New Who 12.2 Spyfall, part 2

[strange_complex]

That resolved out pretty well. I'm kind of glad the Alien Menace wasn't Cybermen after all. It's nice to have something new. I liked Yaz reprimanding Ryan for getting carried away and telling Barton's men the plan, and then it not just being a joke line but an actual step in the plot which helped him to find them again quickly. I liked that they acknowledged that a Master who looked like Sacha Dhawan would find it difficult to 'pass' as a Nazi general, and offered some kind of explanation for it, because that had been bothering me until they did. I liked the nods to City of Death (top of the Eiffel Tower) and Logopolis (reference to Jodrell Bank). And I'm up for a season driven by deep secrets in Gallifrey's past. I'm an absolute sucker for anything Gallifreyan.

I could have done without Ada and Noor Inayat Khan having their memories wiped at the end, though. That is a big squick for me in all fantastical fiction, and I know I've complained about it reviews of both Doctor Who (e.g. what happened to Donna) and other stories (e.g. Fantastic Beasts) before. It feels like such a huge personal violation to take someone's memories away, and it made it even worse that Ada was actively protesting against it. It doesn't even seem consistently applied, either. The Doctor has left hundreds of historical figures with their memories intact before, and I don't see that the fairly brief and confusing things they had seen would be that much of a historical problem anyway - especially since no-one was ever likely to believe them when they talked about it.

Anyway, basically OK, and I hope we'll be seeing more of Sacha's Master as the series goes on.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, I also have a memory removal squick, and I'm not pleased to see the Doctor doing it so casually. I thought she'd learned her lesson when she tried it with Clara, but never mind.

[sovay]

I could have done with Ada and Noor Inayat Khan having their memories wiped at the end, though.

I also hate memory wipes. I have to consider a friend's fix-it to the end of The Dark Is Rising canonical because otherwise I hate the series ending. Also I have a hair-raising reaction to the idea of it with Noor Inayat Khan, because she never gave up a single piece of information to the Nazis, her interrogator testified to it after the war: whatever she knew about the Doctor, she wouldn't have told.

[sfred]

I agree with all of this. I really liked it, overall.

[danieldwilliam]

I'm not sure what the problem is to which wiping those two people's memories is the (or a) solution.

What have they learned that causes a problem?

And the lack of consent is problematic. It's problematic even if there were a compellingly reason for it but I don't really see one.

Inayat-Khan died a year after we see her whilst being an undercover agent all the time. Lovelace doesn't seem the sort to blather on about strange ladies in a time travelling Australian house and if she did so I expect folk would put it down to her being Byron's daughter and a bit of a mad storyteller.