There’s so much to unpack in this episode! Unfortunately, that was one of the problems with it: there was too much going on. We had not one, not two, but three different villains. Then we had two...
There’s so much to unpack in this episode!
Unfortunately, that was one of the problems with it: there was too much going on. We had not one, not two, but three different villains. Then we had two female computer/communications pioneers. And news of Gallifrey. There was too much competition for too little screen time.
For starters, there were times when the three companions felt like guest stars in their own show. They barely got any screen-time. There were a few small moments here and there, but they were crowded out by all the other characters and plots.
Ada Gordon/Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan were totally wasted. They’re both fascinating women in their own rights, but in this episode they were basically just extras. We could have had a whole episode devoted to Ada Lovelace (I don’t know much about Khan). Instead, she got a few minutes of airtime demonstrating "gurrl power" because she could fire a machine gun (which is not what she's known for). That was a waste. It also demeaned an intelligent woman by ignoring her intelligence and making her just another action hero.
We had the Kasaavin being all mysterious and glowy. And that was about it. They were never really fleshed out. Who were they? What did they want? All we got was a couple of minutes of bald exposition in Barton’s speech at the very end of the second part of this episode. They never seemed like real threats because we didn’t know what they wanted. In fact, because they were so vague and unexplained, it was possible to imagine anything about them. I actually expected them to turn out to be Cybermen trying to break through from another universe, and trying to turn all humans into more Cybermen. But instead they remained glowy things who just wanted to turn humans into… hard drives? They didn’t even want to invade! They just wanted more disk space to store… what? Alien porn?
And Daniel Barton. Who was he? Why was he in league with the Kasaavin? What did he want?
His speech at the end, about how we give all our data away to corporations, was an important and interesting enough issue to have built a whole episode around it. Instead, it was a throwaway point at the end of an episode about something else.
The episode was built around hiding things from the audience. We didn’t even find out what the villains wanted until the last 5 minutes of the show. We didn’t see how the Doctor saved the day; that was done off-screen. The episode focussed too much on what was happening, and not enough on why things were happening.
And, finally, the Master.
I just didn’t buy Sacha Dhawan as the Master. While other actors have had fun playing the Master (shout out to Michelle Gomez – best Master/Mistress ever!), Dhawan looked like he was trying too hard. He didn’t feel right. He grimaced and growled and pouted, but it all felt wrong.
We're talking both parts, right? Part one was pretty good in relation to the previous season, instead of Doctor as the weird neighbor with the time machine, we now have her kind of finding her...
We're talking both parts, right?
Part one was pretty good in relation to the previous season, instead of Doctor as the weird neighbor with the time machine, we now have her kind of finding her feet as the Doctor in a way she hasn't done before and having to live with her past instead of waving it off. Spy pastiche is fun, and the Master reveal honestly got me good since we just had Gomez two seasons ago, and the Master seems to be an every other Doctor sort of thing.
Part two had to land the thing, sidelined the glowy guys and was more the Doctor and the Master hitchhiking their way across time while the rest of Team TARDIS accomplished nothing outside of staying alive, Gallifrey having a secret is dropped as a Moffatty seasonal arc deep-lore at the end, but it was trying to cover a whole lot of ground all at once, and bringing back the Master as "bad guy number one" without mentioning that they kind of made up their last go at it is a little bit weird. You could argue that Master is going to Master, but it would be nice for the Doc to have brought that up.
There’s so much to unpack in this episode!
Unfortunately, that was one of the problems with it: there was too much going on. We had not one, not two, but three different villains. Then we had two female computer/communications pioneers. And news of Gallifrey. There was too much competition for too little screen time.
For starters, there were times when the three companions felt like guest stars in their own show. They barely got any screen-time. There were a few small moments here and there, but they were crowded out by all the other characters and plots.
Ada Gordon/Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan were totally wasted. They’re both fascinating women in their own rights, but in this episode they were basically just extras. We could have had a whole episode devoted to Ada Lovelace (I don’t know much about Khan). Instead, she got a few minutes of airtime demonstrating "gurrl power" because she could fire a machine gun (which is not what she's known for). That was a waste. It also demeaned an intelligent woman by ignoring her intelligence and making her just another action hero.
We had the Kasaavin being all mysterious and glowy. And that was about it. They were never really fleshed out. Who were they? What did they want? All we got was a couple of minutes of bald exposition in Barton’s speech at the very end of the second part of this episode. They never seemed like real threats because we didn’t know what they wanted. In fact, because they were so vague and unexplained, it was possible to imagine anything about them. I actually expected them to turn out to be Cybermen trying to break through from another universe, and trying to turn all humans into more Cybermen. But instead they remained glowy things who just wanted to turn humans into… hard drives? They didn’t even want to invade! They just wanted more disk space to store… what? Alien porn?
And Daniel Barton. Who was he? Why was he in league with the Kasaavin? What did he want?
His speech at the end, about how we give all our data away to corporations, was an important and interesting enough issue to have built a whole episode around it. Instead, it was a throwaway point at the end of an episode about something else.
The episode was built around hiding things from the audience. We didn’t even find out what the villains wanted until the last 5 minutes of the show. We didn’t see how the Doctor saved the day; that was done off-screen. The episode focussed too much on what was happening, and not enough on why things were happening.
And, finally, the Master.
I just didn’t buy Sacha Dhawan as the Master. While other actors have had fun playing the Master (shout out to Michelle Gomez – best Master/Mistress ever!), Dhawan looked like he was trying too hard. He didn’t feel right. He grimaced and growled and pouted, but it all felt wrong.
Here’s hoping future episodes are better.
We're talking both parts, right?
Part one was pretty good in relation to the previous season, instead of Doctor as the weird neighbor with the time machine, we now have her kind of finding her feet as the Doctor in a way she hasn't done before and having to live with her past instead of waving it off. Spy pastiche is fun, and the Master reveal honestly got me good since we just had Gomez two seasons ago, and the Master seems to be an every other Doctor sort of thing.
Part two had to land the thing, sidelined the glowy guys and was more the Doctor and the Master hitchhiking their way across time while the rest of Team TARDIS accomplished nothing outside of staying alive, Gallifrey having a secret is dropped as a Moffatty seasonal arc deep-lore at the end, but it was trying to cover a whole lot of ground all at once, and bringing back the Master as "bad guy number one" without mentioning that they kind of made up their last go at it is a little bit weird. You could argue that Master is going to Master, but it would be nice for the Doc to have brought that up.