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Review of Spyfall: Part 2
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I really hate it when something I’m enjoying trips at the finish line. If I could just ignore those last few minutes, I think Spyfall would have ended up firmly in my “win” column. As it is, I’m left with an unpleasant taste in my mouth.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

Much like Part 1, this episode was full of callbacks to earlier eras. Many of them left me grinning in glee, like the nods to Blink (“Don’t talk back to the screens. Obviously, I’m a recording and I can’t hear you.”), The Three Doctors (“Contact.” “Contact.” “Old school.” “You’re not the only one who can do classic.”), Logopolis (“It’s cold up here. It’s worse that Jodrell Bank.” “Did I ever apologize for that?” “No.” “Good.”), and even “The Curse of Fatal Death” (“I’ve just had the most infuriating 77 years of my life.”).

Other callbacks were gut-wrenching in all the wrong ways. Though I didn’t recognize it as such at the time, the way RTD chose to write Donna out of the Doctor’s life with a violation of Donna’s personal autonomy by altering her mind without her consent (in fact, as she begs him not to) was extremely problematic. To see a Doctor who has (one would hope) grown and evolved since then, one who occupies a female-presenting body, pull the exact same shit soured me on the entire story.

The Doctor asks neither Noor nor Ada before removing herself from their minds. Noor, at least, doesn’t seem overly concerned in that last second that she has to react. Ada’s protests, however, sound all too familiar. The Doctor may think Ada doesn’t need any outside help to become the amazing part of history she is (that sentiment, at least, is one with which I heartily agree), but taking unilateral action without even trying to bring her around to the Doctor’s point of view is contemptible.

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An Intrigue-ing Start

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.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2020 BBC

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).

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Bookends

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

Last month when we watched the final episode of Series 11, we weren’t actually watching the final episode of Series 11. This was the final episode of Series 11.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2019 BBC

Resolution ties into the rest of Whittaker’s tenure to date so seamlessly, I can’t help but wonder whether or not it was Chibnall’s intention all along to make an eleven-episode series. Evidence of that idea is peppered throughout the special, making Resolution and The Woman Who Fell to Earth a pair of perfectly matched bookends.

For starters, both episode titles have double meanings. In TWWFtE, the identity of the eponymous woman is up for interpretation, while here the titular resolution could either be the Doctor’s stated intention to come for the Dalek or the completion of a plot through-line or two.

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Saving the Universe Like Adults

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Review of The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I think nothing sets apart the nascent Chibnall era from the RTD and Moffat eras so much as the final regular episode of this first series. Whereas previous showrunners have gone all out with bombastic, plot-heavy tours de force for their series finales, Chibnall… did not.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC

There are still some familiar elements in The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, in that a thread begun back in the series opener (and continued in the second episode) was woven back into the TARDIS Team’s lives. Graham, and to a degree Ryan, finally had a chance to come to terms with the death that sent him scuttling into the TARDIS in the first place.

But it was more in the callbacks—both subtle and stated outright—that I was reminded of prior finales. Without the “Tim Shaw” tie-in, TBoRAK would be indistinguishable from any other episode in Series 11, and certainly not readily identifiable to a casual viewer as the series’s “big finish.”

That fact will make the episode a big disappointment for a certain segment of fans. For those who loved Moffat’s twisty, tricksy, over-stuffed plots, Chibnall’s writing will feel far too straightforward. If, however, you’re someone who loves stories grounded in character, there are plenty of satisfying moments to be had.

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Through the Looking-Glass

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Review of It Takes You Away
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

When I saw a friend’s review of this episode up on Vulture titled “Pining for the Fjords,” I thought, “Damn! That was the perfect title! Why couldn’t I have thought of that and posted it first?”


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC

Then it dawned on me that Through the Looking-Glass, and What the Doctor Found There was even more apt. The Doctor and her friends literally step through a looking-glass into an alternate reality where everything is so topsy-turvy that Alice surely would’ve understood how off-kilter they felt. They even manifested as mirror images of themselves (check Erik’s T-shirt logo or the Doctor’s hair flop and ear cuff)!

Plenty of other little details seem inverted, too. Ryan’s initial take on the reason for Hanne’s dad to be missing, which everyone else rejects as a cynical and somewhat rude view of the situation, turns out to be correct. The monster in the woods isn’t the real threat. And the blind character—fabulously depicted by an actual blind actress (score another point for the production team!)—”sees” more clearly than anyone else. (Okay, maybe that last one’s a trope after all…)

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Ducking Gender Roles

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Review of The Witchfinders
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

In a way, this is the episode I’ve been waiting for since Whittaker was announced. Although she’s been so on screen for a couple of months now, this time the Doctor was finally “a woman.”


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC

Up until now, she’s been able to do her usual trick of swanning in, acting like she owns the place, and being taken seriously. In fact, even when the TARDIS Team first arrived in Bilehurst Cragg, she flashed her psychic paper and was immediately accepted as an authority. But enter King James, and suddenly she is demoted from Witchfinder General to a “wee lassie”—and I loved it.

Not that I loved the Doctor being devalued; that part was, as always, difficult to watch. But I loved it because it was real. “Honestly,” the Doctor herself complained, “if I was still a bloke, I could get on with the job and not have to waste time defending myself!” Welcome to the club, Doctor.

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Great Packaging, Mediocre Product

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Review of Kerblam!
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I found Kerblam! kind of confusing. I don’t mean that I couldn’t follow the plot; rather, I came out of it not knowing how to feel about the whole thing.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC

At first I thought it seemed too obviously derivative (scary robots—never seen those before! and could Kerblam be any more obvious an analogue for Amazon?), but then there were some elements that kept me engaged (most especially the Companions; I felt they were all great in this episode, and each got a chance to shine).

But more than anything, it was the overall message of the episode that left me scratching my head. Was I supposed to think that massive, faceless corporations are (or at least can be) the real “good guys”? And that enthusiastic young people who are fighting for rights for themselves and their peers are misguided murderers?

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Walking Someone Else’s Minefield

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Review of Demons of the Punjab
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

A few hours before the episode aired, I saw someone in one of the Doctor Who-related Facebook groups I’m in express his apprehensions about the potential for an episode set in India in 1947 to be a preachy, anti-British Empire bash-fest (totally paraphrasing)—airing on Remembrance Day.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC

I have rarely felt as much of a cultural divide with the UK as I did in that moment. Such a concern had never—would never have—occurred to me. I thus sat down to watch Demons of the Punjab feeling like I was about to walk through someone else’s cultural minefield. But the type of mines that were actually scattered about were completely different than what I’d expected. And unlike the Doctor and her friends, I really had no context for what was coming.

The US and the UK share an awful lot of cultural DNA. As the former colony rather than the former colonizer, though (and here I’m entirely skipping how my ancestors helped to slaughter the original inhabitants of the land I now live on as they colonized it), the people of my country generally stopped paying much attention to Britain’s affairs after about the turn of the nineteenth century, where “American history” and “British history” diverge.

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The Showrunner Conundrum

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Review of The Tsuranga Conundrum
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

The cautious optimism with which I entered this series has begun to wane.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC

Here we are, halfway through the series, and I’m still not really excited about it. Yes, I love Whittaker’s Doctor. Yes, I really like the Companions—what I know of them, anyway. And yes, each story has had some really good, enjoyable elements to it. But it’s starting to feel very same-old same-old; after only five episodes, that seems like a precarious place to be.

Strangely, that feeling didn’t really hit me until my second viewing of The Tsuranga Conundrum. That is, the first time through, when I was just watching for the pure experience, I liked the episode fine. It didn’t fill me with giddy delight or move me deeply like some of the best ones do, but it also didn’t set my teeth on edge like the worst. However, when I went back to watch and take notes for this review, I found myself checking the run-time counter again and again, to see how much more I needed to sit through. Bad sign.

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Spiders, Families, and Other Sticky Topics

Review of Arachnids in the UK
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

This episode is not for arachnophobes. Straight up—if spiders squick you out, skip this one. Do Not Pass “Go,” Do Not Collect $200.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2018 BBC

If you can handle spiders, well… It’s still plenty creepy. There’s something primordial that just gets at one’s brainstem when something is crawling rapidly toward you with purpose, especially when it has many legs. As usual, though, the creatures are just a convenient (or inconvenient, depending on your perspective) backdrop for a deeper story.

This time that story is nominally about the greed and egoism of a man who is such an obvious analog for the current US President that they actually had to use said President’s name in the dialog in order to maintain deniability. The parallel actually made it hard for me to watch whenever that guy was on screen (that and the fact that the actor will forever be Mr. Big to me, though that actually worked relatively well in context).

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