We've known for a while now that the Judoon would be coming back to the show. A few pictures from set leaked a couple of months ago and I must say… I'm pretty impressed. The BBC managed to keep the "big stuff" from the episode a secret until today. We got a bunch of surprises! At the start of every new Doctor Who Series, there are always rumors. Characters and monsters supposedly coming back, here and there. But there is always one fan favorite: Captain Jack Harkness.
The immortal Time Agent that used to travel with the Doctor. Chibnall brought him back. We knew a character would be coming back for this week's episode, but I never would've thought (not even in my wildest dreams) Jack Harkness would appear on screen again. Now the Easter-egg from "Spyfall Part One" makes sense (the head of MI6 name-dropped both UNIT and Torchwood). This ain't just one-off appearance, this stuff is big. I think we'll see him again during the finale or during Series 13, I'm sure. Also, he dropped a couple of bombs that could turn into story arcs later on. Maybe an answer for the Timeless Child thing? We'll get those answers! "She needs me and I'll be there". Maybe this version of Captain Jack is from the future. He seems to know the Cybermen are coming back and they will encounter the Doctor and her Fam later on. He's trying to warn the Doctor about something that will end up happening anyway. Maybe.
It was fun to see the Judoon back on screen again! There were a bunch of callbacks to the "Smith and Jones" episode from Series 3 (their first appearance) and they worked really well during the story. They kind of got overshadowed by the biggest surprise from the episode, though. But before that… let's talk about another character for a bit: Gat. A Time Lord that used to work alongside with the Doctor. She is, allegedly, from a previous point in her timeline and the Doctor doesn't remember her. She was trying to capture her under someone else's orders. I think this is, precisely, where all starts to get a bit… "timey-wimey". Apparently, there is a new version of the Doctor out there. A face we, the audience, have never seen before. And it's getting pretty hard to trace back into his/her own timeline to make it work properly.
First we got introduced to this woman named "Ruth". She turns out to be an alien in disguise, hiding from the Judoon on Earth alongside a man, protecting her. Later on, we found out that she got her memory wiped and that she's using technology like the Fob Watch from Series 3. Fob Watch: a device that allows a Time Lord to re-write his/her own biology to turn into a human. A MacGuffin created during the Russell T. Davies era, used by both the Master (Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords) and the Doctor (Human Nature/ The Family of Blood). So, it turns out that the lighthouse was working as a kind of Fob Watch thing. Time Lord technology, so this "Ruth" character must be from Gallifrey. And that's when the episode slaps you right in the face… the Doctor finds the graveyard with THE FUCKING TARDIS BURIED THERE. Holy fuck! So this Time Lord MUST be the Doctor! But we've never seen this face before, so she must be from later on… right? RIGHT?! This can't be… the timelines must be out of sync.
And this is where it gets a bit… wonky. This Doctor still calls her TARDIS "ship" and it looks very similar to the "default" console room of the Type-40 TARDIS the Doctor stole when he ran away from Gallifrey 2000 years ago. Look, the round things! What are the round things? Our Doctor doesn't remember being her. Her TARDIS looks like a police box, that means the chameleon circuit is stuck with that look… so she MUST be from the First Doctor's future. That's when the TARDIS' got stuck with the blue look, after he landed on Earth during the 60s. Okay. This could work… I think. If she's from the First Doctor's future, she can be a version between the Second Doctor and the Third. After "The War Games" story, we never saw the Second Doctor regenerate. After his trial with the Time Lords, they forced him to regenerate. We never saw that regeneration. What we saw was the Second Doctor's trial and the Time Lords exiling him to 20th Century Earth.
Later on, we just saw a NEW version of the Doctor (Spearhead From Space) falling out of his TARDIS after regeneration. We never saw him change, did we? So the Time Lords punished the Doctor by condemning him to exile on Earth during the 20th Century and by forcing a regeneration on him. "Ruth" did say she moved into the city on 1999, right? That's still 20th Century Earth. Maybe they could've wiped his memory too, I guess? Or she could've wiped her own memory. She seems to be on the run from the Time Lords, that can work too. But that still doesn't explain why our Doctor doesn't remember being her. Also, there's a bigger problem here. A Time Lord has 13 lives, a cycle of 12 regenerations. Right? Adding up a regeneration between the Second and Third Doctor would brake this old rule. That's why the Time Lords granted the Eleventh Doctor a whole new regeneration cycle during "The Time of the Doctor" story as a reward for saving them during "The Day of the Doctor" story.
Another explanation I can think of is that this version of the Doctor is a previous face from a different regeneration cycle (1st) prior to the events of the "An Unearthly Child" story from 1963. She could die and regenerate into the First Doctor after being granted a new cycle. But what about her TARDIS? Well, maybe the chameleon circuit still works and she just happened to be using the police box look and that's why the Doctor used it later on in the timeline and then it just broke and never got fixed. Right? I'm bending the canon as much as I can. There's the problem with this theory. During "The Name of the Doctor" story, Clara entered the Doctor's time stream and got broken into a million pieces. A bunch of Claras all over the timeline. We know what the default look for all TARDISes is. We saw a Clara helping the Doctor. She helped the Doctor and Susan while they were running away from Gallifrey. This Time Lord version of Clara told the Doctor what kind of TARDIS he should be stealing.
The third explanation I can think of is multiverse. Maybe this Doctor (if she is in fact, the Doctor) is from another universe and she ended up in another universe by accident or because she needed to scape from the Time Lords from her universe. I don't know. And the last one is that she isn't the Doctor. Maybe she's another Time Lord (the Master, the Rani, Romana, etc.) that's using the Doctor's DNA as a template for a biological disguise or something. Someone is lying, I can feel it.
Rule #1: THE DOCTOR LIES. But for now… she's the Doctor. Let's roll with that. It's always fun to see how the Doctor sassies herself, hahaha. Classic.
"How did I end up like… that? All rainbows and trousers that don't reach". "How did I end up like you? I've never been anything like you. Trust me, I'd remember… specially that shirt".
Overall: great episode, definitely big. But I do think that Chibnall's walking on thin ice here. This retcon stuff is hard to pull off, I just hope he can do this. For the sake of the show's history. I don't want him to break the fucking canon. I'm excited! Fun stuff!
Review by Mario A. LunaBlockedParentSpoilers2020-01-27T23:12:39Z— updated 2020-02-13T05:34:43Z
We've known for a while now that the Judoon would be coming back to the show. A few pictures from set leaked a couple of months ago and I must say… I'm pretty impressed. The BBC managed to keep the "big stuff" from the episode a secret until today. We got a bunch of surprises! At the start of every new Doctor Who Series, there are always rumors. Characters and monsters supposedly coming back, here and there. But there is always one fan favorite: Captain Jack Harkness.
The immortal Time Agent that used to travel with the Doctor. Chibnall brought him back. We knew a character would be coming back for this week's episode, but I never would've thought (not even in my wildest dreams) Jack Harkness would appear on screen again. Now the Easter-egg from "Spyfall Part One" makes sense (the head of MI6 name-dropped both UNIT and Torchwood). This ain't just one-off appearance, this stuff is big. I think we'll see him again during the finale or during Series 13, I'm sure.
Also, he dropped a couple of bombs that could turn into story arcs later on. Maybe an answer for the Timeless Child thing? We'll get those answers! "She needs me and I'll be there". Maybe this version of Captain Jack is from the future. He seems to know the Cybermen are coming back and they will encounter the Doctor and her Fam later on. He's trying to warn the Doctor about something that will end up happening anyway. Maybe.
It was fun to see the Judoon back on screen again! There were a bunch of callbacks to the "Smith and Jones" episode from Series 3 (their first appearance) and they worked really well during the story. They kind of got overshadowed by the biggest surprise from the episode, though. But before that… let's talk about another character for a bit: Gat. A Time Lord that used to work alongside with the Doctor. She is, allegedly, from a previous point in her timeline and the Doctor doesn't remember her. She was trying to capture her under someone else's orders. I think this is, precisely, where all starts to get a bit… "timey-wimey". Apparently, there is a new version of the Doctor out there. A face we, the audience, have never seen before. And it's getting pretty hard to trace back into his/her own timeline to make it work properly.
First we got introduced to this woman named "Ruth". She turns out to be an alien in disguise, hiding from the Judoon on Earth alongside a man, protecting her. Later on, we found out that she got her memory wiped and that she's using technology like the Fob Watch from Series 3. Fob Watch: a device that allows a Time Lord to re-write his/her own biology to turn into a human. A MacGuffin created during the Russell T. Davies era, used by both the Master (Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords) and the Doctor (Human Nature/ The Family of Blood). So, it turns out that the lighthouse was working as a kind of Fob Watch thing. Time Lord technology, so this "Ruth" character must be from Gallifrey. And that's when the episode slaps you right in the face… the Doctor finds the graveyard with THE FUCKING TARDIS BURIED THERE. Holy fuck! So this Time Lord MUST be the Doctor! But we've never seen this face before, so she must be from later on… right? RIGHT?! This can't be… the timelines must be out of sync.
And this is where it gets a bit… wonky. This Doctor still calls her TARDIS "ship" and it looks very similar to the "default" console room of the Type-40 TARDIS the Doctor stole when he ran away from Gallifrey 2000 years ago. Look, the round things! What are the round things? Our Doctor doesn't remember being her. Her TARDIS looks like a police box, that means the chameleon circuit is stuck with that look… so she MUST be from the First Doctor's future. That's when the TARDIS' got stuck with the blue look, after he landed on Earth during the 60s. Okay. This could work… I think. If she's from the First Doctor's future, she can be a version between the Second Doctor and the Third. After "The War Games" story, we never saw the Second Doctor regenerate. After his trial with the Time Lords, they forced him to regenerate. We never saw that regeneration. What we saw was the Second Doctor's trial and the Time Lords exiling him to 20th Century Earth.
Later on, we just saw a NEW version of the Doctor (Spearhead From Space) falling out of his TARDIS after regeneration. We never saw him change, did we? So the Time Lords punished the Doctor by condemning him to exile on Earth during the 20th Century and by forcing a regeneration on him. "Ruth" did say she moved into the city on 1999, right? That's still 20th Century Earth. Maybe they could've wiped his memory too, I guess? Or she could've wiped her own memory. She seems to be on the run from the Time Lords, that can work too. But that still doesn't explain why our Doctor doesn't remember being her. Also, there's a bigger problem here. A Time Lord has 13 lives, a cycle of 12 regenerations. Right? Adding up a regeneration between the Second and Third Doctor would brake this old rule. That's why the Time Lords granted the Eleventh Doctor a whole new regeneration cycle during "The Time of the Doctor" story as a reward for saving them during "The Day of the Doctor" story.
Another explanation I can think of is that this version of the Doctor is a previous face from a different regeneration cycle (1st) prior to the events of the "An Unearthly Child" story from 1963. She could die and regenerate into the First Doctor after being granted a new cycle. But what about her TARDIS? Well, maybe the chameleon circuit still works and she just happened to be using the police box look and that's why the Doctor used it later on in the timeline and then it just broke and never got fixed. Right? I'm bending the canon as much as I can. There's the problem with this theory. During "The Name of the Doctor" story, Clara entered the Doctor's time stream and got broken into a million pieces. A bunch of Claras all over the timeline. We know what the default look for all TARDISes is. We saw a Clara helping the Doctor. She helped the Doctor and Susan while they were running away from Gallifrey. This Time Lord version of Clara told the Doctor what kind of TARDIS he should be stealing.
The third explanation I can think of is multiverse. Maybe this Doctor (if she is in fact, the Doctor) is from another universe and she ended up in another universe by accident or because she needed to scape from the Time Lords from her universe. I don't know. And the last one is that she isn't the Doctor. Maybe she's another Time Lord (the Master, the Rani, Romana, etc.) that's using the Doctor's DNA as a template for a biological disguise or something. Someone is lying, I can feel it.
Rule #1: THE DOCTOR LIES.
But for now… she's the Doctor. Let's roll with that. It's always fun to see how the Doctor sassies herself, hahaha. Classic.
"How did I end up like… that? All rainbows and trousers that don't reach".
"How did I end up like you? I've never been anything like you. Trust me, I'd remember… specially that shirt".
Overall: great episode, definitely big. But I do think that Chibnall's walking on thin ice here. This retcon stuff is hard to pull off, I just hope he can do this. For the sake of the show's history. I don't want him to break the fucking canon. I'm excited! Fun stuff!