I think this should go without saying, however, there will always be complaints if it is not said: from now on in this series of articles you should expect sequential spoilers for this series. While we try to keep reviews spoiler free; in the case of a two-parter, it would be very hard and would require someone very clever or very stupid to talk about the episode. I am the latter. So let’s get into this thing we’re mild mannerly calling a review, that really is just an excuse for the Doctor Who fan to rant for a bit. That’s me! However, not the character Me, because she’s too busy with Game of Thrones or something.

So, “Spyfall Part 2” the tricky seconds to slop out after the trickiest of poos that was the first episode. I’m in two minds about it. While watching it I had moments where I was ignoring fifty years of story and laws made by the show, and I liked those moments. However, thinking about them for even a minute puts the whole episode into question, even the simplest little thing from the video on the plane to the few things in the episode that return from the first part.

You see, when someone is running a TV show like Chris Chibnall (the episode’s writer and series’ showrunner) you get a book. This book has all the rules, the running gags, the series notes, and everything in between. They are referred to as a “bible” or “story bible”. Gene Roddenberry wrote one for the team working on Star Trek The Next Generation; generally, it is a guide for writers and directors to look back on and check some things. No one at the BBC has given him this, I like the idea that it is on a shelf collecting dust, it is noticed, and handed to him minutes before he starts work on the next series.

So where we left off: The Master was revealed to still be a problem for The Doctor after only a series and a bit away, and has returned to John Simm’s manic Master. The team, gang, fam? Are stuck on a 767 without a cockpit that had the strongest cockpit door ever; I know they are stronger after 2001, but enough to contain an explosion? Daniel Barton was replaced by a bomb that caused said explosion, and the Kasaavin have put The Doctor in their electro tentacle world. However, at no point was it mentioned throughout this episode how Barton was replaced. It was never mentioned again.

This is what I meant by the story being too messy from last episode, everything that doesn’t concern this episode was cut. In the opening to the last episode, spies across the world were put in comas, having their DNA rewritten, no one knew why. We find out more about the Kasaavin through this episode, and the spies that are practically dead never are even referenced. Bond bits, gone; MI6 working on the case, gone; VOR, gone. Why the episode is even called “Spyfall Part 2” is beyond me, with a slightly different ending to the last or start to this one they could have been two different episodes spread over the series.

The only connecting points are The Master is still about, the Kasaavin are too, and Barton is a warning of the perils of Google, Facebook, and all the rest in one. So with that, the episode starts with The Doctor marooned in the land of the Kasaavin’s forest of nightmares and ominous light. She’s not the only one, as a woman called Ada in the garb of the 19th century doesn’t understand the world she is in, but she’s very smart. Long-winded, wordy, verbose, and redundant like the Charles Dickens of her time. She speaks as one might expect Stephen Fry to when looking down on one in one’s presence.

Meanwhile, the team is still gliding to the ground at the world’s slowest plummet. Somehow The Doctor, at just the right moment, shows up on the in-cabin screens to do the “Blink” trick of a pre-recorded warning message. We’ll return to that in the serious spoiler part, but for now, I’ll say it is stupid. The point is, Ryan has to fly the plane from his phone; no, that’s something they are meant to do from the shoddy 1st class in this 21st-century plane. If you can control the plane from the first row behind the cockpit, why even have one in the first place? I referenced 2001 a minute ago and it’s still a thing people are oddly scared of happening.

If we’re going to take this show about a magical space wizard seriously for a minute, with the knowledge of how this same trick worked in “Blink,” why bother with the video? Use the TARDIS, either before or after the explosion. The point of sci-fi writing is to write yourself into a corner and work your way out. This was the easy and dull way, somewhat of a theme for this episode just to make references to better episodes, if I’m honest.

The Kasaavin is another example of this with Ada, they aren’t interdimensional like I assumed with the multiple earths shown in the last episode, it is just time. They might be interdimensional beings, but they aren’t invading for the complex and fun reasons, they are just doing it through time which makes it easier for The Doctor to fight against them. It is easier to understand but very boring when it comes to problem-solving, which the show is about, how does The Doctor get out of here with the space nazis that are the Daleks? Those are the questions to ask.

For example, at the end of the last episode, “how does The Doctor get out of the Kasaavin dimension?” A very good question, it would require a bit of a natter with the aliens and some space wizardry, but no. They just take her back out as a consequence of Ada being pulled back to the 19th century. It does make for a more Doctor Who-style episode, that is to say, a mid-century version of London before or after our own time. Yet we’re getting there not through purpose but a consequence. “And then,” it is the story trick of lazy writing to get to the next plot device without purpose. Something Matt and Trey of South Park said in a talk at NYU.

I said it last time, but the show is about running. A large portion of this episode (and the last for that matter) is about us as an audience being pulled along instead of running alongside. The plane had an autopilot system to get to a destination and land, “and then” the gang are in England. The Doctor is in the 19th century without a TARDIS, “and then,” The Master shows up to exposit something we already know. We’re metaphorically being dragged on a rope behind The Man in Black from Westworld, which isn’t a good place for telling the narrative from.

I’m dancing around going deeper so I think it is time to say the spoiler-free ending before you go, watch the episode, then come back. If you switch off and ignore the entire show’s history, lore, and throw away gags that prove the former two are important, you’ll like the episode as a stand-alone thing. It is not that great, the team, gang, or fam aren’t doing anything important yet take up half the time, and it is all a bit naff. At a stretch, I’m going to say a four out of ten mostly for callbacks, but they also break a lot of it.

Spoilers Ahead – Read at your Own Risk

“Blink” was a fantastic episode of television, a great piece of writing, and stayed within the lore. The “Blink” reference in this episode at the beginning and towards the end is god awful and whoever thinks it was great to do so should be thrown into the cold vacuum of space. It is literally said in “Smith and Jones,” another fantastic piece of TV and what I’ve told our Editor-in-Chief Alexx to watch first, “Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden. Except for cheap tricks.” This is not a cheap trick, but it is an established event that The Doctor is taking part in. It is going back in time to save someone.

It not only destroys this episode, but also makes The Doctor a bit of an awful person for not doing that several million other times. The deaths of countless companions and one-off sidekicks are ruined by this boring and stupid fix to a problem that could have been done in another way. Use some magic part of MI6 or a Unit replacement to swoop in and save Yas, Graham, and Ryan. We already have time-traveling and interdimensional spies in Kasaavin, Captain Jack it up; i.e get John Barrowman on the blower, don’t do steroids.

Continuing with those three, why were they there at all? They land in Essex, Barton is sent to find them, and just they walk out of an airport where a 767 landed without a cockpit. Yet when it comes to their bits, they do nothing relevant to move the story forward; they just survive Barton and the Kasaavin in the dumbest way possible. If Graham is going to use the spy laser shoes to shoot things, The Doctor should admonish him for that, and the dancing belongs with Russell T Davies’ “World War Three” or “Love & Monsters” for how cartoonish it was.

The way it plays out is their passports have been revoked, their faces are plastered everywhere on wanted posters, and they are hunted by people that work for Barton. You have a cop, bus driver, and a grown man with dyspraxia, use that! It is set up in the first part that Yas’ superior officer thinks she can do great things, use him to negate the wanted posters. Use Graham’s bus driver connections once again like “Rosa” and “The Woman Who Fell to Earth,” they can get around that way. If there’s a ladder, Ryan can’t climb it; oh, drama. Use the characters.

Ada King (née Byron), Countess of Lovelace, the mother of computer science is used far more effectively than the three main characters. Madeleine, Noor-un-Nissa Inayat Khan, is the reason the second half of the episode happens. In these one time, very Doctor Who-style episodes, companions have done more with 20-30 minutes of screentime than Ryan, Yas, and Graham has done so far this season.

To contradict myself on the last article, there are three different locations here and they work. Why do they work? They are London in the 19th century, Paris in the 20th, and (again) England in the 21st. A show about time and space travel might want to use that gimmick for its own concept. The issue is the aforementioned “and then” method of getting to them all.

It isn’t explained why we’re taken to the second place, I mean, the Doctor does give the off-handed line (paraphrasing), “because of you I was held down and put in the 20th century.” That’s like saying, “Well, you’re too fat to time travel!” It also doesn’t explain why the means of egress to the 19th century worked in the first place. Though when speaking about the unexplained: Barton kills his mother, why? There is no rhyme or reason for this other than, “Isn’t he a bad man, fear him.” No, I fear him as much as I fear Mark Zuckerberg, and I could knock him out with a stern look.

Other than meeting Noor and seeing The Master in a Nazi uniform, I guess because the hats from that Mitchell and Webb sketch were getting dusty, why were we in the 20th century? Why Paris? Why not Bletchley Park and Alan Turing? There is just too much that goes either unanswered or what is done is the easiest way to do it all.

While we’re on the Führer’s favorite British born Indian playing villain, the only good part of that entire segment was the code only he and The Doctor would know. It was a lovely reminder of “The Sound of Drums,” a great callback. However, was there a need to telepathically talk about meeting atop the Eiffel Tower? It was the only place they would go, unless you want to stand under Arc De Triomphe while Germany bombs the place.

Might we also add the “de-white face” moment? This man with a very clear ethnic difference to Germany’s favorite race at the time has a small perception filter, the same thing used for a TARDIS. If the Nazis are already going to capture him for being a double agent, much like Alaric/Garbo/Bovril was for the allies and axis, why de-white face him? Surely that puts him at greater risk of being killed by those pesky Germans who, if you didn’t know, hated everyone aside from Ulfric’s men from Tamriel.

Barton uses our phones as a way to “reset” us, our brains are great hard drives after all, and the Kasaavin are the way of reforming us. “and then” The Doctor swoops in, saves the day off-screen, and exiles the Kasaavin back to their home dimension. All tension is gone as they take The Master with them, and yet again Chris Chibnall as proven to be throwing everything at the wall seeing what sticks. Cut ten minutes off the companions doing diddly all day, flesh out the bits that need an explanation, and fix that awful Bill and Ted-style montage in a serious show about a space wizard.

The final bit to rant about, I promise, is this “The Timeless Child” nonsense. This is specifically how not to set up a mystery: tell me there is something under the table, it is something I really want to see, but I can’t look. Already I’ve lost interest because you won’t let me look under the table to see if it is there. I know nothing about it and it might as well be a crap version of Schrödinger’s cat, the difference is I know there is a cat in that box. Given how much The Master lies throughout the two-parter, I wouldn’t put it past him to be lying here too. That was an awful episode of television, though it was a Doctor Who episode at least.

Looking forward to next week, it was written by someone who can write a great episode of Doctor Who, and it was only the last series he did so. Ed Hime’s “Orphan 55” is set to be a distant future alien world with something that has to either be kept in or kept out of someplace. Given his last episode “It Takes You Away” was about keeping someone/something out, I can’t wait for his next work.

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Doctor Who "Spyfall Part Two"

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• "The Sound of Drums" Reference
• Brilliant performances from The Master & The Doctor

Cons

• An awful deus ex machina to save companions
• The companions did nothing to the story
• Idiots playing with guns and shoes.