{"id":2356,"date":"2020-01-05T16:05:57","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T16:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2356"},"modified":"2020-01-05T16:06:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T16:06:48","slug":"so-what-did-i-think-of-spyfall-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/01\/05\/so-what-did-i-think-of-spyfall-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"So\u2026 what did I think of Spyfall, Part One?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nAs regular readers may know, I wasn\u2019t hugely impressed with Series 11. With only a handful of exceptions, this was a huge step back from the last Capaldi season, suffering from thin characterisation, jeopardy-free plotting, very few novel or exciting concepts, three poorly-defined regulars who stand around doing nothing and a general sense of \u201cWill this do?\u201d. Given the low episode count and lengthy wait, this was crushingly disappointing.<\/p>\n

The New Year special managed to address some of these problems. The regulars remained poorly-defined and generally still stood around doing nothing, and the plotting was still relentlessly ordinary, but the reinvention of the Dalek was fun and exciting and there was at least some jeopardy. With another entire year off to get ready for the new season of again only ten episodes, Chibnall and co seemed primed for success.<\/p>\n

What we got was\u2026 kind of a mess.<\/p>\n

I think the biggest problem with the Chibnall era so far, of which much of the foregoing is symptomatic, is an inability to understand how Doctor Who stories typically work and an unwillingness to reinvent them. So, without a solid version of what has worked in the past and without a brand new methodology, what we\u2019re left with is \u201cisn\u2019t that the kind of thing they used to do on Doctor Who?\u201d But the pieces are assembled clumsily, without thought as to how they are meant to fit together.<\/p>\n

So, here we have the Doctor working in cahoots with secret government organisations, facing death at the hands of familiar devices gone rogue, working to uncover the secrets of mysterious slayings and the return of an old foe but \u2013 with one notable exception \u2013 it comes across like teenage fan fiction, rather than the expert storytelling of a master craftsman.<\/p>\n

The gulf in approach (and frankly ability) is nowhere better illustrated than in the trio of \u201cwhere have you been\u201d scenes early in the episode, re-establishing Yas, Graham and the other one. All three have one piece of information to impart and deliver it in the most straightforward, unambitious, mediocre way possible. There\u2019s no twist, there\u2019s no flair, there\u2019s no surprise. There aren\u2019t even any good jokes (in the whole episode). Can you imagine either of Chris Chibnall\u2019s predecessors letting three whole scenes like that trundle tediously by?<\/p>\n

And when the story proper starts, it\u2019s more a series of largely unrelated action beats than anything resembling a narrative. The British government kidnaps the Doctor and her companions \u2013 more exciting than just phoning her up I suppose \u2013 but then it\u2019s those very cars which are themselves (rather feebly) sabotaged by the alien menace. Why? Why doesn\u2019t it attack when they\u2019re out in the open? Why have two different unrelated forces both trying to overpower our heroes, and then put them together in the same vehicle? Why wait for Fancy Guest Star Number One to dole out pages of exposition before offing him also? What does any of it mean?<\/p>\n

The alien menace which can execute anyone at anytime then takes most of the rest of the episode off, while the Doctor and co potter about meeting Fancy Guest Star Number Two and Waris Hussein (of whom more later) and the old familiar Chibnall aimless wandering takes over. There are some shreds of interest as the, let\u2019s call them the Voord, circle the house in the Australian outback, but I struggled to find anything of interest in the by-the-numbers tech millionaire\u2019s HQ. And once again, most of the companions stand around doing nothing. Rewrite this episode with Yas talking to Fancy Guest Star Number Two and the Doctor on her own in Australia. Same story isn\u2019t it? And what\u2019s the point of the magic death ray which doesn\u2019t kill you, it just transports you to another place and then when that environment becomes too overwhelming, it transports you to yet another different place? The major threat in this story seems to be less a deadly threat, more a handy short-cut.<\/p>\n

When the promised James Bond spoof starts, again it\u2019s the clothes (literally) of the rival franchise which get appropriated rather than any understanding of its appeal and the bullet-spraying bike chase is more absurd than fun. Lost in the whirl of all of this was Jodie Whittaker, who is capable of far more than she was given to work with here. Chibnall writes her largely as generic hero, and occasionally as idiot comic relief. It\u2019s not hugely inspiring.<\/p>\n

Just when I was about to write this off as another two-star clunker however, something happened. I\u2019ve rarely seen a supporting character with quite so big a bright neon \u201cI am secretly evil\u201d sign flashing above his head as Waris Hussein has here. But I almost forgot about that in the ridiculous ambition of the plane chase. By this stage, I\u2019d long given up on the story actually making sense or being about anything, but I did appreciate the lengths the production team were going to.<\/p>\n

But the reveal that Waris was actually the Master took me completely by surprise, and it\u2019s a testament to the writing (I suppose) and the PR management that I was unspoilered by this. Waris \u2013 sorry Sacha Dhawan \u2013 is a marvellous actor and his loopy giggling was quite a treat. For that, and that alone, I\u2019ll bump this episode up to three, but I\u2019m still pretty glum about what\u2019s happening to my favourite show. Come at me, haters.<\/p>\n

Maybe tonight\u2019s episode will redeem the story. But in general, part ones are easier to write than part twos so\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As regular readers may know, I wasn\u2019t hugely impressed with Series 11. With only a handful of exceptions, this was a huge step back from the last Capaldi season, suffering from thin characterisation, jeopardy-free plotting, very few novel or exciting concepts, three poorly-defined regulars who stand around doing nothing and a general sense of \u201cWill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,19],"class_list":["post-2356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-doctor-who","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-C0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2356"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2361,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356\/revisions\/2361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}