Spyfall part 1
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winston 8 months, 2 weeks ago.
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3 January 2020 at 20:50 #68788
A reminder that when we take the piss out of trolls, there is a very really nastiness behind them:
Just when you think certain corners of DW “fandom” can’t sink any lower…. pic.twitter.com/nClWmwi33W
— Gary Russell (@twilightstreets) January 2, 2020
4 January 2020 at 02:33 #68791
Don’t mind me just gonna leave these here
4 January 2020 at 02:39 #68792What if this actually isn’t our master at all, but a master from another reality, considering these episodes are clearly about beings from another dimension. The master could just be a front runner leading his army behind him.
4 January 2020 at 02:51 #68793Interesting idea. But perhaps instead of diseased time lords they could actually BE the timelords after being contained in another universe. Afterall we know they escaped back to reality at some point in the future. I personally don’t think they are but it’s an interesting theory.
4 January 2020 at 03:24 #68795OK, just re-watched it. “O” is hiding out in Australia. (Important). “O” turns out to be the Master. When this is revealed and they look out the window of the plane they see his house flying along with them. O/the Master is…The Wizard of Oz.
Where this goes, nobody knows.
Time for dinner. Back later.
4 January 2020 at 03:31 #68796Well crap.
I knew who Missy was.
I saw every reveal coming.
This just punched me in the face and made me squeal like a five year old.
I want more.Also, hello friends! Good to see yall here!
4 January 2020 at 05:26 #68797So.. (oh, dinner is over)…if The Master is modeled on The Wizard of Oz then it tends to suggest that he is rather limited in his powers. That means…hmm.
The end of the episode: the Doctor ends up in a place that seems rather like the matrix. Not sure what to make of this either, but if it is the case, then that means we might revisit the Timelords. Maybe…
You’re right, it’s time for bed.
4 January 2020 at 09:03 #68798@arbutus – he did – but not so quickly. Haha, caught me, I’m the master, finally got you, now you die! Now obviously the Master’s MO is heavily influenced by the fact that it’s part of an episodic drama made for TV. But that’s the same reason you could say Hamlet prevaricates. So in drama you make it part of the personality. The Master favours elaborate, long drawn out attempts to kill the Doctor, preferably humiliate them first. Until you get the feeling he (I’ll just say he here because Missy didn’t tend to want to kill the Doctor. She wanted to bring him a little more over to her side so they could be friends again, and when that didn’t work started shifting herself.) is just addicted to the interaction. If you’re drinking a really nice wine, you sip it. I think – I haven’t seen so many of the older Who Master episodes – that in New Who there is an emphasis of an underlying bond between them. They’ve either been the only two Time Lords, or the only two Time Lords standing against the rest of the bunch. That the Doctor will forgive the Master however many humans are killed is at once the most human and the most alien thing about the character.
All this said, however, did that Master actually try to kill the Doctor here? The Doctor was transported to wherever Yaz went. Yaz wasn’t killed, she was actually transported back to the Doctor (and the Master) physically, at least, pending a DNA check which I’m surprised hasn’t been done yet, she wasn’t even harmed. She was taken to where she needed to be, apparently with the Doctor, actually with the Doctor and the Master. Within the Master’s Tardis, no less.
4 January 2020 at 09:11 #68799If these light creatures aren’t Cybermen, or not quite, we know that as well as changing people’s DNA if they get hold of them, they can be used to transport people from the site of one of their ‘bodies’, to this weird place, and from there to the site of another of their bodies. So if they grab hold of you, you’re destroyed and replaced by a shell, if they walk through you, or surely, if you walk through them, you end up in that place, where you can be pulled out and transported in place of another of those creatures.
Are you actually placed inside one of them, some kind of other dimension, but actually within them? I’m not sure, with the timing, the creature she replace could have been the one that moved her in the first place. But they seem like some kind of hive.
Regardless, best plan seems to be, for the companions, to walk into the creatures if they’re still on the plane, and hopefully end up where the Doctor is now. A hard call for Yaz in particular, Ryan might be able to reassure her that they’ll all be together this time. The Master could have just had them killed the way the spy were. Instead he’s put them in a situation where there is only one way out – Yaz has already experienced it, the Doctor’s just gone that way. This would also tie into the theme of alone v together, better together (as a group) which has played in the background from the last season. And of course the Doctor being better with companions which I think has always been there somewhere.
4 January 2020 at 13:58 #68802Having read most but probably not all the posts I think I’ve collected some thoughts inspired by them.
1. I think there is a good possibility that this is a Master from between Sims and Missy hell there could be more than one Master/Missy out there between them.
2. I agree I don’t think they are repeating the Doomsday cyberman infiltration it would be piss poor writing from Chibbers to repeat a trop from another writer and although I’ve not been his greatest fan I think he’s too good a writer to do that. Personally I think these dimension hoping infiltrators are a new race.
3. Could where the Doctor has landed be a prototype for Missy’s later attempt to create her Matrix like heaven, if so this could be more evidence for this Master being between Sims and Missy remember Missy the first time we saw her was more like the archetypal Master it was only later she became more “good” if she ever was
4 January 2020 at 14:22 #68803@devilishrobby oh she wasn’t good, but she built the cyber-army for him and referred to their ‘friendship’. She was less hostile to the Doctor, just as murdery to human beings.
4 January 2020 at 15:46 #68804Also got an “Army of Ghosts” vibe on this one.
4 January 2020 at 16:09 #68806@miapatrick that was why good was in “”. Yes she was nicer to the Doctor towards the end and yes she did eventually side with the Doctor at the end, but as you indicated it was in a very amoralistic and practical manner to the point it was difficult to see a difference between “good”Missy and evil Missy at times. The core self-centred egotistical character remained which has always been part of the core identity of the master.
4 January 2020 at 16:55 #68807@devilishrobb yes but the niceness at the end, the siding with him – that was the whole plan. Give him a Cyberman Army. That’s simply what she was up to. Not the kind of gift he would ever want. So still evil, but somehow kindly disposed towards the Doctor, which is the kind of change I’m talking about. Giving him the army was the idea from the start, not the result of reformation. That doesn’t occur till later. Even her sympathy over the death of his wife later on isn’t so much the result of mellowing, as the fact that River had Time Lord DNA, and she was able to respect that relationship more than she ever could with his human companions.
So I’m probably not making myself clear. Missy starts out evil as ever, starts to change, grow, reform etc. But she starts out not exactly hating the Doctor in the traditional manner. She’s talking about friendship of more value than human conceptions of love, she’s not trying to kill him, she’s creating for him a deeply disturbing and horrible gift, because she’s the Master, and is disturbing and horrible, but doesn’t seem to hate him. Doesn’t want him dead. It’s almost like a cat bringing you a half killed bird. So it seems some kind of change has occurred, not reformation by any means, but in her attitude towards the Doctor.
And it’s this attitude that enabled him to slowly get through to her, when he saves her life and keeps her prisoner. If it had been Simm’s Master in that volt, this really wouldn’t have happened.
4 January 2020 at 18:33 #68808Well, in the cold light of dawn, I am less sure about the Master as The Wizard of Oz, but I still feel that they are consciously drawing on allusions to The Wizard of Oz. To what end, I am not quite sure. If there is anything along those lines, I will have to wait until the next episode.
Still, right or wrong, it is nice to have a story again that allows us to construct “theories even more insane than what’s actually happening”.
4 January 2020 at 21:02 #68809Well. if the white ghosty things start singing Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead we’ll know you were on to something…
4 January 2020 at 23:11 #68812Could it be Missy that has taken over the body of this O ? Cause if the Simms Master destroyed
her ability to regenerate did he also destroy Missy’s ability to take over a body. Didn’t that happen
in BG Who? I like the notion of ‘Army of Ghosts’ Cyberman being the light creatures! It fits into
a nice story arc if Chibnall goes there.
As @blenkinsopthebrave has pointed out that it makes all the difference to get an episode
where you can theorize on it all again !!! TBH didn’t expect it at all after last season.
5 January 2020 at 03:12 #688155 January 2020 at 06:13 #68816No m’dear @blenkinsopthebrave. He’s a massive bellend with no sense of when he has gone too far. I have awakened and any further infractions will be deleted.
Reviewing your conduct towards other members has made me reach for the mind bleech. You really are an objectionable tit of the most massive proportions. I will take pleasure in deleting even the most innofensive post you make until you apologise to @whisht personally via PM or (preferably) make such apology in public.
If you can make one of the most innofensive members of this forum tell you to go fuck yourself, then consider the advice carefully while staring at your cold-blank face in the mirror, you prick.
5 January 2020 at 06:26 #688195 January 2020 at 08:40 #68824Golly & heck & up with it all! We have some mods back!
I’m seeing in my Netflix in box what looks like Dracula with 2 nuns? Is this the great Dracula of which you speak?
I ask only because of the blobs of blood which looked especially suspicious -in a 16th movie of the Twilight Saga-type of thing – during the credits. I really didn’t want any Twilight drama!
Back from NSW. 20 kms from where we were it reached 51 degrees in the shade. Double plus golly.
Aussies are amazing: “yeah, mate, we’re gonna lie on some blow up beds in the middle of another mate’s dam. We got raw sausages which will cook automatically. Hopefully we’ll see you tomorrow, if we make it. We probly will.”
@blenkinsopthebrave @janetteb no doubt you’ll recall the lilting tones of a “slow down time” way of speaking. As dry as the cinders & kindling around them.
Tough in the face of actual hell. Never have I ever seen anything so horrifying. I saw racing fire, horses running for their lives, cattle being shot, whole towns I used to visit since the age of 5 are just gone. Some in a night. 300 full on properties in under 24 hours. Klaxons driven by fire fighters down streets at 3 am saying “go, now. You have 15 minutes.” They might, during the worst of seasons, serve for 7 days but haven’t stepped down for 3 solid weeks. And they’re volunteers.
Anyway, back to the fun and games. I haven’t seen Who yet, even. I completely forgot about it!
Syzygy.
5 January 2020 at 08:47 #68825Oh mods. Triple apologies. I actually thought I was on The Sofa!
I’ll hobble t’way! ……
5 January 2020 at 09:57 #68826Oh my oh my just had a bit of a bonkers moment thinking back on the Masters statement and I want to just throw this out for consideration: what if Missy was not the Master at all but a Timelord imposter and knew both the Doctor and the Master well enough to fool them perhaps even the Rani playing some sick game……. nah they wouldn’t have done that would they
5 January 2020 at 11:48 #68828Er, what?
6 January 2020 at 09:32 #68849Jolly awesome! Loved O. Had absolutely no idea O was He! Even with the flying building. And then “in the seconds before you die, everything you think you know is a lie. Got you. Finally.”
When we met Fake O I loved the slightly unhinged quality he had: mad scientist. Then the “lucky in love” to Yaz was slightly off.
Rubbing hands with glee at part 2.
6 January 2020 at 09:35 #68850I’m not loving the new you, actually. Not at all. I thought, you know “friendly place.”
What the heck’s happened?
I think there was some genuine confusion about the Wicked West of the West-type of thing. From what I read?
6 January 2020 at 09:53 #68851@thane16 it’s fantastic on re-watch. So many clues in retrospect, which is where they belong. The Fry character says ‘o’ when he dies. Well, it’s just a sound you might make when you’ve been shot in the head. O tempts Graham with his Doctor files (loved the first time round the comment about ‘inconsistencies’). O gravely needles the Doctor a bit when the aliens turn up ‘look what you’ve done, you’ve led them here. They’re after you’ in essence. Well it appears to be the case, and the former spy might be a little concerned at having his safe haven located. Why was O quite so paranoid, enough to set up all these traps. Why are his defence systems precisely that: traps? That happen to work on these creatures? Well, knowing about all the occurrences and invasions might make you a little paranoid. The alien code is in the same kind of form the Doctor and O communicate in – well, it’s an effective method.
I think he fooled the Doctor because the Doctor is clever. She’s clever in a specific Time Lord kind of cleverness. It’s a bit lonely. She met someone else who seemed almost as clever. She was fooled for the same reason Twelve wanted to reform Missy. They want someone to talk to. They’re lonely being the only Time Lord. And frankly, compared to The Doctor and The Master, even the other Time Lords are a bit thick. And finally, he fooled her into a fake friendship because they were friends.
6 January 2020 at 11:12 #68854@miapatrick. Amazing really. I agree: loads of clues -even the unhinged quality, combined with “it’s very interesting but inconsistencies…” was loud and clear! Didn’t even think that far in…or off….or when…! Love what you wrote here:
And finally, he fooled her into a fake friendship because they were friends.
14 January 2020 at 14:00 #69084i think you’re right Winston. In both instances you mentioned the Master did sort of redeem themselves. Which therefore suggests whatever has happened at Gallifrey could be one of the reasons why the Master so desperately wanted to kill off the Doctor. Having said that, the mannerisms of Dhawan’s Master seem to fit the narrative that he comes after Simms and before Missy.
14 January 2020 at 14:20 #69085remind me again how they left it with Simms at the end of his original run? (end of time)
Am I right in saying he returned to Gallifrey with the Time Lords. Does it mention in The Doctor Falls how he then go to the spaceship towards the black hole? I recall something about it crashing and him never being a good pilot.
Dhawan’s Master has to be between Simms and Missy in my eyes. Surely you can’t go from the verge of conversion to how sadist Dhawan was. He was Simms-esque.
14 January 2020 at 14:22 #69086Maybe @codystott, but I think Chibnall would be daft to create a Master from another Universe and not carry on or fit them in to the existing chain.
14 January 2020 at 14:41 #69087@ollie14 is he though? As @bluesqueakpip has pointed out above, hot camp want to kill the doctor Master (she didn’t phrase it like that) is always performing in front of at least one other person. When it’s just the Master and the Doctor it’s more on the lines of ‘how else would I get your attention?’ ‘Gallifry is destroyed’ ‘by the way it was me, I won’t tell you what I found out to make me do it, because I had to deal with finding that out on my own’.
I’m personally torn between placing him between Simm and Gomez (to explain why Missy was so friendly towards the Doctor even before she started to ‘grow’), and after Gomez simply on the basis – again, as @bluesqueakpip pointed out – they tend to meet each other in order. I’d also point out that rather than kill the companions in front of her, he left them in an almost-but-not-quite impossible situation. I’ve said before the Master likes to play with his food, but here he’s jumping straight to ‘hello, I’m going to kill you’ before instead getting her transported off the crashing plane and not actually killing any of her ‘pets’ (as he’d see them).
He makes sense as coming after Simm mostly because he’s so gung-go death to the Doctor angry at the moment – only he isn’t like that without other witnesses. He’s reaching out to her. Which isn’t at all Simm when he died. So the explanations are: what he discovered about the Time Lords has changed, somewhat, his attitude to the Doctor, and this is the Master just before Gomez, Or he’s post-Missy, and what he discovered has set him back a little, morally, though I’m not sure Missy was, by the time of her death, quite beyond killing humans.
19 January 2020 at 06:49 #69214And, of course, we know where Sacha Dahwan met the Doctor before…
Mmm, could’ve be in Wired … 😉
At the time, I thought they missed a quip when the Doctor rumbled O’s game:
DOCTOR: No, no, no. I read your file. You were a champion sprinter.
O: Mmm. Got me. Well done.O should have added, “YOU were always the expert on running.”
21 January 2020 at 17:51 #69299@miapatrick
I guess we’ll be in a better place to have this discussion post-series. Look forward to it! 🙂22 January 2020 at 06:57 #69324@ollie14 me too – see you at the season finale! 😉
30 May 2022 at 15:21 #73200Spyfall
This is my first ever viewing of this ep, and I’m writing my impressions as I watch.
Well this is starting off really well. More 007 than Who. And we’re back to the conventional pre-credit sequence. And then we cut to dyspraxia-less Ryan (bit of a come-down) but then it’s suddenly all Men in Black. And Yaz gets them too. And Graham.
The Tardis up on a hoist with cables dangling off it and the Doctor fiddling with its insides – no, doesn’t work for me. The Doctor is not a mechanic. Stop it, Chibnall. (‘It’ – trying to make the Doctor look like just another guy). “Just draining the water slides. And the boating lakes. And the rainforest floor.” No, stop it already. We know the Tardis has a swimming pool. It might have that other stuff too. But if so, it’s in another dimension, hundreds of cubic metres of water *do not* get drained onto a garage floor through a 1″ hose, and not without flooding the entire vicinity. What was an amusing aside when the Moff did it is just annoying overkill when Chibbers hammers it into the ground. But anyway, the spook convoy collects her too.
Well, somebody’s hijacked their BMW and it’s motoring backwards up the motorway at truly terrifying speed (I don’t think a BMW X4 will go that fast in reverse, and if it will, I doubt the speedo will read but I don’t know that. Nevermind). This is true James Bond stuff, you never just shoot the hero when you can invent some incredibly convoluted method of letting him escape.
And all the MI6 stuff is quite well done, good James Bond feel to it. Stephen Fry is very good as “C”. It even has the standard “Q” briefing. And a good dramatic scene when something starts shooting up the place, and things start walking through the walls. This is a better enemy than anything in last season. So they rush to the Tardis, and a Thing starts forcing its way in – while the Doctor is obliviously babbling – Shut Up and look, you ninny. I think Chibs does this deliberately to annoy me.
I can believe Yaz as an undercover investigator, Ryan less so. At least Yaz is getting a bit more action than ‘Escort them to the stairs’ (Resolution). The Vor guy (Barton) has an impressive office. Right up to standard for a techno master-villain, except he doesn’t seem, at first sight, truly villanous.
I like “O”, he has a nice personality on first acquaintance. His ranch house (what’s the correct term?) at night, with unseen things moving in the darkness, is good creepy stuff. I feel sorry for the two ASIO agents (what, just two?)
O certainly has equipped his ranch with pretty good defences. The transcendental invaders seem to be susceptible to high-voltage electricity, anyway.
Nice fake-out when Barton comes back into his office and says “Show yourselves” at Yaz and Ryan – and the aliens appear. Evidently Barton is in league with the aliens. The the aliens grab Yaz and she’s in a – forest of tentacles? This is scary. [Good stuff.] Are those neurons? Is she in some huge brain? And Yaz gets ‘teleported’ to O’s ranchhouse. Except she now has the look of the other agents – drained of human life. But next morning she looks normal. But – remembering Lin from the previous ep – I doubt she’s got off the hook that easily.
Nice to see that O is a Doctor fan 🙂
So, for a party, the Doctor dresses in formal wear – and bovver boots. The party is a nice James Bond supervillain touch though. (And I thought the way Yaz and Ryan got invites (Barton gave them as an apology for cutting the interview short) was quite credible.) And *of course* Yaz and Ryan’s exploits in Barton’s office were on tape.
And a roulette wheel yet! But do Ryan and Graham really have to act like kids? And the Doctor surely should know that baccarat (?) is not ‘Snap’.
Barton certainly is a cool customer when the Doctor tackles him. I was quite impressed by his response. Give away nothing.
So then the Doctor and gang chase Barton’s limo on motorbikes (which is not cool) and he shoots at them (which is very uncool, doesn’t he have people for that?) with a very low-tech 1911 (or something of the sort, I’m not a gun expert).
Um, if I was the Doctor, I wouldn’t open the hangar doors with them all framed in the opening, considering someone’s just been shooting 45’s at them. But nobody shoots them. In fact Barton is just strolling towards his plane as if he’s forgotten their existence.
I have no idea what plane that is, it has a really weird backside. I have my suspicions… So Barton flies his own aircraft.
… and suspicions confirmed, it has opening rear doors for the Doctor to sonic. So it’s a mock-up, a prop for filming purposes, but very well made (or CGI’d). In previous decades they could have borrowed a 727 or a BAC 111, but I’m not sure any of those are left. And a military aircraft would have looked all wrong. I think the cockpit is an A320 (though I’m not a pilot!).And I really do like the revelation that “O” is the Master. I did *not* see that coming! And his earlier teasing the Doctor “Look for the spymaster” would have been worthy of the Moff. This is so good, I’ll even forgive retconning Missy/Master’s death in The Doctor Falls.
I’m not sure I forgive – or even believe – the Master just killing the Doctor and friends. I don’t think he could bring himself to do that. But then it seems he’s maybe transmatted the Doc at least to the tentacle (neuron?) forest, so I can credit that.
Hey, this was damn good!! The first Chibnall episode I’d credit with that. Mired in Season 11, I just couldn’t see myself unreservedly liking anything Chibnall did. I was mistaken. I do hope Part 2 is as good.
(Now to read what everyone else thought of it)
30 May 2022 at 16:10 #73202@dentarthurdent I scrolled back to check on what I originally wrote but does not seem as though I wrote anything. I have not re watched this episodes but have a favourable memory of it. Sacha Dhawan is great as the Master but I was disappointed by the casting as I’d rather set my heart on him playing the Doctor one day. He proved in this episode that he has the acting range required. I have no problem with Chibbers reviving The Master. He always returns, like the classic comic book baddie. Definitely one of the better episodes as i recall. Your review prompts me to re watch it when I can.
Oh and in Australia we don’t refer to houses as “ranches”. A farmstead might be referred to either as a “station” or just a “farmhouse” or a cottage depending on size. I think that is just a farmhouse and it does not quite look right, probably because it is not actually filmed in Australia. As far as I know this is only the second time Australia has featured in a Doctor Who Story the first being a Troughton story, (The Enemy of the World I think.) I don’t count the use of stock footage of Sydney Harbour which Moffat seemed so attached to.
Cheers
Janette
31 May 2022 at 04:33 #73203@janetteb I recall you saying Sacha Dhawan would make a good Doctor. At the time I didn’t know him and looking at his picture I wasn’t sure. But having seen him in action, I agree with you. And I don’t mind the Master being revived, I think I was just making a rhetorical point. I doubt anyone actually believed that the Master(/Missy) was finally, irrevocably dead. I’m pleased they cast an actor who could do the role justice.
I know very well that in Oz it isn’t a ‘ranch’, it’s a ‘station’. Just not sure what the right term was for the house. The, erm, station house looks all right to me (judging only by vague recollections of other Aussie stations seen on TV, I’ve never been to the outback) so I guess if they didn’t get it quite right, they got it ‘near enough’. It would be interesting to know where they did film it (though I haven’t googled it or listened to the commentary yet, may be clues there). The upper-class party at the vineyard (which I guess was supposed to be California) – I would guess Spain. Maybe the ‘station’ was in Spain too.
They seem to be getting most technical details right – the rear loading ramp on the plane was fake, but then it was very well ‘faked’ or CGI’d. I think they had to do that, I don’t think there are any airliners currently flying with rear airstairs, and a military plane would have looked wrong. The cockpit was (I think) a real A320 or a simulator. Normally that would require two pilots for airline operation, it certainly could be flown by one and maybe (for private use) that is permitted (and anyway who’s to know?). The ‘takeoff clearance’ certainly sounded authentic. (Based on my extensive experience of Youtube aviation videos 🙂
31 May 2022 at 07:01 #73205@dentarthurdent From memory I think the episode was filmed in South Africa, so a fair way from home so they are venturing ever further afield. They might get to Oz or N.Z yet..
Cheers
Janette
31 May 2022 at 10:15 #73206@janetteb Ah, correct, South Africa (I’m just watching the commentary to Part 1). I hadn’t recognised Lenny Henry as Barton, though I should have. I doubt they’ll make it as far as Oz or NZ, since Who isn’t so scenery-intensive as some series. But we can hope 🙂
1 August 2024 at 13:20 #76816Okay, I just watched Spyfall again 2 years later. So my impressions are almost fresh. I think it holds up well.
– Spyfall starts off really well and quite intriguing. Then the Doctor gets all annoying and patronising with ‘C’ to the point where I want to shout at her.
I do like “O” (the Master), he’s got some personality. The Doctor is still being annoying. But the farmhouse sequences are really good and scary.
The white ‘ghosts’ are an intriguing puzzle. Aliens of some sort, obviously. But what has happened to Yaz? And I did find it a bit – strange that the amateur spies Yaz and Ryan could successfully (well, kinda, Ryan escaped) pull off a mission in the heart of the high-tech ‘enemy’ headquarters.
I absolutely agree with O’s verdict on the crystal-grotto Tardis – ‘ridiculous.’
The party on the VOR estate – the Tardis group look distinctly over-dressed (and hot!) in their formal gear, that is not California party gear I think. And it transpires that Yaz and Ryan had been spotted on camera in VOR HQ. And anyway, Graham and Ryan going all juvenile over their roulette ‘winnings’, and the Doctor mistaking baccarat (?) for Snap, are just embarrassing. “O” and Yaz look to make a nice couple, though.
So, telling Barton to his face that you’re ‘on’ to him at his own party may not be the wisest idea. None of the Tardis crew are exactly James Bond. So then they all jump on motorbikes (taking time to put on helmets, of course) and pursue. Barton shooting at them out of his car is just so non-Bond-villain though, doesn’t he have people for that? The whole chase sequence doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And Barton drives into his hangar, and doesn’t notice the huge doors opening again behind him as the Doctor and friends sneak in? – seriously? And, he is qualified to fly an A320 (looks like) single-handed – something no A320 is certified for, I think. Except his has been modified to have a clamshell rear door, military-style, for no apparent reason.
I have to say the revelation of ‘O’ as the Master caught me completely by surprise. But the I don’t think Chibbers gave us any clues at all, so that was maybe cheating. The CGI of the crashing plane is really not very good (such CGI’s never are). But then the last shot implies that the Doctor (and friends?) are all imprisoned in tentacle-land so the entire sequence from the party onwards was an illusion? That would account for the car chase etc etc being a caricature of a Bond movie, though I find that a little unsatisfying.
Still, a good episode, very watchable.
4 August 2024 at 06:17 #76817@dentarthurdent Another interesting review. I always enjoy your episodes reviews, sometimes more than the episode covered. This may be one of those. I have only watched this episode once and recall that it was engaging enough at the time but left very little impression afterwards. It had enjoyable moments though, as I probably mentioned above, I was disappointed by the casting of The Master as Sscha Dhawan was top of my wish list for a future Doctor. He has the right kind of energy for the role. The script did have more plot holes than a local road after heavy rain but then, that is something I tend to overlook in Dr Who provided the story and characters compensate. Not sure they really do in this episode, though as I recall it is better than those that follow, (with a couple of exceptions)
Cheers
Janette
4 August 2024 at 10:26 #76818@janetteb I’d never seen Sacha Dhawan before that episode. But I agree he would have made a great Doctor. He’s got personality.
One thing that did ring false to me, was the Master’s glee at the prospect of instantly disposing of the Doctor. That’s not how the Master operated at all. Ultimately, he always wanted to beat the Doctor, enjoyed making the Doctor suffer a bit, I think he also wanted the Doctor’s (unwilling) acknowledgement that he (the Master) was a worthy / superior opponent. There’s no way he would be satisfied with just ending the Doctor, just like that.
As for the plot, I think some of it looked like Chibbers’ attempt to show that he could do James Bond. As such, it wasn’t a bad attempt.By the way, the airliner with the phony rear cargo ramp, I’ve got a much better solution than a faked-over A320 – make it a Boeing 727, BAC 111 or DC9, all of which had genuine rear passenger airstairs. Admittedly they’re all obsolete by now, but there probably exist a number of low-hours examples which would make suitable corporate jets for VOR. [/geek mode]
4 August 2024 at 13:34 #76820@dentarthurdent Sacha Dhawan came to my attention first in An Adventure in Space and Time playing Waris Hussien and then again in Dracula episode 2. He also has a major role in The Great.
Cheers
Janette
6 August 2024 at 03:25 #76822@dentarthurdent @janetteb I know I watched this because I commented before but I really don’t remember it. The main reason for that though is that one of the characters has the same name (first and last) as a family member who was watching with me. First I loved the connection to a Doctor Who episode and then it became a sort of silly game where I giggled every time the name was mentioned. Anyway I remember the tuxes ,looking good Doc, and the new Master appearing and maybe we were in Oz? Definitely need a rewatch.
stay safe
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