Doctor Who Series 12: 10 Huge Questions After Fugitive Of The Judoon

From an old favourite to a new Doctor, Fugitive of the Judoon has sparked plenty of debate.

Doctor Who
BBC

Revelations and surprises tend to be reserved for the big hitting series finales or openers. Even then, Chris Chibnall had pushed back a fair bit from all the spectacle of Davies’ and Moffat’s sweeping epics to focus on the interpersonal. That’s what makes Fugitive of the Judoon even more shocking. Nobody saw this one coming. A welcome return for the Judoon – that much we expected given the title, but a companion last seen nearly ten years ago and a new Doctor? It doesn’t get much more dramatic than this.

Hats off to Chibnall, he can no longer be described as a writer who plays it safe, and though co-written with Vinay Patel, it’s clear from all the straying into accepted mythology that his hand is all over this one. In his first years, despite casting the first female Doctor, Chibnall approached the series as a traditionalist, often harking back to early Doctor Who in his scripts.

A deliberate move away from Moffat’s focus on what kind of hero the Doctor is, to a more action orientated ‘I’m the good guy, that’s who I am so let’s get on with it’ approach led to much simpler storylines, but with the flip side that the Doctor sounded unintentionally patronising at times.

Something needed to change for Jodie Whittaker’s acting prowess to shine through, and even if the BBC are unconcerned about falling ratings, it is good to see the programme pull its socks up with this major return to form.

10. Will We Be Seeing More Of Captain Jack?

Doctor Who
BBC

John Barrowman had long been pushing for a return to the show. Overlooked for the 50th anniversary by Steven Moffat, who created his iconic character, he must have wondered if this day would ever come. His comeback, nearly ten years after his last appearance, could not have been more out of the blue.

In a huge ‘what just happened’ moment to rival the space-frog in series 11 and even the Master in Spyfall, Captain Jack almost highjacks the plot by scooping Graham and then Yaz and Ryan out of Gloucester. These scenes are so completely detached from the story that if we didn’t love the character so much, we’d be complaining.

He left as abruptly as he arrived, unable to give Graham and co the full message. The set-up deliberately makes us think that by the end of the episode he will get to meet his first female Doctor, but that encounter is postponed. Maybe not soon, as Jack himself concedes (the producer’s effort to manage expectations?), but he will surely be back - it’s just a question of when.

Now the Jack is out of the box, it would be no surprise to see reports of Barrowman openly filming for series 13. But a word of caution is in order. The Doctor links him to both Ruth and the Master as examples of her past colliding with her present. Perhaps before more Jack, we could be seeing other one-off cameos recorded in secret – River Song, Kate Stewart, Rose Tyler anyone?

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Paul Driscoll is a freelance writer and author across a range of subjects from Cult TV to religion and social policy. He is a passionate Doctor Who fan and January 2017 will see the publication of his first extended study of the series (based on Toby Whithouse's series six episode, The God Complex) in the critically acclaimed Black Archive range by Obverse Books. He is a regular writer for the fan site Doctor Who Worldwide and has contributed several essays to Watching Books' You and Who range. Recently he has branched out into fiction writing, with two short stories in the charity Doctor Who anthology Seasons of War (Chinbeard Books). Paul's work will also feature in the forthcoming Iris Wildthyme collection (A Clockwork Iris, Obverse Books) and Chinbeard Books' collection of drabbles, A Time Lord for Change.