First World Anarchist: A Julie River Review of “Spyfall Part II”

As much as I think it was too soon to bring back the Master this soon, I can’t get over how truly magnificent Sacha Dhawan’s performance is as The Master. He’s possibly the most terrifying and most sinisterly playful Master to date. I really want to see the regeneration from Missy to Sacha Dhawan’s Master, simply because I think Dhawan would absolutely rock that dress.

Now, I brought that up in a Doctor Who Facebook group and several people suggested that Dhawan is playing an earlier version of the Master, perhaps even from the Master’s first set of regenerations back in the classic series, citing his obsession with killing the Doctor as well as his use of tissue compression, both of which are more indicative of early Masters than they are of Missy. Nice theories, but there’s a fatal flaw in them: the Master knows that Gallifrey is in a bubble universe, which places him after “Day of the Doctor,” meaning he has to be at least a later version than John Simm’s Master. It’s possible that this Master is between Simm’s Master and Missy, but I doubt it. I think that this is probably the next Master after Missy, which, as I pointed out last week, means Chibnall is essentially ignoring the redemptive arc that Missy was on. But then again, regeneration can change a lot of things, like when the 12^th Doctor became a much angrier man than his predecessor. Others bring up that Missy was supposed to be unable to regenerate after the Master shot her with the full blast of his laser screwdriver, but that’s a ridiculous and petty complaint as the Master has easily escaped much worse fates than that and I can imagine several ways they could have survived. I would have liked an explanation for how the Master survived, but I can understand why the Doctor didn’t ask since the Doctor wasn’t there for Missy’s death.

It’s hard to believe that Doctor Who is a children’s show sometimes, and this is one of those times, as Barton killing his own mother and the Master posing as a Nazi are pretty dark even for the show that suggested once that we might be fully conscious when we get cremated after death. I said I missed the show’s darkness last season, and it was sort of nice to see it return. Still, it was a little frustrating to see Gallifrey gone again after the Doctor (not to mention Steven Moffat) went through so much effort to bring back Gallifrey and the Time Lords. I really hope that we find that some Time Lords survived (and some promotional images from later in the season suggest they have).

And oh yes, the Timeless Child. Finally, a new season-long mystery to unravel and speculate on. Who is the Timeless Child? While it has echoes of “An Unearthly Child,” it doesn’t make sense for Susan to be the stuff of legends around the founding of Gallifrey. Omega would make a bit more sense, as he’s supposed to be the founder of Time Lord society. Could we finally be getting into some Cartmel Madterplan stuff? Probably not, but a girl can dream. But it’s nice to see Chibnall taking a deep dive into the show’s mythology.

Chibnall seems to be doing much less writing than last season, and next week we get an episode from Ed Hime who gave us last season’s brilliant Norwegian string theory mystery, “It Takes You Away,” so I’m looking forward to it. So see ya next time!