{"id":75447,"date":"2020-01-27T00:02:12","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T05:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=75447"},"modified":"2020-01-26T23:13:21","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T04:13:21","slug":"doctor-who-fugitive-of-the-judoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/01\/doctor-who-fugitive-of-the-judoon.html","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Doctor Who episode \u201cFugitive of the Judoon\u201d starts off with a fairly straightforward premise by series standards\u2014\u201ca\u00a0<\/span>platoon of Judoon near the moon\u201c\u2014but gets wibbly wobbly timey wimey by the end. And since my own life got timey wimey as I traveled to Australia, and given the big reveal in this episode<\/a>, I thought I\u2019d blog about this one right away, and come back to the one before it, which I\u2019ve still yet to blog about, \u201cNicola Tesla\u2019s Night of Terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

The seemingly typical premise of the episode \u201cFugitive of the Judoon\u201d is that the Judoon are after a fugitive and quarantine an area on Earth while they seek the person they are looking for. We are introduced to Lee and Ruth, and several clues are sent our way hinting that Lee might be the one they are seeking. But it turns out, as we will soon learn, that Lee is protecting Ruth from a secret that she herself doesn\u2019t know. Before the Judoon execute him, he sends her a text telling her to seek the light and break the glass. The text activates some kind of memory in her and she is able to beat the Judoon.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Doctor\u2019s companions start being swept up one by one\u2026by Jack Harkness! He cannot get a good lock on her because of the Judoon quarantine field, and so\u00a0Jack kisses Graham thinking he is the Doctor. When he learns that the Doctor isn\u2019t a he, Jack says he can\u2019t wait to see.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruth and the Doctor take sanctuary in a church. When the Judoon show up, the Doctor says, \u201cThis is a place of worship. Show some respect.\u201d Ruth rips off the horn of the Judoon captain, saying that bullies always have a weak spot. The Doctor criticizes the move saying that ripping off a Judoon\u2019s horn is the\u00a0<\/span>worst possible insult. Ruth s<\/span>its on the step where the apse begins in the church.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was already beginning to pick up, between Jack\u2019s repeated experiences of mistaken identity, the biological encryption used to hide from the Judoon, and the local shopkeeper\u2019s file and suspicions about Lee, I was already picking up on the fact that this episode is exploring identity. A clincher that would prove still more poignant later was when the Doctor told Ruth that she was someone other than who she believed herself to be. Ruth said,\u00a0<\/span>\u201cI don\u2019t want to be that person.\u201d The Doctor replied, \u201cYou don\u2019t have a choice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, before he runs out of time, Jack sends a message to the Doctor: Beware the lone cyberman. Don\u2019t give it what it wants.\u00a0<\/span>Something was sent back in time to defeat them, and now they\u2019re a defeated empire. We\u2019ll surely be hearing more about this.<\/span><\/p>\n

The big reveal seemed like it might go in a particular direction. As Ruth breaks the glass, we see something we witnessed in Human Nature\/Family of Blood and Utopia: a chameleon arch had been used to hide Ruth\u2019s true identity even from herself. She\u2019s thus clearly a time lord, and so I thought she must be the Master. That the Doctor dug up a buried police call box outside didn\u2019t immediately contradict this, since the Master has on occasion made their TARDIS look like the Doctor\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But it turns out, Ruth\u00a0is<\/em> the Doctor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Obviously the Doctor played by Jodi Whitaker is confused. It isn\u2019t the first time the Doctor has encountered a different regeneration\u2013but why does neither remember the other?<\/p>\n

There is some great Doctor-with-Doctor dialogue that ensues as they meet another Gallifreyan who has been trying to track down the Doctor as fugitive, an encounter into which the Ruth-Doctor carries a laser rifle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDon\u2019t take the moral high ground with me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Doctor never uses weapons.\u201d \u201cI know. Shut up.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know my own life. I know what I\u2019ve done.\u201d \u201cOne of us is wrong.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then later:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cSomething\u2019s coming for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lived for thousands of years.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lest we were still in disbelief, the end credits are unambiguous, telling us \u201cand introducing Jo Martin<\/a> as the Doctor<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Can the Doctor forget her past faces and lives, having lived so long? Is this another sign that the current story is heading for the Carmel Masterplan or something like it? That isn\u2019t the first time this possibility was broached. \u201cThe Brain of Morbius\u201d<\/a> suggested there might be prior regenerations. An interview clarified that that was indeed the intent<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m looking forward to seeing where they go with this. What about you? Are you excited by the storytelling possibilities, and the way they may bring to the fore explicitly something that the show hinted at as long ago as the Tom Baker era?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Doctor Who episode \u201cFugitive of the Judoon\u201d starts off with a fairly straightforward premise by series standards\u2014\u201ca\u00a0platoon of Judoon near the moon\u201c\u2014but gets wibbly wobbly timey wimey by the end. And since my own life got timey wimey as I traveled to Australia, and given the big reveal in this episode, I thought I\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":75462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[2765],"class_list":["post-75447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-doctor-who-science-fiction","tag-doctor-who"],"yoast_head":"\nDoctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Doctor Who episode \u201cFugitive of the Judoon\u201d starts off with a fairly straightforward premise by series standards\u2014\u201ca\u00a0platoon of Judoon near the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/01\/doctor-who-fugitive-of-the-judoon.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Doctor Who: Fugitive of the Judoon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Doctor Who episode \u201cFugitive of the Judoon\u201d starts off with a fairly straightforward premise by series standards\u2014\u201ca\u00a0platoon of Judoon near the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/01\/doctor-who-fugitive-of-the-judoon.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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