"Spyfall"
Part 1- Ryan's excuse for his absences from his job caused by travelling with the Doctor: a litany of serious medical problems, including appendicitis, a hernia and a detached retina. His co-worker comments that he's been really unlucky.
- While Yaz is packing at her flat, her father Hakim is having trouble with his Alexa speaker, prompting one of his daughters to snark that it hates his voice.
- When MI6 shows up to pick up the Doctor, and she's told her friends are already in the cars, Graham shouts out of a window "Worst Uber ever!"
- C explains to the Doctor that they can't find Horizon Watcher because he's gone off-grid... and the Doctor casually responds that she'll just WhatsApp him, having been exchanging text messages with him for some time. And then there's the message she sends him: "Big crisis. Major crisis. Serious crisis. Big serious crisis." Followed by "Kisses. Very French, that."
- A bit of Fridge Funny. The Doctor sends kisses to O on WhatsApp. Considering who he turns out to be...
- And she closes the above message with "And C says you were right and he's sorry for being an idiot". Cue an offended C (Stephen Fry) exclaiming "I did not use those words!"
- Similarly, when O sees the inside of the TARDIS, the initial impression appears to be one of awe and disbelief. Knowing who he actually is, that suddenly becomes "You redecorated. I don't like it." Yes, folks, the "ridiculous" is actually the Master, once again, insulting the Doctor's interior design skills.
- Ryan breaks down in nerves while he and Yaz are on their way to see Barton because he picked "Logan" as an alias, but he doesn't look anything like Hugh Jackman.
- Ryan, posing as a photographer during his and Yaz's interview with Daniel Barton, initially forgets to take the lens cap off his camera and has a minor Oh, Crap! moment when he realizes.
- The Doctor hits a ridiculous number of times while playing blackjack, because she thought they were playing snap.The Doctor: [looking around confused as everyone laughs] ...is that not the game?
- The Master does what he does best — shrink people, blow up a plane (again), and just be completely and utterly insane! One wonders whether stabbing herself when herself was a man and then being shot by said male version of herself and being left to die... by said male version of herself... has done something to the Master?
- It's very darkly funny that the Master keeps the real O's shrunken body in a matchbox in his pocket.
- Even more darkly funny: after revealing the body in the matchbox, the Master is about to put it back in his pocket, but realizes he doesn't need it anymore and casually throws it away.
- What makes it even funnier is that it's not that he realises he doesn't need the body - it's that he can't actually find the pocket!
- Also, the fact that he chose to steal O's identity specifically because of the reaction he anticipated the Doctor having when she found out who he was. One has to wonder how much of their time the various Masters have spent thinking up identities purely for the sake of seeing the Doctor's reaction to the built-in pun.
- Given that this is the same guy who went by "Colonel Masters," "Professor Thascales," and "Revered Magister"...
- The Doctor notes something is off as O was having trouble running when he was a champion sprinter in school. You can see the Master musing as if trying to think of a convincing lie...then deciding, for the hell of it, to just go ahead and pick this as the moment to reveal himself.
- A subtle but genius bit: When he texts the Doctor, what's the last thing "O" sends? An image of a catfish.
- During the dramatic reveal, we get this gem.
The Master: Call me "Master".Graham, appalled: Call you what?
- The Doctor, stuck in the Kasaavin's dimension, wonders if the place is inside something larger. She hopes it's not a liver, because apparently the Doctor has been inside other people's livers, more than once in the same liver.The Doctor: People get so offended! "What are you doin' in my liver again?!"
- It was 4 who ended up in someone's liver last time, wasn't it? Yeah, that makes sense.
- The Master headdesking the console of his TARDIS when he realizes the Doctor isn't dead.
- On her recorded message on the plane, the Doctor predicts (correctly) that Graham will be panicking and tells him to stop, and repeatedly chides him for talking back to a video.
- The Doctor basically set up a phone app for the Fam to use to pilot the crippled airplane. Ryan's first instinct is to press up a bunch, only to end up pointing the plane in a 45 degree angle.Ryan: TOO MANY UPS!
Graham: LEVEL OUT! LEVEL OUT! [falls to the back of the plane]
- The Doctor basically set up a phone app for the Fam to use to pilot the crippled airplane. Ryan's first instinct is to press up a bunch, only to end up pointing the plane in a 45 degree angle.
- After arriving in 1834, the Doctor announces to the people at the invention fair that they've just seen "THE MARVELLOUS APPARATING MAN!" (...Lady!) "THE MARVELLOUS APPARATING LADY!"The Doctor: Every time!
- Bonus points for them doing the drumroll noise twice for her.
- There's something darkly hilarious about the Master milking the Doctor saying his name. "Can't hear ya, luv."
- Graham reveals he's wearing the laser shoes. He activates them by sort-of-dancing, leading Yaz and Ryan to tell him that he should dance for his life when they're cornered by Kasaavin. And then Graham dramatically flaunts said shoes when he, Yaz and Ryan hold some of Barton's men hostage to steal their phones and vehicle. Graham essentially defeats the villains by tap dancing!
- When cornered by Nazi soldiers, the Master tries to defuse the situation by saying that he always thought they were reasonable people.
- Even funnier? Given that this is the Master we're talking about, maybe he does think they're reasonable people?
- After taking The Slow Path back to the present, the Master bursts in at the climax ranting about how unpleasant the last 77 years stuck on Earth have been, including "The places I've escaped from..."
- Especially funny when you realize the parallels with "The Curse of Fatal Death".
"Orphan 55"
- After Graham unwittingly activates a teleport device/coupon that will take the team to their vacation destination, he says that he doesn't have time to grab his Speedos. At everyone else's looks of horror, he states that he was joking — he's already got them on.
- The Doctor curing Ryan of the hopper virus: she tells him about the twitchy fingers, catches him as he abruptly falls down, then dumps the contents of his crisp bag on the floor and pinches his ear, causing him to sneeze the virus out of his mouth. Then she tells him to suck his thumb until he recovers from the hallucinations, and to remember that "the bats aren't real". Ryan is then left waving his arm at hallucinatory bats in the background as the Doctor cheerfully informs other people that everything is fine.
- He hunkers down by a planter, still sucking his thumb, and finds Bella there. Also sucking her thumb.
- Ryan attempts to flirt with Bella by claiming that he's a pilot... or a surgeon... no, a surgeon for pilots. Her response is to ask him if he's always an idiot.
- The Doctor gets snarky and a little arrogant when told what she can and cannot do.Kane: You can't build an ionic membrane from scratch!
The Doctor: If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build you from scratch! - When no one answers the Doctor's questions:The Doctor: Don't want to talk to me? Fine. I don't need a second person for a conversation. A lot of the time, they just get in the way.
"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror"
- Tesla and Dorothy are ducking from the intruder when the Doctor bursts in wearing a headlamp and asking "Sorry, have you seen anything weird around here?"
- The Fam dressed in full period era clothing... and the Doctor just saunters around in her usual quirky outfit.
- The Doctor suddenly switching from threatening and dangerous when Tesla refuses to hand the orb over to them, to giddy and dorky:The Doctor: Well then, if you won't hand it over, you leave us no choice. [walks closer to Tesla] We're not letting you out of our sights until we've worked this out. [suddenly grinning excitedly] So where's this lab, then?
- The Doctor having to break it to Ryan and Graham that some of New York City's best sights (like the Empire State Building) won't be built for a while.
- The Doctor excited to enter the lab of Nikola Tesla... and just entering a mostly quiet room so she can't hide her disappointment.
- While preparing to defend the Wardenclyffe lab, Graham reassures Dorothy that it's "not [their] first rodeo". Ryan, overhearing this, takes the idiom too literally and points out that Graham's never been to a rodeo.
- Ryan and Graham are clearly in awe when they discover a prototype Death Ray among the stuff at Tesla's lab. But then, when Graham attempts to use it at the climax, it goes "phut" and fails to work.
- Graham refers to the squabbling Tesla and Edison as AC/DC. Because Tesla saw the potential of Alternating Current, while Edison was a staunch supporter of Direct Current.
- When Tesla considers sacrificing himself to the aliens, the Doctor cheers him up by pointing out that "it's killing Edison it's you they want, not him." Tesla himself has to chuckle at that.
"Fugitive of the Judoon"
- Thirteen is going through a really hard time, but it's still funny when she admits she's looking for the Master, and the Fam reacts like they've just caught her texting her ex.
- Thirteen really wants to commit to the Running Gag of rhyming "Judoon" — namely "a platoon of Judoon next to the Moon" and "Judoon next to that lagoon".
- You can see on her face when she says "lagoon" that she's frustrated with making the Painful Rhyme.
Yaz: More of a canal, really.
Doctor: [Death Glare]- The Doctor's reprimand actually makes a trigger happy space rhino look abashed for a second.
- Graham finds himself abruptly teleported elsewhere by none other than Captain Jack Harkness, who greets him enthusiastically under the mistaken impression that he's the Doctor. And by "enthusiastically", we mean "gives Graham a snog before the poor man can react in anything other than spluttering confusion".
- Just the fact that if Jack likes a Silver Fox, he would have loved Twelve.
- Extra funny from a meta-perspective since John Barrowman's hair really is gray in real life now and he had to dye it black to play Jack again.
- Then, after Graham's cleared things up, Jack tries to teleport in the Doctor and gets Ryan and Yaz instead, subsequently assuming Yaz is the Doctor since Graham said "she".
- Speaking of, Jack's response to learning the Doctor is now a woman is absolute glee, and "Now this I've gotta see!"
- Jack upon realizing the Doctor now has three companions: "I had a dream about this once."
- The fact that as soon the Other Doctor remembers who she is, she changes her wardrobe to an eye-searing snazzy shirt and brags to/flirts with a woman who she thinks is just a cute blonde. She is most definitely the Doctor, alright!
- Just the fact that the Other Doctor was clearly all ready to make Thirteen her new companion before the reveal of Thirteen being herself.
- Thirteen and the other Doctor continue the trend of hating each other. Plus Thirteen gets mad at everyone calling her short.note
- During the climactic showdown, the other Doctor reveals that they've passed into interplanetary space and begins threatening the Judoon with her laser weapon. Thirteen angrily insists that the Doctor would never use a weapon... to which the other Doctor points out that she knows that, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea to let the Judoon know.
- Ryan likes Jack:Ryan: I liked him. Kind of cheesy.
Yaz: But good cheesy.
The Doctor: [wistful] That's Jack.- Also a bit of Leaning on the Fourth Wall as a meta description for the RTD era.
- Meta funny: Filming was kept incredibly secret for John Barrowman's part, but fans would still recognize him on the street when he wasn't filming and the crew started getting worried they'd eventually figure out why he was in Cardiff. So John came up with the excuse that he and his husband were renovating one of their properties in town, and Barrowman would film himself buying fittings at local shops for his Instagram to sell the lie. The funny part is he did it so much that he and his husband decided to actually renovate the property anyway.
"Praxeus"
- In Hong Kong, Graham is using a scanner to track down a mysterious energy source, and tells Yaz and Jake it's behind a wall. Yaz reaches over and turns the device around so it's properly oriented, leading Graham to announce the source is actually behind a door in the exact same tone of voice. Then, when Yaz and Graham are debating how to open the door, Jake just kicks it in and tells them they spend too much time talking.
- According to the Doctor, there is a talking cat in Ontario that she has ruled out as being connected to the events of the episode.
- This brings up several questions. Just how does the Doctor know of said talking cat? Does she have anything to do with said talking cat actually being a talking cat? Is said talking cat actually a cat at all? Has the Doctor just had numerous off-screen adventures with this talking cat? It wouldn't be the first time they've travelled with an anthropomorphic animal after all.
- Ryan reveals he has a dead bird in his backpack. The Doctor was wondering why he smelled like dead bird, and just assumed it was a new shower gel.
- When the Doctor reveals that the alien structure Yaz and Gabriela teleported to is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, Yaz is greatly disappointed that she didn't discover an alien planet.
"Can You Hear Me?"
- The Doctor starts Talking to Themself when her companions are not with her, before turning around and cursing herself that she has no one to share her thoughts with.
- The Doctor mentions she is an "excellent tap dancer in a crisis". One can't help but wonder... what crisis was she in and, more importantly, which version of her was it? The thought of the First Doctor tap dancing is hilarious. The thought of Four tap dancing just seems appropriate in some way...
- Even while delivering a Patrick Stewart Speech, the Doctor can't resist dropping a pun and thanking Zellin for lending "a helping hand," proving that this incarnation is just as much a Pungeon Master as any of her predeccessors.
- After dealing with the villains, the Doctor remarks that she'll have to do something about "all the people in the TARDIS jacuzzi."
- As sad as it is that she's just so closed off, there's something also funny about Graham having an emotional talk with the Doctor and her having no idea what to say. A lot of fans have teased that she lost Clara's cue cards from Series 9.
"The Haunting of Villa Diodati"
- The first appearance of the Fam is all of them drenched head to foot in the rain. We all know that the TARDIS knew it wasn't raining when she landed but would be within a few minutes and the Fam were going to get very wet. You can just imagine the TARDIS cackling manically.
- Byron is instantly enamoured with the Doctor, and she very clearly wants nothing to do with him.Byron: May I just say, you are quite lovely in a crisis.
Doctor: No. You may not. - Among the Doctor's instructions to her companions were "Nobody snog Byron."
- Dr. Polidori challenges Ryan to a duel after Ryan sasses him too much - which all starts with Ryan playing "Chopsticks" badly. During the confrontation, this exchange happens.Polidori: Fletcher! You will be my second! Will Mister O'Brien be yours?
Graham: (very quickly) No!
Ryan: (annoyed) Cheers, mate.
Graham: No, I mean no, because there's going to be no duel! I absolutely forbid it!- Thankfully, the matter is dropped for good when Polidori gets spooked by a skeletal ghost hand. While the Doctor inspects it with her sonic screwdriver a few minutes later, Ryan is still quite rightly pissed off about what almost happened and decides to send Polidori a message.
Polidori: What kind of implement is that?
Ryan: One that zaps people's heads off who threaten people with guns.- When Polidori tells Fletcher he'll be his second, Fletcher just rolls his eyes and groans with pure "Oh, great, here we go again" energy.
- Graham paraphrases The Sixth Sense: "I think I'm seeing dead people."
- When Yaz, Ryan and Mary are stuck on the stairs, after they see a mysterious shadowy figure, Ryan panics because he thinks a ghost touched him, only for Yaz to inform him that that was actually her elbow.
- At one point the Doctor tries to leave the house, only to walk smack into an invisible forcefield. Made even funnier when Claire, Byron and Dr. Polidori all wince in unison as it happens.
- As the night goes on and the group in the Villa Diodati see the fam and the Doctor especially doing strange things, they start to wonder where they're from.Mary Shelley: I don't think they're really from the colonies.
Lord Byron: No, she is from somewhere much, much stranger.
Dr. Polidori: [Matter-of-factly] The North.
[Dramatic Thunder] - Lord Byron using Claire Clairmont as a human shield.
"Ascension of the Cybermen"
- The Doctor and Ryan steal a Cyberman's ship, and the Doctor sets to work hot wiring the warp drive, all the while giving a Motor Mouth speech about how she used to hot wire warp drives for fun as a teenager and got into trouble for it.
- The Doctor tries to give a Breaking Speech to Ashad, only for him to admit he does loathe not being a full Cyberman. The Doctor then notes she should start charging him for therapy. Her expression when Ashad replies with a Blunt "Yes" is priceless.
- The Master's very hammy reveal! He jumps out of the Boundary, declaring he loves a big entrance.
"The Timeless Children"
- Black Comedy example, with a heavy dose of Crossing the Line Twice: The Master wants to roll out the red carpet for the Cybermen. The carpet is red from the blood of the Time Lords he slaughtered.
- In one of the most heartwarming moments of the series, Graham tells Yaz how amazing and wonderful he thinks she is, prime example of the human race. Better than the Doctor even, because she does it all without a time machine or a sonic. Yaz replies.Yaz: You're not such a bad human yourself.
Graham: [beat] That's it!? - The Master shrinks Ashad down using the TCE, and immediately thinks of a one-liner after the fact. He is kicking himself that he didn't think of it sooner.
- He allows Ashad to reveal his grand plan of fully automating the Cyber Race... and can't hide the fact he is profoundly disappointed at how boring it is, because there are too many robots in the Whoniverse already!The Master: Oh, you mean robots. You'll be robots.
- The Master continues by pointing out that you can scarcely throw a stick in the universe without hitting a robot... then casually notes that he used to throw sticks at robots for fun.
- He allows Ashad to reveal his grand plan of fully automating the Cyber Race... and can't hide the fact he is profoundly disappointed at how boring it is, because there are too many robots in the Whoniverse already!
- After Yaz unmasks herself to Ryan and Ko Sharmus, revealing that they just saved Ethan's life while disguised as Cybermen, Graham has trouble removing his "hat".
- After the gang reunite with 13, she spots the rest of the surviving humans and, still a little out of it, asks if they're having a party. Her prior dialogue, reconciling that there may be previous versions of herself to discover, gets a classic "are we meant to know what she's talking about?" sort of look from Graham (again).
- A fan theory has been confirmed! Gallifrey IS in Ireland! Sort of...
- Once again, the Doctor's plan goes wrong and an entire Cyber-army carrier ship ends up exploding.
- The chameleon circuit disguises Yaz, Graham and Ryan's stolen TARDIS as a whole house and conveniently materialises in an empty plot of grass! The TARDIS that the Doctor steals to escape from Gallifrey becomes a tree... which then materialises in a barren, treeless wasteland! Apparently, it seems that all TARDISes are crap at fitting in when they land.
- In a "13 as The Chew Toy" kind of funny, the fact that she lets herself rest for the first time in ages and almost immediately gets herself arrested.
- The entire cliffhanger is hilarious in the same jarring way as the Series 2 and 3 cliffhangers: the Doctor finally has a moment to rest after being put through the emotional wringer, she sits down on the control console... and then, out of absolutely nowhere, an alarm goes off, the Doctor gives the TARDIS a "why are you blaring at me?" look, a Judoon platoon teleport into the TARDIS, shout something about her being a "cold case" fugitive, and promptly teleport her to a maximum security jail cell. She is even left stammering "What?!" just like Ten used to!
"Revolution of the Daleks"
- The episode opens with a set of title cards, one sentence reading "A long time ago... (2019)", which is funny due to how meta it is. Due to COVID-19, the show was placed on hiatus, so the show summing up the general audience feeling that 2019 was "a long time ago" is quite funny.
- Even better, the title card opens with just "A long time ago. . . Far, far away. . ." before adding that "A long time ago" is 2019, and "Far, far away" is Cheltenham.
- The Doctor, still the Judoon prison, goes to the "exercise yard," where she meets some of the other prisoners, including a Weeping Angel named Angela, a pair of Ood named Bonnie and Clyde, and a little critter called "Tiny." The Doctor admonishes Tiny that he can't eat the cage, "believe me, I've tried." What's funnier is we don't know if these are their actually names, or just appellations the Doctor decided to stick them with.
- A year of real time for fans and 19 years for the Doctor, waiting to see what brilliant method will allow her to slip free from Judoon custody, and what means does Jack Harkness provide? A spherical energy-field that permits the two of them to pass through solid obstacles. But only for a matter of seconds, meaning they need to propel it very quickly via foot-power. In effect, she and Jack escape by running inside a giant hamster ball.
- Jack explains that in order to get a cell right next to the Doctor, he had to commit some crimes. Okay, a lot of crimes. Maybe too many crimes...
- The Doctor explains that after she was arrested for evading arrest twice at the same time, they decided to also convict her of seven thousand more crimes she had committed.Jack: [chuckles] They stopped at seven?
- The Running Gag throughout the episode of Robertson having no idea what a "Dalek" is, as he'd never heard them called as much.
- Robertson is probably the only person who has been in the TARDIS who has no idea what the thing even is. Graham, Ryan and the Doctor don't even give him the Bigger on the Inside spiel. They just like seeing the asshole bewildered.
- Robertson's reaction to The Reveal that not only did the recon Dalek use his company to clone a Dalek army, it liquefied his employees and fed them to the Daleks for sustenance. Pure Black Comedy at its finest.Robertson: This is gonna be a PR disaster...
- When one Dalek mentions that mutated Dalek DNA is detected below, the Dalek in charge has just enough of a pause before he declares "Prepare for maximum extermination!" that you know the Dalek was so furious that it struggled for words.
- Jack only agreed to go onto an S.A.S Dalek ship if he can blow it up. The Doctor is very pleased with this suggestion.
- The Daleks have a comically serious moment after the Doctor calls them "obedient pets".Dalek: Daleks are not pets of the Doctor!
- And the visual of them all flying into the TARDIS like it's an intergalactic clown car.
