Fugitive Of The Judoon: Ranking - 184

        Fugitive Of The Judoon

(Series 12, Dr 13 with Graham Ryan and Yaz,  26/1/2020, producer/showrunner: Chris Chibnall, writers: Viney Patel and Chris Chibnall, director: Nida Manzoor)

Rank: 184

'A Foster Doctor ended up in Gloucester in a lighthouse in the pouring rain, ‘our’ Doctor fell into a riddle right up to her middle and this era will never be the same again’

A platoon of Judoon who were once on the moon make their retoon near a lagoon! And against all odds, after a season and a bit toying with new enemies wreaking havoc on the universe that seem so weak even I could beat them without tripping over (Talking frog? Croaked! P’ting? P’tonged! T-zim Sha? Pshaw!) suddenly the flimsiest, silliest ‘monsters’ of the Russell T Davies era seem like a viable threat when placed in a complex story of twists and turns that’s positively Moffaty. Could it be that, at the sixteenth time of asking Chibnall has truly found his voice? Sort of: while Russell came to his job as showrunner armed with a dossier of everything he wanted to do in his first year as showrunner and Moffat had enough time to set up clues for the whole River Song arc to come when he took over Chibnall only seems to have had this idea, one he had pencilled in for his first year (in a story that, in its first draft, featured a Spanish vineyard and an Exeter zumba class, weirdly: in this version its Ruth’s son Tony who is the Fugitive Doctor, while the Judoon are a new race named the Karreg who have much the same plot function as alien policemen). Chibnall then ignored it due to his ill-fated decision to feature all-new monsters in series eleven and launch the new-look series with as few nods to the past as possible, but really he should have done this a lot sooner: the revelations here make more sense of his characterisation of the 13th Doctor as slightly lost and dazed, like an amnesia patient desperately trying to remember something just out of reach. This is one of those stories that isn’t really about the monsters at all but about the Doctor herself coming to terms with the fact that she isn’t the person she thought she was and just as Russell used the Judoon as an easy to understand threat in ‘Smith and Jones’ so he could spend more time creating the relationship (or lack of it as things turn out) between the 10th Doctor and Martha, so here they’re used as shorthand for a scary viable threat that doesn’t need to be any more than pencilled in. This is such a contrast to series eleven, when the scripts used to take time out to describe the new alien races we met and explain their backstory at length, it makes you want to cheer. As a result this story, plotted by Chibnall but written by Vinay Patel who also wrote ‘Demons Of The Punjab’, is kind of the previous series in reverse: the person the Doctor’s talking to in order to find out answers isn’t the monster but herself. 

 The Judoon are used slightly differently to their old status as comic relief too. In ‘Smith and Jones’ and the even better Sarah Jane Adventures episode ‘Prisoner Of the Judoon’ the joke is that they’re a team of hulking great intergalactic space rhinos tracking down criminals undercover who stand out so far you can see them from outer space (which is why so many of their prisoners get a warning and flee in time); a good half of both those stories is trying to keep them out of harm’s way and the public gaze while they stomp around breaking things. They’re big gimmick is that they talk in indecipherable rhyme: perfect for a one-off easily identifiable threat in a story that was all about introducing new companion Martha, great as a send up of 1970s cop shows made up of the brashest ugliest least suitable people for upholding the law, not so great as a returning threat to scare a new generation of kiddy-winkles. Here, though, the Judoon aren’t a throwaway joke – they’re blooming terrifying, not minding who they kill along the way as long as they get their prisoner, who is exterminated rather than given the chance to explain or plead mercy. Chibnall playing up their relentlessness, their black-and-white mindset and the might of the law they bring with them, even when the law is...questionable. They’re corrupt policemen this time in other words, exactly the sort of thing in the news in 2020 that Dr Who should have been turning into stories (and more timely than they realised: a mere six weeks after this story went to air is when policeman Wayne Couzens was arrested for using the might of his police badge to detain then rape and murder Sarah Everard, taking advantage over the confusion of the new covid restriction laws, an incident that had people talking about the police and their privilege more than they had since the 1960s). This questioning of authority is what had been sorely missing during series eleven and one of the braver decisions of an era that so often took the easy way out of things, attacking easy targets like whistleblowers and anti-capitalists rather than the people Dr Who had long seen as the traditional enemies: faceless corporations, tyrants and dictators and corrupt leaders taking unfair advantages. At last it feels as if Dr Who is one the ‘right’ track again – even though the Doctor discovers how little about herself she really knows. There’s a sweet gesture too in the naming of their leader ‘Pol-Kon-Doon’, which sounds like a typical Judoon name: they were named for BBC online producer Paul Condon who died in 2019 and did a lot for of Dr Who tie-ins on the BBC website and was particularly fond of the Judoon. Turning a BBC executive into a paperwork obsessed monster who plays everything by the rulebook would, in Robert Holmes’ hands, be the start of a quite different kind of a story but it’s a pretty heartfelt tribute: you almost feel sorry for this Judoon in the middle of a story he never quite understands. 

 ‘Fugitive’ is a story that, like many an epic Moffat multi-parter, is built around the shock factor. There are lots if big revelations that story that leave you going ‘what?’ every few minutes , some of them better than others (look away now if you don’t want spoilers…) The Judoon let loose in the town centre actually killing humans (something the Doctor had always been able to stop before); the sudden appearance of Captain Jack for the first time in nine years (the last series of Torchwood) or a full decade (the main series); the assassination of Gloucester man Lee just at the point when we think he’s the fugitive and the story’s ended a quarter hour early; the sudden shock move by Gloucester woman Ruth when she knows just how to attack the Judoon by tearing off its horn (something else we’ve never seen before); a Tardis buried in the ground at the foot of a mysterious lighthouse and finally the revelation of just who Ruth really is – that she’s the Doctor, but not from the future as both we and ‘our’ Doctor naturally assume but from the past pre-Hartnell. In time that revelation will get silly and lead to the black hole of the ‘Timeless Child’ arc which will suck in all sense and feel like a slap in the fact to any fan who ever took any previous story (bar possibly ‘The Brain Of Morbius’; there’s a sweet joke that almost nobody got, that Jo Martin’s Doctor is celebrating her 44th birthday during this story. And what Dr Who was on the air 44 years ago? ‘Morbius’, when the ‘idea’ of pre-Hartnell Doctors was sort--of-but-not-really born) at face values or ever used the Doctor’s own ‘numbering’ system of their regenerations. Here, though, when we haven’t had the explanations yet, it’s a mystery that keeps the story rolling so that, within the space of forty-five minutes, what looked as if it was going to be one of the simplest Dr Who runarounds of the lot has become something bigger and smarter. 

 Now that it’s over and we can look back on it as a ‘whole’, one odd feature of the Chibnall era is the way he and his era of writers re-invent other people’s ideas, taking concepts from earlier in the show’s history and taking them in a whole new direction rather than inventing from scratch. Sometimes, as with the Sea Devils and Cybermen, it falls flat but the strike rate is actually pretty high elsewhere: the Sontarons, Weeping Angels, The Master and even The Daleks are all well catered for. The new revelations we have about the Judoon all make sense based on what we knew from past adventures but add a new dimension to them as a ‘monster’: we’ve seen how dumb and mindless they can be but here we really feel the threat as they get things wrong and execute the ‘wrong’ victims’. The fact that Lee ends up covering up the truth to the end of his life is, at the time, one of the biggest shocks of the era, with Ruth’s line ‘but you come from Stroud!’ recalling Arthur Dent’s shock at Ford prefect being born on Betelgeuse rather than Guildford in Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To the galaxy’ books and a twist that knocks us off what we’ve been primed to assume, although it could be done better. One of the weakest aspects of the Chibnall era is the way the supporting cast never react the way you’d expect to people they ought to care about: he and Ruth have been married decades but, both before and after the revelation of who she is, she never shows the slightest interest in his welfare and even as one of the more callous regenerations around the way she takes off at the end without a look back is out of character. We don’t get to learn anywhere near enough about how this pair came together: how they fell in love, how much of the truth Lee knew (clearly a lot given that he sends the text message that activates Jo martin’s memory just when all hope seemed lost) and why. At the time we all assumed the answers to these mysteries would be resolved when the series arc finally came back into focus at the end of the era – but it isn’t (not the only thread Chibnall will ever leave hanging either. Just what caused the Ruth Doctor to go undercover on earth in the first place? The ‘Timeless Chid’ arc is so concerned with how things look from Jodie Whittaker’s particular regeneration’s point of view it never properly stops to think about Jo Martin’s). 

 Captain Jack’s return is, however, one of the things this story gets right, Chibnall again proving a better writer of other people’s characters than he is his own. Jack’s return is something the fanbase has naturally been keen to hide under the carpet since all the old revelations of John Barrowman enjoying himself in the nude at other people’s expense is series one and two came to light in the aftermath of this series (not that the allegations were exactly hidden at the time – many of them appearing as anecdotes in conventions and DVD extras - and not that they’re as serious as the allegations against Noel Clarke, but let’s just say someone who liked to shock his fellow actors by stripping naked for jokes despite their visible discomfort doesn’t sit as well with the vibe of this show or indeed the making of any show in 2023 and the on-set hi-jinks of 2005 suddenly seem a very long time ago). At the time though Captain Jack was a popular figure many of us had been longing to see again and our biggest worry was how he’d be handled by new writer after so long away from our screens and after the last two series of Torchwood between them turned a jokey cheeky chappy into a mass murderer. Chibnall gets that tricky dynamic bang on and Captain Jack’s never seemed more Captain Jackish than here, when he’s flirting with the wrong member of ‘Team Tardis’ assuming Graham is the Doctor and dropping more double entendres than the Two Ronnies but also clearly an older, wiser being who’d lived through those last two quite devastatingly emotional Torchwood series (the 3rd great, the 4th awful). The pairing of Jack and Graham ios especially fun as they’re polar opposites in so many ways: Graham is one of the most straightforward companions we’ve ever had, hanging around in the Tardis not out of excitement but mostly so he can keep an eye on his adopted son. He’s our everyman spokesperson, the dad who tells dad jokes, whose greatest character trait is his loyalty and reliability, who still mourns Grace the only woman he ever loved and who treats his time I the Tardis partly as therapy for her loss. With Graham you never quite know if he’s going to be safe from danger or whether a visiting aliens is going to run rings around him. Captain Jack was presented to us as the first as someone who could run rings around even the Doctor, an adventurer who loves being at the heart of the action but also an opportunist ready to flirt with anything in a skirt or indeed trousers (but preferably nothing), who doesn’t do commitment to anyone and who you can never be quite sure isn’t a bigger threat than the monsters themselves. His knowingness matched with Graham’s befuddlement is a great match and the jokes at Graham’s expense when Jack assumes he is the Doctor is Chibnall’s funniest writing since ‘The Power Of Three’. 

 Jack is clearly not the man he was when we first met him in 2005 though: fifteen years on (our time) this is a man whose learnt from his mistakes and wants to make amends, which is much how we saw him post ‘Empty Child’ when he’s learned the importance of responsibility and loyalty; Captain Jack risks a lot to get a message to the Doctor here, even if it’s one about the Cybermen that seems an odd thing to risk life and limb for (does he really need to be so cryptic?) and one that she ultimately ignores. This is a Captain Jack whose had a long dark teatime of the soul, but already moved onto the other side into supper without the baggage of old. Had Torchwood as a whole featured ‘this’ Captain Jack, one that just got on with things rather than the one that had the weight of the world on his shoulders and made everyone know about it every few minutes, it would have been a much better watch. In many ways the final comeback in ‘Revolution Of The Daleks’ is a shame: if this is the last time we see the character (as seems likely now) this was as fine a place as any to say goodbye. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that they somehow kept it s surprise: a lot of newspapers reported John Barrowman’s move to Cardiff and started putting two and two together but the actor made up a story about having to renovate his London flat and dropping in to see old friends more or less on the spot – and actually went through with the renovation to try and throw them off the scent! 

 Mostly, though, ‘Fugitive’ is memorable for the twist of having a whole new Doctor and our mystery over who she is. ‘You’re probably a bit confused right now’ she even says after everything changes – not half we’re not; oh the audacity! How has the Doctor been hiding in pain sight all this time? And why? Two questions we never really get an answer too. Is this a Doctor from the future as ‘our’ Doctor assumes at first? Is this the next doctor and we’re about to get a surprise regeneration? Is this not the Doctor at all and they’ve stumbled across a Cybermen plot like last time?! The fact that Jo Martin’s doctor and Jodie Whittaker’s doctor didn’t recognise each other, unlike all the previous Doctor meetings when the newest regeneration always had an advantage over the other, is fun too – unprecedented in fifty-seven years of the show. I always wondered what might happen if we saw a multi-Doctor story from the point of view of the Doctor who didn’t know what was going on and this is the closest we’ve had. The clues that this is an earlier Doctor are though, both in the way we see the Tardis as we first saw it in the Hartnell days, all roundels and blue-tinted lighting (nothing like it was in real life of course, when the Tardis was painted a pale green as pure white would have flared on the camera, though the pale blues works aesthetically, a sepia tone that’s as black and white as possible without actually being black and white) and the way she refers to the Tardis as her ‘ship’ and even the subtle clue of giving the original singular definition ‘Time and Relative Dimension In Space’ without the extra ‘s’ most Doctors have used since the colour days of the 1970s. The revelation of the Tardis itself is a little clumsy though, buried at the foot of the lighthouse rather than disguised as the lighthouse itself which would have been a far better twist. After all, the Doctor refers to the Chameleon circuit being broken in the very first story ‘An Unearthly Child’ and that it was working when the Doctor and Susan landed in 1963 (hence its police box disguise); why would it be a police box here? The lighthouse itself is a good a metaphor for the Tardis as you can get though: just as the original box represented a summons to aid in an emergency so the lighthouse represents a light in the darkness, keeping ships in the distance safe without them realising it while itself being that one extra step removed from humanity by being on the coast, the ‘outside’. That fits the Jo Martin Doctor even after she’s regenerated, a character whose at more of a distance to humanity than most of ‘our’ Doctors, a grumpier even less touchy-feely regeneration than the Hartnell version, whose aloof and removed and that bit more time-lordy, as if she hasn’t thrown of her detached upbringing yet. 

 Like many a multi-Doctor story the two regenerations spend most of their time bitching and moaning about their perceived differences (mostly in costume) even though they clearly needle each other by being too similar. A lot of the story’s best lines come from the pair of them both trying to take charge and outdo the other, being the one used to asking all the questions (it’s about time somebody shushed the 13th Doctor, given she does it to other people so often). The differences between them are particularly fascinating. The ‘Ruth Doctor’ is the Doctor back when she was, ironically enough ‘ruthless’: she’s more naturally harder-edged than ‘our’ Doctor, bossy and authoritarian, like the Hartnell Doctor without the twinkle in his eye that let you know he wasn’t really cross with you. She demands attention in a way that ‘our’ more lost and insecure Doctor doesn’t. And yet there are already signs that a lot of it is bluster: our Doctor is tougher because she’s had more experience, taken more hard knocks, been through more difficult situations. The difference is the Jodie Doctor is gruff because she’s been brave enough to open up her heart and have it broken multiple times; the Jo Doctor is gruff because she was created (loomed?) and brought up that way. It is, perhaps, a reflexive action to the criticism that the Doctor could never be a woman – by showing that she was a woman before she was a man. Even so, again, that’s something that would have had a lot moe power had Chibnall been brave enough to make that revelation at the start, in series eleven; by this time the dust over ther casting was settling and this story just stirred it all up again. 

 The casting of Jo Martin is this story’s biggest strength and weakness. She’s excellent, clearly the star of the episode even before the revelations of who she is and very believable as a long lost Doctor, as butch and macho as any of the male Doctors but with just enough feminine grace to make her more than, say, a 9th Doctor clone (perhaps the regeneration she most resembles, brittle and stern). However something goes a bit wrong in the scenes of her in the first half when, as far as she knows, she’s a tour guide in Gloucester: some scenes have her as scared as anyone at the Judoon and others have her foreshadowing her Doctory self, as if she only got to read the full script to the end when she was partway through filming and accommodated the twist into half of her performance. I still don’t know whether it’s a sign of good writing or bad that Ruth doesn’t feel like the doctor before the big reveal. She’s almost deliriously happy for one thing. And very much a Gloucester homebody (it would be far more in keeping if she was a travel agent wishing she could afford to travel rather than a tour guide who knows her city backwards). Jo Martin also shows up Jodie Whittaker, having all the natural authority and charisma Whittaker doesn’t possess, being a more abrupt version of her Doctor right down to the actresses’ name: most people agreed after this story had been on that if Jo Martin had been on from the Doctor from the beginning the show would have been a lot more interesting. Not to take anything away from Jodie: she can be a good actress too but she’s a born supporting actress, excellent as the feed who makes other people look good – it’s when she’s the focal point demanding attention things go wrong. Even though we know the 13th Doctor so much better it’s the Jo Martin Doctor you instantly believe and listen to and Jodie will never quite shake off that tag of being the second best ‘new’ Doctor in her own eras for the rest of her run (not least because Jo Martin’s Doctor keeps popping back again to remind us how things could have been). 

 The big massive downside to this episode, too, is that like ‘The Next Doctor’ and a lot of the Moffat stories once the genie is out of the bottle there’s no reason to go back and watch this episode. ‘Fugitive Of The Judoon’ is excellent the first time you watch it, when you don’t see the twists coming and the revelations come so thick and fast that you can’t keep up (unlike a lot of the Chibnall era where it feels like the viewer is constantly a few steps ahead of the Doctor). At least the Davies and Moffat eras could get away with making you invested in the supporting characters and companions and their lives: though better written than they have been for a long time (ever?) this Tardis crew aren’t in half of this story and the supporting characters just aren’t interesting enough. At least the two earlier showrunners tended to solve their lot arcs at some point too: a lot of this story is still unanswered even now and it ends in spectacularly boring form, with the Jo Doctor effectively running away with the Judoon clueless and Captain Jack’s return unexplained. Had they returned to this next week they’d have gotten away with it but they don’t even explain these mysteries by the end of the series! Take the revelations away and you’re left with a badly paced episode with particularly poor dialogue (there’s just one really good line this week, when the Ruth Doctor says to our Doctor ‘why am I trusting you?’ and the Doctor says ‘I guess I’ve just got one of those faces, before the revelation that they have the same face…well the same body anyway) that leaves even more loose ties hanging than normal. We never do get to hear what Ruth did and why two lots of intergalactic crooks are following her, or what Lee is to her, or how the undercover man in the shop seems to be on to her and why, or any reason why this Doctor should have ended up in Gloucester, not the most obvious of towns to end up in (is it something to do with the rhyme? Unlike location filming in London or Wales or Liverpool or Bristol or Scotland There seems to be another reason for the story to be set there except, perhaps, that it’s where this story’s biggest precursor ‘The Next Doctor’ was filmed (that’s still a bit too obscure as a ‘clue’ though, given that the two stories don’t even use the same locations). There is nothing here that makes you want to go back and relive this story just for the scenery after you know where the destination is. 

 Even that destination is a bit questionable. The ‘Timeless Child’ arc does more than merely contradicting an ongoing series written by multiple writers that always going to change and develop anyway, it takes away from the idea that the Doctor is a hero to us mortals but a bit of a nobody amongst their own kind; Dr Who doesn’t deal with superheroes (well it did once and that went a bit wrong too – see ‘The Return Of Dr Mysterioso) – it’s about being Human whatever species you’re from, full of people trying to better themselves and sometimes failing, of the best people being created by circumstances and character, not being carved out to be special from birth. That’s the sort of system that gives us Kings and Queens and tyrants, the sort of people the Doctor is always trying to overthrow when they get too much power. Jo Martin’s Doctor has the swagger of someone who knows she’s going to live forever and maybe already has, that she’s invincible. That’s not what Dr Who was for nor should it ever be: once the Ruth Doctor has remembered who she really is she thinks she’s infallible; this would have been fine had the 13th Doctor had a scene pulling her aside and saying ‘no you’re not: I’ve died at least twelve times already’, but she doesn’t. The single worst thing about the Chibnall era, at least for me, is the way that the endings always feature a lengthy ten minute scene of the baddy outlining their wicked plan while the Doctor stands around and gawps, passively. In this story there are two Doctors doing that, standing round chatting when Gat turns up. It’s just not good drama: the ending should be the big powerful release of all that built up tension that has you desperate to tune in next week because you’re pumped full of adrenalin; once again the ending feels like it was tacked on, people talking then leaving without anything being properly solved. 

 Even so, for now, taken on its own terms without the wretched season finale to come, it works – arguably better than anything the 13th Doctor era has given us so far (with the possible exception of ‘Rosa’ and Spyfall’). With ‘The Timeless Child’ it’s a promising question that will be ruined by the answers, on its own its really more of a mystery than a brilliant piece of telly and yet, in context, this means of playing with us and giving us the last thing anyone sitting down to watch this story the first time round expected feels like a far better use of our time than most of the Chibnall era stories we’ve had so far. I love the way that the story takes the usual Dr Who formula of the ordinary hitting the extraordinary head on and having that extraordinary thing be the Doctor herself, in a twist even she doesn’t see coming. The idea that the Doctor has been hiding n our earth in our timezone (after the trial run in the 1920s in ‘Human Nature’) just feels so right and makes you feel ever more connected to the series because, who knows? Maybe you’re really a Doctor in hiding too? Maybe we all are and that’s why the Doctor has so many ties to Earth – because every human that ever lived is an earlier Doctor? (No? Well, the big twist of this review is that I am in fact the Doctor’s 564637576756375th regeneration and you can now refer to me as the ‘Alan Doctor’. OK, it isn’t, but back when I was six and making up Dr Who stories of my own I’d have loved that idea. Actually who am I kidding? I still make up Dr Who stories and love it even though I’m 41). ‘Fugitive’ doesn’t have most of the things that made a lot of the rest of this era so comparatively unwatchable: there are no weak overly cute and easily defeatible aliens, there’s a plot that’s more than just ‘the Doctor defeats the bad guys’, there are monsters whose motivations we understand (even if it’s only because they’ve been around a while), there’s something more than loyalty keeping us invested right up to the end of the episode and most of all instead of the Doctor lecturing ‘us’ at home and making us feel small there’s another Doctor lecturing ‘our’ Doctor. It’s just a shame that all the other hallmarks of this era are there in spades too (a plot that makes less and less sense the more you think about it, weak dialogue, weird pacing, sudden jolts out of the action for no good reason) and that this surprise story has less and less surprises every time you revisit it. Still, there are other eras of the show that delivered stories far worse than this one: had the rest of the era been up to this standard and series 12 carried up this plot and this high standard (Instead of ignoring it for ‘Praxeus’, an ecological disaster story that puts the emphasis on disaster and then a story in ‘Can You Hear Me?’ that literally gives us the finger) then Doctor Who would have been in a very healthy place indeed. And a good job too, what with no less than two Doctors running around (why in 2020 terms that’s practically a hospital full!...) 

 POSITIVES + What with all the familiar and unfamiliar old faces involved it gets overlooked just what a good strong story this is for the Tardis crew – for me, it’s the peak of the Chibnall era’s writing in terms of character rather than just plot and a huge surprise given how badly Vinay Patel wrote for the Tardis crew in ‘Demons Of The Punjab’ (though I guess its similar in many ways, with outsiders hunted down as part of the plot, even if one of them turns out to be the Doctor this time around). Graham is much more than comic relief, he’s our tether to Earth slightly out of his depth but muddling through, a turning point for the plot being when he’s left behind and nobody notices him. Yaz gets to be properly brave at last: her offer to talk to the Judoon as, being a policewoman she ‘speaks their language’ is the most interesting thing her character does for three and a half seasons (even if the plot sadly overtakes this detail: a scene of yaz standing up to the Judoon the way Rani and Clyde did in ‘Sarah Jane’ would have been delicious). Ryan’s laidbackness is a strength at last not a weakness: he’s not shocked by anything this story in a plot where everyone else is running round madly screaming and his calmness contrasted with the Doctor’s makes both of them seem more interesting than usual.The sudden arrival of Captain Jack, a walking caricature himself, suddenly makes all three seem more ‘real’ somehow too: they become by turns confused, protective of ‘their’ Doctor and a little bit shocked at the idea she’s ever had companions before them. Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor has never been stronger than here too, perhaps to bring her up to Jo Martin’s level, Chibnall finally understanding this incarnation’s schizophrenia ranging from fits of the giggles she can’t wait to share to deep isolated thoughts that nobody else can share (as Graham himself points out in this episode, uncharacteristically). 

 NEGATIVES - One thing that’s quickly becoming an unfortunate side effect of this regeneration though is the way when she’s scared and vulnerable she takes all her anger out on the people around her. The 13th Doctor deserves a good slap for a good half of this story: she’s unfathomably rude to her companions this story, repeatedly, for no apparent reason. While Chibnall was clearly going for ‘she’s an alien who doesn’t understand human emotions this particular regeneration’ that’s about: it wasn’t funny when the 12th Doctor kept doing it to strangers and it certainly isn’t now she’s doing it to friends. The ending of this story, pitched like the Doctor’s an adopted child whose just accidentally bumped into her biological parents and doesn’t know how to handle it, relies on her friends stepping up and saying ‘we know who you are – and we love you for it’. But honestly, after how she snaps at Ryan about not being able to ‘understand’ because his life is ‘so short’ I wouldn’t blame him for upping and leaving. I mean, it’s a good job the Doctor aimed this potshot at a character so laidback it’s a wonder he can find a chair to sit down on; had she tried this with, say, Steven or Ace or Donna or the Brigadier we’d have never seen them again. A good job K9 isn’t around anymore, too, as this regeneration has a real kick-the-dog syndrome when things get on top of her. We’ve seen this a few times before (the Sixth Doctor liked sulking and blaming Peri and the 10th Doctor was an expert at moping, while even the easy going 4th Doctor yelled that poor Harry was an imbecile) but there’s something particularly unlikeable about the way the 13th Doctor makes everyone else out to be at fault but can never see her own weaknesses. After all, she knows these characters well by now – she knows how much they worry, how much she shuts them out from all her decisions, how much they need her compared to most Tardis crews. You would hope that the arrival of the brusque no-nonsense Jo Martin Doctor would make her go the other way and be over-friendly, to realise her failings from the past when seen up close and experienced as a companion might, but instead she becomes even more brusque and no-nonsense. Again, had the end of the Chibnall era taken the 13th Doctor to task for this, seeing her eventually pay by losing her life for this syndrome the way the 3rd Dr paid for his life with his curiosity or the 5th Dr paid for his need to do the right thing at all costs (while the 6th Doctor pays for his brusqueness in several individual stories, his big character finale of course going un-filmed when Colin Baker was sacked by a BBC controller for whom character arcs were too complicated to get his tiny little head around) then I would be all over it, but it’s a character point that’s never really explained or answered and that doesn’t seem very Dr Who-ish. Somebody always pays for bad behaviour in these stories, with karma as close to a ‘system’ to how the universe works as any (especially in the 1960s and 70s); these stories would have been a lot more interesting if they’d worked that in. 

 BEST QUOTE: ‘Doesn’t time fly when you don’t have all the answers?’ 

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