Doctor Who: Every episode of season 12, ranked from worst to best

Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor - Doctor Who _ Season 12 - Photo Credit: Casey Crafford/BBC America/BBC Studios
Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor - Doctor Who _ Season 12 - Photo Credit: Casey Crafford/BBC America/BBC Studios /
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Auror Marion as Noor Inayat Khan, Sylvie Briggs as Ada Lovelace, Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor – Doctor Who _ Season 12, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: James Pardon/BBC Studios/BBC America
Auror Marion as Noor Inayat Khan, Sylvie Briggs as Ada Lovelace, Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor – Doctor Who _ Season 12, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: James Pardon/BBC Studios/BBC America /

Spyfall, Part 2

Sadly, the second half of the Doctor Who season 12 premiere wasn’t nearly as good as its first. Where “Spyfall, Part 1” was a James Bond homage that featured everything from car chases to a casino trip, the second hour is much messier and less focused. (It also basically drops the Bond motif completely, which makes it less of a traditional “part two” and more of “an episode that follows “Spyfall”.)

Jodie Whittaker and Sacha Dhawan have tremendous chemistry as they sort of chase one another through time because…reasons, but the build-up to the reveal that Gallifrey’s been destroyed again is not really worth the punchline if you get my drift. (We’ve been here before, after all.) The addition of several awesome and little known women from history in the form of Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan is great but generally purposeless.

And the episode really pulls its punches where Khan is concerned, failing to point out the bittersweet ending to this story of female empowerment. (The real Khan was tragically executed in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau.)