Doctor Who (TV Series) Spyfall: Part One (2020) User Reviews

That's more like it!

[Sleepin_Dragon · 7/10 · 1 January 2020]

The question on most fans lips, would the show get back to a place where it United fans, rather than divided them. Could this two part, Bond inspired caper win some fans back?

The beginning felt like a carbon copy of Resolution, I'd argue that was perhaps not such a bad thing.

Stephen Fry's mistaking Graham for The Doctor... a minor irritation for many I would imagine.

The visuals, fantastic, I wonder how much of the series budget went in this episode? It looked terrific, very lavish, with fantastic location work and great CGI.

I loved the alien threat, the best thing about this story, they were menacing, sinister, and looked really rather good. The fact that this is a two part story has allowed them time to develop.

Jodie..... I'm still not sure she's had a script with moments to give her that scene that defines her character. That moment wasn't here, her appearance was hugely improved by the evening dress though. Lenny Henry was excellent. Loved Sacha Dhawan.

Overall, they threw the kitchen sink at us, they perhaps offered up too much, car chases, aeroplane getaways etc, they kept the knockout punch til the end, I was not expecting such a big revelation here, loved it though. All in all though, I really liked it. 7/10

What a way to come back!

[maxglen · 7/10 · 1 January 2020]

Not only is Who back but with a bang, the cinematography is fantastic, the effects are brilliant, the music is delightfully Bond and the creatures are creepy! Also... THAT TWIST! Also did anyone else notice the morse code in the next time? Four knocks. Man I haven't been this excited for who in a long time, that final scene had me grinning from ear to ear. 8.9/10

Where did THAT come from?!

[ryanjmorris · 7/10 · 1 January 2020]

Energy. Style. Something for everyone to do. Moments for Whitaker to shine. Any actual sense of threat or urgency.

Pretty much everything missing from the previous season was brought thrillingly back with Spyfall. We don't have the full narrative yet, so most answers remain unresolved, but all you can ask from a Part One is that it has enough mystery to see you through to the end and leaves you wanting more. Spyfall does it perfectly.

Best episode of the show since Moffat left.

Spyfall - Part One

[Prismark10 · 8/10 · 1 January 2020]

Well the last episode of Doctor Who I saw was a rewatch. The Time of the Rani: Part 4.

What a contrast. This was a cinematic epic with South Africa standing in for Australia, Ivory Coast and California.

It was more than being just a James Bond pasiche. Spies are incapacitated and their DNA are being re-written. The Doctor is called into action by C. As in the Bond movie Spectre, C stands for Careless, he gets shot dead.

Writer Chris Chibnall has a go at tech companies that love to capture private data. The alien menace seemed to be more Torchwood inspired. The cliffhanger reveals the real spymaster and maybe there is a nod to the film, The Matrix.

Chibnall still likes exposition in his dialogue but it might be we are used to the Moffat era where it was all explained away as being timey-wimey.

What happened to this brilliant show?

[digivoss · 6/10 · 3 January 2020]

I started this episode with very low expectations. Being the biggest fan of the Davies and Moffat era of Who, loving the Doctors 9 through 12 and their brilliantly complementing companions, season 11 with its absurd (in the wrong sense!) writing, cramped dialogue and characters which were not built up at the end of the season broke my Doctor Who loving heart. So, I thought maybe they packed it out this season and turned the show back to its glory. Unfortunately this was a big no.

You can easily tell somewhat more budget went into this episode. Stunning locations, decent to good CGI, etc. But, this won't ever cover the fact that I still don't know who the companions are. And I continue to wonder why there are bloody three of them. There is no possible dialogue to build a personality of, the writers force the "they are now best friends" schtick on them but to me they are just faces with some sentences attached to. I feel not a single emotion from them, and I don't even blame the actors for this, I believe it's because of the fact that there are so many there is no room for the characters to breathe and get gritty. Two companions work! Rose and Jack were an excellent duo, so were Amy and Rory. They worked because one character was introduced first, and then the other came, leaving room for both to develop as characters and people.

We have a lovely little twist at the end which, as any Who fan probably, got me to sit a little closer to the edge of my seat. But the episode was bittersweet to me. I had no idea what was going on, and suddenly we are surprised with a twist, making things even more complicated.

I do have a bit of hope for season 12 but I beg of the writers to ditch one or two of the companions and for Jodie, who I have seen in countless brilliant shows and films and that's why I have somewhat hope, to find the essence of the Doctor, because I feel like she's grasping for it but really not quite there.

Doctor in Bondage...

[Xstal · 8/10 · 7 January 2022]

I'd like to see James Bond as a woman, a sarky lass from Glasgow Govan, the Kasaavian silhouettes, could dance the outset, with a spy master fully interwoven.

The Chibnall era is back where it left off

[jackkemp-30612 · 6/10 · 1 January 2020]

The Chibnall era is back where it left off, a TV show which is aiming to reach the greatness of the T Davies era but isn't succeeding one bit. Whilst it seems to be a step up from the horrors of series 11, there is still the problem of unnatural acting, bleak character development and a feeling of a show which isn't doctor who.

Whilst we can all appreciate the last ten minutes as being the best moment from the Chibnall era so far, for me it doesn't make up for the rest of the episode. The reveal was excellent but yet again the character feels nontraditional to their previous incarnations. Furthermore the majority of the episode can be concluded as a mess with little to no intrigue.

Eh, I mean they are trying

[drael64 · 6/10 · 2 January 2020]

There's some mystery, it's an actual two parter, it has a villain. It's action centric because it uses a spy premise.

The tone is still inconsistent, the jokes are not only sort of out of place, but still not all that funny. Said villain seems like an odd pick, doesn't strike one as particularly menancing, yet (well it's a two parter).

Honestly it's better than s11, which tried to subvert all the things fans love about Dr who (no established aliens or villains, lots of preaching moral tales), in that it's TRYING to be exciting, adventurous, but it still can't help but trip over it's own shoelaces.

If only Chibnall could hire more experienced science fiction writers.

Give. Me. Strength.

[W011y4m5 · 5/10 · 1 January 2020]

So after an exact year's hiatus, Doctor Who's back & dissatisfying as ever under the helm of the irredeemable Chibnall with Spyfall: Part 1...

*Firstly, let's first take a quiet, reflective moment before delving any deeper to really comprehend how truly awful a title that is for an episode.*

SO, in Series 12's debut outing, he relentlessly slaps his audience in the face with the story equivalent of a wet fish; an inconsistent mess of an episode that attempts to compensate for its total lack of substance with gratuitous visual style for 60 arduous minutes, blatantly misguided in his belief that one is a satisfactory alternative for the other. Thus, we're subjected to repeated, continuous, formulaic, inconsequential action set pieces (one after the next), each blow from the haddock delivered unrepentantly until it's nothing more than a salty mush of scales strewn across our bruised, swollen cheeks...

Does this make any sense? No. It obviously doesn't have to any more. It's meaningless - almost a reflection of the writing!

To be more specific (& unlike the script, I am genuinely endeavouring with every fibre of my being to form coherent sentences - though my brain is currently still recovering from what I've unfortunately witnessed), previous showrunner Steven Moffat gifted us with the PERFECT bittersweet ending for the Master in S10 & within his 2nd launch season, Chris Chibnall has already completely undone Missy's poignant death, offered absolutely no explanation as to how she survived & regresses the character back to a clichéd, underdeveloped, two-dimensional, campy villain. Gone is the multi-layered complexity - we're back to a giggling idiot blowing up yet more planes. How reassuringly original!

In addition, Stephen Fry - a tremendous talent worthy & deserving of a decent role - is irrevocably WASTED & acts as a shamelessly glorified cameo - exploited as a recognisable face featuring on screen so that his image may be cynically utilised in S12's marketing campaign to draw in more gullible viewers.

Everything was done superficially for show - a conglomerate of consecutive hollow spectacles; as an example, what was the point in the car chase? If one were to remove it in its entirety from the episode, the set piece's absence wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference to the main narrative; indicative of both verbose storytelling & bad executive producing - to prioritise the funding & the filming of an irrelevant & expensive sequence instead of cuttingt it, saving money & redirecting the useful funds elsewhere - to something perceptibly more vital.

And herein lies Chibnall's problem - the amateurish dialogue, the lack of concision & the thinly constructed plot which progressed with such deliberate rapidity, viewers were hardly left with enough time to question the logic of what they were seeing. He's the Michael Bay of Doctor Who...

For instance, why were the 3 companions arousing suspicions with their noticeable desertion from normal life when travelling in a time machine? Surely the point of time travel is to arrive home shortly after leaving so as not to behave conspicuously? None of this is ever developed upon.

FURTHERMORE, I LOATHED how they shamelessly reused instantly recognisable set locations from some of the most iconic past episodes in the show's history since it was brought back in 2005. Instantaneously distracting...

I'm not mad. I'm just very very very very disappointed.

The Doctor will see you...

[ejaysam · 9/10 · 1 January 2020]

What an explosive start to another fantastic series of this cult classic sci-fi show!!!! Jodie Whittaker's incarnation of the Doctor has had some very harsh reviews to date, but to be honest, the spin of a female incarnation is a fresh breath of air in my opinion! Jodie has done an absolute tremendous job as the Doctor and as an actress I think she's very versatile and carries this version flawlessly! I'm not going to spoil this review by giving out details of the plot but the whole cast did an amazing job this episode especially which made me watch the episode twice, once it aired live and again on BBCiplayer. Sacha Dhawan really out shine in this episode!!! I really didn't see it coming!!! You'll know what I mean once you watch the episode....

I can't wait to see the next episode to see how it all unfolds.

It really has been worth the long wait for the series to return.

Above average Chibnall episode but had a lot more to offer

[samcaddy-55866 · 6/10 · 8 January 2022]

There were some really good ideas thrown into this episode but not enough time to flesh them out due to the decision to shoehorn both the VOR story and the Master story into the same 60 minute period. The episode should have solely been about one or the other in my opinion.

We were left with just 1 clue that "O" was the Master, they could have filled the episode up with clues and then revealed him in the second part instead of squeezing it all in, leaving it all to feel a lot less forced.

A twist doesn't make things better...

[kingkass · 5/10 · 1 January 2020]

This episode definitely improved on some aspects of the last season. The fact it's part 1 of a 2 part story gives the plot more room to breathe, and the ending makes it feel the doctor is more of a character than a plot devise (mostly). Although some people here are jumping up and down because they saw something they recognised. There are so many issues here. Three companions don't work. Nobody gets enough time and none of the companions feel like they need to be there, or even feel like people. They have no connection with each other, yet their dialogue suggests they're best friends. Why does the Doctor even like them? There is absolutely no relationship between any of the characters. The Doctor still barely has a personality. One liners and whacky quirkiness isn't the doctor. This is all so bad. Doctor Who feels so lifeless here. Definitely the worst era of DW we've ever had, which is a shame because people will blame the fact it's a female doctor when it's actually due to the horrendous writing. This feels like freaking CW show.

The dialogue is so bad. The companions, when all of them are together, are clearly just given random things to say so the audience knows they're still there. It's so bad. So so so bad.

Thrilling, Fun and Twisty!

[jogre17 · 8/10 · 2 January 2020]

This episode definitely isn't what I would call a masterpiece. Story and script wasn't perfectly written or executed, but it definitely did what it had to.

The spy aspect was thrilling and fun and constantly had me on the edge of my seat with questions. Entertaining for sure throughout and the best performance of Wittaker as the infamous Doctor to date.

Plenty of fan service was placed throughout to keep us excited and very hopeful for a fantastic new season. Fingers crossed. And the twist at the end truly through me off guard. I didn't expect that. A fun time for sure. It's nice to see the show feel like New Who again.

2020 Return

[myspam-88627 · 7/10 · 1 January 2020]

A well-rounded return with a surprise twist! Not perfect by any means, but it is the opener and the storylines are still playing out.

Series 12 begins in style, improving on the failures of series 11

[rileyhdc · 8/10 · 1 January 2020]

On virtually every front, this episode improves upon the failures of series 11.

The three companions are more dynamic and nuanced, feel more important to the story, and are generally given more time to shine.

The monsters are more threatening and interesting.

And of course, the Doctor feels more... like the Doctor. Whittaker still hasn't been given the opportunity to establish herself as the character with a fantastic moment like all previous Doctors have, but she's definitely getting there.

The twist is also surprising and genuinely exhilarating and the end to the episode is interesting and leaves a desire to keep watching.

Let's just hope Chibnall keeps at this quality or even gets better and this series may well be worthy of the title of Doctor Who.

Spyfall: Part One

[studioAT · 7/10 · 30 May 2020]

Some people aren't going to like the Doctor being a woman. Jodie Whittaker could play the role for longer than Tom Baker and people would still complain. People need to embrace change I think.

I thought this James Bond inspired episode (Part 1 of 2) was a lot of fun, fleshing out the 13th Doctor a little bit more, and her 'fam'.

There's some lovely moments, some nice action sequences, and a strong twist to round of the half.

This for me continued the good form the New Years Day Special started.

Keep doing as you're doing Doctor Who, you can't please everyone.

Amazing!!

[lachlanburgess98-719-457279 · 10/10 · 2 January 2020]

Finally! No matter what anyone says this episode does deliver even if it is a bit slow at times. Like come on it's doctor who just enjoy it it's back, and finally something big to really explore throughout this new season. It has probably the third biggest twist in all of doctor who.

Such a massive improvement from last season

[erlendvoaden · 1 January 2020]

It may have felt slightly unsatisfying but that is to be expected from a 'Part 1'. Much better writing and performances, i just hope part 2 expands on the monsters and doesn't step over the boundary of unbelievably. Like how many times was the front of their motorcycles shot, it's like he was aiming. Anyway, i'm nit-picking, a much brighter future for doctor who lies ahead (i hope)

Spyfall: Part One

[MrFilmAndTelevisionShow · 7/10 · 10 September 2021]

Interesting action sequences, interesting aliens, interesting plot twist at the end, great acting, great visuals. However the episode itself was fine it wasn't particularly gripping, spooky, or anything else. The episode Blink keeps you on the edge of your seat because the episode makes you want to know what happens. This series has such a different feel to it, than previous Doctor's namely 12 and before that when the Master is revealed although the acting is spot on he doesn't yet feel like him. It's all very strange, and hopefully will be revealed in part 2.

Best under Whitaker's era

[2004Daniel · 5/10 · 1 January 2020]

Definitely an improvement from series 11 however that's not to say this episode was good by any stretch of the imagination.

The episode definitely picked up in the second half and the story is OKAY but the script is just terrible. Sometimes it's just cringy or sometimes dull, I actually sometimes feel sorry for the actors.

Having said all that I'll definitely be watching Part 2 on Sunday, and hopefully more will be explained.

So long as Chris Chibnall is in charge I can't imagine it will ever pick up under Jodie Whitaker.

Masterful

[galvedere · 9/10 · 1 January 2020]

Part One:

Well plotted, well paced. Masterful reveal.

Plenty of shallow focus and, so far, excellent alien threat.

Great first episode.

7.3/10

[rohanumpleby · 7/10 · 4 January 2020]

It is a lot better than siries 11, It has more character and it is a bit more funnier. The Master is back to which is great for the fans. And I bet the second part will be really good to. It is a big Improvement and I think this siries will be more funnier hopefully, because I like things more when they have a bit of humour. I think the siries will maybe progress In some episodes, and some of them stay a little flat like series 11 was. This one is better then all the 11 siries stories. And it is more exiting then the other siries. S the fans are in for a treat.

Really dissapointed. It's an ambitious episode, but not executed well

[pjgs200 · 4/10 · 3 January 2020]

I'll upload my full review in a bit, but Spyfall part one was disappointing.

I have a couple of big issues with the episode.

1. The direction. LOTS of missed opportunities to make things creepy or tense. There's a noticeable lack of reaction shots. Walsh and Whittaker turn in weak performances. The humor fell flat for me the entire episode.

2. The writing. The jokes just weren't funny for me. Again, too much exposition. I remember noticing that I zoned out the moment O began talking about tech companies at the house. And when it comes to the Doctor, her characterization is frustrating. Previous Doctors commanded attention, were always the smartest in the room and had authority. Whittaker's Doctor is always frazzled by everything and playing catch up, never in control of what's going on. It's a disservice to the fans, the character, and the actress.

3. The music. There were some good bits in the score, but the constant music in *every scene* makes things feel same-y. Fun scenes aren't fun when there's dramatic atmospheric music in the background.

Overall, it's not an inspired effort. I don't think the visuals were that great, Whittaker wasn't good (why is her Doctor so devoid of authority?), Walsh wasn't good. It's not a good start and probably my least favorite opener. I'm looking forward to a new director next week.

Great start!

[tobylythgoe · 10/10 · 1 January 2020]

This is a great start to the new series!!!

I've hated the anticipation because I couldn't wait for doctor who to return!

But this is truly proof it was worth the wait!