Spyfall: Part Two

This was a very good, solid episode. I will never understand why they wasted so much time in part one doing the James Bond type stuff. It was inconsequential. That episode was crap until the last 10 minutes. This one was good and interesting throughout and back to sci-fi and Doctor lore. Let's hope the rest of the season is more like this!

The question was always going to be if this second part could live up to the opener, which surprised many.

If I'm totally honest, I didn't enjoy this anywhere near as much as the opener, it was a bit messy, and at times it felt a bit flat. There were a few good scenes, but it's what I would class a mug's eyeful, way too much going on. They've tried to do too much.

It really did look great, and whilst I wasn't perhaps bowled over by some of the historical characters, they looked great.

Credit to Sacha Dhawan, he did a great job, unambiguously evil, no grey areas, he's a bad guy, he had bags of energy and charisma, I loved his mania. Chibnall's best decision was casting him, he's brilliant. I'd argue he was the best thing about it.

At last a mention to the past, a mention of a previous episode, and the resulting scene on the Tower was perhaps the best, but why no talk of Missy?

The companions were poorly served.

I have watched it for a second time, and have the same opinion, it was decent, but the alien threat was wasted, Lenny Henry was wasted, if they had stripped it back a little it would have worked better, the scenes at the end were very good, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this series. 5/10

First item watching this, she finally feels like the doctor. Very excused to watch the rest of the season. A big improvement from last season. I would rate the whole of last season 4/10

Someone or something is disposing of Earth's secret agents, leading the Doctor and her three companions to investigate a mysterious high-tech entrepreneur, only to discover that nothing is as it seems thanks to the nefarious machinations of an old nemesis. Cross-over parodies can be a lot of fun, but this Dr. Who: 007 hybrid is pretty lame, especially the chase scene (featuring the Who and crew wearing silly looking helmets and unconvincingly riding motorcycles that seem bulletproof). The resolution of the part-one cliff-hanger is painfully contrived and a good example of the current show-runner's reluctance to have any sort of tension or drama without inserting some (usually forced) levity. The actual story could easily have been done in a single episode and there is a lot of filler involving the companions' side-stories and the Doctor's bouncing around time meeting people who are superfluous to the plot but must have appealed to the writer's sense of 'inclusion'. The two main historical characters might have made interesting characters in a more nuanced story (and the actresses playing them were quite good) but in Spyfall they are just throwaways. I still dislike Jodie Whittaker's take on the venerable Timelord character. Her 'Mork from Ork' 'flood pants and suspenders' ensemble is both silly and ugly (silly has precedence in Time Lord fashion but ugly doesn't) and her delivery rushed and 'scripty' but the worst is the constant grimacing - there were a couple of moments in Spyfall where she managed to look 'Timelordly', but for the most part she looks like an amateur trying too hard to look like they are acting. Since I've not liked the current cast from the beginning, I need a good story, which this wasn't despite the third act 'twist', or interesting imagery (also lacking, the CGI of the damaged plane was terrible), to keep me involved. I wish that the show-runners would trim the cast and stop trying to show how 'progressive' they are, a lightweight science fiction adventure series is really not the place for endless sophomoric attempts at social engineering. I am not optimistic about the upcoming season, despite that being better than last season isn't that much of a challenge.

Could be an improvement from last week but is just confusing and awfully hard to follow. Great scenes were less sparse than last time and was much more exciting but the episode is just poorly executed.