Premise
spoilers for this episode, which also gives nods to last week’s “The Haunting
of Villa Diodati.”
The
first part of the season finale reads a little to me like the first part of the
season premiere: some interesting threads and some good character moments
hampered by too much plot messiness, but the ending has my excited for next
week’s conclusion. I loved “Spyfall: Part 2,” so hopefully Chibnall will pull
off the same trick and the season finale will be great.
The
Doctor, Yaz, Graham, and Ryan head to a war-torn ruin near the end of the Cyber
Wars in search of the Lone Cyberman, a Cyberman caught halfway between human
and conversion with human emotions fueling the zealotry of his deadly rampage.
They meet and attempt to help a small group of human survivors while the Doctor
works to figure out the Lone Cyberman’s ultimate aim and stop him.
Honestly,
once I hit on the “Spyfall: Part One” comparison, I couldn’t stop seeing it.
There’s a lot of cool, intriguing stuff here. The Lone Cyberman is a neat
concept, and I’m interested to see where the show goes with it. While it’s a
lighter episode for Ryan, both Yaz and Graham make a strong showing, having to
fend for themselves a bit as they help the survivors, and all three companions
have some good lines/moments. We visit an interesting new locale, and there are
some nice if perplexing interludes in what looks like maybe early(-ish?)-20th-century
Ireland. The Doctor gets some fun bits, my favorite being her ramble down
memory lane while she hotwires a spaceship.
But
again, like “Spyfall: Part One,” there’s an unfortunate amount of flab and
inconsistencies too. Given the setup of the episode (that the Cyber Wars have
drive Cybermen and humans alike to near extinction,) it doesn’t make sense that
the Cybermen are so trigger-happy with our heroes and the human survivors –
surely their interest in their own continued survival would prompt them to
capture/convert rather than shoot? And while I like a number of the different
threads, they don’t gel together at this point. Not even in an “I wonder how
this is all going to fit together!” sense, more like a “good luck getting all
this to fit together!” sense. Now, maybe it’ll come together magnificently next
week, and I’ll eat my words. I hope it does. But for now, this aspect of the
episode has me scratching my head, not waiting with bated breath to find out
what happens next. Finally, it’s not an especially strong episode for the Doctor.
It’s one where she doesn’t get to feel particularly effectual for much of the
time, and those episodes always get me feeling a little nervous.
Yet,
there’s that ending, kicking my anticipation for the finale into high gear.
Maybe Chibnall is a bit like Suzanne Collins. Sometimes the Hunger Games books were great, sometimes
not so much, but goodness gracious, that woman knows her way around a
cliffhanger. I had to start actively choosing to stop reading those books when
I had a page or two left in a chapter, because I knew that the final paragraph
would send me scrambling to read on and find out what happened next. Bring on
the conclusion to this season!
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