Doctor Who — ‘Spyfall: Part 2’ [12x2] ★★★☆☆
By: Dan Owen
Tags: Culture, Doctor Who, Television, TV, Review

Doctor Who — ‘Spyfall: Part 2’ [12x2] ★★★☆☆

After the New Year’s Day premiere ended with an unexpected twist and a momentous cliffhanger, it felt like new life had been injected into Doctor Who after a sluggish and unappealing Series 11. There aren’t many two-part stories that have a better conclusion than setup, alas, and “Spyfall: Part 2” was certainly weaker than “Part 1” in many respects. But it wasn’t boring or a disaster, even if the answers to parts of the mystery felt unsatisfying or just poorly communicated. There are times when Doctor Who is guilty of getting in its own way, so you lose the thread with important plot matters because of how an episode is throwing to much knockabout humour and VFX at the screen. “Spyfall: Part 2” lacked cohesion, restraint, and focus… but there was enough good elements and visuals for this two-part premiere to be considered a success. Just a befuddling one.

How The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) escaped the spooky ‘DNA forest’ and rescued Graham (Bradley Walsh), Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Ryan (Tosin Cole) from the stricken jet plane worked surprisingly well. Writer Chris Chibnall chose to ‘Bill & Ted’ the situation, with The Doctor having travelled back in time to ensure her friends could follow a plan to avoid crashing long after this adventure was over. And connecting a plane’s automated flight system to a special app that could land it safely, while a serious stretch, is within the realm of acceptable possibility for Doctor Who. But if this is now something she can do now in her TARDIS, it’s a get-out clause for every bad situation she faces. And yes, I know The Doctor technically did something similar in “Blink” (they even reuse the idea that a recording of The Doctor is able to reply to questions being posed), but this felt even more blatant as using time-travel to unravel any sense of danger.

Having The Doctor escape with the help of Ada Lovelace (Sylvie Briggs), who has been visiting the ‘DNA forest’ with her “guardians” she doesn’t understand are dangerous interdimensional aliens (the Kasavin), was an unexpected and entertaining way for The Doctor to hitch a ride with Ada back to the Royal Gallery of Practical Science in 1834. I’m not sure specifics of what’s going on really hold together, but Doctor Who tends to have a ramshackle approach to plot. But it’s all fun enough for you to accept The Doctor’s now in a different century — looking much better in her black tuxedo dress than her regular costume, IMO — working with Lovelace and Charles Babbage (Mark Dexter), who invented the computer to figure out what the aliens are doing.

And then The Master (Sacha Dhawan) tracks The Doctor down to her 19th-century hiding place and starts shrinking random Victorians down to miniature, forcing The Doctor to kneel before him and say his name “Master” aloud to stop his frenzy. It was a surprisingly uncomfortable bit of power-play between those characters, which now has an added sexual connotation thanks to The Doctor’s female gender.

“Spyfall: Part 2” was telling two entangled stories, really. Firstly, The Doctor was back in time having to find her way to the 21st-century, eventually appearing in 1943 Paris and meeting Noor Inayat Khan (Aurora Marion) — the first female wireless operator dropped behind enemy lines during WWII. And the episode had a lot of fun with her situation in France, as The Doctor described the predicament as “two pacifists, and a 19th century descendent of Byron, against the Nazis in Paris and an alien invasion across multiple dimensions. That’s a big to-do list.”

The storyline also allowed for longer scenes between The Doctor and The Master, which helped elevate Jodie Whittaker’s performance. She was much better without her companions around during this episode — worryingly! — even if Dhawan’s arch performance slipped into pantomime at times. He was unhinged but genuinely scary in his sky-high introduction last week, whereas here The Master was played broad and things turned silly. I like Dhawan in the role and he just needs better material to work with, as this script was only giving him opportunities to snarl and behave like a Nazi psychopath.

Secondly, we had the companions in the modern-day having to cope without The Doctor to guide them. All three felt lost and redundant without her to coalesce around, sadly. It was a good opportunity to see what Graham, Ryan, and Yaz would be like by themselves, but the results were mixed. I still think Tosin Cole is a poor actor playing Ryan as too one-note, and there were two fairly embarrassing jokey scenes with Graham fending off dozens of Kasavin and cops with laser shoes. It’s been a while since I’ve cringed at Doctor Who, frankly, so it wasn’t a nice feeling. Oh, and Yaz was back to being a spare part.

The unveiled mystery was redolent of the convoluted nonsense Russell T. Davies would dream up, too — which is clearly the nu-Who era Chibnall most wants to resurrect in spirit. I’m not sure that’s a wise decision because, frankly, RTD’s style was fine for the time and had its highlights, but Who under Steven Moffat came of age and lost the overt childishness. I want a continuing evolution of Doctor Who in 2020, not a more polished throwback to 2005.