Review of Spyfall: Part 1
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I haven’t enjoyed an episode that much in a long time.

After exactly a year’s absence from our screens, Doctor Who came screaming back with Chibnall’s first two-parter since Series Five. Giving its own special take on another British classic, Spyfall has the Doctor and her “fam” taking on a freaky unknown alien adversary in true James Bond style.

Flitting from location to location, the TARDIS team gets the full Bond film experience, including MI6 gadgets, some infiltration work, data decryption, visiting another agent to get intel, crashing a black tie party, and even a chance for our titular hero to intone, “The name’s Doctor. The Doctor.”

Despite the trappings of spycraft and intrigue, though, it never felt like anything other than Doctor Who (with the possible exception of the first appearance of the aforementioned aliens, when they seriously reminded me of the Suliban from Star Trek: Enterprise). There were so many moments that hinted back to older stories that it made my head spin. At various times I wondered if these new baddies were anything like a whole raft of past ones: the Vocs robots from Robots of Death; the 456 from Torchwood: Children of Earth; the ATMOS device from The Sontaran Stratagem; the Host from Voyage of the Damned; the Cybermen from Army of Ghosts; and particularly the Cybermen from The Invasion (where Daniel Barton looked like a 1:1 correspondent to Invasion‘s Tobias Vaughn).

Of course, it was this swirling question of who these unreadable aliens are that served to occupy the viewer, executing skillful misdirection and helping us to forget the Doctor’s own admonition to trust no one. Maybe there are tiny niggling clues throughout (I actually posited O’s true identity when we first saw his face, then dismissed the idea), but like with Moffat, there wasn’t really enough time, as events barreled, ahead to dwell on those clues.

I hope for your sake, reader, that you came into this episode unspoiled, as I did. Because that was one hell of a reveal.

And there are so many places the story could go from here. That’s actually what’s got me most concerned. I know from long, painful experience that a Moffat two-parter can really knock it out of the park on the first episode, but will very rarely rise above “disappointing” by the end. In contrast, the only specifically multi-part episode we’ve ever seen from Chibnall, whether in Doctor Who or Torchwood, is the aforementioned Series Five double-header The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood. While I didn’t dislike the back half of that story, neither does it stand out as a favorite. So I’m left feeling extremely anxious about whether or not he can stick the landing with Spyfall.

That will have to be to topic for next time, though. For now, I’ll highlight a few of the other details that delighted me about Part 1 and left me crossing all my phalanges for Sunday. Beginning with the superficial, I just loved the crew’s formalwear. The gents all looked quite dapper, Yaz’s sequined jacket was divine, and the Doctor’s get-up initially surprised me into a bark of laughter at the silhouette—the same as her usual clothes—and then a gasp of heart-wrenching recognition at the bright red lining of her black coat.

Little moments throughout made me smile and nod, sometimes sadly: the Doctor’s assertion that both UNIT and Torchwood are “gone”; the Doctor’s suggestion that they do something crazy, and Yaz’s all-in response; Rule 1a: No panicking while you’re not trusting anyone; O’s comment about his notes on the Doctor showing “a lot of inconsistencies” about her past.

Most especially, though, all the hints and clues about O, from dialog to facial expressions, that take a second or third viewing to notice are simply (excuse the pun) masterful. I expect to be rewatching both parts with that kind of hindsight soon, telling myself, “Yep, you should’ve picked up on that clue,” for moments that I can currently only pick out as peculiar around the edges.

I’m hoping that this series continues to keep more focus on Yaz, as there was when she preceded the Doctor to whatever freaky interstitial space they each ended up in. I’m hoping, in fact, that Yaz’s experience will somehow end up being the key to the Doctor understanding the claim that “everything that you think you know is a lie.”

Of course, as we all know, “everything” is relative.