Doctor Who - Spyfall Part Two - 12.02 - Recap

**The following is a detailed recap of the episode, which means it's full of spoilers. Please don’t read any further until you’ve watched it. You can also check out my spoiler-free review from earlier today if you prefer**

Doctor WhoIn “Spyfall: Part Two,” The Doctor wakes up in the place with the hanging tentacles where Yaz had previously been, talking to herself and trying to figure out what to do.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang is still on the crashing plane without a pilot. They struggle to figure out what to do, holding on for life.

On the wall near the floor, Ryan finds a plaque that has his name and another with an arrow. He follows the signs until he finds a pamphlet on “how to land a plane without a cockpit.”

Back with the Doctor, she sees a sort of spark, like electricity moving through the tentacles, which she follows. She questions what it could be.

Doctor WhoDOCTOR: I hope it’s not a liver. I hate being inside livers. People always get so offended. “What are you doing in my liver again?!”

The Doctor hears someone calling out and follows the voice to a woman.

Graham reads the instructions to Ryan, who opens up a panel in the floor and connects the cable to his phone.

The Doctor shows up on a nearby video screen. She says that the bomb knocked out the signal from the computer to the engines, but the computers in the plane aren’t in the cockpit; they’re under the cabin floor. She tells Ryan there is an app opening he needs to use to communicate with the engines and to shut the cockpit door. The signal goes out before she can tell them the supposedly important part.

The Doctor tries to understand who the woman is and why she is there. The woman, who believes they are inside her mind, tells the Doctor that this has happened before. Her paralysis will fade, and she will wake up back in the real world.

The lights start to move around the woman, who says that it places a word in her mind: “Kasaavin.”

Suddenly one of the light creatures show up; she calls it her guardian and says not to be afraid.

The Doctor asks the alien if this is their realm. She wants to know how it brought them there; she guesses perhaps it’s a gateway. It ignores her questions.

Ada tells the Doctor to take her hand so she isn’t marooned, and maybe she can bring her back with her.

Doctor WhoBack on the plane, with the app, Ryan has managed to get the plane leveled.

RYAN: Can’t ride a bike, but I can fly a plane.

The app says that the plane is preprogrammed to land somewhere.

The Master is with Barton, who tells him he has gotten a notification that his plane is about to land at its programmed destination. The Master doesn’t see how they could have survived. Angry, he tells Barton to deal with her friends, and he will deal with the Doctor.

The Doctor wakes up next to Ada in London in 1834 during some kind of invention convention, stranded in the past.

Barton talks to a staff member who says the plane landed itself by automation, and there is no one on board. He says that they’ve had this conversation before, and they need to be kept in the loop.

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham, who are listening nearby, have landed and realize they are in Essex. Ryan still has access to Barton’s schedule and says that he has a keynote speech the following day; that’s where they need to go find out what he’s up to.

Barton calls someone to track the three of them.

Doctor WhoThe Doctor tells Ada who she is and that she was dealing with a planet-threatening conspiracy in the future and was attacked and sent there.

Suddenly, the Master shows up with his shrinking device and starts randomly shrinking (and assumedly killing) people. The Doctor tells Ada and the man who is with her to run.

The Doctor steps out and tells the Master to let them all go, and he can have her. He tells her he has her anyway.

He accuses someone of moving and zaps them. He tells the Doctor that he likes killing them; it gives him a buzz in his hearts. It’s like knowing he is in the right place doing what he was meant for.

She asks what he wants, and he tells her to kneel before him and call him by name, or they all die. She does.

The Master asks how she escaped and ended up there, which makes the Doctor happy, as she realizes that he doesn’t know and therefore is not in control of the creatures.

Doctor WhoSuddenly, Ada yells at the Doctor to get down and shoots the Master with someone’s machine gun-like invention, hitting him in the arm. The Doctor doesn’t approve. He says that she won’t get far without a TARDIS, and she yells that she doesn’t have a TARDIS, but she does have an Ada and takes off after Ada throws a grenade towards him.

Barton calls the Doctor’s friends. He says that he has had their passports revoked and they are wanted for hijacking his plane. They see electronic billboards confirming this. Yaz calls her mother and tells her not to listen to anything they hear, but Ryan grabs her phone and smashes it after having destroyed his own. They have to get rid of them.

Now safe for the moment, the Doctor realizes that the man is Charles Babbage, who created the Difference Engine, and she is Ada Lovelace, who essentially creates the first computer. The Doctor tells them that it isn’t an accident; they are clues and important.

She notices the strange figure that was in the Master’s place in the future, the Silver Lady. Babbage tells her that it moves and sometimes also projects. Without asking, she looks at his journal and realizes that it projects the aliens.

The Doctor asks Ada about her recurring paralysis when she first saw the apparition. The Doctor realizes that they take her and study her in their dimension, because they can’t be in our dimension for long. Maybe they found someone to build them a machine to stabilize them in this world long enough to send spies. She says that she now thinks the map in the Master’s hut is multiple time periods rather than multiple Earths. The aliens aren’t just spies on Earth, but also through time, through history.

She needs to get back to where she came from; the Master’s coming, and she only has one way out. The Doctor uses her sonic on the Silver Lady and the alien shows up. Ada grabs onto her at the last second and travels with her.

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham try to decide what to do without the Doctor. They decide that they will carry on and do what the Doctor would want - stop Barton and get rid of the creatures. Ryan wonders aloud why the Doctor couldn’t recognize the Master if she knew him for so long. Graham remembers the Master talked about knowing the Doctor when she was a man, and also that the Doctor had mentioned going through some kind of regeneration. They will ask when they see her again, which they all agree will happen.

Doctor WhoYaz says that the Doctor would ask what they have at their disposal. Graham and Ryan reveal that they did keep some of the spy tech; however, they didn’t read the instructions.

The Doctor and Ada wake up, but not where expected. They are in Paris in 1943 and the Germans are attacking. A woman is there and tells them to get inside so the patrolling soldiers don’t find them. The patrol is of course let by the Master.

Meanwhile, the others are suddenly surrounded by the light aliens, the Kasaavin. Graham tries and successfully shoots at them with his laser shoes.

Barton has brought someone, likely his mother, to see the Silver Lady. She is angry at him, and he says that it can’t be about him moving to the states. She asks him why she is there. He says that he was in the country and thought they should see each other. She says he didn’t give her a choice. He questions if she realizes how successful he has been; he changed the world. He asks what he has to do to get her to say “well done.” She says it sarcastically and asks if they are finished. He says that they aren’t. He wanted to see her on the last day, so she could be the first.

Suddenly the Kasaavin appear and start attacking her, shooting light into her head.

The Germans break into the woman’s house where the Doctor and Ada are hiding, led by the Master. He has the soldiers shoot up the floor and eventually leaves when he doesn’t find them.

The Doctor and Ada were under the floor, but under a rug in a section they missed. The Doctor comments that there is wireless radio equipment under the floor. She realizes that the woman who helped them is Noor Inayat Khan, a British spy.

The Doctor says that Ada grabbing her hand must have thrown them off course. The Master tracked her down. The Doctor tells them that they need to turn what happened to their advantage. She has an idea, and they are both a part of it

The others have made it to a phone booth. Yaz calls her sister and tells her to tell their mother not to worry and not to believe anyone or to let anyone in.

Doctor WhoSuddenly men show up having traced the call and she has to hang up. Graham tells them to put down their guns and threatens them with the laser shoes, shooting a bit. Ryan takes their guns and tells them that they called on purpose to bring them there, and now they will get their GPS and go where they were planning to take them. Yaz tells him not to tell them their plan.

The group takes the car and leaves.

Back in the past, the Doctor sends a message with Morse code that Khan doesn’t recognize. It’s a personal code - the rhythm of two hearts.

The Doctor gets a reply from the Master of the same code. She says that she got his attention and can sense him; he’s not that far. She talks to him psychically. She says that she knows she is cornered and agrees to meet him if he will go alone.

The two meet at the top of the Eiffel Tower. The Doctor questions how he has been able to make the Germans listen to him, as he’s not exactly their Aryan archetype. He says that he has been using a psychic-perception filter.

The Doctor asks why the aliens are assassinating spies. He says that Earth’s intelligence services started to notice the aliens’ presence. He persuaded the Kasaavin that they had interests in common. He went to Barton and said to think of them as Russia, but bigger - sleeper agents everywhere, ready to be activated, collecting information in case they need to attack. He says he couldn’t help himself. The Doctor asks what he did, and he says that he suggested a better plan.

Meanwhile, the others have found Barton’s mother, dead, at the hangar where they were supposed to be taken. Barton calls them on the tablet there. He says that he has an announcement to make, and they are two steps behind.

Yaz says that they know he isn’t completely human. Graham asks what he is. Barton says they don’t understand who he is. He builds things and tests them, and he let the aliens test a tiny part of him. Now it’s time for the global rollout; he’s proof of concept. He tells them to look after his mother and then hangs up.

They question he killed his own mother and left her there. They soon realize the Silver Lady from Barton’s office is also there.

Meanwhile, Khan sends a message to London in Morse code and she and Ada head out.

They find what they think they are looking for; the Doctor told them to look for something anomalous. Khan tells Ada to use the device, so she uses the cell phone the Doctor gave them to call her.

Doctor WhoWhen it rings, the Doctor tells the Master it went to voicemail, but actually sonics the phone behind her back.

The Master asks the Doctor why she didn’t die, and she says that she and Yaz are both time travelers and covered in Arcon energy, and her DNA wouldn’t have registered human; it likely confused them.

She asks what deal he made with them. He says he showed them and Barton what was possible. They helped him raise a trap for her and he raised their ambitions. He says though that the aliens are just the mechanism; that they don’t have his vision of maximum carnage. Everyone will lose except for him. He is having the aliens and Barton do his dirty work, and then he will get rid of them, having destroyed the human race in the process.

The Doctor asks when it stops for him, his games, the betrayals, the killings. He asks why it should. How else would he get her attention? He asks her when she last went home. He says that he took a trip to Gallifrey in the bubble universe and it was all burned, nuked. Someone destroyed their home and killed everyone.

She thinks he’s lying, but he says that she should really take a look. He sarcastically says she can’t, but he wanted her to know before he [killed her].

Suddenly he hears someone. There are troops coming up the stairs. The Doctor had Khan send a fake message to the Brits, designed to be intercepted. The message told them how valuable he has been as a double agent, sending Nazi information to Britain. She’s also jammed his facial perception filter so they will see the real him. She wishes him good look and leaves as the Nazi soldiers take him away.

The Doctor meets up with the two women. They think they found what she wanted, as it wasn’t there previously. She says that the Master is so arrogant; he didn’t even change its appearance. The camera pans to show the Master’s hut. She tells them that it’s time to go lock picking.

They ask why the house is important, and she tells them that it’s not a house; it’s a machine that travels in space and time. It’s her way back to finding her friends and saving humanity. The master is arrogant, and arrogance can trip you up.

She looks at his map, which she now knows is actually a temporal map, showing every significant person in the development of computers, starting with Ada. The Kasaavin posted an agent with each of those people to gather data. She doesn’t know how the DNA is connected, however.

At the keynote, Barton gives his speech. He says that people gave them access to all their data. They carried cameras and microphones into their lives. They told them their data was safe, and they believed them. Now they can do anything. He can send a text to every device in the world at once.

Everyone’s phone beeps at the same time, and he tells them to answer it. Yaz’s family is also shown getting it.

Yaz also reads the text, which says that humanity is over, and they have three minutes to prepare.

Barton says it’s not a joke. They are way past Peak Human. They have systems that can run more efficiently than they do, but they have a function; they can be repurposed. The most efficient type of hard drive on Earth is human DNA. All they need to do is reformat humanity. Luckily, there is an app for that.

Everyone’s devices light up, and back where the group is, the Silver Lady starts spinning, the aliens appearing and then going into the device. They try to use their spy tech to shoot it, but nothing works.

Light covers everyone everywhere, all of them holding a device. Barton tells them that only a handful will stay sentient to supervise and perhaps rebuild.

Suddenly, the Master shows up in the hanger. He tells them that he’s had the most infuriating 77 years of his life. He came back just in time to watch them pay. The machine converts and transmits. They are sending Kasaavin energy around the world into every device and erasing everyone’s DNA simultaneously.

Yaz suddenly is covered with light and can’t let go of the tablet as it spreads up her. He says he will do it to all three of them.

Just as suddenly, it stops.

Doctor WhoFrom the presentation, where the light has also stopped, Barton makes a call and says that he wants an extraction team.

The Doctor, Ada, and Khan appear in the hangar. She tells the Master she is sorry; that what happened might have been her, and she admits, it was close.

The light stops attacking everyone, including Yaz’s dad, who says he keeps telling his family it’s a conspiracy.

The Doctor tells the Master that both of them can embed things in history. She couldn’t work out why he built the Silver Lady, so she traced its movements through history. When she found out Barton owns it now, she stopped by his office the previous year in his TARDIS and planted a failsafe, a virus, and that if it detected a Kasaavin army, it would shut it down.

The aliens show up and he says that she will have to explain herself to them. Instead she tells them that she’s rigged the Silver Lady to exile them back to their own dimension and that Earth is off limits. She then plays a recording from her sonic of what the Master said about using Barton and the aliens and then disposing of them.

Doctor WhoMASTER: Oh...
DOCTOR: That’s your name; don’t wear it out.

She tells him that the trouble with modern technology is that you don’t know when you are being spied on.

The aliens take him to the place with the tentacles and leave him there.

Yaz tells the Doctor she has a lot of explaining to do. Graham asks who the women with her are and if they are being replaced. She says no and introduces them. She’ll be taking them back to their own times.

Ryan asks how she saved them on the plane. She realizes she forgot!

The Doctor takes the women with her to the past and sets up what she needed to do, from placing things on the plane as it was being built to recording the message that will later save her friends.

The Doctor then gets her TARDIS and erases Khan’s mind of all the future she now has knowledge of.

Ada, who doesn’t want her to do it, is next. After putting her to sleep, she tells Ada that she doesn’t need a preview; she figures it out on her own. Computers will start with her.

Remembering what the Master said, the Doctor travels to Gallifrey and sees everything is burnt; he wasn’t lying.

Back in the TARDIS, a hologram of the Master appears. He says that if she is seeing him that she went to Gallifrey and saw it for herself. He says that when he said that someone did it, he obviously meant himself. He had to make them pay for what he discovered. They lied to them, the founding fathers of Gallifrey. Everything they were told is a lie; they aren’t who they think they are. The existence of their species was built on the lie of the Timeless Child.

The Doctor sees flashes, including when the aliens from last season mentioned the Timeless Child.

He says that it is buried deep in all of their memories, in their identify. He could tell her more, but why would he make it easy for her? It wasn’t for him.

The hologram disappears.

Doctor WhoLater, back on the TARDIS, after they’ve traveled for a while, her team asks her why she won’t tell them about herself. She asks what they want to know. Graham asks who she really is. She tells them that she was born on Gallifrey in the Kasterborous Constellation. She’s a Time Lord who can regenerate her body. She stole a TARDIS and ran away. The Master was her friend and they went very different ways.

Yaz asks if they can visit her home, and she says, “Another time.”

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