Doctor Who – Spyfall – Part One

By: Ellie Dolan-Yates

Across the globe, several spies are being targeted by monsters materializing through the walls. In Sheffield, Ryan (Tosin Cole) is playing basketball with his mates when he is approached by what look like the “Men In Black.” Meanwhile, Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Graham (Bradley Walsh) are also approached. The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) is doing some maintenance to her TARDIS when she is approached by the agents. Despite telling them that she is in the middle of draining the water slides, the boating lakes and the rain forest floor she is advised to go with them. Graham sticks his head out of the back of one of the cars to shout, “worst Uber ever!”

The Doctor asks her “fam” how everyone is-  apart from being kidnapped. Her plan is to just see where they are being taken. Her plan goes a bit awry though when the sat nav kills the agent (Ronan Summers) driving them and the car decides to drive itself. Very fast. Backwards. Through traffic. The Doctor uses her trusty sonic screwdriver to try and stop the car before it reverses them onto the motorway below. With a mobile phone, she reflects the sat nav’s killer beams onto itself and the car stops just in time. A voice comes over the comms to ask what they’re doing to his car. The Doctor explains that his car just assassinated its driver and tried to kill them. The voice explains that he is C (Stephen Fry) and was having them brought to MI6.

At MI6 we hear C address Graham as The Doctor. An aide whispers in his hear and he tells them not to be ridiculous as The Doctor is a man! The Doctor tells him that she’s had an upgrade.  C tells her that they need her help. It turns out that the agents who have been targeted are left as a shell, with their DNA corrupted and reshaped as if they’ve been erased. The Doctor responds that all that this is beyond human technology, something of which C was afraid of.

C shows Ryan and Graham an array of gadgets including rocket launcher cufflinks. Ryan tells Graham that they’re not toys. Graham agrees and if Ryan were to say otherwise he’ll shoot him with his laser shoe. C gives Yaz a file on Daniel Barton (Lenny Henry) located in San Francisco. He is the founder of VOR, which (according to C) is a web company more powerful than most nations. The spies that have been killed were investigating leads on Barton. C reveals to The Doctor that he sacked the one person the MI6 had investigating extra-terrestrial life. He explains that’s what UNIT and Torchwood are for. The Doctor tells him that they’re all gone and she WhatsApp’s “Horizon-watcher” to get his location. C mentions that Barton was an MI6 agent when he first went to the US. It’s possible he became a double or triple agent. At this revelation C is shot and lasers are fired at the team. They make it to the TARDIS, with the gadgets of course, and The Doctor uses the hidden pixels in a picture of a fish to find the whereabouts of Horizon-watcher. She needs to be quick though as a monster is phasing through the TARDIS door! This is obviously concerning as nothing is supposed to be able to get into the TARDIS. What’s more concerning is that the sonic screwdriver can’t pick up any readings. The Doctor takes Graham with her to the Australian outback and sends Ryan and Yaz to investigate Barton with a 90% assurance that they’ll be safe. Well, seventy-five percent. Forty percent minimum.

Yaz and Ryan have hacked Barton’s diary in order to get a meeting with him. Yaz is undercover as a journalist and Ryan as a photographer. Ryan begins to panic that his spy name is Logan and he looks nothing like Hugh Jackman. Barton greets the pair and it turns out that two of his PR team got fired for the mixup in his diary. Oops! There’s a tense moment when Barton searches the pair online, but (luckily) they have profiles set up. Yaz uses the DNA scanner disguised as a recorder and Ryan uses his camera to scan and replicate Barton’s I.D badge. Barton cuts the meeting short but invites Yaz and Ryan to his birthday party. The DNA scanner tells Yaz that Barton is only ninety-three percent human.

In the Australian desert O (Sacha Dhawan) is waiting with his secret service guards Seesay (Darron Meyer) and Browning (Dominique Maher). O asks if C’s murder was related to the alien attacks on spies, but The Doctor says she’d hoped he’d have more information about that. Graham unveils O’s tech setup. O says he can’t be too careful. Outside the movement sensors are tripping .but The Doctor can’t get any readings from her sonic screwdriver again. It’s not long before Seesay and Browning are devoured by fluorescent figures. O tells The Doctor to retreat. A figure gets through the walls, but they manage to trap it. The figure tells The Doctor that they are from far beyond her understanding. They’re also ready to take this universe.

Back in San Francisco Yaz and Ryan let themselves into Barton’s office to pull data from his computer. Yaz tells Ryan that her sister (Bhavnisha Parmar) still isn’t happy that she won’t give her Ryan’s number. Ryan tells Yaz to give it her as he’d be a good brother-in-law. Things get tense as Barton approaches. They hide behind the sofa in his office. The monsters appear and tell him that there’s been obstacles and Barton says he told them to be discreet. They tell him that the project must continue as planned and they need to defend. Barton takes his bag and leaves. Ryan wants to get out but Yaz wants to see what else is there. However, she’s taken by one of the monsters into what looks like an eerie underworld of supersized DNA strands. With Yaz being taken, the glow in the trapped figure at the hut intensifies. After a blast of light from the trapped figure, a shell-shocked Yaz is transported into the hut.

Yaz tells Ryan she thought she was dead, but he says he’ll never let that happen to her. O tells Graham that he knew The Doctor briefly when she was a man. This shocks Graham as he always thought The Doctor was joking. O tells him that he has a whole shelf of info on The Doctor if he wants to look, but The Doctorsays to meet out front. O explains that military operations across the globe rely on servers operated by VOR. The Doctor has found alien code relating to a small company in Barton’s empire. She decodes it the same way as she did the picture of the fish. It shows co-ordinates of all the fluorescent creatures across planet earth. She works out that they’re alien spies embedded on earth. It also shows her that there are multiple earths. O says that they need to find the spymaster. The Doctor lets O into the TARDIS for the first time and, just like everyone else who’s gone before him, he can’t believe his eyes.

At Barton’s birthday bash Graham and Ryan are raking it in at the roulette wheel.The Doctor thinks the aim of Blackjack is “Snap!” and Yaz and O aren’t really sure what they’re playing either. The Doctor confronts Barton outside, but he calls her unhinged and threatens her. She tells him that she’s really hard to get rid of. Barton leaves in a car and the team give chase on motorbikes. Barton shoots at them but they take cover in the lines of the vineyard. Yaz tells O this is a quiet day with The Doctor. They’ve chased Barton to a hangar and catch him escaping in his jet. As he starts to take off, The Doctor jumps into the carrier of the plane leaving everyone to follow. Barton gets a phone call as O just makes the plane. He tells The Doctor he’s never been good at sprinting which confuses her. The Doctor tells everyone to get to the main cabin.

The Doctor tells everyone to sit tight. She tells O that she read his file and that he was a champion sprinter. O tells everyone to look out of the window. His hut is floating alongside the plane! It turns out that O is…The Master! The Doctor is in shock since she met O. The Master manically claps as he reveals he has him in a matchbox after shrinking him and taking his identity. The Doctor goes to warn Barton, but he’s not there. The Master tells her to check the seat. There’s a sonic proof bomb there ready to go off. The Master reveals that he called Barton to get off the plane before takeoff. It seems controls everything – even the fluorescent monsters. The bomb goes off and everyone is left clinging to their seats, at home and on the plane! The Master tells The Doctor that everything she thinks she knows is a lie. After this she is taken by the monsters.