Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon (2020) - Review

I've been waiting to see what big, mad idea Chris Chibnall has for his Doctor Who for a while now - essentially since a "five year plan" was teased back in 2017 - and whilst 'Spyfall' earlier this season teased a new status quo for the Doctor, 'Fugitive of the Judoon' comes along as a big mid-season shake-up that the show desperately needed, and something that the Who fan-base definitely needed. But despite being possibly the best thing to happen to the show for a long time, 'Fugitive' is also quite possibly the worst thing to happen to Doctor Who for all of the same reasons.

The episode was teased as a fun monster-of-the-week episode featuring the return of the Judoon (voiced by Nicholas Briggs, first seen in Series 3's 'Smith and Jones'), who were hunting a mysterious fugitive character (Neil Stuke), except then it turns out that he's not the real fugitive, and that his wife Ruth (Jo Martin) is. The Doctor and Ruth travel to Ruth's childhood home to try and find out exactly who she really is, and there its revealed that Ruth is actually the Doctor in disguise (via a chameleon circuit, first seen in Series 3's 'Human Nature'), and that the Judoon have been hired by the Time Lords, represented by the mysterious Gat (Ritu Arya). Meanwhile, the companions meet Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman, returning for the first time in ten years), who warns them about an upcoming rise of the Cybermen, and then disappears thanks to nanogenes (in a call-back to Jack's first appearance in 2005's 'The Empty Child').

When 'Fugitive of the Judoon' comes to an end though, there's no real sense of conclusion to the episode's story. We've got no idea who the Ruth-Doctor is, how neither her nor Gat are aware of Gallifrey's destruction, who hired Gat, the Ruth-Doctor and the Judoon in the first place, what Jack was doing when he was trying to reach the Doctor, and what the whole deal with the Cybermen is. 'Fugitive of the Judoon' is essentially a set-up episode, establishing key pieces for ongoing story-lines that may or may not reach a satisfying conclusion at some unspecified point in time, and justifies its existence purely on exciting twist reveals and an ambiguous plot that leaves fans desperately going online to discuss the show with their friends. There's nothing really in 'Fugitive of the Judoon' to warrant much discussion beyond "what will happen next", and whilst there's nothing wrong with that, I do struggle to form an actual opinion of an episode based entirely around setting things up for later on in the show's run.

It's an episode that wants to get the attention from the fans, and throws in so much fan-service without any real care to tell a full standalone story. In hindsight, this could work brilliantly, or it could fall flat on its face in the same way that a number of Steven Moffat's Who episodes have in retrospect. I'm not against Chris Chibnall putting episodes like this in Doctor Who, but I don't know how excited I should really be when I've got no idea if Chibnall will stick the landing. All I can hope is that he does, that I look back on 'Fugitive' as a brilliant arc-related episode, and that I don't feel disappointed when the story-lines are resolved.

I can say that I was completely caught up in 'Fugitive of the Judoon' throughout its running time, and I can say that I am very excited by the prospect of Doctor Who doing something bold and new, even if 'Fugitive' itself doesn't offer anything new in itself. Yeah, I was overjoyed to see Captain Jack return, and I was completely thrown by Ruth being the Doctor, but these cameos felt like set-up for something greater as opposed to full stories of their own. Maybe 'Fugitive' will hold up to repeat viewings, maybe it won't, we'll just have to see how it all unfolds.