Spyfall Part 2

The second part is only slightly worse than the first.The SpyMaster disguised as Agent O and Vor were working together the whole time

The Doctor is displaced in time with The master. Yaz Ryan and Graham escape a plane crash and become fugitives. Thirteen has to stop the SpyMaster through time, leading to his defeat in Nazi occupied France while "The Fam" stop vor on Earth. The Master and Vor plan is stopped.

I love a good time-hopping adventure. It makes this world of time-travelers feel alive and it makes Time Lords feel powerful. Here are the Doctor and the Master jumping through time (or living through stretches of it) to catch up with each other and continue the fight. It would be terrifying to be a mortal in this world. Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan are great additions. A real strength of this era is that it brought us to corners of history the franchise had ignored until then.

It's wild that we got a Winston Churchill audio boxset before meeting Noor, but Doctor Who is finally righting that. It's great to see, and if you're going to grab two people from different points in time, these two (the first programmer and an anti-fascist spy) feel especially on theme for an adventure about a modern-day tech company and its connection with a scheme to kill the world's spies. That said, I would have liked the writing and plot to do a little more with this. I feel like a stronger show would have woven their personal stories throughout the episode, giving them time to be proper fleshed-out characters who help save the day with their unique skills and outlooks. They help the Doctor, to be sure, but the episode would have been stronger if it had leaned in.

Now, for a few issues.

Yaz and Ryan are not handled well in these episodes, but they seldom are. I just never feel like they are going anywhere or doing anything interesting. They are simply not given enough to do and yet they are always around. If 13 was going to travel with three companions, the show should have done a better job of really making each episode focus on one of them. Maybe one of them really goes through some intense growth while the other two have a comic relief-y B-plot. Give us an episode where Yaz goes 80% and Ryan and Graham share a 20% on some light hijinks. Then switch it up. Instead we get everyone at 33% and nothing ever feels meaty enough. In Spyfall, Yaz was seemingly traumatized by her trip to the Kassavin realm. This is resolved by Ryan saying he'll protect her. What? That's not the issue. And why doesn't 13 seem to care? 13 should care. 13 is her girlfriend.

Reintroducing the Master was a choice. I totally think it's fine to bring the Master back, and they cast a wonderful actor to take on the role, but it was way too soon. Yes, the Master is constantly killed and brought back. But never before have we seen a Master redemption arc like we had with Missy. That should have sat untouched for a while and only brought off the shelf with good purpose.

Destroying Gallifrey AGAIN was an even bigger choice. We start NuWho with Gallifrey extinct and that gives the first few New Doctors a distinct flavor. Then we find out it actually wasn't destroyed. Woah. But then, the Doctor has to find it and after two seasons, he does. He doesn't really mess with Gallifrey or the Time Lords again until he regenerates but it doesn't feel like a glaring omission. He hates them and he's got other things to do. And then, with no further adventures on Gallifrey, we destroy it again. Because the Master was mad? Because he was lied to? The way everyone else was lied to? About something that's just kind of interesting in the same sci-fi way everything else is?

Why didn't we at least get a season (or a few) of Gallifrey being a threat or annoyance to the Doctor? I'd love to see our hero Time Lord chafe against a tyrannical, feudal time empire. How much more interesting would the Timeless Child arc be if it played out against this backdrop? The Time Lords are manipulating the Doctor all while lying about who she is. That would be great. That would feel like a story.

I had a lot of good will and energy following Spyfall, Part 1. It really made me hopeful and ended on such a fun twist I was very ready to give it a chance.

Instead though we immediately dive back into a rushed and poorly thought out plot that really does a disservice to the Master, Gallifrey, and the big arc of Series 12 that would lead to the infamous Timeless Children. It's a pretty useless and at times downright offensive piece of media. I just lost so much enthusiasm for this version of the Master after seeing his over-the-top silliness. Without a specific direction, this character feels a little useless. As is thoughtlessly killing off the Time Lords after it was such a huge emotional journey just to bring them back not that long ago.

It's a series of catastrophic decisions that I don't think the Chibnall was ever able to recover from. And absolute disaster and real low point for the Doctor Who franchise, perhaps just as if not more so clunky and troubling in its implications as the widely despised Sixth Doctor era. I am not a fan, and considering this is the first female Doctor and first Master of colour, this feels particularly wasteful.

this 2 parter was absolutely amazing. sacha dhawan plays his part so perfectly. the plot actually kept me really engaged for the most part, the dialogue written by chibnall for once felt in character and believable, i really love how spyfall was put together in general. and i may be biased because im a bit of a james bond fan but like... this is actually the first quality episodes we've even seen from chibnall. he actually seems to have improved here. im not sure if its because this is him actually writing out a full on plot without motw elements (the series 11 overarching plot was basically nonexistent so maybe hes also just learning on the job?) but im really pleased with this one. lots of fun. definitely a classic 2 parter. i cant wait to see more of sacha dhawan since hes also very sexylicious which means seeing him be evil is going to be a huge treat for the rest of his run as the master

What I've realised rewatching the 13th Doctor's era, after admittedly not giving it the full time of day at broadcast, is that my god it has pronounced ups and downs, its a rollercoaster. And nowhere is this as apparent to me going from Resolution into Spyfall. Resolution to me is a truly classic story, that allows the dalek(s) to be terrifyingly genius for the first time in such a long time. The dalek feels so real and gritty and creates true fear in me which is so hard to achieve using such a well known and used enemy as the daleks, because it feels so grounded in what is a believable and gripping plot.

I say this because Spyfall is the complete antithesis to everything that Resolution is. Part 1 isn't as criminal as part 2, but I could personally never enjoy a serial that is set up to be so cheesy and filled with overdone cliches without doing anything new with them really, not for me. But part 2 is where the plot becomes completely disparate and all over the place. We spend the time of the episode getting taken from time period to time period across history and after watching I'm not even sure why, except to save the dangling plot pieces that were thrown at us. It was all loosely held together by a thread by three very powerful enemies, at least two of which felt underutilised because of the need to throw as much extravagance into the plot for show. The tech CEO was a convincing villain, who really portrayed a coldness that was maybe my favourite part of the serial. The mysterious race from another universe and the master both honestly felt like they could've been left out to create a better story, we're left with 3 huge personalities as our villains that take up so much space without really clashing or being addressed in much of a meaningful way, their motivations, individually or as a mismatched alliance, never really explained. The Master especially honestly felt like he didn't have to be there, especially with no acknowledgement of the events of the Doctor Falls. It's the most unnuanced depiction of the Master in a long time which is a real shame after just having such a beautiful arc end with Missy, and we don't even know how they're supposed to fit together.

And then of course I take issue with Gallifrey being destroyed again so cheaply, apparently just because the Master had a tantrum, oopsie! The first time Gallifrey was seemingly gone in the time war it was a mythic event that defined the Doctor's character arc for series to come and was the ultimate sacrifice at the end of the greatest war known to time. Just awful for this episode to tack on at the end, "oh yeah by the way. Gallifrey's gone." Character work is far from this era's strong point, and such an extreme event will not be able to have justice done to it I fear. But I know there's more Resolutions to come, and after this showing I can't wait for an episode that will restore my faith.