Fugitive of the Judoon is has hints of Steven Moffat’s era of Doctor Who especially with the huge plot twists that we don’t expect. This episode is incredibly enjoyable and exciting to watch and you want to watch the next episode to see what will happen next.
In this episode, the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) meets a version of herself from a different timeline. The issue is this new Doctor is apparently from the Doctor's past yet she can't remember her and it is all linked with Gallifrey before it was destroyed. We are left wondering what has happened and why these two Doctors have met and why our Doctor can't seem to remember the other. We begin this episode, in an ordinary day in Gloucester, when a squadron of Judoon beam in on the search for an alien fugitive. Our team arrive just in time to try and stop the Judoon and then things go strange. We discover the local tour guide we meet at the start of the episode, known as Ruth (Jo Martin) is actually the Doctor from alternative or another dimension or timeline. Our Doctor only discovers this when she is searching for answer about who Ruth really is and discovers the Tardis buried in the garden of the lighthouse Ruth grew up in.
Yet while the Doctor is trying to uncover what is going on with the other version of herself, her friends have been whisked away by Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). This is one of most surprising things to happen in this episode, as we all believed that we may not see Jack again but then he appeared out of nowhere with a message for the Doctor. The message was "beware the lone Cyberman". Graham (Bradley Walsh), Ryan (Tosin Cole) and Yas (Mandip Gill) don't know what that means but for the most part of this episode they are out of action as our attention is mainly on the two Doctor.
The two Doctors are captured by Gallifreyan mystery woman Gat (Ritu Arya), she is tricked into obliterating herself. In the end Whittaker's Doctor is reunited with her team in Gloucester and they inform her of their encounter with Jack.
As stated above we don't really get to see much from Walsh, Cole and Gill in this week’s episode but the time they did have onscreen they put on a good performance. Over the weeks Tosin Cole's performance as Ryan is getting stronger and stronger and in this episode is no exception. At the end of this episode Cole's speech to the Doctor about how they will always be there to support her as they brought them together and they are now a family, is quite powerful and delivered really well as it really makes an impact, especially at the end of such a confusing but exciting episode.
Whittaker's performance as the Doctor is strong as ever, it is interesting to see how her version of the Doctor is starting to become stricter and even a little dark. She tells her friends how they can never really know her and what she has done, we are given the sense that she wants to close herself off to her friends and not confine in them as she wants to protect them but she doesn’t want to think about the people she was before. Whittaker's performance shows us how concerned the Doctor is and at the end we are told that she can feel that something is coming after her. In only five episodes, we have been given so much information, from Gallifrey, to the master, and now we have another Doctor and the appearance and warning from Jack Harkness. We are left thinking at the end of this episode, what else can the rest of this series bring but it is exciting to see where this series is leading up to.
This is one of the best episodes of this new series to date, full of surprises and more clues to what is after the Doctor, which makes us start to guess what might happen next. The performances are strong in this episode, the Judoon remind us of when we first met them and their dialogue is very much the same from the Smith and Jones episode. Chibnall is promising a lot for future episodes but Fugitive of the Judoon did not disappoint and left us wanting to know more and see more.
