Doctor Who: Spyfall, Part One

“The name's Doctor.The Doctor."

About bloody time. Another hiatus is over and Chris Chibnall’s second full season begins. I’ll make no secret of the fact I was somewhat underwhelmed by last season, in spite of a strong cast and generally sound show running decisions: Chibnall has shown good judgement while overseeing the show. But that doesn’t make him a particularly great writer, unfortunately. There’s some decent stuff in his track record but his scripts have never stood out, and he’s certainly not remotely comparable to an RTD or a Moff, and last season’s scripts by him tended to be weak points. Still, Resolution last year was much better; let us hope it was a good sign.

I’m also a little disturbed by a lazy narrative that seems to have emerged over the reaction to last season- that those of us with concerns are objecting to Jodie as a female Doctor or the liberal political leanings of stories like Rosa or Demons of the Punjab. This is, of course, nonsense: most of us are sensible types who are well aware that anyone using the word “snowflake” in a non-meteorological context needs to have their adulting licence revoked. The casting of Jodie as a female Doctor was a hugely positive step- but can we please give the character of the Doctor some actual development? And as for Doctor Who being a bit liberal and having a social conscience- that’s an ancient tradition from the anti-racist message of Remembrance of the Daleks to the environmentalist message of The Green Death or even as far back as Planet of Giants. One wonders how those people who apparently think Doctor Who is too left wing would have made of Malcolm Hulme. I’m afraid that’s how the programme has always been.

No; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the programme’s style, direction or broad show running approach. It’s just that the scripts have on average been sub-par. Will Season Thirty-Eight show any improvement?

This is the first two-parter of the Chibnall era and, I believe, the first since 1989 to have an overall story title rather than individual ones. It’s the first time in fifty-six years (The Enemy of the World is tenuous) that Doctor Who has done James Bond. It's got our first pre-titles teaser since Chibnall took over. It's also got a rejigged theme tune and title sequence- I like it.

It's also awesome. I'm not sure Chibnall will be able to keep it up but this is his second very, very good script in a row. The James Bond stuff is fun- the ridiculous number of gadgets, the casino party in tuxedos, the constant spying theme, and a brief but scene-stealing role for the great Stephen Fry as "C". We also get a motorbike chase- Pertwee would have loved this. The perilous sat nav scene was awesome, and far better than the similar scene in The Sontaran Stratagem. But the spies are not only alien but seem to be beings made of energy, wanting to invade our universe... perhaps. And Lenny Henry is excellent as a sinister IT tycoon and Bond villain... or is he? He's dodgy in a Mark Zuckerberg, privacy-invading sort of way, probably giving us the real-world subtext of what the story may end up being about, but could he be a red herring?

It's encouraging, too, that all four regulars get decent amounts of stuff to do, although the globe-trotting premise (South Africa is made to stand in for Ivory Coast and Australia, at least) certainly helps. Yaz, in particular, seems to be receiving some development as a character- we begin to see tensions appear between her travels in the TARDIS and her career as a police officer.

But THAT cliffhanger... I never suspected, being completely unspoiled, that Sacha Dhawan, having previously played Waris Hussein, would be the new Master. I punched the air, and again with the extra reveal of the Tissue Compression Eliminator. Even more intriguingly, before the cliffhanger ending with a bomb, a plane, and the Doctor somehow ending up in some other reality, he tells the Doctor that "Everything you think you know is wrong". Is this heralding a major retcon on the Time Lords this season, or the Doctor's past? What about the "Timeless Child" stuff from last season?

Regardless, I'm well and truly hooked. Best season opener since Deep Breath. Possibly.