Spyfall

Chapter The 145th, is the Story of O (but not the naughty Story of O, obviously).

Plot:

[A brand new pair of episodes with big plot reveals, so beware spoilers, sweeties! I even left a respectful couple of weeks - and the broadcast of another story - as a gap to let things settle, so no excuses - be warned!]

The Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz are called in by MI6 to investigate a spate of attacks on spies around the globe, where the victim's body has been altered, infiltrated by alien DNA. They meet 'C' - a code name for the head of the secret service, to protect his identity, even though he's clearly Stephen Fry - who gives them a lead just before he's assassinated. A British social media CEO billionaire, Daniel Barton, who once was an MI6 agent but who may now have been turned, is involved. Ryan and Yaz investigate him under the cover of being journalist and photographer. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Graham track down an ex-operative who had a special interest in extra-terrestrial activity, 'O', and talk with him at his hideout in the Australian outback. Glowing pan-dimensional aliens attack Yaz and transport her to the Upside Down (or its slightly cheaper equivalent); they also attack O's hideout. O and the Doctor manage to capture one, but it swaps places with Yaz. The Doctor picks up Ryan in the TARDIS, and they're all together again. During the interview with Barton, he'd mentioned his imminent birthday celebrations, so the TARDIS team and O gatecrash. The Doctor confronts Barton, but he makes a break for it and they pursue in a big James Bond-esque chase sequence. They all end up hiding in the back of Barton's private jet as it takes off. But O reveals himself to be the Master before transporting himself away; Barton has already left the plane, and there's instead a bomb on the pilot's seat. The glowy aliens (the Kasaavin - double-A actually!) attack the Doctor, who vanishes into the knock-off Upside Down.

The bomb blows up and the jet descends, but the Doctor's three friends find clues that she has somehow left inside the plane to help them land it safely. In the Upside Down, the Doctor meets Ada Lovelace who has been brought here many times through her life for the Kasaavin to study her. When Ada is returned to her own time, the Doctor catches a lift, but the Master follows them to that time and starts attacking people. With Ada's help the Doctor escapes. At Babbage's place, the Doctor finds a moving sculpture, the Silver Lady, which Babbage was given years before, which seems to be a device for helping the Kasaavin project themselves into our universe. The Doctor uses it as a way to time travel back to the present, but Ada tags along, knocking them off course to Paris 1943, where they meet Noor Inayat Khan, the first female wireless operator working undercover for the SOE. The Master follows, now posing as a Nazi officer. The Doctor manages to get him to monologue his plan. The Kasaavin are alien spies from another dimension, and the Master's provided them and Barton a new scheme - turn the human race into database servers, using the storage capacity of human DNA. The Kasaavin have been using the knowledge of technology experts like Ada through history to help in this aim. Meanwhile, following instructions from the Doctor, Noor sends a false message to the Allies that the Master has been passing on secrets, dropping him in it. While he's being arrested, the Doctor steals his TARDIS and makes off with Ada and Noor.

in the present day, Barton instigates the plan - the Silver Lady activates, and the Kasaavin appear en masse. Yaz and Ryan have tracked the device down, and the Master (who's had to live through the years 1943 to 2020) catches up with them too. But the Doctor has altered the Silver Lady in the past, and it stops working. Barton escapes, but not the Master - the Kasaavin surround him, and spirit him away. The Doctor returns Ada and Noor - taking a detour first to set up Barton's plane with the clues the others will need to land it - and wipes their memories of her. Following hints that the Master had dropped, the Doctor then travels to Gallifrey to find it has been destroyed. A recorded holographic message of the Master plays in the TARDIS, where he explains that it was he who did this, as retribution for a mysterious lie that the Time Lords have told relating to the Timeless Child...

Context:

This story marks the start of the fourth new series to be broadcast while I've been doing the blog. Given the random order concept to which I try to adhere, this always begs the question of whether the show being back on TV is sufficient reason to override the randomiser and blog a story from the new set, and - if so - which one. If something is significant enough, such as the very first story for a new Doctor, then it's a no-brainer; but otherwise, one needs a system. I'd a while back settled on the idea of choosing one story from the upcoming series at random in advance, rather than always blogging the first story of the new series. It seemed like a good balance: mark the occasion, but still keep a chance factor involved. The trouble is that this approach only works if one knows the number of stories to be broadcast in advance, and this information hasn't really been released.

Ten episodes have been filmed (even that might be a supposition, and not technically on record), but a number of them have been reported to be two-parters, with no official confirmation as yet as to which. The current production team are so tight-lipped about any plot details that most of the series' story titles hadn't been released when Spyfall was broadcast. The series in 2018 was the same, with a few titles being released at a time gradually as the series progressed. It's great for avoiding leaks (the major plot points within Spyfall took pretty much everyone by surprise, I think), but left me with the only real option being to blog a story of my choice, and it might as well be the opening story. It was fairly significant, I suppose, being the festive offering, and the first show broadcast for a year. Anyway, a couple of days after the broadcast of the second part, I watched the two episodes again back to back from the PVR recording (as I'm old school, I'm still recording new episodes even though they are available, and will be seemingly forever, on iplayer).

First time round:

Watched the first part on New Year's Day 2020 live on its BBC1 broadcast, and then the second when it was broadcast a few day's later in the usual series Sunday night slot. I was accompanied by the whole family (Better Half, boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7). Youngest child, who has avoided most Jodie Whittaker episodes up to now thinking they're too frightening, sat down and watched both episodes without any worries (alas, Orphan 55 a week later gave both the younger two nightmares). The Better Half was happily watching the first episode, but not engaged enough that she didn't take a phone call during the show, and missed the big plot reveals towards the end! Luckily clips of the significant moment were all over social media afterwards for her to view. Sweetly, the youngest watched the moment of the Doctor sitting forlorn in the console room after witnessing the ruins of Gallifrey, and seeing the usually orange crystal buttresses had turned blue said "The TARDIS is sad!".

Reaction:

Spyfall is two parts, each an hour long, making it one of the longest duration stories in the whole of post-2005 Doctor Who. Only The End of Time and (if you count them as one three part story like I do) Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords rack up more minutes of entertainment. In terms of season openers, it is shorter only than one story from the 1960s in the whole history of the series since it began. It is big, and in more than one sense: the action begins with brief scenes across the globe, with large point font captions on screen to tell us where in the world we are, giving an instant sense of scale (a similar trick to that which was pulled off in Resolution a year before), the music is suitably espionage-esque, and everything looks widescreen and million dollar budget. For the next hour, we get the full throttle Bond pastiche, with far flung exotic locales, gadgets, men in black, chases, explosions, tense pauses as USB sticks take ages to gradually download data - that sort of thing. There's also the wonderful sequence at Barton's casino-themed birthday party with everyone in a tux, which includes perhaps the most 13th Doctor-ish joke so far, where she thinks she's playing Snap while everyone else is playing Blackjack. Jodie Whittaker is amazing in the role, and must surely be hero to all the new generation of youngsters tuning in for the first time these last couple of years.

Why are they doing a spy pastiche, fun as it is? Because the Kasaavin are alien spies. Why are they spies? Well, who cares? It's fine and it's fun. Fry is great at having a slightly more serious jab at the Special Intelligence 'Control' character that he used to play for laughs in his A Bit of Fry and Laurie days. It's obvious casting, but not unwelcome for that. Lenny Henry is also great at playing the smarmy social media CEO villain, tying the espionage theme in to the nefarious treatment of our data by these huge companies over recent years. It's a shame that the full-on spy film ambience stops at the mid-point, The second episode goes off at what at first appears to be a tangent, arriving at the 19th century, and then WW2. The theme of modern smartphone / social media technology being a spy in our pocket brings all the separate threads about technology and espionage together at the end, just about, but I have to admit - though I loved the second episode - it would have been fun to have a whole second episode of knockabout Bond, blasts and banter. Occasional inter-cutting of Graham, Yaz and Ryan's antics on the run, using silly gadgets and outwitting Barton, was some consolation.

The change of speed, look and feel of the second half was deliberate - they hired a different director for part 2, after all. The rompy runaround develops into something a bit deeper as we focus on a pair of pioneering women. I knew a lot about Ada Lovelace (and Babbage), but nothing about Noor. It prompted me to look her up, as I hope it did for lots of others watching - it's a brave and sad story, and the Doctor's parting line to her, "Bonne chance", is all the more poignant when one finds out that a year on from the events we've seen, she will die in Dachau. Aside from the Silver Lady statue being a bit of a clumsy device, my only other criticism of this story is that Ada and Noor could both have been centre of an individual story on their own. It's a bit of a waste that it's all so whistle-stop, and they have to share the limelight with the Master and all the spy shenanigans. It is great, though, that the world is saved by a trio of intelligent women. This team-up also means there's room elsewhere to focus on the Doctor's three friends, once they are separated from her. In their stories thus far, Thirteen and 'fam' have worked together, remaining close even when splitting up temporarily into smaller groups. Here, the three companions are apart from the Doctor for a whole episode, not only giving us a chance to see how they've grown into the adventuring life so that they can operate without her, but also giving space for them to question the mystery of the Doctor, and how much they really know. Also, having myself wondered this last January, it was nice to have the early scenes explain how Graham, Ryan and Yaz's ordinary lives are continuing, with Ryan persevering with battling his dyspraxia, and Yaz still retaining her police job.

There are lots of wonderful touches throughout the two hour running time. Stakes are raised early on when the Kasaavin are shown to be able to walk through the TARDIS door. Stephen Fry's character dies saying "Oh!" giving us a huge clue as to the identity of his assassin. The Master's "Did I ever apologise for that?" line about Jodrell Bank (a reference back to the Master and Doctor's tussle on top of the radio telescope in Logopolis). The Doctor at the beginning with the TARDIS in a garage elevated, so she can work on the underside as if its a car. This last moment I enjoyed, but it annoyed people online, who muttered about how it's impossible as the box is in a different dimension to the TARDIS interior works, blah, blah, blah. I think this is a silly thing to get worked up about. Some other online criticisms were more fair, though. There was some disquiet about the Doctor taking a certain amount of pleasure at leaving the non-white Master to the mercy of the Nazis, but this is I think supposed to balanced against the moral outrage she'd earlier displayed for him working with them in the first place, and we pretty soon see that he has come out of it unscathed. The memory wipes too gave rise to some comments online. The morality of this approach was discussed in stories during Steven Moffat's tenure (in the Russell T Davies era, no one thought twice - Torchwood were ret-conning people every week). Does the Doctor have the right to take people's memories away, even if it's for their own good? Here, though, it was only about allowing Ada to keep her historical agency - her achievements remain her own, and not down to her experiencing alien influences.

A lot is packed in to these episodes; as well as everything else, a major part of this story is the introduction of a new incarnation of the Master, which again in the past could have taken up a whole story on its own. Sacha Dhawan is an inspired choice, and works very well against Whittaker's Doctor. He will undoubtedly return, possibly before the series is finished, and I'm looking forward to it. It's got to be a compliment to an actor that a performance leaves you wanting more, and Dhawan manages it twice, for both the performances he gives in this story. Not only is the big revelation at the end of part 1 a major plot twist, it's a great shame too, as O was such a nice character. I almost wanted it not to be true as I was up to that point very keen for O to be a future returning ally. I'll hold on to judgement about the other big revelations about Gallifrey and the Time Lords, as they haven't fully played out yet. But, if Gallifrey is finally gone (again), I'm not too bothered - it is a very dull place whenever we end up back there. Though, given it took every Dalek in existence to fail to destroy it last time, it does stretch credibility a bit to imagine the Master managing it on his own. Or perhaps he wasn't on his own. Unless this is all part of the arc, we'll probably only find out when the next showrunner revisits the moment in a few years' time to undo it! 

Connectivity: 

Both Spyfall and The Time Warrior were the first stories broadcast of a new series of Doctor Who; in both stories, scientists are plucked out of their correct time zone and transplanted to another, where they end up helping a single member of a more advanced race (the Doctor is more benign than Linx, though).

Deeper Thoughts:

The Unreal McCoy? Seriously, what is up with the secrecy of this current Doctor Who production team? It used to be that the cast of Doctor Who stories were revealed as they were being made. Like everyone else, I only found out that Sacha Dhawan was in Spyfall when he appeared midway through episode 1 on January 1st. They cut every frame of him from the scenes he appeared in that were featured in the trailer! Now, you might think that this was additional secrecy because he was playing a significant character, but other actors who didn't turn out to be old enemies were treated the same. Only in the trail at the end of Spyfall part 2 did it get revealed that James Buckley was appearing in Doctor Who the following week. And did any audience member know Laura Fraser was in Orphan 55 until she actually appeared in Orphan 55? Laura flippin' Fraser - she's been in Breaking Bad! As I mentioned above, it's not just casting decisions where the chance of publicity is being passed up in favour of surprise - it's story titles too. Up to two days before the broadcast of the latest episode, nothing had been revealed of the titles of any stories following it. It used to be a traditional ritual that the Radio Times in the week of any new series starting would include a full run-down of the titles up to the finale. This ritual is sadly no more.

If the show is getting less advance publicity in the Radio Times, though, it means there is another thing in common between Jodie Whittaker's run and the tenure of another Doctor, Sylvester McCoy. I have been musing on this for a while now, like a typical human seeing patterns in things that possibly aren't there. I have a slightly sketchy theory that the post 2005 eras are following a superficially similar pattern to those of the 1963 to 1989 period, but at a faster rate. Refer to the Deeper Thoughts section of The Mysterious Planet for more details, but to my mind new Doctor Who has now reached the equivalent of the late 1980s, and Jodie is running in parallel with Sylvester. Look at the (circumstantial) evidence: both Doctors started with big changes to the 'front of house', new title sequence, new arrangement of the theme music. Behind the scenes, a new person took charge of the writing making a big effort to use new writers, and break with the long history of the show, with the first year of both Jodie and Sylv being free of too much in the way of returning elements (unlike McCoy's script editor Andrew Cartmel, current showrunner Chris Chibnall didn't have someone more senior like John-Nathan Turner insisting on giving roles to a couple of previous guest turns, so 2018 was even more pure and unsullied than 1987). More 'right on' political subtexts were introduced by both compared to their recent predecessors too. The show in both cases went through scheduling changes, no longer being broadcast on Saturdays; both runs were on air for fewer weeks of the year than in the recent past.

Now that a few more episodes and a trailer have been shown since that first Jodie series, there are even more echoes. The very next story after that first run, was - as it was for Sylv - a Dalek story. The second year for both Doctors includes much more continuity and fan service; this year, the Cybermen are going to return just as they did in 1988. The biggest emerging similarity, though, is that - just as Cartmel did in his second year - Chibnall is bringing back some mystery about the origins of Gallifrey and the Time Lords. Even though the show (new or old epoch) has been going many, many years, we don't know the whole story. The Master's line in Spyfall "Everything that you think you know is a lie" and the mentions of the mysterious Timeless Child are both very reminiscent of the hints dropped in the McCoy stories of his second and third years. The backstory sketched out to explain all that, which might never have been fully spelled out on screen, became known later - when the series was off the air for many years, and it was being used as a touchstone for the stories being continued in other media - as the Cartmell Masterplan. It looks very much like Chibnall might be attempting to pull off the same trick.

Now, this could prove to be dangerous; it was certainly a bold move in the late 1980s, when Doctor Who had been on air for 25 years, for a young script editor to try and bring back the mystery again, and it does beg the obvious question "Why have you never mentioned any of this stuff before?!" But in a series where the lead character's home planet and people has been destroyed, then turned out not have been destroyed after all, and now have been destroyed again, anything is possible. The other significant factors mitigating against any risk are the resources and support available to the current series to make it work - the major difference between the Whittaker and McCoy eras, and something of which those striving to keep Doctor Who interesting thirty-odd years ago, could only dream.

In Summary:

The satisfying start of the Chibnall Masterplan!