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Spyfall
I am very fond of the Lord of the Rings movies (bear with me, I have a point), but I have a strong suspicion that the movies I am very fond of are not the movies that Peter Jackson made, but something with similar visuals and acting choices but which hew closer to the books.
I have a similar feeling about Spyfall. I liked it a lot, but I suspect the Doctor Who story I like is not actually the one that Chibnall made.
The master reveal was excellent and I have no complaints about that. I was genuinely surprised, the performances in that moment were great and it made sense of much that had gone before. I have no quibbles there.
In fact, in general, I genuinely enjoyed episode one but, as is always the case with two-parters, did it stick the landing? Well, sort of.
I thought "the Fam" were excellent in part two. For the first time I had a real sense of them as a team and they seemed to cohere as a unit. It's just a shame they were basically shuffled into a side plot to keep them out of the way, in which they managed to achieve pretty much nothing.
I liked the idea of the Doctor picking up two historic temporary companions, but Ada Lovelace actually had no part to play once taken out of her time and the whole wiping memories thing... I mean, yes, fair enough but also, this has never bothered the Doctor in the past and we'd just come out of some fairly intense stuff in the Capaldi era about how wiping people's memories is not a good thing. Just as one sometimes got the feeling that Moffat's character and writing choices were making subtle digs at Davies', so several things here felt like digs at Moffat and as someone who really enjoyed much of the Moffat era that leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.
... speaking of taking digs at the Moffat era. To have one's planet destroyed once may be regarded as a misfortune; to have it destroyed twice looks like carelessness. Frankly to have it destroyed three times (if we are to count the books as well) seems positively wilful. Obviously, the sequence did leave a hint of how the Master's character got from Missy to O, again unravelling some of Moffat's work.
I'm not sure I want to get into the whole white supremacy thing here: would the Doctor do that? absolutely, she's not above ruthlessness, always improvises with the weapons to hand and has a penchant for hoisting people by their own petard. Was it a good look to use white supremacy to defeat the first Master of Colour in his first appearance? Not so much. To be honest, what upset me most about it which doesn't seem to bother anyone else is the same thing that annoyed me when the Doctor's gender became an obstacle in The Witchfinders. It turns out I have constructed an extremely personal head-canon in which part of the Doctor's magic (and by extension the Master's magic) is that they are simply accepted for who they are wherever they go (hence why, Kinda excepted, being a white man has never caused any issues for them). I am annoyed to have this head-canon undermined. Like the mind wipes, the deliberate weaponising of racism by our hero wasn't needed for the plot, so why do it?
What lingers in my memory of this episode are set-pieces and visuals: the casino; the motorcycle chase; O becoming the Master; escaping the plane; The Doctor, Ada and Noor; I loved them all and like Spyfall a lot because of them but I'm not sure I actually like the story they are being used to tell all that much.
It has been remarked in several places that Doctor Who seems a lot more confident this season. I have the same feeling as well, but I'm not sure its true. The show did some very daring stories last season so I wouldn't describe it as lacking confidence. What this season does seem to be serving up, which we didn't see a lot of last season, is spectacle and set-pieces that seem to be designed, at least in part, because they are either crowd- or fan-pleasing and ideally both. Series 11 was frequently quite serious about what it was trying to do. Series 12 seems to have decided to have a bit more fun.
I have a similar feeling about Spyfall. I liked it a lot, but I suspect the Doctor Who story I like is not actually the one that Chibnall made.
The master reveal was excellent and I have no complaints about that. I was genuinely surprised, the performances in that moment were great and it made sense of much that had gone before. I have no quibbles there.
In fact, in general, I genuinely enjoyed episode one but, as is always the case with two-parters, did it stick the landing? Well, sort of.
I thought "the Fam" were excellent in part two. For the first time I had a real sense of them as a team and they seemed to cohere as a unit. It's just a shame they were basically shuffled into a side plot to keep them out of the way, in which they managed to achieve pretty much nothing.
I liked the idea of the Doctor picking up two historic temporary companions, but Ada Lovelace actually had no part to play once taken out of her time and the whole wiping memories thing... I mean, yes, fair enough but also, this has never bothered the Doctor in the past and we'd just come out of some fairly intense stuff in the Capaldi era about how wiping people's memories is not a good thing. Just as one sometimes got the feeling that Moffat's character and writing choices were making subtle digs at Davies', so several things here felt like digs at Moffat and as someone who really enjoyed much of the Moffat era that leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.
... speaking of taking digs at the Moffat era. To have one's planet destroyed once may be regarded as a misfortune; to have it destroyed twice looks like carelessness. Frankly to have it destroyed three times (if we are to count the books as well) seems positively wilful. Obviously, the sequence did leave a hint of how the Master's character got from Missy to O, again unravelling some of Moffat's work.
I'm not sure I want to get into the whole white supremacy thing here: would the Doctor do that? absolutely, she's not above ruthlessness, always improvises with the weapons to hand and has a penchant for hoisting people by their own petard. Was it a good look to use white supremacy to defeat the first Master of Colour in his first appearance? Not so much. To be honest, what upset me most about it which doesn't seem to bother anyone else is the same thing that annoyed me when the Doctor's gender became an obstacle in The Witchfinders. It turns out I have constructed an extremely personal head-canon in which part of the Doctor's magic (and by extension the Master's magic) is that they are simply accepted for who they are wherever they go (hence why, Kinda excepted, being a white man has never caused any issues for them). I am annoyed to have this head-canon undermined. Like the mind wipes, the deliberate weaponising of racism by our hero wasn't needed for the plot, so why do it?
What lingers in my memory of this episode are set-pieces and visuals: the casino; the motorcycle chase; O becoming the Master; escaping the plane; The Doctor, Ada and Noor; I loved them all and like Spyfall a lot because of them but I'm not sure I actually like the story they are being used to tell all that much.
It has been remarked in several places that Doctor Who seems a lot more confident this season. I have the same feeling as well, but I'm not sure its true. The show did some very daring stories last season so I wouldn't describe it as lacking confidence. What this season does seem to be serving up, which we didn't see a lot of last season, is spectacle and set-pieces that seem to be designed, at least in part, because they are either crowd- or fan-pleasing and ideally both. Series 11 was frequently quite serious about what it was trying to do. Series 12 seems to have decided to have a bit more fun.
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In particular I’d have liked to see more of the Victorian and Paris scenes, and more interaction from Ada and Noor. I suppose this is somewhere where a Target novelisation, perhaps along the lines of what Steven Moffat did with his Target version of Day of the Doctor, could expand and fill in gaps nicely. And since the BBC are still producing new Target novelisations I’m crossing fingers for this one.
When I watched the episode I didn’t mind the perception filter cancelling. But afterwards, thinking about it more, I felt extremely uncomfortable with it.
I’m delighted with the new Master, and think his scenes with the Doctor were highlights. Again crossing fingers, this time that we may get more of that pair this season, perhaps in the finale.
Also I really, really liked the music. Segun Akinola is doing an excellent job. Again.
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Dhawan is great and Drawn and Whittaker together were amazing.
Music is one of those things I find it really hard to notice. I mean, I can more or less sing-a-long to the soundtrack of Attack of the Cybermen but I think the case could be made that that is not a reflection of its quality.
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I thought this was OK, nothing more (although I liked Dharwan a lot) and found Orphan 55 pretty lousy. I think I preferred series eleven overall, for all that much of it felt inconsequential. I'd like to see more things with the aesthetic of The Woman Who Fell to Earth although I think I would struggle to say what that aesthetic was, except that we haven't really seen it anywhere else.
I also felt that destroying Gallifrey again was not such a great idea and that there was a lot of telling about Ada being wonderful, but little actual showing of it.
I wonder if the WWII Resistance setting was chosen before Sasha Dharwan was cast and then someone pointed out the consequences and Chibnall wrote a handwavey few lines. I don't know if they were deliberately looking for a non-white actor or not.
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Yeah, it didn't have the same feel of subtle criticism - maybe its more a kind of "Davies' greatest hits" problem, which implicitly involves rewriting the way Moffat moved a lot of that forward.
The Woman Who Fell to Earth was my favourite of the more "mainstream Who-is" episodes of last series (if you see what I mean). It's certainly the episode I'd have liked to be the template for what followed and which really wasn't in any obvious way.
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