usuallyhats | spyfall (Reply)

A Doctor Who reaction post! Partying like it's 2013*. (I really need a Thirteen icon, but that would involve dealing with the whole Icon Situation over here (I let my paid account expire, it's a mess) and I don't want to.)

I thoroughly enjoyed these two episodes, but there were a few things I didn't like, so let's start with them:

I really did not like the Doctor unmasking the Master to the Nazis, or some of the dynamic between the Doctor and the Master. I'm lumping them in together because I feel like it all came from a place of not wanting to write the characters any differently than if they were still white dudes, which does work well in some situations, but as a blanket approach is not good. A white person handing over a brown person to the Nazis: very bad! A man forcing a woman to kneel and call him "master": also bad! (Though I did enjoy Jodie Whittaker's performance in that scene: her complete refusal to be intimidated or humiliated helped a lot.)

Sacha Dhawan is great, but I just don't care about the Master, I never have. Like, obviously Delgado's performance was a fun time, and in theory I enjoy the idea of them making extremely overcomplicated plans that basically boil down to DOCTOR LOOK AT ME DOCTOR PAY ATTENTION, but in practice... eh.

I also don't care about Time Lord related mytharc nonsense. The thing I like about the Time Lords is that they swan around all "Hello We Are The Supreme Moral Authority In The Universe" when in actual fact they're a load of pretentious bureaucrats in ridiculous collars. I don't want grandeur, I don't want mystery, I don't want Everything You Know Is Wrong, I just want ineffectual pedantic bickering and the [Insert Increasingly Ludicrous Noun Here] of Rassilon. Or both, both is also fine, as proved by Big Finish's Gallifrey audios.

OK, now that's off my chest, onto the things I did like.

The Doctor playing snap! I love her so much.

The Doctor in a suit! I love how her suit outfit matched her normal one so closely, she's found a thing she likes and she's sticking with it. Also the flash of red lining, v good.

Yaz's outfit: also extremely good. I enjoy a fancy frock but this really felt like something Yaz would pick for herself, especially when there might be adventuring afoot. Plus it had great visual continuity with the others AND avoiding any chance that the audience might be invited to leer at her, win win win.

Part 1 especially really revelled in Spy Nonsense, I loved it a lot.

Thirteen teaming up with two real life excellent women was such a nice touch. I really liked just getting this little glimpse into their lives - the episode did a great job at hinting at how much else was going on in them.

Usually I'd've hated the Doctor wiping Ada and Noor's memories, but I really liked the way the show played it as them not needing the Doctor to be amazing. On a meta level, it avoided diminishing their real life achievements by implying that the Doctor's influence was responsible for them, which I appreciated a lot.

I also thought it was a smart choice to avoid engaging with the fact that they both died tragically young: "Vincent and the Doctor" aside, there isn't really a satisfactory way to deal with that, so ducking it entirely was a good call.

My epic love for Thirteen rather overshadowed the companions last season, so I loved that they got a chance to shine without her. (The landing the plane sequence was A+) I love that they are really very ordinary: they're all great and they all have many skills, but ultimately they're just three normal people trying their best, and succeeding, and it's great.