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Spyfall Part 1
Original review here
Why was the Doctor working on bits hanging out the bottom of her TARDIS? Actually, how were there bits hanging out the bottom of the TARDIS???
Lenny Henry – a comedian acting serious role, and doing it very well. Gives me hope for John Bishop!
Yaz gets to show her skills acting a reporter, and also gets a terrifying experience and a brief but sweet scene with Ryan afterwards, though his assurance that he won't let anything happen to her feels not only stupid (he couldn't stop the aliens taking her the first time!) but a bit, frankly, old-fashioned – young women these days don't generally need dashing young men to save them!
Still sad that O turned out to be the Master. I really, really loved his quiet, understated characterisation of O. In fact, on rewatch, I really loved watching the Master playing at O, a wonderfully nuanced performance. The fact that he'd been playing the waiting game, collecting stuff on aliens as he sat alone in the outback for years, occasionally texting the Doctor.
But I don't really like Dhawan's Master. He's too over the top maniacal, like Simm but somehow not as good. I miss Missy's complexity and layers (not to mention the continuity).
Spyfall Part 2
Original review here
Nothing to add, really, except that I found this even more cluttered and confusing than last time. And now, with foreknowledge of the rest of the season, I'm wondering why on earth all the interesting stuff was crammed into the four or five 'arcy' episodes instead of being allowed more time to be addressed properly? It's weird, I always complained that Moffat's stories were too complicated to follow, and to be fair for quite a few of them I still have to go back to my notes to remind myself how they made sense, but these are almost worse, because they bring up so many things and never really address them. The Master being stuck on Earth for 77 years (in which a LOT of stories have been set) without causing any ripples, for example. Or are just cop-outs like the Doctor going back and teaching them how to fly the plane.
Orphan 55
I… really can't find anything to say about this one. It was boring. Some of the characters were interesting but they almost all ended up dying. And surely this possible future of Earth clashes with all the other ones we've seen on Doctor Who?
Plus, this was the first of the episodes to slam home a message – I mean, okay, I'm definitely one of the people who wants to teach people about environmentalism, but you don't do it by getting their backs up or boring them to death with a long, super-serious speech!
Also? Oxygen tanks on your wrist that invisibly connect to a bit of tape over your nose are a really silly idea!
(No original review for this one because I was too uninterested to write one)
Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror
Original (unposted) review notes upon first watching, some time after 19 January 2020:
Mind wipes
Rani!!!
Most of what I know of Tesla is from The Prestige and therefore I expected him to look like David Bowie. However, a very quick Wiki search revealed that Goran Višnjić (who I've got to knot pretty well through Extant and Timeless) actually looked far more like the real Tesla.
Tonight's thoughts upon second watching:
Bizarrely, last night on our Star Trek: Next Gen rewatch we were up to Samaritan Snare, which involved a spaceship of people stealing a clever engineer to fix their ship… Isn't coincidence interesting?
I kind of feel like this season and the last have already done rather a lot of Victorian episodes, but you can't argue that Tesla and Eddison are a very interesting pair to get involved with (even if it all feels a bit too recent after the exhibition in Spyfall Pt 2)
Loved Graham calling the pair of them "AC/DC"! Which, to be fair, I wouldn't have got without the way this episode educated me on Tesla, who seems so fascinating I don't know why I've never heard more about him! Radar (or exploring ray), wifi, bolts of lightning, X-rays (or shadowgraphs), radio, automata… what a man!
The Skithra Queen seemed way too like the Racnoss Queen to be at all interesting. And it's weird that the rest of her race looked nothing like her…
Apparently, "the period setting of 1903 New York was recreated in the immersive Bulgarian studio Nu Boyana, the set of London Has Fallen and various Sylvester Stallone movies." (The Guardian) I have to admit it was very impressive!
The Radio Times review points out that the Doctor apparently felt no need to wipe Tesla, Eddison or Miss Skerrit's memories – very weird after she was so determined to with Ada and Noor in Spyfall. (Obviously I read this review after my first watching and is where my "mind wipes" note, which I have to admit was confusing me, came from!)
Still, this was a very enjoyable episode. Thank goodness.
Original review here
Why was the Doctor working on bits hanging out the bottom of her TARDIS? Actually, how were there bits hanging out the bottom of the TARDIS???
Lenny Henry – a comedian acting serious role, and doing it very well. Gives me hope for John Bishop!
Yaz gets to show her skills acting a reporter, and also gets a terrifying experience and a brief but sweet scene with Ryan afterwards, though his assurance that he won't let anything happen to her feels not only stupid (he couldn't stop the aliens taking her the first time!) but a bit, frankly, old-fashioned – young women these days don't generally need dashing young men to save them!
Still sad that O turned out to be the Master. I really, really loved his quiet, understated characterisation of O. In fact, on rewatch, I really loved watching the Master playing at O, a wonderfully nuanced performance. The fact that he'd been playing the waiting game, collecting stuff on aliens as he sat alone in the outback for years, occasionally texting the Doctor.
But I don't really like Dhawan's Master. He's too over the top maniacal, like Simm but somehow not as good. I miss Missy's complexity and layers (not to mention the continuity).
Spyfall Part 2
Original review here
Nothing to add, really, except that I found this even more cluttered and confusing than last time. And now, with foreknowledge of the rest of the season, I'm wondering why on earth all the interesting stuff was crammed into the four or five 'arcy' episodes instead of being allowed more time to be addressed properly? It's weird, I always complained that Moffat's stories were too complicated to follow, and to be fair for quite a few of them I still have to go back to my notes to remind myself how they made sense, but these are almost worse, because they bring up so many things and never really address them. The Master being stuck on Earth for 77 years (in which a LOT of stories have been set) without causing any ripples, for example. Or are just cop-outs like the Doctor going back and teaching them how to fly the plane.
Orphan 55
I… really can't find anything to say about this one. It was boring. Some of the characters were interesting but they almost all ended up dying. And surely this possible future of Earth clashes with all the other ones we've seen on Doctor Who?
Plus, this was the first of the episodes to slam home a message – I mean, okay, I'm definitely one of the people who wants to teach people about environmentalism, but you don't do it by getting their backs up or boring them to death with a long, super-serious speech!
Also? Oxygen tanks on your wrist that invisibly connect to a bit of tape over your nose are a really silly idea!
(No original review for this one because I was too uninterested to write one)
Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror
Original (unposted) review notes upon first watching, some time after 19 January 2020:
Mind wipes
Rani!!!
Most of what I know of Tesla is from The Prestige and therefore I expected him to look like David Bowie. However, a very quick Wiki search revealed that Goran Višnjić (who I've got to knot pretty well through Extant and Timeless) actually looked far more like the real Tesla.
Tonight's thoughts upon second watching:
Bizarrely, last night on our Star Trek: Next Gen rewatch we were up to Samaritan Snare, which involved a spaceship of people stealing a clever engineer to fix their ship… Isn't coincidence interesting?
I kind of feel like this season and the last have already done rather a lot of Victorian episodes, but you can't argue that Tesla and Eddison are a very interesting pair to get involved with (even if it all feels a bit too recent after the exhibition in Spyfall Pt 2)
Loved Graham calling the pair of them "AC/DC"! Which, to be fair, I wouldn't have got without the way this episode educated me on Tesla, who seems so fascinating I don't know why I've never heard more about him! Radar (or exploring ray), wifi, bolts of lightning, X-rays (or shadowgraphs), radio, automata… what a man!
The Skithra Queen seemed way too like the Racnoss Queen to be at all interesting. And it's weird that the rest of her race looked nothing like her…
Apparently, "the period setting of 1903 New York was recreated in the immersive Bulgarian studio Nu Boyana, the set of London Has Fallen and various Sylvester Stallone movies." (The Guardian) I have to admit it was very impressive!
The Radio Times review points out that the Doctor apparently felt no need to wipe Tesla, Eddison or Miss Skerrit's memories – very weird after she was so determined to with Ada and Noor in Spyfall. (Obviously I read this review after my first watching and is where my "mind wipes" note, which I have to admit was confusing me, came from!)
Still, this was a very enjoyable episode. Thank goodness.
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