Thread by @ellardent

Time for #tweetnotes on #DoctorWho Spyfall Part 2.

MUTE FOR SPOILERS

In short: The best of Chibnall continues, but worrying problems are exposed by this episode.

DW-S2: The Doctor has never been better. The companions have never worked better.

In an episode where they’re separated for the entire duration.

Nice to have them doing well, but…you see the problem. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: How terrifying to work out that the companions actually can be interesting together, have a little chemistry, it just requires the Doctor to be nowhere near them. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: (A *little* chemistry. This was still a ‘and then they do a sit down chat’ index card. Worrying ‘who the Doctor is truly is’ was, as ever, a factual thing, not a deep and ongoing dramatic issue. But it’s something that Yaz and Graham finally share lines.) #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Meanwhile the Doctor - who shielded her fam from the cockpit blast last week - remains on ‘doing things’ form here. Out of her element, working to deduce things and get home, stop the villain.

So much better without her gang. Forced to be interesting. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: In the end this is only ‘I’m in trouble, and I have a nemesis’. This is not some exciting new direction. But it works because…well, it always has.

What it lacks in creative stretch it gains in remembering how to be the show it is. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: What’s bonkers is adding two historical companions to this. Ada works, broadly, because we ‘buy’ her confusion more easily than Yaz’s. Cos she’s from ‘the past’.

That’s illogical - Yaz on a spaceship is Ada with a laptop - but it’s kinda how the genre works. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Historical companions were mostly passengers for function (plus encouragement to check Wikipedia - not so great for Khan).

But knowing they’re ‘part 2 guests’ means you know they’re there to serve the Doctor’s story. A goodbye is baked in, focus stays clear. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: We get some Victorian fun (though note this is the first Chiball historical to be an outright PARODY rather than s11’s realist approach, more ‘drop into a telly genre’ than ‘visit the true past’), and the Master in WWII - which is the perfect place for him. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: And then THE DOCTOR USES THE MASTER’S SKIN COLOUR AS AS A WEAPON AGAINST HIM AND OH MY GOD HAS ANY MOMENT IN FIFTY-SEVEN YEARS OF THIS SHOW BEEN SO HORRIBLY MISJUDGED?! #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Last season it took eight episodes before the Doctor’s gender was used against her on TV. And that was by villains in an ancient culture.

Here it took one episode to use the Master’s ethnic appearance against him. And it was by the hero.

No. No no no. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Seeing a lot of how “See, he’s a different man in your boss’s uniform!” would have served the same function.

But it’s still the Doctor happy to use with the Nazis ideology when it suits her. And the racism would still be a honkingly loud subtext. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: What I did enjoy was the thought that the Master then lived through the *whole* of the Doctor Who show from 1963 to now.

He was there to see the his past self run a plastic invasion, raise daemons, and probably voted for Harold Saxon. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: So sure, the way our companions work together is plotty placeholder nothing - there’s little emotional journey to their trip. That’s why it gets a ‘sit and do the emotional stuff’ index card scene.

But at least they’re not trailing the Doc asking questions. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Still and all, “We need to get to x” isn’t much of a story, y’know? Not without an emotional angle.

Make them travel with the Master - a journey where he can weaponise their doubts about the Doctor. escalate that tension - and you have something meatier. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: And we get Jodie as good as she’s been because, of course, she has an actor giving it some welly opposite her, in a part written not to be a wet drip.

It’s standard, hackneyed Master stuff. But it means she has a solid thing to push back against. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: When we get on top of the Eiffel tower I felt for Chibnall, who doesn’t have his predecessor’s gifts for dialogue. The shape of it’s okay, but very little of how it’s written *crackles*. What you get is deeply functional. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Still, this is the first time a “Tell you a little but not the facts” style has worked in this show. And it’s cos the Master is genre made flesh - his character delights in drawing out the game, being a prick for the hell of it.

You blame him, not the writing. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Elsewhere the villainy falls apart. Making Barton into Steve Jobs was dated and misguided (they’re the one big company in legal trouble for *protecting* user privacy); this needed a young upstart.

Note how killing the mum feels like a 25 year-old’s action. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: I kinda liked Barton killing his mum out of nowhere - another index card, ‘do bad thing to stay in story’ since he’s no other cast to work with. The (likely accidental) abruptness was unsettling.

But come on, this was written for a Zuckerberg. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: The ‘we hand over data willingly’ thing is a banal truth, but clearly meant to be what the episode is about.

Except ‘owning a Vor device’ is what allowed the aliens in, not ‘knowing your pet’s name’.

And this was about spies wasn’t it? Data stolen, not given? #tweetnotes

DW-S2: So poor Lenny Henry is miscast, given only one emotion-based interaction with the main cast (a stock “I dunno what you’re up to but I’ll stop you” thing), and then just sort of toddles away in his car.

I imagine he and the Kasaavins will be back. But…shrug. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Oh yeah: ‘Kasaavins’.

A K *and* a V - what a joy! Another slide-off-the-brain 60’s sci-fi name to go on the massive series 11 pile.

Nothing in Kasaavins implies a world in the way ‘Woman Wept’ did. Nor does it sound pleasingly sayable. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Actually, no, I take that back a little. There was a time when Ks, Vs and Zs implied other cultures…because they sounded foreign.

Indian, Chinese, Russian, etc. Those 50s/60s names come from an attempt at otherness we’ve since evolved past. A bit. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: At no point was this about spying. The Master killed spies to “get the Doctor’s attention” (cos she’s usually especially invested in state assassins?!).

You didn’t need C to get the plot going (Chibnall apparently missed that the Bond films just *did* a C.) #tweetnotes

DW-S2: ‘DNA for mass hard drive storage’ doesn’t make a lick of sense.

It’s hard to take the educational info-dumps seriously when it gets ‘what DNA is’ wrong.

It’s quickie version of ‘human batteries’ from The Matrix, only dafter & with no thematic weight. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Here’s a strange one - I only didn’t like Graham’s laser shoes cos they were MI6 tech.

That’s not how Who works. Bond films’ tech source is MI6’s lab, but in Who it comes from space. Or, start of a plot, from a scientist.

It’s the wrong way to combine genres. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: And we’re back wiping minds while women cry no. Which is another insanely wrong thing the show had already confronted as a failing.

And why? What would it matter to leave them knowing? We feel no danger from it. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: The mind wipes are *just* there to be tidy. Because the alternative is to wonder if it affected them, or history, at all.

The Doctor going around tidying up. Trying not make waves, changes or impact.

This is the same ‘low impact’ approach that hurt Kerblam. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: So look, in the end there’s the usual flubs. Redundant monologues, index card scenes that don’t affect scenes wither side of them.

A just basic duff cliffhanging. Doctor and Master both get trapped in a realm which we’ve only seen people escape within minutes. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: But around those flubs is a story derived from a load of old Who (The Sontaran Stratagem, Army of Ghosts, Last of the Time Lords, umpteen Moffat timey-wimey reveals, etc.) which least makes those old tropes work in an entertaining way. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Sure, we’ve seen that time-travel-instructions escape before - it’s how Blink began.

But it was done with mechanics from *within* this story - not the TARDIS. That matters, makes it feel of a piece and not a trick we can pull every week. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: I’m very keen on ‘the Master nuked Gallifrey’.

It’s unfortunate we’ve already done ‘lose/return Gallifrey’ so recently, mind you. Makes it feel tired.

But in itself, it’s not a backstory this time, it’s an action. The Master went huge and went home. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Crucially, it leaves us with a clear mystery to uncover, with the Doctor concealing a lie (um, right after she finally decided to tell the truth, but whatever), and with some big imagery. I’ll take it. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: In retrospect the dirty bandages’ ref to Timeless Child seems even more misjudged.

Likely late ADR as this was being plotted, thrown in cos it could be…derailing the season it’s in by inviting questions in ep 2, rather than once we knew what that season was. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Timeless Child - the Doctor? Some original sin to create the Time Lords? Probably both.

The Master’s fury likely won’t make sense when this comes out - righteous, compassionate anger isn’t him. This version, like most, loves a liar.

Ah well, we’ll see.
#tweetnotes

DW-S2: For emotional drama it is, obviously, better to show the devastation of something the Doctor actually cares about.

Twelve didn’t care for Gallifrey, and Thirteen hasn’t cared to visit. It’s not a thing we feel she’s lost - it’s a thing fans have lost. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: The Doctor admitting to her fam who she is? Seemed like a good index card until you get to it and…it’s just that two-line summary we’ve heard umpteen times.

Sure, more to tell. But what’s the more? “Who you are” isn’t “Where you were born”. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: As ever, drama and emotion is reduced to exposition. The Doctor was refusing to blurt out her character sheet, now she has.

But the *feelings* are absent. “How this Doctor feels about herself, who she says she is” gets you something. But we don’t do that. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: Though it hurt the unity of the piece, I felt like the change of director got us a better directed episode. More clear on how to do the funny bits, how to get tension out of the set-pieces. No ‘car chase fades out’, no ‘big parody Bond theme’. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: And kudos for landing, more or less, the awkwardly written ‘kneel’ thing. She very clearly does it to save lives, with little concession - and bit of steel - in the voice.

Going there at all seems iffy. But it wasn’t ghastly and could have been.
#tweetnotes

DW-S2: In the end, look, I’m still stuck finding this a functional show with little grasp of how to do theme or real characters and emotions.

But within those boundaries, this is as much fun - as much good entertainment - as it’s been under this head writer. #tweetnotes

DW-S2: The Master works to solve a lot of the prior mystery and drive problems. Separating the cast works to solve the problem of how empty they often feel - it makes the Doctor and her companions more dynamic.

Whether those things can be held onto we’ll see. #tweetnotes

As ever, if you enjoy the #tweetnotes please consider tipping me for the work here.

ko-fi.com/ellardent

Thank you so much everyone who did last week. I’m seriously touched by the support.

Since this part of the #tweetnotes has risen some spirited discussion I want to talk about what might have happened and how ’they didn’t mean to be racist’ isn’t good enough.

We’ll quote the episodes directly. Do a little script archeology.

https://twitter.com/ellardent/status/1215996211871862784

To set the scene: The Master is now pretending to be a Nazi officer. The Master was just recast, with the excellent Sacha Dhawan in the role.

The episode also features the splendid Lenny Henry as Daniel Barton, a tech billionaire in the Google/Facebook mode. #tweetnotes

Barton feels like a Zuckerberg-like part. As written, it’s all youth smugness. “I fly my mates around the world, insult them over the intercom.”

And he kills his mum in an adolescent-ish act of revenge for childhood.

Seems like a 28 year old, not a 60 year old, no? #tweetnotes

But clearly the part was either written black or changed to accommodate the casting, since he gets a line about being “being one of the few non-white faces at my school.”

I’d suggest this was added, and the age of his mum moved up, when the role was cast. #tweetnotes

So far, fair enough. I think the role’s miscast, but you can see the value in casting against the obvious, and in getting a big name for your opening two-parter.

It’s a line or two. No big rewrite. Easily done.

So how does this same process work with the Master? #tweetnotes

Dhawan’s first episode revealed him to be hiding in plain sight, a sometime friend of the Doctor’s. No make-up, she just didn’t know it was him.

In the second episode he meets her in WWII, where he’s taken on the role of a Nazi officer. #tweetnotes

The Doctor disapproves of “the company he keeps” - the show staking out its view on Nazis clearly for anyone in doubt.

Then later, she frames him as a spy for the Allies. She outsmarts him, escapes by getting him arrested! Clever Doctor.

Again, so far, fair enough. #tweetnotes

But in the middle of that something happened that offended me, and others with better right to *be* offended.

And we should look at what it’s doing there and why.

The Master was given ‘a ‘perception filter’ - specifically to hide his race. #tweetnotes

My guess would be that the filter was added when Dhawan was cast. A couple of lines, no props or FX. A neat solve.

Where originally a likely-white-male Master would be able to stride about in the uniform, now it’s a bit odd if they don’t notice she’s British-Asian. #tweetnotes

So now the Doctor says “How have you managed that? You're not exactly their Aryan archetype.”

The Master: “Tiny Teutonic psychic perception filter. Learned it at school. Lets people see what they want to see.”

Audience question preempted and solved. Done.
#tweetnotes

By the way, Chris Chibnall has form with adding little body tech solutions to fill plot holes. Here’s a quick list from last season:

https://twitter.com/ellardent/status/1072095318462881793

#tweetnotes

So far, still no problem. Neat little solve. Audience objection preempted and answered. Job done.

But then…

We can only guess at the process, but I suspect that in rewriting, it was decided that revealing the Master’s identity to the Nazis was a neat idea!
#tweetnotes

And you can see why. They’d trust him even less!

But here’s the thing: The Doctor doesn’t need to do it. In fact it makes her victory in the moment win *less* likely.

She turns off his filter when his men arrive to arrest him. So they show up and see…someone else! #tweetnotes

If she’d let them arrest him as a traitor, she’d solve the immediate threat. They’ve come to the top of the Eiffel Tower to arrest this specific man, and there he is.

And they get there and find…someone else entirely.

That’s a *worse* plan! #tweetnotes

Logically it should confuse the men. They don’t know who this is, they can no longer assume he’s the traitor they expect.

It means framing him - the original, clever plan - was unnecessary. Just show them an Asian dressed up as a Nazi and that’ll do, right? #tweetnotes

That’s why it bothers people.

The Doctor goes out of her way to reveal a man’s skin colour for no purpose other than to gain an upper hand *she already had*.

It plays like a fuck you.

It weaponises a man’s race against him. #tweetnotes

We can see how, in the heat of production, that seemed clever.

Had to add the perception filter. Solves a problem.

Clever to pay it off if you’ve set it up. And Nazis are built to hate different races. Clever!

Except…you missed what it *is*, what it *says*. #tweetnotes

Imagine the scenes with a white Master (as a people have insisted I to) and sure, less bad. By far.

But imagine the episode with a white Master *and* without the perception filter.

It works *better*! You don’t need it!

It was added for race. That’s why it’s there. #tweetnotes

“Facial perception filter? Very easy to jam. Now they'll see the real you.”

Lines added to explain what’s happening. Just exposition. But…

“Real you” is the face under the one passing for white. This is…in bad taste at very least. #tweetnotes

And that’s why it’s a problem.

The Doctor - in a story where she has no need to do it, the guy’s already getting arrested by Nazis - adds a little ‘fuck you’.

She makes him visible as non-white. Not out of necessity, but because it’s a clever bit of business. #tweetnotes

It ignores how there’s a vast difference in what Nazis will do with a white guy wearing a uniform he stole and what they’ll do to a brown guy doing the same thing.

It ignores how careful you need to be when these are actual Nazis, not Daleks, not some allegory. #tweetnotes

I see how we got here. I don’t think it was malice. It’s trying to do a rewrite that works and entertains.

But it’s ignorant of what the act is saying. What “the real you” *says*. And that’s offensive through bad craft.

Just like wiping woman’s mind without consent. #tweetnotes

You are not required to agree with me - there’s a raft of defenders this week. (At least they’ve parked the “these companions r gr8 cos they’re not magical like stoopid Moff and RTD ones” schtick.)

But I felt icky in the moment, watching. And I think this is why. #tweetnotes