#Henry 30 seconds later after seeing the first person come up: eh sure that seems good

[discocandles]

Ok that was definitely supposed to be the most fruity episode of Henry Danger, and that's a show I can barely seen as remotely heterosexual.

Like Ray and Henry basically downloaded Grindr i mean Rumblr, a fighting app and go to a gay fighting bar on a double "fight".

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who Series 12 Review Part 1/10: Spyfall Part One

Air date: 1 January 2020

Bond. We’re going James Bond.

Series 12 started off with the first of a two-part episode with spies and guest stars alike. This is the first two-parter I’ve encountered during the course of these reviews, so there will be things that don’t make sense for the time being that will hopefully be answered in the next episode.

This is my spoiler-free thought for this episode: “It has to be something else.”

As usual, spoilers are coming after the break. This time around, I want to make this clear - please make sure you’ve watched the whole episode before you continue reading.

Bad (Aussie) airtimes

Before I go into the episode proper, I want to vent a little bit about air times and how the move to Sundays have spoiled a few aspects of it. As you may know, I’m Australian and as such, we are about half a day ahead of the UK. Viewers in the US will be able to watch it on (practically) the same day on BBC America because they’re hours behind the UK, while for us, we have to wait to the next day.

In 2018 for Series 11, episodes were broadcast on ABC at 6 PM on Mondays, which is the day after broadcast in the UK. However, with the first episode being broadcast on a Wednesday in the UK, it will be broadcast on the ABC on Thursday at 7:30. Here’s the real kicker; where subsequent episodes would be broadcast on Sundays in the UK, the ABC will be broadcasting the second episode next Thursday, but at 8:00. I don’t have anything else further than that, so I’m presuming that it will be the case for the time being unless I see otherwise.

Until the end of Series 10, episodes would be broadcast on the ABC at 7:30 on Sundays, but with the UK premiere being moved to Sundays, I can see that the ABC is having some difficulty finding a good time for it. This week, that is, for the week of 29 December, Grand Designs Australia is being repeated in the 6 PM weeknight timeslot, while for the week for 5 January, which is next week, there are two shows in that same timeslot, namely the ABC Evening News and Summer Drum, the former of which is also broadcast on the ABC News channel and keeping in mind that the usual ABC state bulletins are at 7 PM.

I’m not really complaining about this per se, but you can see where I’m coming from and why that time might be inconvenient for some people when the school year starts at the end of January to the start of February. Even if I had something to complain about in regards to this, my whole argument is rendered moot thanks to the popularity of streaming and catchup services over the past decade. The episodes are on ABC iView by 7 AM the next day, essentially right after the UK broadcast, but even if delays or time zones screw us over, we’ll somehow find ways to watch the episodes eventually.

Defying all expectations

The initial enemy in the episode is something called the Kasaavin (according to the credits), who are apparently monsters not from this universe that come out of walls, can hack technology and even walk into a closed TARDIS. It feels like when you’re prepared for everything you already know about, you’re not prepared for anything you don’t know unless it’s too late. This is a trope that’s been repeated many times and yet it still keeps me interested.

Daniel Barton is shown to be affiliated with these monsters, but to what extent (and how he only has 93% human DNA) is unknown at this point. We also see them attacking spies across the world (because they were investigating Barton), but how their DNA was jumbled up we have no information for yet.

O, the elephant in the room

Hopefully everything up to this point was enough for you to confirm that you’ve watched the episode. Anyway, I’m just going to come out and say it - I refuse to believe that Sacha Dhawan is the Master.

Sacha Dhawan was initially rumoured to be playing another incarnation of the Master. Rumours also state that John Simm could be returning because some Vote Saxon posters were spotted in Cardiff back in April.

The only way I can believe that Sacha Dhawan is the Master is if that incarnation is between Saxon and Missy or even before that. There is no confirmation of this as yet, but if so, that could explain the character discrepancy in regards to Missy turning good. In my personal project, I used the gap between Saxon and Missy to implement two additional incarnations. I initially thought it didn’t make sense because they weren’t linear to the Doctor’s timeline, but then I remembered the Series 10 finale two-parter. Saxon’s incarnation came from after the Tenth Doctor’s time and met the Twelfth Doctor and Missy near the end of their lives. He then became Missy and confronted the Twelfth Doctor since the start of his life.

When we (apparently) last saw the Master, the Saxon incarnation shot Missy with a full blast of his modified laser screwdriver, which apparently prevented her regeneration. If Missy regenerated into the O incarnation now, it wouldn’t make sense because of this. Maybe Saxon lied and he didn’t actually give Missy the full blast, but then the question lies as to how Missy’s next incarnation would manage to leave the Mondasian ship with no TARDIS of their own.

There’s also the problem of the Tissue Compression Eliminator, which he used to shrink the original O on his first day at MI6. The last time the Master was seen using it on screen was in the classic series episode The Ultimate Foe. During his Saxon incarnation, he used a laser screwdriver while Missy used a multi-purpose device and later a sonic umbrella.

In all honesty, either the Master shouldn’t have been killed off (by Moffat) or should have stayed dead, given that his story ended in The Doctor Falls. You know what would have been a better choice to bring back if we’re looking for old enemies of the Doctor? The Rani. Nothing has been mentioned of her in the revived Doctor Who, plus if the Doctor and the Master regenerated into female incarnations, there’s no reason why the Rani can’t regenerate into a male incarnation. But could the Rani behave more like the Master, though, given that she is an evil scientist?

Look, these are just my initial thoughts on this. We’ll hopefully get more context next episode.

Other general thoughts

After the series premiere was announced, Stephen Fry and Sir Lenny Henry were revealed to be guest stars in this episode. I haven’t really followed them, particularly the latter, in other works, however I felt that they were pretty good, and so was Sacha Dhawan, who had previously played Waris Hussein in the docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time.

This time around, I feel like we’ve gone back to what Doctor Who was before the end of Series 10, in terms of tone, themes and writing. I wasn’t able to find any tokusatsu parallels or references, nor was I able to find any SJW red flags. If the problem of racial representation still exists, then I think that has been solved (at least in this episode) by the performance of Lenny Henry and Sacha Dhawan. Keep in mind that this is only the first part, though.

At the start of the episode, I thought I was seeing Ryan’s dyspraxia in action when he missed the ring, but then he goes on to state other things that I realised were excuses for his travel with the Doctor. It’s good that they haven’t forgotten about it, at least, but this also serves as a reminder that the Doctor’s companions have their own lives to live as well and that for many of them, her adventures take them away from it. In this series, the only exception to that rule seems to be Graham; he’s retired and following Grace’s death, has no other known family with the exception of Ryan. Clara during Series 7 also comes to mind; unlike other companions who seemingly travel with the Doctor full-time, she is only able to go on adventures on Wednesdays. During Series 8, we see her having to juggle her life as a teacher with her life as the Doctor’s companion.

The text for the locations looks better than they did on Resolution. That giant Impact font was really jarring, eh?

According to C (Stephen Fry), MI6 does not accept the possibility of alien life. However, according to the Doctor Who Wiki, they have had quite a bit of involvement, particularly in the comics, where they formed a division known as Wonderland to combat alien threats.

UNIT and Torchwood were also mentioned in this episode as organisations that MI6 leave alien work to, but the Doctor mentions that they are now gone. Man, they’re really trying to distance themselves from the Davies and Moffat eras, aren’t they? I can buy the Doctor thinking that Torchwood is gone given events that happened in their series, though their audio adventures are still ongoing.

The TARDIS console room has also been redesigned a little for this series. There are more round things on the columns, plus there is a second crystal pointing down to the central column.

Summary and verdict

The Chibnall era is essentially a clean slate for Doctor Who, with UNIT and Torchwood being out of the picture. Series 11 was apparently an experimental series going back to the historically educational nature of the First Doctor’s era, but in Series 12, the returning enemies and monsters (that started with Resolution) are signs that signify the series returning to the tone and pace it did during the revived series.

Like I said, I’m still not sure about the Master, but my feelings may change by the next episode. It’s not even confirmed yet whether O really is the Master at all, so there’s something to find out when we get there.

This essentially acts as a New Year’s Special for 2020. The rest of the series will continue on Sundays.

The next episode seems to be a historical episode as according to Cultbox, a part of it will take place in 1943 Paris. We will also be seeing three historical figures, namely Noor Inyat Khan, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace.

Rating: 8/10

The story continues on Sunday (or Monday) as I review the second episode, Spyfall Part Two. Hopefully, all our questions will be answered then...