“Spyfall” is the first multi-part episode since series ten, the last heavily serialized series of Doctor Who. But it’s got a lot in common with the even more serialized series nine, which was comprised entirely of two-part episodes, and though I know it wasn’t very popular, I generally liked a lot of the moments that came out of it (and the episode “Heaven Sent” is still one of the shows’ best). Because as was common in that series, “Spyfall Part 2” is very different to “Spyfall Part 1” in terms of its tone, plotting, and even aims. While both episodes do connect and are heading in the same direction, the storytelling elements are vastly different, more improved and interesting in this installment for sure.
There’s almost no pretensions to the spy aesthetic in this part, little more than a passing reference to what went down at MI6 and the dead Stephen Fry (the more I think about it, an incredible waste of a massively talented guest star), as the Doctor and companions spend the episode split apart trying to find a way of taking down the two main villains. The mysterious aliens, called the Kasaavins, are relegated to being mostly props after their intensely creepy and implicitly powerful role last time -less emphasis overall is placed on a horror theme of any kind. The one thing the episodes have in common is the overwrought nature of the evil plan that leaves more than a few loose threads in the end if you stop and think about it (not least in that we see no repercussions for Daniel Barton and still don’t really know what his relationship to the Kasaavins is).
Thankfully though the episode gives you a lot to think about that matters, and has much more of an engaging momentum through Doctors’ story especially. Pulled out of the disturbing Kasaavin universe by a similarly enraptured Ada Lovelace (Sylvie Briggs) into 1834, she discovers that the creatures are implanted throughout time as well on Earth, and at particular eras marked by significant advances in computing technology. She meets Charles Babbage as well, and the Master, tracing her by using the Kasaavins as a sort of Iconian Gateway to borrow a Star Trek concept, eventually escaping with Lovelace in tow, to 1943 Paris where she finds further assistance from Noor Inayat Khan (Aurora Marion). Obviously, it’s no accident that the Doctor should team up with two renowned innovative women of British history to take on the Master and get her back to the 21st century; since the show came under new management it’s been unashamed of its progressive inclinations and has shown a greater interest in highlighting more diverse figures and environments across history and the present. It’s likewise no coincidence that they come together in the light of Nazi occupied France, that the Masters’ new racial ethnicity requires he use some technobabble disguise to appear white while masquerading as a Nazi, and that when Khan asks at the end of the ordeal if the fascists win, the Doctor responds not entirely in the affirmative with “never, not while there’s people like you.” It’s far more genuinely effective and relevant commentary than the tongue-in-cheek winking nature of Chris Noths’ weak Trump caricature in “Arachnids in the U.K.”, treated with much more gravity and immediacy, not to mention a firmer conviction.
It’s equal parts perturbing and impressive in the moments where Chibnall and director Lee Haven Jones take this a step further into territory disturbingly real and typically foreign to Doctor Who. When the Master first arrives in 1943 and is able to trace the Doctors’ whereabouts to Khans’ residence, it almost plays like the opening of Inglorious Basterds with the Doctor and Lovelace hidden beneath the floorboards as the Master calmly interrogates Khan, and even has officers shoot through the floor (though not where the characters are concealed). It’s baffling that the show went there, complete with the kind of imagery you’d see in a Holocaust film; and of all the bold decisions this episode makes, visually equating the two scenarios, and particularly with the Doctors’ eccentric attitude bubbling up immediately afterwards, this was the poorest -erring troublingly close to tone deafness. Less objectionable, but also loaded with horrible implications is how in the process of making her escape, the Doctor unveils the Masters’ perception filter so when the Nazis find him moments later, his non-whiteness in full view, you can’t help but fear for him, even though he’s a megalomaniacal alien bastard, in the all-too-clear understanding of the context being evoked.
While this is going on, the present storyline allows for the companions to show some tenacity, perseverance, and cleverness independent of the Doctor. Escaping from the falling plane by way of the Doctor pulling a “Blink” and arranging everything for them to save themselves ahead of time, Ryan, Yaz, and Graham quickly become fugitives by way of Barton hacking their phones and making their identities public as perpetrators of corporate espionage -at which Ryan very eagerly destroys all their phones. Back in Britain (Essex, Ryan notes with, as someone who lived there can attest to, appropriate disappointment), the gang continue with their plan in spite of the Doctors’ absence, Graham especially confident she’ll return. And they have a great scene together while gathering their wits and reaffirming their purpose and comradery that evolves into a realization of how little they actually know about the Doctor, Graham piecing together the basic idea behind regeneration, but also pointing out that she’s never told them when asked where she’s from or exactly who she is. It’s a moment that reminds you the Doctor isn’t quite as honest with her fam as she might pretend, and they’re catching on and deserve to know more.
As they make their way to a warehouse where the Kasaavin conduit is held, Lenny Henry really turns up the dark on his character in a scene where he essentially feeds his mother (Blanche Williams) to the hostile aliens. It’s an uncomfortable moment as he has her strapped to a chair and makes bitter conversation about her lack of support over the years. More than that though it’s cold and remorseless in a way that seems to suggest Chibnall can’t help but fall back on the bleak subject matter of Torchwood and Broadchurch to showcase Bartons’ villainy. It’s not a necessary story point, clearly an explicit choice to portray matricide, which I don’t think is fundamentally antithetical to Doctor Who, but does need much more care in its application; and certainly not towards a one-off villain whose not much interesting outside of the actor playing him to begin with -and whose big Keynote anti-digital age speech (that acts as a scare tactic against putting information online) is overshadowed by bizarre lighting that distracts from whatever he’s saying.
Of course it’s all foiled by the Doctor, who arrives in the Masters’ TARDIS (which rather neatly is the cabin from Australia) at the warehouse shortly after the Master himself, having survived the Nazis and just waited out the past seventy-seven years. He’s turned over to the Kasaavins when the Doctor reveals she’d earlier recorded his comments about betraying them, and he’s expelled to their universe where Sacha Dhawan gets to let out one hell of a “DOCTOR!”
So, let’s talk about the Master, and his relationship with the Doctor here, and the couple of bombshells that will dominate the conversation around this episode, not only beating the last one, but boldly setting a course for the shows’ future, possibly beyond Chibnall’s and Whittaker’s association with the program. First off, Dhawan is already proving an interesting Master, an analogue to Anthony Ainley’s take the way Michelle Gomez was to Roger Delgado. He’s mad and sinister in much the same way but without quite the campiness -his evil much more pronounced and seriously psychotic, early on telling the Doctor how good it feels to kill people, having no qualms wearing a Nazi uniform (again, in spite of the colour of his skin), and gleefully boasting of how he’ll destroy the human race. Particularly fascinating though is the subtle but noticeable way the dynamic between him and the Doctor has changed now that they’ve both shifted genders. The power play is no longer one of equals, and there’s a lot of sexual subtext where the Master orders the Doctor to kneel and call him ‘Master’ or risk further reckless killing. He overall seems more lascivious around her, and while there’s always a been a pseudo-erotic tension between the two Time Lords, it’s so nakedly palpable here.
But this character we find, stems not entirely from the gender swap, as the Master reveals in light of his plans for the Kasaavins and humanity, and the Doctors’ disgust with his candor, that he’s been back to Gallifrey and it is destroyed -all life on the planet wiped out -something confirmed when the Doctor visits herself, and subsequently learns from a message the Master gave her that he did it himself. He’d discovered some grave secret about the Time Lords, a great lie of a “Timeless Child” built at the foundation of their race, that all Time Lords are not what they think they are, and he decimated Gallifrey for it, leaving the Doctor shell-shocked.
It’s an earth-shattering development for the universe of Doctor Who, leaving the Doctor with a mystery arguably bigger and more personally devastating than anything she’s yet had to contend with, and leaving us with a background context more severe than anything since the Time War unsurprisingly. Speaking of which, this big new development can’t help but feel a little like a deliberate undoing of Steven Moffat’s retcon in “The Day of the Doctor”, and though I was never a fan of his decision there to gut the most compelling facet of Russell T. Davies’ reinvention of the Doctors’ mythology, it would be hypocritical to wholeheartedly endorse Chibnall for doing what I vehemently criticized J.J. Abrams for. That said, I don’t think Chibnall quite did -he hasn’t erased the time bubble and the survival of Gallifrey in the Time War, he hasn’t maliciously gone back and rewritten what Moffat did. Rather, I think he’s offering a compromise to both Davies’ and Moffat’s stories: where Gallifrey and the Time Lords are gone, allowing the Doctor to be alone in the universe, racked with angst and guilt, yet not being the one to have committed the capital crime themselves and thus with an intact moral compass. That said, it’s all for naught if this doesn’t pan out in a satisfactory way. And I hope that Gallifrey being destroyed and coming back isn’t going to be a regular thing on Doctor Who going forward (though it most likely will if the show runs long enough), I always preferred the Doctor alone in the universe, hence why they need their companions. But while there’s a lot of risk and plenty of room to be wary of this grandiose story choice, it excites me, it shakes things up, unafraid of challenging the status quo of Doctor Who, and the secret at the heart of it all has the potential to be something truly groundbreaking.
In light of this, the Doctor finally tells her companions the basics of her story, Jodie Whittaker playing the scene remarkably with affectionate nostalgia, yet a subdued despair. Her inclusion of the Master as her oldest friend seems to forecast his presence will loom over coming episodes, and that their relationship will be once more in focus. What’s also forecast is that as I predicted last time, serialization is coming back to Doctor Who, in a format perhaps akin to the Davies years. There’s an overarching story again, a specific drama that will need to make a return. As a fan of the classic series, I might have preferred more of the looser continuity and standalone nature of series eleven, not beholden to the series’ mythos and resisting the Doctor being characterized as the most powerful/important figure in the universe. But as a fan of those Davies years as well, I can’t help but feel immense anticipation for where this story goes.
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment