12x05 Fugitive of the Judoon

We've known for a while now that the Judoon would be coming back to the show. A few pictures from set leaked a couple of months ago and I must say… I'm pretty impressed. The BBC managed to keep the "big stuff" from the episode a secret until today. We got a bunch of surprises! At the start of every new Doctor Who Series, there are always rumors. Characters and monsters supposedly coming back, here and there. But there is always one fan favorite: Captain Jack Harkness.

The immortal Time Agent that used to travel with the Doctor. Chibnall brought him back. We knew a character would be coming back for this week's episode, but I never would've thought (not even in my wildest dreams) Jack Harkness would appear on screen again. Now the Easter-egg from "Spyfall Part One" makes sense (the head of MI6 name-dropped both UNIT and Torchwood). This ain't just one-off appearance, this stuff is big. I think we'll see him again during the finale or during Series 13, I'm sure.
Also, he dropped a couple of bombs that could turn into story arcs later on. Maybe an answer for the Timeless Child thing? We'll get those answers! "She needs me and I'll be there". Maybe this version of Captain Jack is from the future. He seems to know the Cybermen are coming back and they will encounter the Doctor and her Fam later on. He's trying to warn the Doctor about something that will end up happening anyway. Maybe.

It was fun to see the Judoon back on screen again! There were a bunch of callbacks to the "Smith and Jones" episode from Series 3 (their first appearance) and they worked really well during the story. They kind of got overshadowed by the biggest surprise from the episode, though. But before that… let's talk about another character for a bit: Gat. A Time Lord that used to work alongside with the Doctor. She is, allegedly, from a previous point in her timeline and the Doctor doesn't remember her. She was trying to capture her under someone else's orders. I think this is, precisely, where all starts to get a bit… "timey-wimey". Apparently, there is a new version of the Doctor out there. A face we, the audience, have never seen before. And it's getting pretty hard to trace back into his/her own timeline to make it work properly.

First we got introduced to this woman named "Ruth". She turns out to be an alien in disguise, hiding from the Judoon on Earth alongside a man, protecting her. Later on, we found out that she got her memory wiped and that she's using technology like the Fob Watch from Series 3. Fob Watch: a device that allows a Time Lord to re-write his/her own biology to turn into a human. A MacGuffin created during the Russell T. Davies era, used by both the Master (Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords) and the Doctor (Human Nature/ The Family of Blood). So, it turns out that the lighthouse was working as a kind of Fob Watch thing. Time Lord technology, so this "Ruth" character must be from Gallifrey. And that's when the episode slaps you right in the face… the Doctor finds the graveyard with THE FUCKING TARDIS BURIED THERE. Holy fuck! So this Time Lord MUST be the Doctor! But we've never seen this face before, so she must be from later on… right? RIGHT?! This can't be… the timelines must be out of sync.

And this is where it gets a bit… wonky. This Doctor still calls her TARDIS "ship" and it looks very similar to the "default" console room of the Type-40 TARDIS the Doctor stole when he ran away from Gallifrey 2000 years ago. Look, the round things! What are the round things? Our Doctor doesn't remember being her. Her TARDIS looks like a police box, that means the chameleon circuit is stuck with that look… so she MUST be from the First Doctor's future. That's when the TARDIS' got stuck with the blue look, after he landed on Earth during the 60s. Okay. This could work… I think. If she's from the First Doctor's future, she can be a version between the Second Doctor and the Third. After "The War Games" story, we never saw the Second Doctor regenerate. After his trial with the Time Lords, they forced him to regenerate. We never saw that regeneration. What we saw was the Second Doctor's trial and the Time Lords exiling him to 20th Century Earth.

Later on, we just saw a NEW version of the Doctor (Spearhead From Space) falling out of his TARDIS after regeneration. We never saw him change, did we? So the Time Lords punished the Doctor by condemning him to exile on Earth during the 20th Century and by forcing a regeneration on him. "Ruth" did say she moved into the city on 1999, right? That's still 20th Century Earth. Maybe they could've wiped his memory too, I guess? Or she could've wiped her own memory. She seems to be on the run from the Time Lords, that can work too. But that still doesn't explain why our Doctor doesn't remember being her. Also, there's a bigger problem here. A Time Lord has 13 lives, a cycle of 12 regenerations. Right? Adding up a regeneration between the Second and Third Doctor would brake this old rule. That's why the Time Lords granted the Eleventh Doctor a whole new regeneration cycle during "The Time of the Doctor" story as a reward for saving them during "The Day of the Doctor" story.

Another explanation I can think of is that this version of the Doctor is a previous face from a different regeneration cycle (1st) prior to the events of the "An Unearthly Child" story from 1963. She could die and regenerate into the First Doctor after being granted a new cycle. But what about her TARDIS? Well, maybe the chameleon circuit still works and she just happened to be using the police box look and that's why the Doctor used it later on in the timeline and then it just broke and never got fixed. Right? I'm bending the canon as much as I can. There's the problem with this theory. During "The Name of the Doctor" story, Clara entered the Doctor's time stream and got broken into a million pieces. A bunch of Claras all over the timeline. We know what the default look for all TARDISes is. We saw a Clara helping the Doctor. She helped the Doctor and Susan while they were running away from Gallifrey. This Time Lord version of Clara told the Doctor what kind of TARDIS he should be stealing.

The third explanation I can think of is multiverse. Maybe this Doctor (if she is in fact, the Doctor) is from another universe and she ended up in another universe by accident or because she needed to scape from the Time Lords from her universe. I don't know. And the last one is that she isn't the Doctor. Maybe she's another Time Lord (the Master, the Rani, Romana, etc.) that's using the Doctor's DNA as a template for a biological disguise or something. Someone is lying, I can feel it.

Rule #1: THE DOCTOR LIES.
But for now… she's the Doctor. Let's roll with that. It's always fun to see how the Doctor sassies herself, hahaha. Classic.

"How did I end up like… that? All rainbows and trousers that don't reach".
"How did I end up like you? I've never been anything like you. Trust me, I'd remember… specially that shirt".

Overall: great episode, definitely big. But I do think that Chibnall's walking on thin ice here. This retcon stuff is hard to pull off, I just hope he can do this. For the sake of the show's history. I don't want him to break the fucking canon. I'm excited! Fun stuff!

On it's own, the episode wasn't that bad, and neither was it good.

For the show's mythology, this is one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who.

I hate i'm going to have to make a critique of the episode is order to fully illustrate why, because no one else has done so, and the episode is highly rated.

I initially liked Ruth. Then she turns terminator on a group of Judoon and they don't attack her and then she threatens one and tears off it's horn and sends them back.

I don't remember John Smith in season 3 having instinctive combat abilities. And the doctor has never had these abilities too.

And why would she do that? To rip the horn off? It's a great humiliation? Why did she instinctively do it? It makes us like her less for doing it and because these are space police, good guys really. Their methods are brutally harsh, but they are good guys. And some of the people they killed in this episode i didn't feel for them because they did stupid stuff.

Then the doctor and Ruth go on a freaking country trip?

Why is breaking glass the way to make the doctor return?

Stupid.

Captain Jack. I love this character, and they pretty much only chose one trait of his to write about and then exaggerate it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Along with him not meeting the doctor.

Stupid.

And for all their political messages and seeming to be so good, they then have Jack go and kiss Graham who he just met. It's not completely out of character for Jack, but you thought the writers would have left that behavior behind.

Stupid.

I enjoyed seeing Jack again though. Except he did nothing in the episode except talk a bit and push a few buttons, then give a warning and then disappear.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The companions don't really have much to do this episode except wait to be teleported by Jack.

Stupid.

Then it turns out Ruth is a former doctor, and she's an arrogant unlikeable character.

Stupid.

Why do that? What a stupid decision to do on it's own, but you should also be trying to get us to like and be interested in her, and you do stupid stuff like this.

Stupid.

I think the acting from Ruth was good, but the writing wasn't.

Making Ruth a former doctor is terrible for the doctor's mythos. It's just terrible because it's so retconned, and it looks like forced diversity, like "Oh look, the doctor used to be a black woman before she was a white man 13 times. We're very progressive creators for finally doing the first black doctor and the first black female doctor, aren't we? It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense"

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I dislike it all. I dislike there's ANOTHER unknown incarnation of the doctor we never knew. I dislike the addition of this timelord lore with the woman hunting the doctor. Somehow Ruth's tardis is a policebox even though she's pre-Hartnell? Somehow the timelords from the past are hunting the doctor even though in the current time Gallifrey and the time lords are destroyed, and a whole lot of other history has happened with it in previous seasons that you would THINK would have overwritten anything else going on in the past with them, but nope, everything is happening at the same time apparently. How the previous timelords interfering with the present day? Why is Ruth on earth in this time? Why did she have to hide from the time lords like this? The doctor's always been fine before. The timelords literally had to convince Ashildr to help them capture the doctor. I dislike the personality of this pre-hartnell doctor and them being on earth, and having this antagonistic history with the timelords. I hate there will be a memory wipe to retcon this into existence, and the doctor has had a memory block about her all this time. I dislike it all.

In a season and a point in time where the doctor desperately needed not to be upstaged, and to cement her own character and grow after the disastrous season 11, she then gets upstaged by Ruth doctor in this episode.

Ugh.

There is NO talk about the original human Ruth, when we know how important the the doctor's human alter ego is when they transform into that. We saw that in season 3, when the doctor transforms into a human we know how important that is and how important the human person is, and that they're their own person. The death of the human Ruth is not talked about AT ALL.

In season 3 it was heartbreaking. It had very big and very real emotional depth concerning this man, John Smith, the doctor's alter ego. We explored who he was and his emotions and his consciousness, he talked about who he was and how he would be losing that.

But no, not here. Ruth turns back into the doctor and becomes a badass. The end.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And by not talking or mentioning the human Ruth, it makes us dislike this other doctor even more.

Stupid.

Why are these writers failing at the most basic fundamental levels of good writing?

Because they're not good writers.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just more bad creative decisions in the Chibnall era, commonly considered the worst era. Season 11 is the worst season, and it's shocking how season 12 is looking like it might be even worse.

Season 11 made me increasingly uninterested in doctor who, and season 12 is making me actively dislike it because of the consistent continuing mediocrity and the bad creative decisions. Both seasons had bad creative decisions compounded by messy political messaging.

I like the actor who played the master this season, he had this menacing madness and anger, yet it undercuts Missy's arc. And the master this season is missing the depth of previous masters, it's only madness and anger and that's it. Someone pointed out how even John Simm's master had this occasional melancholic reflective tone amongst his anger and madness.

Some good comments:

"Chibnall's completely fucked up the first female Doctor by making her come off as a ditz with a very poor moral compass who feels less intelligent than her predecessors, which is heartbreaking. His political messages don't feel genuine, it's like he's forcing them in there because they're "trendy" (I say that as a lib leftist). It's almost as though they're being written by someone on the right to make leftist policy look as twee and irritating as possible"

"Chibnall wasted the first black Doctor (who is incidentally portrayed as somewhat violent) on a side character, cause that's not yikes at all (nor is the Doctor giving the first PoC Master to the Nazis)"

"not only has Chibnall changed heavy continuity, but has very likely done so to insert a more diverse range of Doctors for the sake of progressivism. As a strong liberal progressive, let me tell you that this is NOT progress. True progress is moving forward without changing what once was. Respecting the past, even if it isn't everything we'd like it to be. Not only has Chibnall shown utter disrespect to the last 56 years, and made a series of plot holes in doing so (how is a pre-Hartnell Doctor's TARDIS a police box?), he has also wasted the "groundbreaking first black Doctor" on an incarnation that isn't going to be a series lead. That's like having Craig's bond meet a former black agent who used the moniker "007" before he did, then going "look, we've had a black 007!" It's tokenism, and only harms the cause it claims to stand for by paying lip service without actually saying anything, just like Orphan 55 did with the issue of climate change"