I'm pretty sure O hasn't been in a previous adventure. For better or for worse, this is his first go-round.

I have things to say about this ep, mostly about the Master and the James Bond (side not: this is not the first time Doctor Who has done James Bond) but right this instant I'm mostly miffed that part 2 isn't showing here until Thursday. The hell, ABC?

Anyway, a few quick notes:

Curious who the aliens are. They remind me of the Boneless from Flatline in Season 8 (one of my favourite eps from that season), especially when they're pushing through walls and such. Given they're invading from another universe or dimension or whatever, that could work. Most disappointing possibility would be the Cybermen. They seem like a clear riff on Army of Ghosts (in which too the Cybermen invaded from a parallel universe), so Cybermen is a chance; which would make this the third adventure in the last few years to pair the Master with them. My favourite and most obscure possibility is one person suggesting that they've brought back the Vardans. (Conceptually speaking, that could actually work.)

I'm a bit miffed that they killed off Stephen Fry in such short order. Also miffed they didn't make him more menacing. Here he is, head of MI6 and he spends a lot of time apologising for being a bit too cloak-and-dagger. (Lenny Henry, on the other hand, was a pretty effective piece of guest casting.)

There's a little more to say about this point later, but for now: the Doctor visits Australia! I can only recall two other adventures in the programs 56-year history where that's happened, and only one other where it plays a substantive role. So that's noice, it's different, it's unusual.

I quite liked this ep. It was decently pacy, set up some interesting questions, wasn't overly incoherent in plot or stance; overall I'd rate it so far as better than anything Chibnall wrote last season. Of course, that's all going to depend on how well it sticks the landing in part 2. And that said, I do think there were two key weaknesses.

First, of course, was the Master, who was disappointingly dated. Another unambitious moustache-twirler (I'm inclined to call him the Simmulacrum) is a letdown after Missy, of course. She was a great, fresh take on the character. I particularly liked her agent of chaos role in The Magician's Apprentice/The Witch's Familiar.

I thought the use of the character was tired too. This isn't the first time the Master has been hiding in plain sight, either in disguise or as a new regeneration; I count at least eight times they pull this reveal on the audience. There are a few good ones, but often it seems to serve no other purpose than a conviction that fans like that sort of thing. (My favourite is the Fifth Doctor adventure, The King's Demons, where the Master is disguised as King John's champion, Sir Gilles Estram (Estram - Master). King John himself is also a fake, being a shapeshifting alien robot. The Master's plot is to have King John act SO VERY ANNOYING to everyone that there'll be a revolution and the Magna Carta will never be signed, because why not. Oh, and the shapeshifting robot is called Kamelion, and joins the TARDIS crew. They built an actual animatronic prop for him, though they could have him look like anyone and therefore be played by any actor, so why they got hung up on the prop I don't know. In the end he came back for just one more adventure where the Doctor destroyed him, because the production team couldn't figure out how to use him for any non-Magna Carta-related plots.)

Spyfall isn't that bad but the reveal was still pretty flat. It's possible that part 2 will turn it around, but I'm not hopeful.

Oh! One other retro element to this Master, and I had to go back and check that this was the case: it's the first appearance of the Tissue Compression Eliminator since the Fifth Doctor adventure, The Planet of Fire! (Which, incidentally, was Kamelion's other adventure.) It appeared in the very first Master adventure and was a common feature of the classic series. In the new series, Simm favoured a laser screwdriver(?) and Missy had a multipurpose disintegrator thing. Another step back to the future.

My second issue concerns the James Bond theme. I mean I love the idea. There's no show on television better suited to genre cosplay than Doctor Who. And the set-up raises some interesting questions around the role of intelligence services, and the dangers of data hoovers like Facebook and Google. Spy stories and privacy/info issues should work well together. It just feels like they didn't really use it beyond a bit of dress-up - put a couple of companions on the snoop, have a scene at a casino and sub in MI6 for UNIT. Like Barton said, the aliens were too blatant to be proper spies. When the Doctor confronted Barton, she gave away more info than she got out of him. (Plus, they should really have had that convo over a game of Baccarat.) I'm a bit more optimistic that part 2 might improve here, but we'll see.

Incidentally! This isn't the first time that Doctor Who has done James Bond, not by a long shot. In 1967 there was The Enemy of the World, where the Second Doctor turns out to be the dead ringer for a Bond-style villain called Salamander. His companions Jamie and Victoria go undercover, there's a secret underground base, there are helicopter chases, a bonkers scheme to take over the world, a final showdown in the TARDIS, it's really quite good. One of the more novel Second Doctor adventures.

A nice touch there: the plot very largely hinges on a point of morality (which means it not only dresses up as James Bond, but critiques it at the same time). The Doctor gets pulled into the plot by one Giles Kent, who tells him Salamander is eeevil and wants the DoppelDoctor to help assassinate him. The Doctor says Kent's word isn't a good enough reason to commit murder and demands proof. It feels a bit simplistic, but by the end of the story it turns out the Doctor's real suspicion was about Kent's motives, because he's too ready to resort to murder. Rightly so, as it turns out Kent and Salamander used to be in cahoots until Salamander betrayed him. He doesn't want to save the world, he wants revenge and to take Salamander's place. (This, by the way, is how you can use a pacifist Doctor in a spy thriller.)

The Enemy of the World and Spyfall share one other thing in common, and here we go back to my previous post. As I mentioned, Spyfall is one of only two Doctor Who adventures that did proper scenes set in Australia. The other one was The Enemy of the World. Ironically, the source material for both adventures - the James Bond films - have never had any Australian scenes.

Back on Doctor Who, Australia did at least cop the occasional mention. The villain in The Talons of Weng Chiang, Magnus Greel, was known as the Butcher of Brisbane. Later on, John Nathan-Turner was actually interested in filming in Australia sometime, knowing Doctor Who was very popular here. He created an Australian companion, Tegan Jovanka, who was a flight attendant. Apparently the hope was that Qantas would think this was great PR and offer them free flights to Australia. (It never happened.) In Tegan's third adventure, Four to Doomsday, there was an Aboriginal group on a spaceship that had been abducted by the alien villain. (Also Greeks, Chinese and Mayans.) Naturally, the Aboriginal leader was played by a Nigerian.

Spyfall Part 2 was a big improvement over Part 1. Bring on the mytharc!

(The resolution of the actual A-plot was, I guess, fine. But I'll always forgive an unsatisfying one-shot if it comes with a dollop of long-term mythos. See also: cut my fannish teeth on X-Files.)

Semi-serious question - do Time Lords canonically have some way of sensing where they are in relation to each others' timeline? Because a question like "when did you last go home" seems like it would be REALLY hard to answer without a much longer conversation establishing when "when" is in the first place.

Hence my deep and abiding love for the wibbly wobbly timey whiney! Have not seen Part 2 yet, but I am looking forward to a nice Doctor Who escape later today.

Jessica, I recall that Gallifrey used to have something in effect (the Transduction Barrier?) that prevented Time Lords from visiting it prior to their last visit, which generally kept their interactions with each other linear, if not with even passage of years. Of course, with the Doctor and the Master zig-zagging through time frequently they probably cross each other's timelines a lot.

avoiding Who spoilers...

CW has already renewed almost its entire slate, including Roswell, which hasn't aired its S2 yet.

[link]

Meanwhile, if you would like to know more about Roswell? Ask me about Roswell.

I never got into Roswell but I'm glad to see some of the continuing shows. But I'm a bit ... confused? ... about remakes of Walker: Texas Ranger and Kung Fu. Maybe because a broadcast channel (Charge!) is running about four hours of the original Walker series every evening.