Written by Chris Chibnall
Directed by Lee Haven Jones
The Master (to the Doctor, re Gallifrey): "When I said someone did that, obviously I meant I did. I had to make them pay for what I discovered. They lied to us. The Founding Fathers of Gallifrey, everything we were told was a lie. We're not who we think, you or I. The whole existence of our species built on the lie of the Timeless Child."
Ah, yes the Timeless Child. That thing that was briefly mentioned in The Ghost Monument that we thought would be important but then last series seemingly abandoned the idea in favour of basically doing nothing. Well, looks like it actually means something and whatever it is, it's given the Master enough of an identity crisis that he decided to go and destroy Gallifrey.
Chris Chibnall really is a man of two extremes, isn't he? Last series, it seemed to pain him to reference anything from the Doctor's past and in this two parter alone, he's done nothing but throw as many past references as he possible but after a previous series of utter aimlessness, I'm both cautiously optimistic and somewhat nervous here as to where this series is going.
The Master is volatile and destructive at the best of times but even destroying Gallifrey while in character for him (come on, it really is) still came across as a massive shock and even the Doctor looked genuinely floored when she saw her home planet in ruins once again. Can we all thank Sacha Dhawan for making Jodie Whittaker up her game? Well, I'm going to nonetheless.
In two episodes, Dhawan has really owned this role as moving away from the Timeless Child, we saw a Master flitting through two different time zones upon realising the Doctor had survived his latest trap while Daniel Barton and the Kasaavin mostly sought out the Fam for the majority of this episode.
Separating the Doctor from her companions and giving her substitute companions with Ada Lovelace (Sylvie Briggs) and Noor Inayat Khan (Aurora Marion) really was a masterstroke. If last series felt like the show was preaching too much with certain historical figures/settings, the same could not be said here as both women were utilised pretty well with the Doctor as audiences got a brief rundown on their significance and they played a good part in helping the Doctor deal with the villains of the week as well as reuniting with her companions. It's just a shame that their memories were wiped but other than that, I think both figures worked extremely well in this episode.
As for the companions themselves, they were surprisingly better away from the Doctor as they did their best to stay one step ahead of Daniel Barton/ Kasaavin (even though they were usually one step behind) and just as importantly, they finally started asking questions about the Doctor's past, which to her credit, she mostly answered. Granted she held back on Gallifrey being destroyed again but hopefully they'll learn about that one before the finale airs, where no doubt the Master will return if not before then.
As for Daniel Barton - boy, was he a nasty piece of work. Lenny Henry really can play a cold villain and he did it well, even if Daniel's whole spiel about the invasive nature of technology is hardly anything new (The Bells Of Saint John, anyone?). As for the Kasaavin, I'm glad they were a new threat and definitely a step up from the "threats" we had last series and hopefully that will continue to be a trend as the series goes along. Also yet again, the Master stupidly underestimated his current alliance and somewhat paid the price for it but I doubt he'll be gone for long though.
- Along with Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan, we briefly saw Charles Babbage (Mark Dexter) as well when the Master kept testing out his TCE. I loved that we got another proper look inside the latter's TARDIS too.
- It was hard not to notice the references to events such as Logopolis, The Curse Of Fatal Death and The Sound Of Drums to name a few. Sacha Dhawan also did a video outlining the Master's history for the BBC and implied that his version comes after Missy.
- Like Missy, this version of the Master also seems to like dressing up in purple and doesn't it look bloody gorgeous on him?
- If the Master blowing up Gallifrey wasn't bad enough, on a smaller scale, we had Daniel Barton actually kill his own mother. This show really got dark.
- This is one of the few multi part stories in the revived series with a different director but I think Lee Haven Jones managed to match the style near enough to what Jamie Magnus Stone did in the first part.
- Chronology: Let's see 1834 England, 1943 Paris and of course, 2020.
Spyfall, Part 2 at times almost felt like a different episode but jumping about in history actually did more good than harm for the pacing nonetheless. The guest historical characters worked well, there was definitely something uncomfortable about having the Doctor remove the Master's perception filter at a certain point and the whole Timeless Child arc will either make or completely decimate Chibnall's era. For all our sake, it needs to be the former but as a two parter, this finally felt like Doctor Who and all the better for it.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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