which the doctor experiences friendship,this is probably one of the best stories focusing on the inner psyche of the doctor himself.