Spyfall
I v much should be working on my festivid, which is due in 5 days and is still Not Finished, despite wonderful notes from my beta.
BUT INSTEAD I spent this evening re-watching Doctor Who because, friends, I have Thoughts and Feelings about it! And I can't concentrate on anything else until I have written them down at GREAT LENGTH. What a glorious thing! It has been So Long, and I had forgotten how to feel like this about my show. (Possibly there are other reasons I have Thoughts and Feelings again now, but that is another post.)
The first time around I watched Part 1 alone in my flat and then
such_heights PHONED ME on her PHONE like some sort of NON-MILLENNIAL and put me on speaker so I could flail with her and
happydork and it was GREAT. :D
such_heights and I used to call each other after every Christmas episode of DW, and I have such happy memories of those phonecalls. For Part 2 I went to Casa SuchDorks and got to flail with
such_heights whilst on the same sofa which was even more delightful. There was a great deal of waving of hands and clutching at each other, and then trying to yell about our feelings quietly after the episode when poor
happydork had to work.
The other thing to say is that, as a former Bond Girl*, I felt personally victimised by the entire concept of this episode :P I also can't believe that the next Bond film is called 'No Time To Die', which is a Doctor Who crossover title if ever there was one. Why is this happening to me.
(*...I worked, for the first 3 years of my working life, as the office assistant for Ian Fleming's literary estate. I was Miss Moneypenny. I have the hilarious business cards to prove it. I got the job because my boss was - is, we are still in touch - a HUGE DW fan and we talked in my 'interview' about how much we both loved David Tennant and that is 100% why I got the job. How have things come full circle like this. What is time.)
Anyway,
-To get this out of the way first: OMG THE MASTER IS BACK!!! THE MASTER IS SACHA DHAWAN!!! HE HAS SUCH A GOOD FACE. HE ALSO HAS A NORTHERN ACCENT, JUST LIKE MISSY WAS SCOTTISH WHEN THE DOCTOR WAS SCOTTISH. THERE IS LITERALLY NOTHING ABOUT THIS THAT IS NOT AMAZING :D :D :D I am *truly* astonished by how completely blissfully unspoiled I was for this reveal. As soon as 'O' first appeared on screen (in a shot that, on a second viewing, is framed as *extremely* Bond Villain) I was the personification of the heart eyes emoji, because I just adored him in An Adventure in Space And Time and have long thought he should be in more things, and he’s just so beautiful and so charming. I was desperately worried throughout that he was going to die, and increasingly worried towards the end that he was going to turn out to be in league with the bad aliens...AND THEN. I GASPED. I watched the remainder of the episode with both hands over my mouth. I was SO THRILLED. And I didn't guess EVEN THOUGH I'd had Harold Saxon in my mind ever since the scene with Barton talking to the Kasaavin when he thinks he's alone in his office, which reminded me v strongly of Simm!Master and the Toclafane in his Downing Street office. I doubt that was a deliberate reference on Chibnall's part, though the line about 'nobody could create a fake life that good' CERTAINLY was. And I still didn't guess! WHAT A GIFT. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ME. I can’t remember when I was last this floored and delighted by a reveal. (And omg all the little Classic Who callbacks! The tissue compression eliminator! The conversation on the Eiffel Tower about the events of Logopolis!) When O says ‘I’ve never done undercover work’ that line is FUCKING HILARIOUS second time around, oh my GOD. Master, you are so good at undercover work that the Doctor *literally never recognises you* despite the fact that according to the Doctor, Time Lords are supposed to be able to recognise each other on sight. (Which still works for me, because it’s either a throwaway lie - Rule One, The Doctor Lies - or it IS true but as we know the Doctor is canonically Really Bad at most Time Lord shit)
-And Dhawan is clearly having a FABULOUS TIME and he does *such* a wonderful job - quite Simm!Master-esque in a lot of ways, but also very much his own person. I do think it's interesting that he appears to have reverted so thoroughly to his pre-Season 10 self (gleefully, exaggeratedly evil, etc) when Missy had undergone such a painful process of change for the better. BUT I have seen it pointed out that this could make a lot of sense - as Missy, with Twelve's help, she learned to *care* more, to regret her past mistakes, to want to *be* better. And then that resulted in her death, before the Doctor could even know that she'd changed, and then sometime after that they discovered some terrible secret about Gallifrey (about which more later) which now they had to CARE about. Obviously we don't know what that secret is yet, or how it could so undermine the Master's sense of identity, when they *already* know that their entire life has been warped by Rassilon's machinations, but perhaps the emotional depth they developed as Missy made whatever this 'Timeless Child' thing is seem all the more unbearable. Which is why he is now so *angry* at the Doctor - when we last saw Missy working *with* him - because it's thanks to the Doctor he now has these *feelings* about Gallifrey and what he has (supposedly) done to it, which he DOES NOT LIKE. Anyway, will see how that one pans out I guess. There are so many layers to Dhawan's acting, so many complex emotions going on beneath the Master's exuberant performance of evil, especially the conversation on the Eiffel Tower, and I feel like we won’t understand all of them for a while.
-I do have thoughts about things that are not the Master, but, omg, him and the Doctor in Part 2 was just...PEAK THEM. "Kneel", "Call me by my name", "Why would I make it easy for you?", “How else would I get your attention?” The morse code drumming (my own heart skipped a beat when that started up) and the psychic connection and the blatantly ridiculous plan to - as always! - team up with some aliens and then betray them. It was all so classic and beautiful and I am delighted to see that Blank Space will never not be relevant for this relationship. THE MASTER HAS A SCRAPBOOK OF HIS FEELINGS ABOUT THE DOCTOR. That moment with Graham is *so* interesting, because even the first time around it felt sketchy - this guy enticing Graham to snoop around behind the Doctor’s back - but I STILL didn’t guess. And on a second viewing it’s GOLD. Everything about the Doctor and the Master’s incredibly overdramatic interactions is gold. The Doctor being THREE MILLION PERCENT DONE when he tells her to kneel and say his name is PERFECT. Her little eyeroll! The fact that he kneels down as well!! “When I arrange for your death, I expect you to remain dead” NO YOU FUCKING DO NOT, Master, let’s not pretend that is even slightly true. The Doctor’s childlike glee when she realises the Master may not be as in control of the situation as he’s pretending! You can feel the history between them.
-Speaking of history GALLIFREY HOLY SHIT. MORE YELLING. I cannot believe that Moffat spent a literal six seasons and a movie bringing back Gallifrey and re-establishing the Doctor's extremely ambivalent relationship with it, only for Chibnall to destroy it again after just one season XD. Would desperately love to see the presumably capslock-filled texts Moffat has sent him. (I am also a bit outraged on Moffat's behalf that Chibnall has clearly not watched, or at least not bothered to remember, Hell Bent, in which Gallifrey is very explicitly no longer ‘hiding in a little bubble universe'. I know you have to pick your continuity battles carefully in Doctor Who, but unexpectedly this is something my brain has latched onto. Why, brain??? It's so unimportant in the scheme of things! Why do you care???? Maybe the Gallifreyan High Council decided for Reasons to put the planet back in a bubble *after* the events of Hell Bent! Who knows. Shut up, Phoebe.)
-Let's start that bullet point again, shall we, it rather got away from me there. GALLIFREY HOLY SHIT. I have no idea what has gone down (is everyone really dead??? I hope not, we don't need to go down that route again - it's more fun when there's something around for the Doctor to run *from*) - I have seen speculation that the 'Timeless Child' is going to be some sort of 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' kind of deal, which would be potentially interesting though I don't know if that's something that would really disturb the Master, of all people. Whatever happens though, it's GREAT to get some meaty, dramatic, Time Lord Fuckery in there, because I felt the lack of that a bit last season. ANGST TIME. That whole hologram scene was AMAZE (was the Master dressed like One and doing the lapel thing??) and the Doctor’s faaaaace throughout was beautiful.
-I will never not get chills when a Doctor delivers the ‘I’m a Time Lord From Gallifrey In The Constellation Of Kasterborous’ speech for the first time.
-It's extremely interesting to me how *very* Season Three/Four this all feels?? What with the Simm!vibes and deliberate Harold Saxon echoes of Dhawan's Master, the return of that drumbeat, and the scenes with Yas and Ryan and Graham on the run and hiding in a warehouse whilst their faces are on every TV screen just like Ten and Jack and Martha back in the day (up to and including Yas phoning her family). The Death By Evil SatNav. The ‘End Of Time’-esque plot to transform everyone on the planet into something else. And that whole conversation where the Doctor makes the ‘Gallifrey’ speech and Yas (/Martha) asks to go there and Thirteen's (/Ten's) face just falls. Thirteen has a lot of Eleven's unselfconscious oddness, but for some reason she feels, to me, most like Ten out of all the previous (New Who) Doctors, so I guess this is just a place Chibnall feels comfortable? (The fact that I am constantly comparing the Doctor and the Master to their predecessors is no slight on either of them - it's something I always do, with every version of them and also with every companion. My brain likes to find Parallels and Echoes.) Ten was much more obviously Angsty and Brooding than Thirteen, but they have a similar manic, wide-eyed energy about them, and a similar surface-level of approachability. I think the biggest difference - other than the fact that Thirteen is TOTALLY DONE with the Master in a way that Ten was Not - is that whilst Ten's arrogance led him to topple regimes with 6 words (because he apparently learned NOTHING from the whole Satellite Five debacle, oh my god) and to set things on (sometimes literal) fire around him, Thirteen has, thus far, tended to...mostly leave terrible power structures in place?? Which is not a great look for the Doctor, and I'm hoping is something we will see addressed this season. It's like she's so afraid of causing major catastrophes by her intervention, or of becoming overwhelmed by her own hubris, that she's gone too far the other way. Also, Ten’s surface-level approachability masked a dark well of Tragic Backstory which he dropped hints about, even sometimes actually talked about when pushed. Thirteen has not even hinted at any of that since her very first episode. She has a much stronger facade.
-On a shallower note, everyone was REALLY BEAUTIFUL in this episode. The Doctor in that suit was AMAZING as was O in his tux and Yas in that jacket and I just, oh no.
-The Doctor playing snap was absolutely my favourite non-Master-related thing in this whole two-parter. What a perfectly beautiful Doctor moment. What a LOSER i LOVE HER :D Also desperately loved the Doctor lying in the floor in Nazi occupied Paris saying ‘I’m not where I wanted to be, but I can work with this’ :D Hai, Doctor, ilu.
-Yas and Ryan and Graham were all wonderful in these eps, though my feelings about them are overshadowed by Master feelings. But I felt like they all got interesting things to do - I loved Yas and Ryan being TERRIBLE SPIES, and Ryan LANDING A PLANE and Graham’s LASER SHOES and omg all the stupid Bond tech and the Casino scenes and all of it. I loved Yas levelling up and taking the lead on stuff, I loved Ryan’s anxiety about ‘not looking like Hugh Jackman’ (wtf Ryan you dork) I loved Graham basically being there to make sarcastic comments, and the Master picking up on that XD I loved all their relationships with each other, I loved that they all got stuff to DO which was not always the case last season, I really enjoyed seeing them have to do the ‘what would the Doctor do’ thing.
-Actually, that’s a lovely parallel I enjoyed within the episode - the Doctor taking down the Master on the Eiffel Tower had an aspect to it that I hated (see below) but I LOVED that it involved her sending a fake message that was *intended* to be intercepted...and that is ALSO what Yas &co were doing, in the present day, with the phonecall to Yas’s sister! I only clocked that parallel on a second viewing, and thought it was v clever.
-Also that reminder at the very start of the episode, of the lives they are putting on hold to travel with the Doctor. Yas, in particular, has a lot at stake and is going to have some big decisions to make down the line. Though in the meantime it’s making me lol to imagine the Doctor, with her apparent penchant for faking documents (and laminating them!) creating increasingly ridiculous secondment paperwork for Yas’s job.
-I did not even slightly understand the absurdly convoluted alien plot, and thought it was all rounded off too suddenly - the Doctor seemed to be always a few steps behind and scrambling to catch up, until suddenly she wasn’t. But in an episode that had so much character stuff going on, I didn’t really mind that. I am always here for character more than plot.
-I hope that the trauma Yas seems to have suffered from her experience in the weird Kasaavin realm comes to something, because whilst it was great to see some emotional fallout (and that lovely interaction with Ryan) in Part 1, it seems to have entirely gone away by Part 2.
-Speaking of emotional fallout, am VERY HERE for Yas and Ryan and Graham to probe more deeply into the Doctor’s life and for her to have to give up some of her secrets at last :D Yesssssss give it to meeeeeee.
-TIMEY WIMEY SHENANIGANS :D :D :D Every single thing about the Doctor doing The of Curse Of Fatal Death to foil the Master, and then doing and Blink but with added photoshop and lamination and welding was AMAZING. Especially the fact that she didn’t remember to do that part until Ryan asked her about it. I love it when Doctor Who remembers it’s a time travel show.
-VORRRRRRRR. Omg, I have sent so many VOR puns to
such_heights and
happydork this week, what a glorious, horrifying gift :D (I was expecting there to be payoff - either it was going to be an acronym, or something to do with VORtech (vortex) and the Master, but nope. Just vorrrrrrrrrrr(e).
-Lenny Henry!! He was marvellous. I can’t believe he killed his mother. (And yet! Apparently got no comeuppance?? Much like Fake!Trump in the Arachnids ep or the whole Amazon thing last season, he just strolls away. This must be a theme.) I especially loved his little showdown with the Doctor, which had some wonderful tension between them. And I am always here for Doctor Who using not-even-slightly-subtle villains to discuss current concerns.
-The sonic not recognising things! I thought the sonic was a bit overused last season in a Magic Diagnosis Wand sort of a way, and so was pleased it was a bit useless, at least in Part 1. (Sidenote: the Doctor built this sonic herself, on Earth, using a bunch of totally random alien tech scraps and some sheffield steel. And yet it can apparently do All The Things. I wonder why the Master, stranded on Earth in linear time for 77 years, didn’t harvest the many, many alien tech remnants that must be littering the planet and do something similar?). Also liked that the TARDIS could not translate the Kasaavin’s language, and the idea that the Doctor ‘keeps the TARDIS open for new languages’. I like the idea of the TARDIS as a linguist, constantly scanning the furthest reaches of space for languages she hasn’t encountered before. I was also amused by the extremely traditional Doctor Arrogance of ‘I’ve checked every known language in the universe’ - you mean, every language YOU know of in the Universe, Doctor. That is a different thing entirely and one day you may even learn that.
-References to UNIT and Torchwood! RIP both of them (though apparently not in the audios? Clearly MI6 is misinformed). Also RIP Stephen Fry, I was SO AMUSED when they killed him off, unceremoniously, mid-sentence and like 15 minutes into the episode. :D I mean, his character was clearly a disaster - in the version of Earth that Doctor Who now takes place in, there’s no way you could be head of MI6 without being THOROUGHLY au fait with the idea of aliens. The Master must have done some v impressive work to get himself kicked out.
-”Oh…” “That’s your name, don’t wear it out” :D Sacha Dhawan’s face did some amazing emoting in this scene of ‘fucking HELL she’s foiled me AGAIN why do I BOTHER fml’ :D
-Two things I did...not love re. the Master: (1) seeing him in Nazi uniform, and (2) the Doctor using his brown skin against him, to hand him over to the Nazis. Re. (1) I *know* he's totally evil and an unrepentant murderer who cares about himself (and the Doctor) and nobody else...but I still didn't like seeing him dressed like that. Have him team up with the Nazis, fine! That is v On Brand. But I didn't like seeing him wear the uniform. We are supposed to *enjoy* the Master as a villain, for all his evil and murder-y-ness, and I cannot enjoy watching him dressed as a Nazi. Sorry. Maybe that's just me though? Re. (2) This just felt awful to watch, and I hated it the first time around and hated it even more the second time around. Thirteen handing him over to the Nazis by 'revealing' him to be a double agent - fine! Clever! He got himself involved with them in the first place! Thirteen handing him over to the Nazis by revealing him to be a double agent...and then also revealing his skin colour and flippantly saying "good luck!" specifically in reference to that...felt unnecessary and gross. From a Watsonian perspective, sure, this is v much the kind of thing the Doctor would do (HAS done - looking at you, Ten and Harriet Jones, Ten and 'walk around like you own the place', etc), even if it's interestingly new territory for Thirteen. (Her friends aren’t watching right now…) But from a Doylist perspective...the best thing I can say about it is that, as a white Jew, I would like to show that scene to any white British Jews who voted Tory in the last election. It felt like a pretty good metaphor for the fragility of being culturally accepted as White by a dominant group who could turn on you at any moment when they decide you are no longer white *enough*. Maybe that was what Chibnall was going for? But even so, brown people do not exist to be metaphors or learning experiences for white people and so even if that *was* what he was going for, I think it was horribly misguided. What is it supposed to tell us, except that Nazis Are Racist (thanks, Chibnall, we know) and apparently So Is The Doctor (thanks, Chibnall, we didn't need that).
-Relatedly, the Master's line, when he returns at the end, "The places I've escaped from" made me shiver (I think I might have said oh no out loud the first time?) because that is a seriously dark line that does not seem to be treated with the horror it deserves.
-What I REALLY WANT, okay, what I REALLY WANT is a TIMELINE of the entirety of Earth history that shows, in different colours and with the ability to zoom in on individual years/dates: all the times the Doctor, the Master and Captain Jack are around. I just want to see how many versions of them all are co-existing at once, and watching other versions of themselves doing stuff. Could also include River, Amy and Rory (who live through much of the 20th century...Rory twice) and Ashildr/Me. I just...was this version of the Master around as 'O' when he was also Harold Saxon??? Was Twelve texting with O as he was guarding the vault that contained Missy?? When the Master lived through 77 years of twentieth century history, what was he up to during the UNIT years?? What was he doing whilst THIS plot was going down - just waiting to stride into that warehouse at just the right moment like the drama queen he is? :D I have questions, and they would in no way be solved by this timeline but I want it anyway.
-ON THAT NOTE, I ALSO want a timeline of the entirety of Earth history showing alllll the alien presences. Because the longer this wonderful, ridiculous show goes on, the more alien species we encounter who have been on Earth 'the whole time'. We now have the Racnoss forming the core around which the planet was formed, the Silurians slumbering beneath the ground, the Silence who have apparently shaped human history, the Zygons who are living among us, at least one Dalek who has been on Earth in pieces for hundreds of years, and the Kasaavin who have *also* been lurking (though in smaller numbers) throughout human history. And that's just a random sampling I can remember off the top of my head, all from New Who. I want to know how many different aliens are invading/coexisting here at the same time :D
-I ALSO ALSO want, or rather, wanted, an entire episode about Noor Inayat Khan and Ada Lovelace running around Paris together using their combined wit and skills to be brilliant. I absolutely *loved* what we got to see of them both here (‘that is not designed for use by a young lady!’ ‘nothing is! And yet I find myself more than capable’), but felt it was a criminal underuse of two amazing and fascinating historical figures to throw them into this episode when there was *already* so much going on. It did feel a bit like they were just there to be Badass Historical Women (TM) as a backdrop for Thirteen to exclaim at their brilliance rather than as people in their own right. I thought both actors were wonderful, they made a delightful team, and I really could have done with a whole episode about them that did not also have the Master AND Mysterious Possibly-Plot-Arc-Related Sinister Aliens AND a terribly convoluted present day plot about the evils of google/facebook/etc involving yet a third villain AND timey-wimey shenanigans AND Dramatic Reveals About Gallifrey. Like, it could have some of those things? But not all of them. Just because an episode is a two-parter, Chris Chibnall, does not necessarily mean it has to contain More Things. It means you have the time and space to explore a *regular number of Things* in *interesting detail*. So yes, I loved seeing Noor and Ada in this episode, but also kind of wish they...hadn't been in this episode. /o\
-I also really wish they hadn't had their minds wiped. That, to me, played into the whole 'they are just there to be Badass Women as a backdrop for the Doctor rather than to be interesting characters on their own' thing.
such_heights is very smart and has pointed out that this v much is Thirteen's deal, as mentioned above, where she is much more low-key than previous regenerations, and really doesn’t want people - even her ‘fam’! - to know much about her. When Eleventy decided to try and withdraw from the universe, he did so in the most melodramatic way possible (and was also not hugely successful at it, sorry Eleventy ilu). Thirteen, meanwhile, is just quietly preserving the timeline by erasing traces of her presence that would complicate history. And that would be FINE, were it not for (a) the fact that she is so inconsistent about it (why does King James get to remember her, and the Tardis, and the aliens he encountered, but not Ada or Noor?) and (b) the HUGE WEIGHT OF HISTORY of Memory Wipes In New Who, Like, this is not an action devoid of context in this show, and context matters. I am much more prone to obsess over CONTEXT than most people (see above, re, liking echoes and parallels) and I am the first to admit that often when I say ‘this thing in this episode was just like that other thing in that episode seven seasons ago!’ I don’t expect most other people to actually care. But this is not that. This is a THING that started back in S4 with Donna, and then has been painstakingly addressed over and over again throughout seasons 5-10. Amy’s whole S5 arc was about the vital importance of memory. Likewise River’s arc, throughout - from her childhood with the memory-stealing Silence right up to her death when she refuses to let the Doctor re-write her life. Clara’s storyline ended in S9 with a reaffirmation of that importance, as she fights the Doctor for her right to keep her memories - and the Doctor losing his memories of her is treated, rightly, as a proper tragedy. The fact that he gets to regain them before his regeneration (as Donna never did) is seen as a beautiful reward for having learned the lesson - that wonderful, brilliant Bill teaches him, in her very first episode - that you can’t just do that to people without their consent. Noor doesn’t get a chance to consent, and Ada actively does *not* consent to losing this part of her life. And the Doctor goes ahead and does it anyway. And it made me sad that in regaining Twelve’s lost memories, she has apparently forgotten what he learned from it all.
-I don’t want to end on that negative note, because aside from that and the Nazi stuff I really did desperately love this two-parter, and it’s made me even more excited for the season to come. HAI SHOW, I'M GLAD YOU'RE BACK.
-The next episode apparently involves the TARDIS team visiting a luxury spa resort planet, because that ALWAYS goes well for the Doctor :P
BUT INSTEAD I spent this evening re-watching Doctor Who because, friends, I have Thoughts and Feelings about it! And I can't concentrate on anything else until I have written them down at GREAT LENGTH. What a glorious thing! It has been So Long, and I had forgotten how to feel like this about my show. (Possibly there are other reasons I have Thoughts and Feelings again now, but that is another post.)
The first time around I watched Part 1 alone in my flat and then
such_heights PHONED ME on her PHONE like some sort of NON-MILLENNIAL and put me on speaker so I could flail with her and
happydork and it was GREAT. :D
such_heights and I used to call each other after every Christmas episode of DW, and I have such happy memories of those phonecalls. For Part 2 I went to Casa SuchDorks and got to flail with
such_heights whilst on the same sofa which was even more delightful. There was a great deal of waving of hands and clutching at each other, and then trying to yell about our feelings quietly after the episode when poor
happydork had to work.
The other thing to say is that, as a former Bond Girl*, I felt personally victimised by the entire concept of this episode :P I also can't believe that the next Bond film is called 'No Time To Die', which is a Doctor Who crossover title if ever there was one. Why is this happening to me.
(*...I worked, for the first 3 years of my working life, as the office assistant for Ian Fleming's literary estate. I was Miss Moneypenny. I have the hilarious business cards to prove it. I got the job because my boss was - is, we are still in touch - a HUGE DW fan and we talked in my 'interview' about how much we both loved David Tennant and that is 100% why I got the job. How have things come full circle like this. What is time.)
Anyway,
-To get this out of the way first: OMG THE MASTER IS BACK!!! THE MASTER IS SACHA DHAWAN!!! HE HAS SUCH A GOOD FACE. HE ALSO HAS A NORTHERN ACCENT, JUST LIKE MISSY WAS SCOTTISH WHEN THE DOCTOR WAS SCOTTISH. THERE IS LITERALLY NOTHING ABOUT THIS THAT IS NOT AMAZING :D :D :D I am *truly* astonished by how completely blissfully unspoiled I was for this reveal. As soon as 'O' first appeared on screen (in a shot that, on a second viewing, is framed as *extremely* Bond Villain) I was the personification of the heart eyes emoji, because I just adored him in An Adventure in Space And Time and have long thought he should be in more things, and he’s just so beautiful and so charming. I was desperately worried throughout that he was going to die, and increasingly worried towards the end that he was going to turn out to be in league with the bad aliens...AND THEN. I GASPED. I watched the remainder of the episode with both hands over my mouth. I was SO THRILLED. And I didn't guess EVEN THOUGH I'd had Harold Saxon in my mind ever since the scene with Barton talking to the Kasaavin when he thinks he's alone in his office, which reminded me v strongly of Simm!Master and the Toclafane in his Downing Street office. I doubt that was a deliberate reference on Chibnall's part, though the line about 'nobody could create a fake life that good' CERTAINLY was. And I still didn't guess! WHAT A GIFT. HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ME. I can’t remember when I was last this floored and delighted by a reveal. (And omg all the little Classic Who callbacks! The tissue compression eliminator! The conversation on the Eiffel Tower about the events of Logopolis!) When O says ‘I’ve never done undercover work’ that line is FUCKING HILARIOUS second time around, oh my GOD. Master, you are so good at undercover work that the Doctor *literally never recognises you* despite the fact that according to the Doctor, Time Lords are supposed to be able to recognise each other on sight. (Which still works for me, because it’s either a throwaway lie - Rule One, The Doctor Lies - or it IS true but as we know the Doctor is canonically Really Bad at most Time Lord shit)
-And Dhawan is clearly having a FABULOUS TIME and he does *such* a wonderful job - quite Simm!Master-esque in a lot of ways, but also very much his own person. I do think it's interesting that he appears to have reverted so thoroughly to his pre-Season 10 self (gleefully, exaggeratedly evil, etc) when Missy had undergone such a painful process of change for the better. BUT I have seen it pointed out that this could make a lot of sense - as Missy, with Twelve's help, she learned to *care* more, to regret her past mistakes, to want to *be* better. And then that resulted in her death, before the Doctor could even know that she'd changed, and then sometime after that they discovered some terrible secret about Gallifrey (about which more later) which now they had to CARE about. Obviously we don't know what that secret is yet, or how it could so undermine the Master's sense of identity, when they *already* know that their entire life has been warped by Rassilon's machinations, but perhaps the emotional depth they developed as Missy made whatever this 'Timeless Child' thing is seem all the more unbearable. Which is why he is now so *angry* at the Doctor - when we last saw Missy working *with* him - because it's thanks to the Doctor he now has these *feelings* about Gallifrey and what he has (supposedly) done to it, which he DOES NOT LIKE. Anyway, will see how that one pans out I guess. There are so many layers to Dhawan's acting, so many complex emotions going on beneath the Master's exuberant performance of evil, especially the conversation on the Eiffel Tower, and I feel like we won’t understand all of them for a while.
-I do have thoughts about things that are not the Master, but, omg, him and the Doctor in Part 2 was just...PEAK THEM. "Kneel", "Call me by my name", "Why would I make it easy for you?", “How else would I get your attention?” The morse code drumming (my own heart skipped a beat when that started up) and the psychic connection and the blatantly ridiculous plan to - as always! - team up with some aliens and then betray them. It was all so classic and beautiful and I am delighted to see that Blank Space will never not be relevant for this relationship. THE MASTER HAS A SCRAPBOOK OF HIS FEELINGS ABOUT THE DOCTOR. That moment with Graham is *so* interesting, because even the first time around it felt sketchy - this guy enticing Graham to snoop around behind the Doctor’s back - but I STILL didn’t guess. And on a second viewing it’s GOLD. Everything about the Doctor and the Master’s incredibly overdramatic interactions is gold. The Doctor being THREE MILLION PERCENT DONE when he tells her to kneel and say his name is PERFECT. Her little eyeroll! The fact that he kneels down as well!! “When I arrange for your death, I expect you to remain dead” NO YOU FUCKING DO NOT, Master, let’s not pretend that is even slightly true. The Doctor’s childlike glee when she realises the Master may not be as in control of the situation as he’s pretending! You can feel the history between them.
-Speaking of history GALLIFREY HOLY SHIT. MORE YELLING. I cannot believe that Moffat spent a literal six seasons and a movie bringing back Gallifrey and re-establishing the Doctor's extremely ambivalent relationship with it, only for Chibnall to destroy it again after just one season XD. Would desperately love to see the presumably capslock-filled texts Moffat has sent him. (I am also a bit outraged on Moffat's behalf that Chibnall has clearly not watched, or at least not bothered to remember, Hell Bent, in which Gallifrey is very explicitly no longer ‘hiding in a little bubble universe'. I know you have to pick your continuity battles carefully in Doctor Who, but unexpectedly this is something my brain has latched onto. Why, brain??? It's so unimportant in the scheme of things! Why do you care???? Maybe the Gallifreyan High Council decided for Reasons to put the planet back in a bubble *after* the events of Hell Bent! Who knows. Shut up, Phoebe.)
-Let's start that bullet point again, shall we, it rather got away from me there. GALLIFREY HOLY SHIT. I have no idea what has gone down (is everyone really dead??? I hope not, we don't need to go down that route again - it's more fun when there's something around for the Doctor to run *from*) - I have seen speculation that the 'Timeless Child' is going to be some sort of 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas' kind of deal, which would be potentially interesting though I don't know if that's something that would really disturb the Master, of all people. Whatever happens though, it's GREAT to get some meaty, dramatic, Time Lord Fuckery in there, because I felt the lack of that a bit last season. ANGST TIME. That whole hologram scene was AMAZE (was the Master dressed like One and doing the lapel thing??) and the Doctor’s faaaaace throughout was beautiful.
-I will never not get chills when a Doctor delivers the ‘I’m a Time Lord From Gallifrey In The Constellation Of Kasterborous’ speech for the first time.
-It's extremely interesting to me how *very* Season Three/Four this all feels?? What with the Simm!vibes and deliberate Harold Saxon echoes of Dhawan's Master, the return of that drumbeat, and the scenes with Yas and Ryan and Graham on the run and hiding in a warehouse whilst their faces are on every TV screen just like Ten and Jack and Martha back in the day (up to and including Yas phoning her family). The Death By Evil SatNav. The ‘End Of Time’-esque plot to transform everyone on the planet into something else. And that whole conversation where the Doctor makes the ‘Gallifrey’ speech and Yas (/Martha) asks to go there and Thirteen's (/Ten's) face just falls. Thirteen has a lot of Eleven's unselfconscious oddness, but for some reason she feels, to me, most like Ten out of all the previous (New Who) Doctors, so I guess this is just a place Chibnall feels comfortable? (The fact that I am constantly comparing the Doctor and the Master to their predecessors is no slight on either of them - it's something I always do, with every version of them and also with every companion. My brain likes to find Parallels and Echoes.) Ten was much more obviously Angsty and Brooding than Thirteen, but they have a similar manic, wide-eyed energy about them, and a similar surface-level of approachability. I think the biggest difference - other than the fact that Thirteen is TOTALLY DONE with the Master in a way that Ten was Not - is that whilst Ten's arrogance led him to topple regimes with 6 words (because he apparently learned NOTHING from the whole Satellite Five debacle, oh my god) and to set things on (sometimes literal) fire around him, Thirteen has, thus far, tended to...mostly leave terrible power structures in place?? Which is not a great look for the Doctor, and I'm hoping is something we will see addressed this season. It's like she's so afraid of causing major catastrophes by her intervention, or of becoming overwhelmed by her own hubris, that she's gone too far the other way. Also, Ten’s surface-level approachability masked a dark well of Tragic Backstory which he dropped hints about, even sometimes actually talked about when pushed. Thirteen has not even hinted at any of that since her very first episode. She has a much stronger facade.
-On a shallower note, everyone was REALLY BEAUTIFUL in this episode. The Doctor in that suit was AMAZING as was O in his tux and Yas in that jacket and I just, oh no.
-The Doctor playing snap was absolutely my favourite non-Master-related thing in this whole two-parter. What a perfectly beautiful Doctor moment. What a LOSER i LOVE HER :D Also desperately loved the Doctor lying in the floor in Nazi occupied Paris saying ‘I’m not where I wanted to be, but I can work with this’ :D Hai, Doctor, ilu.
-Yas and Ryan and Graham were all wonderful in these eps, though my feelings about them are overshadowed by Master feelings. But I felt like they all got interesting things to do - I loved Yas and Ryan being TERRIBLE SPIES, and Ryan LANDING A PLANE and Graham’s LASER SHOES and omg all the stupid Bond tech and the Casino scenes and all of it. I loved Yas levelling up and taking the lead on stuff, I loved Ryan’s anxiety about ‘not looking like Hugh Jackman’ (wtf Ryan you dork) I loved Graham basically being there to make sarcastic comments, and the Master picking up on that XD I loved all their relationships with each other, I loved that they all got stuff to DO which was not always the case last season, I really enjoyed seeing them have to do the ‘what would the Doctor do’ thing.
-Actually, that’s a lovely parallel I enjoyed within the episode - the Doctor taking down the Master on the Eiffel Tower had an aspect to it that I hated (see below) but I LOVED that it involved her sending a fake message that was *intended* to be intercepted...and that is ALSO what Yas &co were doing, in the present day, with the phonecall to Yas’s sister! I only clocked that parallel on a second viewing, and thought it was v clever.
-Also that reminder at the very start of the episode, of the lives they are putting on hold to travel with the Doctor. Yas, in particular, has a lot at stake and is going to have some big decisions to make down the line. Though in the meantime it’s making me lol to imagine the Doctor, with her apparent penchant for faking documents (and laminating them!) creating increasingly ridiculous secondment paperwork for Yas’s job.
-I did not even slightly understand the absurdly convoluted alien plot, and thought it was all rounded off too suddenly - the Doctor seemed to be always a few steps behind and scrambling to catch up, until suddenly she wasn’t. But in an episode that had so much character stuff going on, I didn’t really mind that. I am always here for character more than plot.
-I hope that the trauma Yas seems to have suffered from her experience in the weird Kasaavin realm comes to something, because whilst it was great to see some emotional fallout (and that lovely interaction with Ryan) in Part 1, it seems to have entirely gone away by Part 2.
-Speaking of emotional fallout, am VERY HERE for Yas and Ryan and Graham to probe more deeply into the Doctor’s life and for her to have to give up some of her secrets at last :D Yesssssss give it to meeeeeee.
-TIMEY WIMEY SHENANIGANS :D :D :D Every single thing about the Doctor doing The of Curse Of Fatal Death to foil the Master, and then doing and Blink but with added photoshop and lamination and welding was AMAZING. Especially the fact that she didn’t remember to do that part until Ryan asked her about it. I love it when Doctor Who remembers it’s a time travel show.
-VORRRRRRRR. Omg, I have sent so many VOR puns to
such_heights and
happydork this week, what a glorious, horrifying gift :D (I was expecting there to be payoff - either it was going to be an acronym, or something to do with VORtech (vortex) and the Master, but nope. Just vorrrrrrrrrrr(e).
-Lenny Henry!! He was marvellous. I can’t believe he killed his mother. (And yet! Apparently got no comeuppance?? Much like Fake!Trump in the Arachnids ep or the whole Amazon thing last season, he just strolls away. This must be a theme.) I especially loved his little showdown with the Doctor, which had some wonderful tension between them. And I am always here for Doctor Who using not-even-slightly-subtle villains to discuss current concerns.
-The sonic not recognising things! I thought the sonic was a bit overused last season in a Magic Diagnosis Wand sort of a way, and so was pleased it was a bit useless, at least in Part 1. (Sidenote: the Doctor built this sonic herself, on Earth, using a bunch of totally random alien tech scraps and some sheffield steel. And yet it can apparently do All The Things. I wonder why the Master, stranded on Earth in linear time for 77 years, didn’t harvest the many, many alien tech remnants that must be littering the planet and do something similar?). Also liked that the TARDIS could not translate the Kasaavin’s language, and the idea that the Doctor ‘keeps the TARDIS open for new languages’. I like the idea of the TARDIS as a linguist, constantly scanning the furthest reaches of space for languages she hasn’t encountered before. I was also amused by the extremely traditional Doctor Arrogance of ‘I’ve checked every known language in the universe’ - you mean, every language YOU know of in the Universe, Doctor. That is a different thing entirely and one day you may even learn that.
-References to UNIT and Torchwood! RIP both of them (though apparently not in the audios? Clearly MI6 is misinformed). Also RIP Stephen Fry, I was SO AMUSED when they killed him off, unceremoniously, mid-sentence and like 15 minutes into the episode. :D I mean, his character was clearly a disaster - in the version of Earth that Doctor Who now takes place in, there’s no way you could be head of MI6 without being THOROUGHLY au fait with the idea of aliens. The Master must have done some v impressive work to get himself kicked out.
-”Oh…” “That’s your name, don’t wear it out” :D Sacha Dhawan’s face did some amazing emoting in this scene of ‘fucking HELL she’s foiled me AGAIN why do I BOTHER fml’ :D
-Two things I did...not love re. the Master: (1) seeing him in Nazi uniform, and (2) the Doctor using his brown skin against him, to hand him over to the Nazis. Re. (1) I *know* he's totally evil and an unrepentant murderer who cares about himself (and the Doctor) and nobody else...but I still didn't like seeing him dressed like that. Have him team up with the Nazis, fine! That is v On Brand. But I didn't like seeing him wear the uniform. We are supposed to *enjoy* the Master as a villain, for all his evil and murder-y-ness, and I cannot enjoy watching him dressed as a Nazi. Sorry. Maybe that's just me though? Re. (2) This just felt awful to watch, and I hated it the first time around and hated it even more the second time around. Thirteen handing him over to the Nazis by 'revealing' him to be a double agent - fine! Clever! He got himself involved with them in the first place! Thirteen handing him over to the Nazis by revealing him to be a double agent...and then also revealing his skin colour and flippantly saying "good luck!" specifically in reference to that...felt unnecessary and gross. From a Watsonian perspective, sure, this is v much the kind of thing the Doctor would do (HAS done - looking at you, Ten and Harriet Jones, Ten and 'walk around like you own the place', etc), even if it's interestingly new territory for Thirteen. (Her friends aren’t watching right now…) But from a Doylist perspective...the best thing I can say about it is that, as a white Jew, I would like to show that scene to any white British Jews who voted Tory in the last election. It felt like a pretty good metaphor for the fragility of being culturally accepted as White by a dominant group who could turn on you at any moment when they decide you are no longer white *enough*. Maybe that was what Chibnall was going for? But even so, brown people do not exist to be metaphors or learning experiences for white people and so even if that *was* what he was going for, I think it was horribly misguided. What is it supposed to tell us, except that Nazis Are Racist (thanks, Chibnall, we know) and apparently So Is The Doctor (thanks, Chibnall, we didn't need that).
-Relatedly, the Master's line, when he returns at the end, "The places I've escaped from" made me shiver (I think I might have said oh no out loud the first time?) because that is a seriously dark line that does not seem to be treated with the horror it deserves.
-What I REALLY WANT, okay, what I REALLY WANT is a TIMELINE of the entirety of Earth history that shows, in different colours and with the ability to zoom in on individual years/dates: all the times the Doctor, the Master and Captain Jack are around. I just want to see how many versions of them all are co-existing at once, and watching other versions of themselves doing stuff. Could also include River, Amy and Rory (who live through much of the 20th century...Rory twice) and Ashildr/Me. I just...was this version of the Master around as 'O' when he was also Harold Saxon??? Was Twelve texting with O as he was guarding the vault that contained Missy?? When the Master lived through 77 years of twentieth century history, what was he up to during the UNIT years?? What was he doing whilst THIS plot was going down - just waiting to stride into that warehouse at just the right moment like the drama queen he is? :D I have questions, and they would in no way be solved by this timeline but I want it anyway.
-ON THAT NOTE, I ALSO want a timeline of the entirety of Earth history showing alllll the alien presences. Because the longer this wonderful, ridiculous show goes on, the more alien species we encounter who have been on Earth 'the whole time'. We now have the Racnoss forming the core around which the planet was formed, the Silurians slumbering beneath the ground, the Silence who have apparently shaped human history, the Zygons who are living among us, at least one Dalek who has been on Earth in pieces for hundreds of years, and the Kasaavin who have *also* been lurking (though in smaller numbers) throughout human history. And that's just a random sampling I can remember off the top of my head, all from New Who. I want to know how many different aliens are invading/coexisting here at the same time :D
-I ALSO ALSO want, or rather, wanted, an entire episode about Noor Inayat Khan and Ada Lovelace running around Paris together using their combined wit and skills to be brilliant. I absolutely *loved* what we got to see of them both here (‘that is not designed for use by a young lady!’ ‘nothing is! And yet I find myself more than capable’), but felt it was a criminal underuse of two amazing and fascinating historical figures to throw them into this episode when there was *already* so much going on. It did feel a bit like they were just there to be Badass Historical Women (TM) as a backdrop for Thirteen to exclaim at their brilliance rather than as people in their own right. I thought both actors were wonderful, they made a delightful team, and I really could have done with a whole episode about them that did not also have the Master AND Mysterious Possibly-Plot-Arc-Related Sinister Aliens AND a terribly convoluted present day plot about the evils of google/facebook/etc involving yet a third villain AND timey-wimey shenanigans AND Dramatic Reveals About Gallifrey. Like, it could have some of those things? But not all of them. Just because an episode is a two-parter, Chris Chibnall, does not necessarily mean it has to contain More Things. It means you have the time and space to explore a *regular number of Things* in *interesting detail*. So yes, I loved seeing Noor and Ada in this episode, but also kind of wish they...hadn't been in this episode. /o\
-I also really wish they hadn't had their minds wiped. That, to me, played into the whole 'they are just there to be Badass Women as a backdrop for the Doctor rather than to be interesting characters on their own' thing.
such_heights is very smart and has pointed out that this v much is Thirteen's deal, as mentioned above, where she is much more low-key than previous regenerations, and really doesn’t want people - even her ‘fam’! - to know much about her. When Eleventy decided to try and withdraw from the universe, he did so in the most melodramatic way possible (and was also not hugely successful at it, sorry Eleventy ilu). Thirteen, meanwhile, is just quietly preserving the timeline by erasing traces of her presence that would complicate history. And that would be FINE, were it not for (a) the fact that she is so inconsistent about it (why does King James get to remember her, and the Tardis, and the aliens he encountered, but not Ada or Noor?) and (b) the HUGE WEIGHT OF HISTORY of Memory Wipes In New Who, Like, this is not an action devoid of context in this show, and context matters. I am much more prone to obsess over CONTEXT than most people (see above, re, liking echoes and parallels) and I am the first to admit that often when I say ‘this thing in this episode was just like that other thing in that episode seven seasons ago!’ I don’t expect most other people to actually care. But this is not that. This is a THING that started back in S4 with Donna, and then has been painstakingly addressed over and over again throughout seasons 5-10. Amy’s whole S5 arc was about the vital importance of memory. Likewise River’s arc, throughout - from her childhood with the memory-stealing Silence right up to her death when she refuses to let the Doctor re-write her life. Clara’s storyline ended in S9 with a reaffirmation of that importance, as she fights the Doctor for her right to keep her memories - and the Doctor losing his memories of her is treated, rightly, as a proper tragedy. The fact that he gets to regain them before his regeneration (as Donna never did) is seen as a beautiful reward for having learned the lesson - that wonderful, brilliant Bill teaches him, in her very first episode - that you can’t just do that to people without their consent. Noor doesn’t get a chance to consent, and Ada actively does *not* consent to losing this part of her life. And the Doctor goes ahead and does it anyway. And it made me sad that in regaining Twelve’s lost memories, she has apparently forgotten what he learned from it all.
-I don’t want to end on that negative note, because aside from that and the Nazi stuff I really did desperately love this two-parter, and it’s made me even more excited for the season to come. HAI SHOW, I'M GLAD YOU'RE BACK.
-The next episode apparently involves the TARDIS team visiting a luxury spa resort planet, because that ALWAYS goes well for the Doctor :P