Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon

“Consider your rhino backside imperially regulated!"

Er... so this isn't a story of the week, then. Blimey.

I'm still more than a little shellshocked from that. Did they really squeeze all that into forty-nine minutes? Impossible, surely?

So let's take a deep breath. I shall try and be coherent about what I just watched. Firstly, it was very good- I'm not sure how much was Chibbers and how much was Vinay Patel; frankly a big chunk of it was very heavily arc stuff so you can see how Chibbers ended up with a co-writing credit. Nevertheless, between this and Demons of the Punjab I'm impressed with Patel, on present evidence one of the more promising of the new writers.

I'm also extremely impressed with Jodie Whittaker. So far she hasn't been given scripts which allow her to show the kind of range that other recent Doctors have, and the result has been a kind of vague post-2005 generic Tennant-style performance. But here we get to see more of this Doctor's hidden depths, and at last Whittaker is called upon to dig deep- and she really nails it. This, more than anything with current Doctor Who, is what I've been waiting for. We know that this isn't going to be an episode of the week from very early on, in the TARDIS, where the Doctor is uncharacteristically secretive to her friends about what the Master told her at the end of Spyfall.

At first this seems like a fairly normal episode. Yes, we know the Judoon of old but they're portrayed as the same old occasionally murderous comic foils of old, with their silly language and vulnerability to having obscure legislation quoted at them. They're looking all around Gloucester (naturally, the episode gives us a good look at that fair city's main tourist attractions including, KGB assassins please note, the very pretty cathedral) for a fugitive, who seems to be a bloke called Lee, played by Matthew from Game On.

Except all this is just very clever misdirection. Because we begin the episode from the POV of Lee's very ordinary tour guide wife, Ruth, who is likeable, relatable and reacts just as a normal person would to all these alien rhino people. Only after a while, and after the appearance of the Judoons' immediate employer Gat, do we realise that all this is just misdirection and that Ruth- not poor, doomed Lee- is the fugitive.

None of this, at this point, seems to have much wider significance. Much more jaw-dropping is that ship orbiting the Earth that first Graham and then Yas and Ryan are transmatted to. Only gradually do we get the completely out-of-the-blue (at least to those of us who are unspoiled) return of Captain Jack. This is something of a joyous shock- and I love his reaction to the Doctor's current gender. I suppose it makes sense that Chibbers, former showrunner of Torchwood, would bring back a character he knows well. Even more intriguing, for vague reasons of plot convenience he can't hang around, and gets to impart some enjoyably cryptic and fascinating words before sodding suddenly off. The Doctor is to "Beware the lone Cyberman" and "Don't give it what it wants". It seems there's a big alliance against a massive Cyber-empire which can only be "brought down to nothing" if the Doctor does the right thing. Oooh.

All of this is huge, but it's not even close to being the main shock of this not-exactly-anonymous episode.Because Ruth shows some unexpected combat skills while facing the Judoon and the mysterious Gat in Gloucester Cathedral, which a probably going to get a few more tourists than usual. The Doctor accompanies her to her lighthouse childhood home and digs up a strange object while Ruth goes to what turns out to be a trigger for a chameleon arch (remember them?). The object turns out to be a somewhat '60s-ish looking TARDIS and Ruth turns out to be... the Doctor. We can add Jo Martin (who is very good indeed, and whom I remember from Chef) to the list. And she is absolutely Doctorish- right up to giving Gat a chance before letting her trip the fatal booby trap.

This is, I think it's fair t say, a bombshell. Oh, there's a certain amount of plot and peril until the episode finishes, but while all this is going on we, the viewers are trying to digest this information. Because this is clearly a past Doctor and that, as continuity currently stands, is theoretically impossible. There are thirteen incarnations in a regeneration cycle, and although it's slightly complicated by the fact that Jodie is the first of a new cycle of thirteen, we know every past incarnation of the Doctor, right? And Brain of Morbius, you can shut up. Multi-Doctor stories from The Five Doctors to Day of the Doctor have flat out stated that William Hartnell was the first.

But Chibbers, of course, knows this. He's one of us. It's pretty much certain that a) all this is done deliberately and with all due continuity obsessiveness and b) he has a plan. We're going to get yet another layer of retcon. The Doctor's past is looking a bit knocked about, certainly, but I for one am excited. Even more curious is that the employers of the Judoon are the Time Lords- but Time Lords from the past. This is the first time we've seen non-renegade Time Lords from Gallifrey's actual past, which in any other episode would itself be huge. There's clearly some kind of forgotten, buried past.

Then again, the TARDIS is a police box- so post An Unearthly Child? But no sonic screwdriver as yet, so pre-Fury from the Deep? And Chibbers is certainly well aware of these points.

We end with the Doctor and her friends reaffirming their togetherness, the Doctor concluding that "Something's coming for me", and a hook into next week's episode. We have a week to recover. Phew.

I have no idea, excited as I am, where all this is leading. But that's how you masterfully ramp up the revelations, beat by beat. Brilliant.