Spyfall part 2
Jan. 7th, 2020 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidc(Still haven't got a new season icon)
Well, that was ... interesting. Apart from Graham's laser shoes, we basically seem to have dropped the Bond pastiche completely, and I'm not entirely sure what replaced it. The Doctor's jaunt through time was fun, although I'm not sure about having not just one but a double Celebrity Historical as almost a subplot. The Doctor meeting Ada Lovelace or Noor Inayat Khan is something that deserves an episode of its own, surely? Meanwhile, the fam appear to be in the realms of technothriller, with the usual "going dark" and "the cameras are everywhere" tropes. I enjoyed it, but it did feel a bit disjointed.
The villains ... well, I do like the new Master, but the Kasaavins' motives remain entirely opaque, and beyond his antagonistic relationship with his mother, the same could be said for Barton, who wants to turn the human race into hard drives because ... something, something, tech companies are bad? Which, I mean, they are, but they're bad in pursuit of profit. There's no profit in wiping out your customers, and most of the infrastructure that lets profit mean something. I suspect both are returning at some point , so we might get a better handle on them then.
And we didn't get "the Master teams up with the Doctor when he realises the aliens are going to betray him" but we did get "the aliens turn on the Master when they realise he's going to betray them", which is almost as classic. Plus a Logopolis reference! At least assuming that by "Jodrell Bank", the Doctor means the Pharos Project. (But not a "Sound of Drums" reference; instead we get, what, the third in-universe reference for what "dudududum" signifies?)
So, are Ryan, Graham and Yaz still wanted for hijacking? Or are we just ignoring that the way post-"Last of the Time Lords" stories ignored that the Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack had been declared Most Wanted by the Prime Minister just before his death?
And Gallifrey destroyed ... again. And hey, we're finally picking up on that Timeless Child thing I thought might be the arc words last season. Maybe they'll do something with it this time.
(Oh, one last thing I forgot to mention about part 1. Wow, Ryan and Yaz make hopeless spies. They have a camera jammer, and use it on one camera, despite pointing out another one in the room they're actually doing dodgy stuff in . What the heck?)
Well, that was ... interesting. Apart from Graham's laser shoes, we basically seem to have dropped the Bond pastiche completely, and I'm not entirely sure what replaced it. The Doctor's jaunt through time was fun, although I'm not sure about having not just one but a double Celebrity Historical as almost a subplot. The Doctor meeting Ada Lovelace or Noor Inayat Khan is something that deserves an episode of its own, surely? Meanwhile, the fam appear to be in the realms of technothriller, with the usual "going dark" and "the cameras are everywhere" tropes. I enjoyed it, but it did feel a bit disjointed.
The villains ... well, I do like the new Master, but the Kasaavins' motives remain entirely opaque, and beyond his antagonistic relationship with his mother, the same could be said for Barton, who wants to turn the human race into hard drives because ... something, something, tech companies are bad? Which, I mean, they are, but they're bad in pursuit of profit. There's no profit in wiping out your customers, and most of the infrastructure that lets profit mean something. I suspect both are returning at some point , so we might get a better handle on them then.
And we didn't get "the Master teams up with the Doctor when he realises the aliens are going to betray him" but we did get "the aliens turn on the Master when they realise he's going to betray them", which is almost as classic. Plus a Logopolis reference! At least assuming that by "Jodrell Bank", the Doctor means the Pharos Project. (But not a "Sound of Drums" reference; instead we get, what, the third in-universe reference for what "dudududum" signifies?)
So, are Ryan, Graham and Yaz still wanted for hijacking? Or are we just ignoring that the way post-"Last of the Time Lords" stories ignored that the Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack had been declared Most Wanted by the Prime Minister just before his death?
And Gallifrey destroyed ... again. And hey, we're finally picking up on that Timeless Child thing I thought might be the arc words last season. Maybe they'll do something with it this time.
(Oh, one last thing I forgot to mention about part 1. Wow, Ryan and Yaz make hopeless spies. They have a camera jammer, and use it on one camera, despite pointing out another one in the room they're actually doing dodgy stuff in . What the heck?)
no subject
Date: 2020-01-07 09:50 pm (UTC)I thought this episode was more like what I'd think of as Who than the series had been for some time, at least in the Doctor's plotline. Perhaps the Doctor should have kept Ada and Noor on, because in some respects they seemed to work better as companions than Team Present-Day Sheffield.
What I don't care for is the promised arc about the Secret Origins Of The Time Lords. These things are usually a lot of hype and then an underwhelming revelation. It reminds me of the line in the Father Brown story: "But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude."