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Spoilers Spyfall, Part Two grade and discussion thread

How do you rate Spyfall, Part Two?


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    65
Taking a sharp left turn - how many Tardises are actually 'out there' at the moment.

Surmising that The Time Lords mostly withdrew to Gallifrey and their Tardises were destroyed in the attack, we still know The Doctor now has hers AND The Master's.

Any more ?

The Master had (at least) two in the classic series. Not sure if the one he/she had recently was one of those, or another one stolen when he went to Utopia.

If many Time Lord escaped, the obvious modes of travel would be TARDISes.........TARDII?
 
And how could anyone destroy all the time lords? These people literally have all of time at their disposal. They know the past, present AND future. If the Master attacked Gallifrey, travel back in time and stop him.
 
Taking a sharp left turn - how many Tardises are actually 'out there' at the moment.

Surmising that The Time Lords mostly withdrew to Gallifrey and their Tardises were destroyed in the attack, we still know The Doctor now has hers AND The Master's.

Any more ?

She doesn’t have the Masters anymore. Odds on he got it back after taking the long way round, and you have to ask how that hologram was made.

Rest of the universe? Well, assuming we go by onscreen only, and if we don’t have good reason to *know* they went elsewhere, there’s five, maybe six. We don’t know what happened to Chronitis’ one, The Monk has a cramped one somewhere, The Master has one, though there’s a possibility he nabbed another, and The Rani has one, and there is Clara.

If we go into the apocryphal and ancillaries, it gets more complex. There’s Compassion and Rodan possibly, I think maybe a Doctors Tardis from a parallel dimension where the Doctor died (no, not in Interference, Blood Heat.) and whatever Faction Paradox left about the place. Does Brax have one? Where did he park it? I am not into Big Finish.

It gets more interesting when you think there are some periods in human history where the Tardis is on earth more than once (‘our’ Tardis, as it were) sometimes along with their respective Doctors, sometimes not, and sometimes it appears to have been borrowed. It’s regrown itself at least twice, and we don’t know that Missy’s ‘vault’ prison, wasn’t in fact just her Tardis with its locks changed and demat circuit yanked. In which case, it may still be in Bristol.

This is just off the top of my head of course.

Compassion was awesome.
 
And how could anyone destroy all the time lords? These people literally have all of time at their disposal. They know the past, present AND future. If the Master attacked Gallifrey, travel back in time and stop him.

If they knew it, it couldn’t happen. Gallifreyan Mean Time is a handy theory that helps with that.
 
One tiny thing I noticed:

See the Master's holo-message to the Doctor at the end of this ep - for some reason, he is wearing Second Doctor-esque checked pants, which we never saw him in previously.

Now back in part 1, when we first meet Daniel Barton, he has his PR exec with him, a short nebbishy guy who is also wearing checked pants and a bow tie in a very Second Doctor-ish style. Was that PR guy actually the Master, working closely with and keeping an eye on Barton all the time? Obviously he didn't look like the Master we later see...

...but then this episode establishes that the Master was using a perception filter so that he didn't look like a dark-skinned man to his fellow Nazis. He would have had to look white. So is the nebbishy PR guy actually what the Nazis saw? And also what Yaz and Ryan saw in part 1, because they're only humans and wouldn't see through the Master's perception filter like the Doctor did?

.
I was about to write this off by pointing out we know the Master was in Australia with the Doctor and Graham at that moment, but then I realized it could have been the Master who was stranded in the 1940s who was going the long way around to modern times we see with Barton.

Hmm, I wonder if maybe we're going to see others clad like Troughton throughout the season who we will learn to be the Master in disguise manipulating events for some grand plan as the season's arc?
And how could anyone destroy all the time lords?
We've known since Hell Bent the Time Lords are for more worried about an ancient prophecy regarding Gallifrey's supposed destruction at the hands of a Hybrid that they're ignoring the far more tangible threat of every spacefaring race in the universe wanting to eradicate them. So, with that in mind, I can easily imagine the Master lining up WMDs targeted at the Citadel, with the Time Lords willfully ignoring it since "prophecy says we go down at the hands of a Hybrid. That's just the Master, ignore him, he's no threat."
 
watching on Sunday with the captions on and who ever did them obviously never read a Terrance Dicks novelisation :)

No "wheezing, groaning sound" when the TARDIS dematerialised. Instead "vworping"

The again the electronic howl at the start of the theme got described with the same word.
 
watching on Sunday with the captions on and who ever did them obviously never read a Terrance Dicks novelisation :)

No "wheezing, groaning sound" when the TARDIS dematerialised. Instead "vworping"

The again the electronic howl at the start of the theme got described with the same word.

No, but they have read the comics, because "Vworp! Vworp!" has been used for the TARDIS noise in those for donkey's years.
 
No, but they have read the comics, because "Vworp! Vworp!" has been used for the TARDIS noise in those for donkey's years.

Can't say I've ever read a Doctor Who comic so hadn't come across it.

Vworp doesn't really sound like the TARDIS though. Perhaps if you say it with a British accent :evil:
 
Can't say I've ever read a Doctor Who comic so hadn't come across it.

The older ones that were illustrated by Dave Gibbons (yes, he who illustrated "Watchmen") are particularly striking. He really caught the look of Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin, without needing to edge into caricature. Many artists have drawn the property over the decades, but Gibbons was the first artist I encountered in association with DW, and a bit like Tom Baker being my first exposure to the franchise, Dave's work has been my favorite. During the PBS heyday of the 1980s, Marvel republished them as a specialty title. Downside, they were "colorized" and thus a lot of the subtle pen strokes were obscured.

Google sampling of Dave Gibbons' Doctor Who art

Vworp doesn't really sound like the TARDIS though. Perhaps if you say it with a British accent :evil:

I think it helps if you kinda' "exhale" the word as a heavy, deep "whisper" and add a bit of a rising "lilt" at the end.
 
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I for one am glad the timelords have been wiped out.
I think the worst thing to happen in NuWho was Moffat to reconning the entire time war. The greater timelord community should've stayed dead.
 
The older ones that were illustrated by Dave Gibbins are particularly striking. He really caught the look of Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin, without needing to edge into caricature. Many artists have drawn the property over the decades, but Gibbins was the first artist I encountered in association with DW, and a bit like Tom Baker being my first exposure to the franchise, Dave's work has been my favorite. During the PBS heyday of the 1980s, Marvel republished them as a specialty title. Downside, they were "colorized" and thus a lot of the subtle pen strokes were obscured.



I think it helps if you kinda' "exhale" the word as a heavy, deep "whisper" and add a bit of a rising "lilt" at the end.

Voyager is an excellent graphic novel collection that benefits from the colour.
 
Spyfall two parter overall
Do the two episodes work well as a two parter? Yes, even if the second goes in a direction completely unanticipated at end of the first. Also, there are unifying themes through the two. Spies, computers, codes, secrets. Beginnings and endings. The beginning of the computer age with Ada Lovelace and the Difference Engine. And a near ending with what Barton and the Kasaavin were trying to do. Secrets, a secret at the heart, the Timeless Child. The Time Lords not being who they think they are.
Spies. The intelligence agents being attacked in 2020, including C. The Kasaavin. Noor Khan. The Master taking O's place before he starts work at MI6. The Doctor framing the Master as a British agent. Not to mention, Ryan and Yas infiltrating V()R, and Graham using the spy gear to help the Fam avoid the authorities. Were all these threads effective? Was the use of Noor appropriate, given her fate? I'm not sure on the latter. But as for the former, I would say the laser shoes were more than a bit silly.
But the plots involving the Kasaavin and the Master worked quite well. Codes and secrets. The Doctor using a code the Master would recognise. Ada having the potential to come up with the programs for the Difference and Analytical Engines. The Kasaavin having their own code. Noor sending a message in a code the Nazis had broken, so the Master would be captured. The Doctor planting a virus in the Silver Lady to defeat the Kasaavin plan. Whatever algorithms Barton used in the V()R products.
All of these worked out well as part of the story. Secrets. Not the least of which is the Timeless Child. What is this secret that caused the Master to destroy Gallifrey? But there were more secrets than this. The Doctor being a cipher to the rest of Team TARDIS (even at the end she doesn't share everything). The Master's plan. Barton's plan. The Doctor erasing Noor and Ada's memories of what happened. (Still not sure what to make of this.) Of course all these themes link together. Codes allowing spies to operate secretly.
And the near ending of humanity, and the apparent ending of the Time Lords. Again. 8.75/10.
 
I wonder if the Master is baiting the Doctor into destroying the Time Lords with this Timless Child stuff.

Or at least the scheme might be his for whatever "Master" plan he has in mind.
 
Spyfall two parter overall
Do the two episodes work well as a two parter? Yes, even if the second goes in a direction completely unanticipated at end of the first. Also, there are unifying themes through the two. Spies, computers, codes, secrets. Beginnings and endings. The beginning of the computer age with Ada Lovelace and the Difference Engine. And a near ending with what Barton and the Kasaavin were trying to do. Secrets, a secret at the heart, the Timeless Child. The Time Lords not being who they think they are.
Spies. The intelligence agents being attacked in 2020, including C. The Kasaavin. Noor Khan. The Master taking O's place before he starts work at MI6. The Doctor framing the Master as a British agent. Not to mention, Ryan and Yas infiltrating V()R, and Graham using the spy gear to help the Fam avoid the authorities. Were all these threads effective? Was the use of Noor appropriate, given her fate? I'm not sure on the latter. But as for the former, I would say the laser shoes were more than a bit silly.
But the plots involving the Kasaavin and the Master worked quite well. Codes and secrets. The Doctor using a code the Master would recognise. Ada having the potential to come up with the programs for the Difference and Analytical Engines. The Kasaavin having their own code. Noor sending a message in a code the Nazis had broken, so the Master would be captured. The Doctor planting a virus in the Silver Lady to defeat the Kasaavin plan. Whatever algorithms Barton used in the V()R products.
All of these worked out well as part of the story. Secrets. Not the least of which is the Timeless Child. What is this secret that caused the Master to destroy Gallifrey? But there were more secrets than this. The Doctor being a cipher to the rest of Team TARDIS (even at the end she doesn't share everything). The Master's plan. Barton's plan. The Doctor erasing Noor and Ada's memories of what happened. (Still not sure what to make of this.) Of course all these themes link together. Codes allowing spies to operate secretly.
And the near ending of humanity, and the apparent ending of the Time Lords. Again. 8.75/10.


Here's a quick answer to one of your points, as well as another thought:

So the three companions have to go off the grid because of Barton, and everyone's taking photos of them on their phones and tablets and everything. It's a great set piece moment but I don't recall the episode addressing the issue, though one can allude that they've been acquitted or what not. All things considered it's be not as much a plot hole but an unresolved issue, which can be handed off easily enough.

Didn't the Doctor state that because of Ada tagging along they were brought accidentally to Noor's area? Would there be other reasons for the Kasaavin to drop them off elsewhere, since their goal is to stop all the spies before taking over Earth (but in which timeframe)?

I thought the company name was VOR despite the graphic design put into the O, but I like your spelling of it better. Looks like "VR", nodding to Virtual Reality, which is something these handy little handhelds give people...

As for wiping memories, any knowledge of any sort might alter future history. There's nothing to make of it, it had to be done.
 
I really enjoyed that. I went for 9 but pressed 10 by accident - oopsie.

I just like how the episode went in a totally different direction to the first part, whilst remaining thematically linked. I also liked the end with the Master revealing his destruction of Gallifrey was to do with the Timeless Child.

My curiosity is piqued, I just hope the follow-through is worth the loss of the Time Lords. Again. ;)
 
I really enjoyed that. I went for 9 but pressed 10 by accident - oopsie.
You can change your vote. I deliberately used that option for instances such as yours or when someone reevaluates an episode and change the grade accordingly (like I did with part one).
 
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