Fugitive of the Judoon: The Past, Forgotten and Remembered

 Hello!

I'm doing another review - this week, I'm reviewing a Thirteenth Doctor episode, from Series 12. Mainly for a friend who really likes it, and wanted to know what I thought of it (side note, that means if anyone else wants to know my opinions on a topic, feel free to suggest it!)

The Doctor and the Fugitive 

So, before I launch into the summary, background context on Fugitive of the Judoon! At the beginning of Series 12, the Master made his grand return! (Missy was last seen fatally wounded, too badly injured to regenerate, and trapped on a spaceship floor which went kaboom. Apparently, she survived by using a forbidden Gallifreyan technique in which you break down every molecule in your body, then rebuild it from the ground up, handily giving yourself a new regeneration cycle in the process.)

During the course of his latest conflict with the Doctor, the Master revealed that he destroyed Gallifrey, because of the truth of the Timeless Child. Then he got kidnapped by an extra-dimensional species called the Kasavin, who took him to their own dimension; the Doctor has been looking for him ever since, mostly because she wants to pry more information about the Child out of him.

The new Master! He's the first incarnation of the character to be played by a non-white actor!

Fugitive of the Judoon thus starts with the Doctor busy at the TARDIS console, while her companions (still Graham, Ryan and Yaz) look on in concern. Happily, a distraction occurs; the Doctor realises that the Judoon (intergalactic police-for-hire who look like rhinos) are putting up an enforcement field around Earth, and she heads down to investigate; the field's localised on Gloucester.

While this is happening, we're also introduced to Ruth Clayton and her husband, Lee Clayton, who live in Gloucester; also, it's Ruth's birthday. Ruth works as a tour guide, while Lee...seems to be unemployed.

The Doctor and her companions materialise in the back room of a coffee-shop, run by a guy called Allan. Lee's come to the coffee-shop to pick up a cake for Ruth's birthday; he hears about the Judoon incursion and races off to find Ruth. When he finds her, they return home to pack.

Team TARDIS, minus Graham, head off to confront the Judoon; Graham gets teleported away, but stays long enough to insult Allan's baking skills. Graham comes to on a spaceship and meets someone the Doctor's not seen in a very, very long time: Captain Jack Harkness! Because Jack doesn't know about the Doctor's gender change, he initially assumes that Graham is the Doctor; upon being corrected, he tries to contact the Doctor again...only to accidentally teleport Ryan and Yaz instead. Jack warns the companions about an upcoming threat - the Lone Cyberman, telling them to tell the Doctor to not give it what it wants. He then teleports them back to Gloucester.

The return of Captain Jack Harkness!

The Doctor, meanwhile, accompanies Ruth to her childhood home, which she's been having visions of; Lee stays behind at the Clayton apartment to distract the Judoon. The woman who hired them, a woman called Gat, personally interrogates and kills him; before she kills him, she calls him Ruth's faithful companion...

At Ruth's childhood home, Ruth activates a fire alarm system, which bathes her in regeneration energy...

At the same time, the Doctor unearths a 1960s police telephone box from a false grave...

Ruth, as it turns out, is a Time Lord - and not just any Time Lord! She's the Doctor - an incarnation from her distant past, hiding from pursuers in much the same way that the Tenth Doctor and the Master once did. Unfortunately for both Doctors, said pursuers (the Judoon and Gat) catch up to them pretty quickly and take them on board a Judoon ship. Gat is a fellow Time Lord, working for a Gallifreyan organisation known simply as 'the Division'; as the Doctor observes, given Gallifrey's recent destruction, this pretty much confirms the Fugitive Doctor, Ruth, as a past incarnation. The Fugitive Doctor quickly proves that she is the Doctor, by tricking Gat into disintegrating herself, then delaying the Judoon until the ship enters interstellar space; in interstellar space, nobody has jurisdiction, leaving the fugitive(s) free to depart in the (Fugitive) Doctor's TARDIS.

The Doctors part ways, with the Fugitive Doctor helpfully dropping her future self off by her own TARDIS. There, she reunites with her companions, who tell her about Jack and his warning. 

Then, the TARDIS alerts the Doctor to multiple crises across three continents. The episode ends on Team TARDIS preparing to investigate this new threat.

The Fugitive Doctor! First incarnation of the character to be played by a non-white actor!

Overall, I really enjoyed Fugitive of the Judoon! It's a fun episode! There are some interesting collisions between various eras of the show. The Thirteenth Doctor and team meet the Judoon and Captain Jack Harkness, two elements of the show which were created during the Ninth and Tenth Doctor's time (and the device used for re-writing a Time Lord's biology shows back up!) The Doctor has three full-time companions for the first time since the Fifth Doctor. And the Fugitive Doctor has a no-nonsense manner of behaviour akin to the First Doctor's demeanour. Given that this is all part of the Timeless Child arc, which arguably supersedes every era of Doctor Who, this is fitting.

On a related note, I feel like this is an episode which deals heavily with the past - like I said earlier, elements from across the show's history turn up. And that past shows up whether the Doctor remembers and acknowledges it or not. I've always been fascinated by the past - it's interesting to consider all the events and decisions which led up to the present day. I often spend a lot of time thinking about the past; I find that there's something...bittersweet about seeing the past. Time's like a river, flowing past, and we, situated a certain way down the bank, can look back at what came before. It's sad, in a way, because of all the time that's elapsed - the past is gone, and we can't go back. At the same time, there's something exhilarating about seeing the passage of that time, witnessing the changes which occurred from a perspective which would have been impossible for the people living during that time. (Well, I am a historian!)

I also spend a lot of time thinking about my own past, my childhood in Africa, my experiences at school. I said that the past becomes inaccessible; at the same time, parts of it remain with us, and they can't easily be gotten rid of. Like with my experiences in Year 11. March 1st, this year, was the anniversary of when the bullying stopped, which I've mentioned several times. Four years ago. I had thought I was over what happened that day, but due to a variety of factors which I have neither space nor desire to elaborate on, I felt very depressed that day...and it took me about a week and a half to feel better. At the same time, my upbringing in Africa has shaped my personality and the way I see the world, and for the most part I really like the person that I am because of it. For better or for worse, the shadows of the past follow us, even when the events themselves have faded. Similarly, we see that here - the Doctor is forced into a confrontation with a past so distant that she doesn't even remember it. By happenstance, she's embroiled in the affairs of a prior incarnation of hers. And, spoilers for a later episode, the events of this episode wind up getting the Thirteenth Doctor thrown in space-prison - for the actions of the Fugitive Doctor. The past comes back to haunt the Doctor...and in a very big way. Another aspect of this is the return of Captain Jack - a man from her past, bearing a warning about her future. 

Even when they've faded into memory, the events of the past continue to impact the present and the future - that's the fascinating thing about history. In fact, Samwise Gamgee once said the same thing; during a discussion with Frodo, on the bordor of Mordor, he describes how a mythological figure, Beren, beat impossible odds to steal a Silmaril (a magical gem, burning with the light of a sun) from the dark god Morgoth. The Silmaril in time came to an elf called Earendil (Elrond's dad), who took it into space, where it became a star. The light from that star was captured in the waters of Galadriel's mirror, some of which she placed into a glass phial and gifted to Frodo, who carries it all the way to Mordor. Remarking on this, Sam notes how they are still in the same tale - the great tales never end.

In my last Doctor Who blog, I referenced an episode in Series 12 which hinted at the whole Timeless Child thing - this is that episode. And credit where it's due, it does do a good job of it. Namely, the issue with the two Doctors - they are both the Doctor. The sonic screwdriver confirms it. And yet, neither can remember each other (and both note that, given the outfit the other's wearing, they absolutely would remember dressing like that!) To complicate matters, the woman chasing the Fugitive Doctor hails from Gallifrey...which has been destroyed by Thirteen's time. So both other Time Lords must be from Thirteen's past. In turn, this indicates that the Fugitive Doctor knew something about the Timeless Child (which was my going theory).

So the running arc is handled well. It's developed in a relatively subtle fashion, introducing hints about a past the Doctor doesn't know.

On the other hand, this episode also reveals one of the biggest problems with the era: the companions are effectively window dressing. They have next-to-no relationship with the Doctor, which is most apparent in the fact that they know nearly nothing about her. At the start of Series 12, they have to coerce and coax her into providing a bare-bones description of her origins and her relationship with the Master. They also do not know that the Doctor's home planet is gone - by comparison, every companion from Rose Tyler to Clara Oswald knew both that Gallifrey was (supposedly) destroyed and that the Doctor was responsible. I'm not sure Graham, Ryan, or Yaz even know about the Time War, let alone that little tid-bit. Similarly, when the Tenth Doctor, Martha and Jack had an encounter with the Master, the Doctor willingly told Jack and Martha that he was friends with the Master. He also, in the context of explaining why his relationship with the Master changed, unhesitatingly describes an ancient Gallifreyan ritual which all Time Lords undergo - given that it's the story of how his best friend went evil, you'd expect the Doctor to consider it too private to share. And yet, he shares it anyway, because Jack and Martha are his friends - they deserve to know the full story. Not so with Thirteen - after her companions have a similar encounter with the Master, she says "He was my oldest friend. We went down very different paths." Minor paraphrasing aside, that's literally the amount of information she provides. 

Also, all three companions, over the course of the episode, get teleported away. The Doctor? Doesn't even notice. In fact, she finds the time to drive all the way from Gloucester to Newport (a journey lasting an hour and 14 minutes with good traffic conditions), and never once thinks of her companions. This is either a storytelling gaffe, in which the companions don't exist until they're plot-important, or a characterisation gaffe, in which the Doctor doesn't appear to care about her friends. And I don't know which is worse. Although it is simplified by A: the return journey being made in a time machine, and B: the Doctor explicitly asking her companions where they disappeared to once they've reunited. Overall, though, this forgetfulness over the companions reflects the single main problem of the era - once something's not relevant, it disappears until it is relevant again. Tragically, this brings down an otherwise good episode.

Overall, I would rate Fugitive of the Judoon at 6/10.

Random observations:

-I do really like the Fugitive Doctor. She's a brilliant character. Also, her bickering with the Thirteenth Doctor produces some of the best scenes in the episode.

-On the topic of the Fugitive Doctor (or, more accurately, Ruth), Allan, the maker of the awful birthday cake, has a not-so-secret obsession with her. Amusingly, his obsession is utterly hopeless, as she's completely in love with Lee. The icing on the cake (literal, as it happens) is the fact that he wrote 'You can do better' on the birthday cake, which would just have resulted in a restraining order, had the Judoon not turned up.

-Jack's reaction to the companions is quite fun - he sees Graham and, assuming that he's the Doctor, snogs him. Then he finds out that the Doctor's a woman, to which his reaction is utter glee; upon meeting Ryan and Yaz, he quickly assumes Yaz is the Doctor. He doesn't kiss Yaz, though. Then, his reaction to learning the Doctor's got three companions implies he thinks she's going a bit overboard.

-The first episode to feature the Judoon, Smith and Jones of Series 3, featured them on the moon, so that the writer had an excuse to make the pun 'A platoon of Judoon on the moon!' This episode tries gamely to carry the trend...culminating in an excruciatingly painful 'Platoon of Judoon by that lagoon'.

...Yeah.

-Featuring the return of the Judoon, Jack, the anatomy-re-writing technology, and the concept of the Time War, this is actually one of the most continuity-heavy episodes of the Jodie Whitaker era!  (There were almost no continuity references at all in the previous series.)

-A trivial criticism I have with this episode is Jack's hair. In a previous episode, it was mentioned that, while he is immortal, he is still aging, very slowly - so what happens when he gets old enough? And, by Fugitive of the Judoon, Jack's actor has gone grey. What better way to reflect Jack also aging, than to not dye the actor's hair? Nope, they just dyed his hair brown...

-The events of Beren's adventure are contained within the Silmarillion, a history of the First Age of Middle Earth. It's good, but...a great deal more difficult to read than Lord of the Rings.

-To finish, I have two musics I listen to a lot, which I feel like reflect the passage of time quite well.

-The first one is from Doctor Who, it's called The Shepherd's Boy (Or Breaking the Wall). It plays as the Doctor spends four and a half billion years punching through a substance 400 times tougher than diamond, 20 feet thick, with his bare hands! (Fair warning, the episode this soundtrack appears in is the second part of a trilogy of episodes at the end of Series 9;  if you want to  watch the episode, you kind of have to watch the rest of Series 9.) I like it - it really reflects the feel of those 4.5 billion years passing. It's also quite cyclical, repetitive in nature, which makes sense, as history itself repeats fairly often.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB4lJv5HQio

-The second is from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, called A Window to the Past. It plays over a conversation Harry has with Remus Lupin about Harry's parents. It's sad, wistful, looking back on happier times. It reminds me of Year 11 - I listened to that music a lot then, and I saw lots of parallels between my situation and Snape and the Marauders. Not happy times, but...familiar to me, now. Even four years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osTcYcYmf0o