Spyfall (TV story)
Spyfall was the two-part opening story to series 12 of Doctor Who. It saw the Thirteenth Doctor and company team up with MI6, and re-introduced the Spy Master, now in a new incarnation played by Sacha Dhawan. This Master indirectly mentioned using the Tissue Compression Eliminator, marking its re-introduction to the revived series.
Synopsis
The security of the entire world is at stake, so head of MI6, C, enlists The Doctor and her team to investigate former agent spy Daniel Barton to see if he's been turned against them. Meanwhile an alien threat that can pass through walls, even the TARDIS's, known as the Kasaavin is wiping out spy organisations all over the planet. Can former MI6 agent "O" help them, or is he not who he claims to be?
Plot
Part One
On the Ivory Coast, a sniper observes a vehicle, presumably containing her target. However, before she can take a shot, she is attacked from behind by an unknown creature.
On a passenger aeroplane above the Pacific Ocean, enroute to Tokyo, a passenger is handed a washbag by an older passenger. Hiding within the cabin toilet, she finds microfilm hidden within the bag, which she observes and swallows. After this, she is attacked from behind by another creature.
In Moscow, an American operative returns to his safehouse in an attempt to escape a pursuer. As he calls for extraction, he looks above to see one of the creature phasing through the ceiling. Unable to move, he only watches in horror as it attacks him.
In Sheffield, Yorkshire, Ryan Sinclair is playing basketball with his friends. After a missed shot, Ryan and his friend Tibo have a chat, talking about his absence due to the Doctor - all of which are blamed on appendicitis, a hernia and a detached retina. They are cut off as they see a car parked in front of them and men in dark grey suits standing by.
At their flat, Sonya is pestering Yasmin Khan for Ryan's phone number while Yaz is packing. Hakim attempts to get the Alexa to work, and Najia looks at a piece of paper, scorning, and says to Yaz that this is the third secondment she's been selected for, all during her probation period. Yaz is proud, but Najia pushes on.
Outside the police station, Yaz's boss Ramesh Sunder does not approve. He notes this is the fourth secondment he gets a secretive load of paperwork and doesn't like that he keeps losing his best probationer. He asks if this is undercover work, and says this is the last time, that she has to be present to finish her probation. He assumes that the parked car and men in dark grey suits are for her.
At his doctor's office, Graham O'Brien is rolling up his sleeve. His doctor notes how the time has flown since his procedure 4 years ago. He asks some routine questions, then offers condolences on his wife. He proffers a tablet for Graham to sign, which he does, and mentions that he's travelling. Graham leaves the office and sees a parked car with two men in dark grey suits.
At M.O.T., The Doctor has the TARDIS up on a car lift. She's wearing dark-tinted goggles and a worker's apron. Cables and tubes are hanging down from the TARDIS's bottom. The Doctor is leaving a group voice message to her "fam" on her mobile phone. She notes they said in an hour and that they are late, very late. She hangs up and turns to see three parked cars and six men in dark grey suits, one of them approaching her. She greets them, noting they are "rocking the ominous look". The man says she needs to come with them. She asks if she can finish up first as she's draining the water slides, the boating lakes, and the rainforest floor. Also, she's waiting for her mates. The man says her friends are in the car and Graham pops his head out of a window and calls it the "worst Uber ever".
With the companions in the backseat and the Doctor in the passenger seat, the man is driving them someplace, guided by SatNav. The Doctor turns around to talk with the companions. The SatNav starts to fritz out, then a red beam shoots from it, killing the man. The car then accelerates wildly for a bit, then stops in the middle of the road. The companions try to escape, but the doors won't open. The Doctor tries to use her sonic screwdriver, but the SatNav starts up again, noting that in 5 seconds, "Die! Die! Die!". The car then starts up again, driving in reverse while the Doctor tries to stop it. Red beams shoot from the SatNav. The Doctor grabs the rearview mirror and uses it to reflect a beam back to the SatNav, destroying it. The car stops just before falling off the end of the road. C talks over the car's speaker, and convinces the Doctor to come to MI6, in London.
The team arrives at MI6. As they climb the stairs inside, the Doctor sees the TARDIS and notes that it's arrived undamaged. Graham remarks in wonder that he's always wanted to be a spy, and Ryan banters with him that he'd be a terrible spy. C greets them at the top of the stairs, but mistakenly addresses Graham as the Doctor. When his assistant Franklin corrects him, he notes "I read the files, the Doctor is a man." The Doctor replies that she's "had an upgrade". C verbally defends himself from the Doctor's and Yaz's accusations and slights, then announces that he is authorised by "every security agency around the globe" and asks for help.
While walking down the corridor, C briefs the team on the situation - that intelligence officers of all nationalities around the globe have been attacked, that the attacks were not from rival intelligence agencies, and that no agency has the technology to perform these kinds of attacks. Arriving at a door, C uses a wall-mounted hand scanner to access the room and leads the team in. In a hospital bed and connected to various medical equipment with tubes and wires, is the passenger from the Tokyo flight. C hands the Doctor a tablet saying her expertise is "dealing with the impossible". The Doctor takes the tablet and agrees that it's impossible; her DNA has been rewritten, that she's no longer human, just a shell. The Doctor mentions that this is beyond any human technology.
In his office, C provides Team TARDIS with three briefcases of spy equipment, including anesthetic darts, laser-shoe gun, infrared-ID duplicator, calendar hacker, lock breakers, rocket launcher cuff-links, retinal ID decoder, and tongue immobilizer chewing gum.
to be added
Cast
- The Doctor - Jodie Whittaker
- Graham O'Brien - Bradley Walsh
- Yasmin Khan - Mandip Gill
- Ryan Sinclair - Tosin Cole
- O - Sacha Dhawan
- Daniel Barton - Lenny Henry
- C - Stephen Fry
- Najia Khan - Shobna Gulati
- Hakim Khan - Ravin J Ganatra
- Sonya Khan - Bhavnisha Parmar
- Sniper - Melissa De Vries
- Passenger - Sacharissa Claxton
- Older Passenger - William Ely
- Operative (US) - Brian Law
- Tibo - Buom Tihngang
- Sergeant Ramesh Sunder - Asif Khan
- Mr Collins - Andrew Bone
- Rendition Man - Ronan Summers
- Ethan - Christopher McArthur
- Seesay - Darron Meyer
- Browning - Dominique Maher
- Voice of Kasaavin - Struan Rodger
Crew
to be added
References
The Doctor
- The Doctor once lived in the Outback for 123 years.
Technology
- Hakim tries and fails to use Alexa.
- The Doctor contacts "O" using an iPhone, through WhatsApp.
- "O" encrypted his location using steganography.
Popular culture
- Hakim asks Alexa to play Rubber Soul.
- Graham calls the grey-suited men's car the "worst Uber ever".
- Ryan decides that his spy name will be "Logan", but starts panicking upon realising he looks "nothing like Hugh Jackman".
- The Doctor introduces herself to the party receptionist as "[the name's] Doctor, The Doctor" in James Bond style.
- During the lead-up to his real identity, “O” states his house flying outside the plane is “[b]it Wicked Witch of the West”.
Story notes
- This was the first multi-part television story to be given one overarching title since 2009-10's The End of Time, and only the second such story in the BBC Wales era.
- Incidentally, both stories aired in part on New Year's Day, and both featured the Master.
- Part one of Spyfall was, in fact, broadcast on the 10th anniversary of 1 January 2010's The End of Time: Part Two. Each aired on the first day of their respective decade, according to one outlook on the bounds of such a measurement, which this wiki follows.
- The first part of this story was dedicated to the memory of the "Masterful" Terrance Dicks. Dicks was script editor for the Master's debut story, Terror of the Autons.
- Some scenes in this story were filmed in South Africa.
- This story's title is a play on the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall.
- According to one news source, the story also pays homage to Casino Royale, the first novel in the Bond series, which was centred on gambling and aristocracy.[1]
- The concept of MI6 members being known by a single letter, namely "C" and "O", may also be in reference to a similar feature ("M" and "Q") seen throughout the James Bond franchise, introduced in the original novels by Ian Fleming.
- Additionally, it has been something of an in-joke for fans of Doctor Who that the reason that James Bond has different faces might be because he is actually a Time Lord.
- This is the first episode since Twice Upon a Time to include a "cold opening".
Ratings
- 4.48 million (BBC overnight)[2]
Filming locations
to be added
Production errors
to be added
Continuity
- A doctor offers Graham his condolences regarding Grace O'Brien's death. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)
- It has been four years since Graham's operation. Previously, in September 2018, he told the Doctor that he had been in remission for cancer for the past three years. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)
- The Doctor's life is once again threatened by a SatNav device controlled by a power intent on killing target passengers. In her tenth incarnation, the Doctor narrowly escaped from an ATMOS-controlled UNIT vehicle which was about to plunge him and Jenkins to their "final destination". (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem)
- When C dismisses the possibility of alien life, the Doctor tells him to ask GCHQ, referring to the Dalek attack of New Year's Day 2019. (TV: Resolution)
- The Doctor remarks in surprise at an entity's abilty to enter the TARDIS given its high security. (TV: Rose, The Parting of the Ways, Journey's End)
- The Doctor notes that both UNIT (TV: Resolution, PROSE: Lucy Wilson and the Bledoe Cadets) and Torchwood (TV: Doomsday, Children of Earth: Day One, AUDIO: Thoughts and Prayers) are "gone".
- The Master, while still under the guise of O, refers to the Doctor as having once been a man. (TV: An Unearthly Child, Twice Upon a Time, et al.) Graham recalls the Doctor having made this claim, which he believed to be a joke. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)
- Graham is mistaken as the Doctor, (PROSE: The Good Doctor) and the Doctor herself is immediately dismissed, in favour of Graham, on account of her gender. (TV: The Witchfinders)
- The Doctor refers to her regeneration to female form as an "upgrade", much as Missy once did. (TV: The Witch's Familiar)
- The Master once again spends an extensive amount of time masquerading as someone else in order to carry out a long-term plan. (TV: The Sound of Drums, World Enough and Time)
- The Master has used his Tissue Compression Eliminator to shrink the original O. (TV: Terror of the Autons et al.)
- The Master claims to be the Doctor's "best enemy". Within the Death Zone, the Third Doctor previously identified the Tremas Master as such to Sarah Jane Smith. (TV: The Five Doctors)
Home video releases
to be added
External links
- Official Spyfall, Part 1 page on the Doctor Who website
Footnotes
- ↑ Laford, Andrea (27 December 2018). Doctor Who Spyfall: new images and information. CultBox. Retrieved on 1 January 2020.
- ↑ Ratings - Radio Times
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