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This is the Fusion Patrol podcast.
Each week, we look at a different science fiction TV episode or movie
and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life.
Welcome to the discussion.
jadun okay all right i think they were going for that whole victory of the examination of the
daleks except it's jadun okay well we start off with a synopsis of this segment of doctor who
in gloucester modern day in what is not at all a contrived coincidence or metaphor
it's ruth clayton's birthday but apart from an anticipated birthday cake from her husband lee
It's just a typical day flogging walking tours of Gloucester.
Little does she know, uninvited guests are coming to crash the party.
She stops by her local coffee shop where the creepy proprietor, Alan,
tries once again to convince Ruth that her husband is a dangerous man.
He has no family and checks out weird books from the library.
He's even compiled a dossier on Lee Clayton.
Of course, Alan's just jealous.
In the vortex, the Doctor is in a mood, and her companions try to tease it out of her.
But they only get so far before the TARDIS picks up a containment warning from a Jadoon platoon near the moon.
And when I say near the moon, I mean on the Earth, where the Jadoon do not have jurisdiction.
They have erected a containment field around Gloucester and are searching for a fugitive.
The Doctor reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, or something not nearly as cool, and lands the TARDIS within the field.
The Dejun are cataloging all people within the area in search of the fugitive,
and just generally terrifying the fine folks of Gloucester,
because they are, after all, space rhinoceroses.
When they confront Alan, he suggests they go after Lee Clayton.
Unobserved to the TARDIS team, Graham is scooped up by a teleport,
where he meets Captain Jack Harkness, who is trying to grab the Doctor in a stolen spaceship.
Back on Earth, the Doctor bluffs past the Dejun and starts talking to Lee,
who behaves very suspiciously, and Ruth, who is clearly clueless. Lee's concern seems to be
keeping his secret and getting Ruth to safety. The Doctor sends Yaz and Ryan out to stall the
Jadun further, but they are scooped up by a teleport where they meet Captain Jack Harkness,
who was trying to grab the Doctor in a stolen spaceship. Wow, failed to get the Doctor twice
in a row? Is there some form of Jadun level 7 containment field in the area? There is? Oh,
Well, that explains it.
The doctor takes Ruth to a nearby cathedral, while Lee confronts the Jadoon and Gat, the
controller of the operation.
Gat and Lee are old friends, and she kills him, but not before he sends a cryptic text
message to Ruth.
Follow the light.
Break the glass.
The Jadoons surround Ruth and the doctor, but suddenly Ruth, as if acting on instinct,
kung fu's the entire Jadoon squad and sends them packing.
She is confused by what just happened.
The message from Lee leads Ruth and the doctor to the lighthouse where she grew up.
While the doctor pokes around, Ruth is drawn to an emergency break-the-glass thingy, and she does.
On the grounds, at Ruth's parents' grave, the doctor finds not bodies, but a buried police box.
What? says the doctor.
Ruth arrives, now wearing an uninspired cosplay outfit.
I'm the doctor, and this is my TARDIS.
What? says the doctor.
Back on the stolen spaceship, instead of explaining, Captain Jack gives a cryptic warning about the lone Cyberman for the companions to take back to the Doctor.
In a rush, he sends them on their way.
Inside the buried TARDIS control room, which I might add is cooler than any TARDIS we've seen since the reboot, the Doctor explains.
No, she doesn't.
They don't know what's going on and they argue, of course.
Then Gat arrives, who is from Gallifrey, and used to work with the Doctor, despite the fact that the Doctor doesn't know her and now needs to kill her.
but the Doctor gives her a rifle that backfires, killing her.
The Jadoon are sent away due to a contract technicality,
and the Doctor uses the TARDIS to drop off the Doctor near the TARDIS.
What? says the audience.
The Doctor is dazed and confused,
but her team are supportive,
and then alarms go off,
end of Act 2 of an unknown number of acts.
Fugitive of the Jadoon.
Surprises galore in this episode.
Oh yeah.
I suppose.
What did you think of Fugitive of the Jadoon?
Well, yeah, I mean, I had a pretty good time with this.
I've got to say, I like these kind of, I mean,
it's quite difficult for them to pull them off on this scale, I think, anymore.
But it sort of put me in mind of Utopia with the master reveal in that.
And obviously there's all the chameleon arc stuff
and Captain Jack's back and, oh, glimey.
Yeah.
Yeah, quite a lot of fun.
You could actually say it's derivative of that.
I, you know, this is a show that didn't hold well for second viewing,
I thought, because then it sort of, it's about the surprises, I think.
and I don't really consider it to be a story.
I mean, it's a scene.
It's an act of a play.
It's clearly the middle of something.
It's an arc story.
It's an arc story for sure.
It's barely a story.
It's definitely an arc thing.
Yeah.
I mean, I liked watching it the second time
because I was very interested in watching Joe Martin
knowing what I knew.
And so I think that's, in particular, that's why it repays a second viewing.
But this has a title that literally screams mid-season filler at you.
This is going to be a monster of the week where they dig up a unremarkable sort of semi-baddie from the show's past in order to provide some kind of something basically to plug a gap in between episodes of either original stuff or actual, you know,
the season arc bookends
that's what I'm expecting, I'm expecting season arc bookends
because in Skyfall
you've got the master
reappearing and saying
oh I've destroyed Galifrae and you think
oh god right
clearly we're going to have to come back to that in the finale
but at least in between we can have
a few
standalone episodes
and you know, don't get me wrong
I like standalone episodes
but when arc stories can do something as surprising
as this and they can do it in a way that when you go into the episode you just think this is
definitely monster of the week i quite like being thrown off balance uh i you know i'll give them
i'll give them credit um for the surprise um i think they must have sacrificed a few things
for the benefit of surprise. But when I look at shows like The X-Files, which is the closest
thing I can think of to the way Doctor Who exists in modern television now, because a lot of shows
are really very, very heavy on the arc now. And in many cases, they are just simply chapters in a
book as you go along.
Whereas the X-Files still existed in that era where, you know, 70%, 80% of the stories
were monster of the week, creature of the week.
And then you would have a couple along the way that were arc stories.
And they were usually bigger stories, two-parters.
they had a story that was at least sort of there
that had to be solved,
if not completely resolved
because of the questions that were raised
during the course of the story.
This one with the Jadoon is just,
you know, they came down,
took their horn, Kung-Fu'd them,
said, oh, by the way, you know,
you're out of jurisdiction, go away.
Jadoon, there you go.
I mean, the Jadoon are a terrible villain
or whatever they are antagonists.
I thought they were bad when they started them.
They were one-off when they started them.
They served a purpose in that story.
And then, of course, when you build,
this is always the problem with the kind of the sequels.
When you try and build a new story
around one-off villains like that,
then you've either got to add some previously
unseen dimension to their nature that gives you that story but in fact seems quite kind of
contrived or you basically end up with a with a retread and so it's quite a clever villain when
you want some window dressing for the story that's actually coming and it and it and it was
it was a story that suited them because it was a if it was about a fugitive it was effectively
something that put them in you know into then into their natural that's their purpose really
isn't it um and i like that and also i think i think they were just really seriously well
realized because the animatronics were better than ever i mean lovely lovely faces and great hair
they didn't have hair before did they i think they might have done but i don't know if it was
shot as in a way that made them look quite as cute well um anyway i i you know i think
it's as you say it's mid-season filler and they were you know doing it to to present something
to two things obviously they were trying to sneak captain jack in there and and get his
his long realized desire to return to the show um and i'll ask do you think we'll see him again
before the year's over i think that's it i think we're not going to see him again he will not be
part of the finale i would be quite surprised if we don't see him again oh okay but i i i i i i
really i really really don't know i mean i've read a couple of interviews with him he said he
says he doesn't know whether he's coming back obviously he also says in those interviews that
he lied about coming back this time therefore right you know that okay let's let's look at
his coming back this time in this story he says you know i will be back maybe not soon which says
to me maybe not this season but oh well i'm talking about this season i don't think we'll
see him as part of this season again i think there is a planned return for captain jack
I mean I would be astonished
because I
I mean one thing is fabulous
fabulous secret to have
kept in such a way I did
and it's entirely my own fault I did
get slightly spoiled on this
but
even then even when I knew
Captain Jack was going to be in it
I was like oh my god I can't
wait to see John Barrowman and Jodie
Whittaker together and
there is no way they would have
brought Captain Jack back
and not had him up against Jodie Whittaker unless they were saving it.
Then they filmed it at the same time,
and it'll be a room scene somewhere.
Because this is what I get out of this.
No, because they can bring him back now,
and it doesn't have to be top secret.
But they've already finished filming it.
Oh, sure.
They finished filming this season,
so it's probably going to be the Christmas special he's back in.
That's my guess.
New Year's special?
whatever you know the see this the seasonal special my you want my guess i reckon the finale
is going to end on the cliffhanger we're going to have a seasonal special that resolves that
cliffhanger is going to have captain jack in it but this may be wishful filming i don't know
but if you look at the structure of way this episode this was filmed and i don't mean filmed
as in the logistics of the filming captain jack is isolated on a small barren set for a scene or
big baron set well okay a big baron set it might be bristol cathedral i can say it's it's obviously
just a building that they slapped a console in and uh brought the the three supporting characters in
so easily could have been shot in a day captain jack or or john barrowman did a remarkable job
of faking people out on his social media why he's in cardiff renovating his house but you know he
He was never out on location filming anywhere with Jodie Whittaker or anything like that.
So that's why I think this is it.
This is the piece.
And if we do, by some weird bit, see him again, it'll be on a television screen or it'll be again in a one-off spot like this where the doctor gets pulled out to have a couple words and then sent back.
It will not be Captain Jack as an integral part of the story.
I think it's perfectly possible there is more Captain Jack footage in this season shot on a closed set
because all of the stuff on his social media channel was about renovating a property in Cardiff.
This wasn't shot in Cardiff.
So, and he did actually renovate a property.
So you wonder, I mean, maybe he actually did want to renovate the property.
I don't know.
But, or maybe he was, it was more elaborate cover because there's more to cover.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So, but I just feel like he, and he was, well, frankly, unimportant.
He was the bad wolf moment in the episode.
Beware the lone siren.
He couldn't explain, couldn't give him anything better than, yeah, I know, nanogenes.
But if he'd spent less time flirting and more time explaining.
Captain Jack we're talking about, we don't want him to turn up and then not flirt.
I would rather Captain Jack, who has a purpose, obviously quite an amazing purpose, is a very important thing that he has to explain to the doctor.
And then he doesn't actually give them the information they need to pass on to the doctor.
First and foremost rule of passing on a message to someone, do not start off with the flirting.
Go straight to the message, flirt second.
It's just, you know, it's just polite.
like why wait until why wait until he brought yaz and ryan i know he was trying to get the doctor
again but he was for starters he was trying to give a direct the direct message he was it wasn't
until he gave up on the doctor that he decided to send the message via the companions more routes
better attempt anyway um the lone cyberman um yeah we've seen pictures of a cyberman
beat up cyberman i think um so we know that's coming we also know from that he said something
about it was sent back through time and space actually he said there was no no he said a thing
or something like that was sent back through time and space and it was the alliance who sent
something back through time and space not the cyber well we don't know who the alliance is so
no we don't yeah so i i think we got you know just stuff trying to make this mystery interesting
well i'm interested whether i think definitely wasn't interested after spyfall
now okay let's um talk about uh good alan the cafe proprietor got killed good he deserved it
Harsh
He pushed a Jadoon
I mean how stupid do you have to be
I mean the next thing he's going to be
He's going to be an old lady shouting
Where's my Benny
Oh wait no she was in this episode wasn't she
No she wasn't
I know it just reminded me of her
Marcia was awesome I thought
Well not for long
No not for long
Not for long
did they shoot her or did she run into the barrier
no they shot her
they shot her okay I didn't see the gunfire
I just saw it when he hit it
and he goes oh the barrier is in
operational or something
that barrier better not be right there
okay
yeah
she reminded me of the woman shouting
Benny, Benny, Benny, Bungie
whatever it was in the previous one
I don't know if she was just
better or because the director
This one and the last one was so much, so much better.
So, the real...
Ruth is the Doctor.
A Doctor.
We don't know which Doctor.
The Doctor.
Frickin', I mean, which version of the Doctor?
And for some ridiculously opaque reason,
they didn't go, which one are you?
Well, they did that a bit.
They did that a bit because...
Not a bit.
They did not.
They did not go, which doctor are you?
Which one?
What number are you?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Give me a number.
Which doctor came before you?
I don't think there is the slightest indication in any episode I can think of that the doctor
thinks of herself in terms of numbers.
Okay.
They don't think of themselves.
Yes, they do.
No, they don't.
they do because they think of themselves in the terms of regenerations well okay occasionally
although okay i think that the doctor is smart enough to if the doctor remembers how many people
they were the very least they could sit there and work on their fingers and figure out because i
think the doctor's smart enough to work out on the fingers or go which one came before you oh before
me i was the big eyebrows and the gray hair which one came before me oh it was the guy in the horrible
multi-coloured outfit oh no i know i'm i think that's a much that's a much more that's a much
more plausible approach i mean first of all i hate i hate the terminology the 13th doctor
jodie whittaker is not the 13th doctor there is only one doctor well unless you count peter
cushing the she is the whatever it is the doctor after the 12th regeneration although i don't know
whether we're counting Metacrisis, Doctor, as a regeneration. So that gets complicated.
And thank goodness, the Doctor doesn't go around referring to herself by numbers and has not done
so. Or there would have been all sorts of trouble after the ninth, the so-called ninth Doctor,
the ninth incarnation, or in fact, tenth incarnation because of the War Doctor,
which suddenly turns up. So no, no, no, no, no, no to numbers.
It doesn't matter whether they use a number or how they use, they count their regenerations
whatever it is the point is is that they have a much easier mechanism for trying to orient themselves
in when they don't know who each others are that they are they have they have a they have a mechanism
for trying to orient themselves but they didn't try any of them they they start they started out
well no they have several and and i'm interested in why they didn't but i but i don't contact i
don't think it's entirely inexplicable that they didn't they started out with i you're in my future
you're obviously in my future because that's the natural instinct they both go you're in my future
because they can't remember the other one so that right that so then you're level naturally natural
but then the the the second thing about what so what i want to know is okay why did they not start
comparing how many whether whether there were any past regenerations assuming they both well
assuming the joe martin doctor has past regenerations we know the jodie whittaker
doctor has past regenerations but why did they not why did they not start comparing notes on
whether there was any commonality in that so yes i'd be i'd be kind of starting off with
you know the grumpy old man who ran away from gallifrey you know the reason the reason that
they didn't do that is because they are not trying to process this logically they're trying
to process it in terms of a secret to the audience but it's you know that the doctors
would absolutely try to orient themselves they're not trying to process it logically because
there are there's a there's an emotional reaction to this which i thought came across from jodie
particularly strongly but also because they do not trust each other and i and that and so the
other thing that i was wondering about um apart from the fact that it's a it's just a a really
really really really really naff device contact thing yeah which i would rather they just forgot
about you know okay so they did it in the three doctors or whatever but just and the five except
that she bloody does it with Gat.
And Gat.
Right.
So, okay, you do it in this episode,
then you do start to wonder why did the two doctors not do it.
But I genuinely think things are moving so fast in this,
they didn't have time to build up that sense of trust.
But, you know.
What exactly Jodie Whittaker was thinking
and revealing whatever she revealed to Gat, I don't know.
because yeah she had a sense of trust there um i mean she had already determined that that that
ruth was her so and the other doctors are are literally they'll run into the room and they'll
say i didn't have time to explain here contact blap uh in three and five doctors so which is
which is naff and annoying but but at least they they know each other and have a reason to do it
I mean, if you wanted to, you could, the Sonic could have the ability to tell how many times a time launch has regenerated.
Because if it can tell that you're the same person and all that kind of thing when, you know, it's in its complete molecular, dobbly dobbly, then you could do that.
Or you could, because the Doctor always seems to have trouble working out her age, the Sonic could be, could have the ability to age a time launch.
oh, right, you're now 3005 or whatever it is that she is at this point.
But, you know, that's because the Sonic's a magic wand
and Contact is a magic wand.
And yeah, no thanks.
Yeah.
So, but because they're using all that stuff in the episode,
you can't say, well, you know, it's a good thing they didn't use it.
It's because they should have,
because it was at their disposal and it was in their hands.
And it's because the whole thing is nothing but a contrivance.
An in-story reason.
Yeah.
and and there there clearly wasn't so no no i think that i think there was you think there
was an in-story reason you just didn't tell us why they didn't i i i think i think that the the
level of distrust and the and the pacing of it was was sufficient because we just cannot
the time i think you might need that explanation is when they're traveling
back to earth in the joe martin doctor's tardis which incidentally you are entirely correct about
that would have been the point to actually say okay who are you can we work this out but even
then you know joe martin is pretty grumpy and she's saying i'd like you to get off my ship now
yeah um which seems to be in character for her doctor i i didn't get any character i thought
she was terrible no i really like she was terrible um i think that stunt casting a disposable doctor
was a stupid idea and oh but we don't know hiring someone who is you know and and then not spending
the time anyway that's john hurt put in his play yeah i'm not crazy about the john hurt uh no
process but at least they hired an actor who was good and they gave him a personality and here
i yeah no this just doesn't because name name of the name of the doctor i thought this is this is
just this is the worst idea ever but well and at the name of the doctor it was the worst idea ever
um and it's still really a kluge brought on by chris eccleston being i don't think dave the
doctor would have worked with christopher eccleston i think i think i think it works
so well with john hurt i have it i have the greatest difficulty even imagining it was
christopher eckleton and it would have screwed up rose well yeah there is that problem with rose
um you could have done day of the doctor with paul mcgann yes you could have done paul mcgann
and i think even that probably would have been a better uh a better option uh i'd have watched
from a canon standpoint but but i like i like but here's the thing i'm glad you know what but but
you're assuming joe martin is a disposable doctor but i don't think that's been established yet
well okay i'm i'm i'm desperately hoping joe martin the worthless doctor is a disposable doctor
um and if that would be the end of doctor who if that's the next um i'm done i think not i'm done
yeah um i mean i she's about as miscast as i've ever done i have criticized the the the kind of
when we when we um when we had time of the doctor and we all knew what was happening because capaldi
had even appeared in day of the doctor and so there was the opportunity to do something a little
bit more interesting in terms of the the sequence in which you introduced the the new doctor and it
it being it involving time travel and being timey-wimey and yet what they do is just this
kind of endless um emo angst about being about to quote die because they're not about to die
they're about to regenerate and and and i can kind of understand why because when they introduce
the new doctor they need the old doctor out of the way so the audience from a from a marketing
the show point of view so the audience can bond with the new doctor without the old doctor being
around for them to cling on to so i kind of get that but if this were the introduction of a new
doctor then i'd be quite impressed with the audacity of the way in which they've structured it
um well um it would be audacious still a bad idea but it would be audacious um
here's the thing i i said it at the beginning at sky at spyfall uh the gallifrey thing with
the timeless child and the master destroying it and all that stuff doesn't interest me no they
haven't made it interest me yet no this is this i i am i am absolutely convinced that this is a
disposable chunk of the doctor's history or an alternate universe what's what's your what's your
theory then because i because i've i've been puzzling i've been puzzling this out if if this
doctor is not a traditional doctor if you like so this is this is a this is a a doctor that we
haven't seen from the doctor's past like john hurt or this is a doctor from the doctor's future that
we haven't seen like michael jayston or this is a an a doctor from another universe like david
warner or or from this universe but an alternate timeline but that probably is another universe
um which is it i i i don't think that they're going to provide us with a satisfactory explanation
that's going to make sense so we'll start with i mean they'll they'll have an explanation but it
will ultimately fall apart um if you start thinking about it but let's let's review a
couple of possibilities that that have occurred to me one as you say the simplest one is it's an
alternate universe somehow and that is a parallel doctor and after this crisis is over uh the
universes will be unparalleled and then that will be that will be the end of it um there's also the
very real possibility that although again it does not fit with the whole doctor's counted number of
regenerations, but that could theoretically be, that can easily be retconned with a stroke of a
pen and a callous writer. That at some point the doctor was regenerated, taken out, made a CIA
operative, functioned as a CIA operative for Gallifrey for a period of time, escaped,
used the Chameleon Arch,
ended up doing this.
Who knows?
May have regenerated more than once
somewhere along the way,
obviously before the Chameleon Arch,
and then will be wiped
and then put back to whatever doctor
they were at the end of that.
So you're saying it's the same timeline.
So it comes between regenerations.
It could have been a...
Yeah, we know that Time Lords
can make a regeneration do what you want.
So, I mean, they could have...
This could be between Colin and Sylvester.
No, because we saw someone with Colin Baker's hair regenerate into Sylvester McCoy.
So that's not possible.
I don't know.
There's a similarity there.
If she were wearing a wig, look as close as the person on the floor in the TARDIS.
But in other words, the Time Lords can put you back, I feel like.
Well, the problem with that is I don't think you can fit it in.
I don't think you can fit it in.
So either way, whether you go for an alternative universe or that this is somehow a prior to Jodie Whittaker incarnation of the Doctor who we haven't seen,
we can do what the Doctors didn't do in the show and we can work back to where there is some commonality.
And very simply, we can straight away say that if she's an alternative universe doctor, they diverged at or pre-Troughton.
Because of no sonic screwdriver.
And there is no way that this regeneration comes between Hartnell and Troughton.
Well, it is possible that Troughton, since that was a Time Lord regeneration, and we did not see the transition between Troughton and Pertwee.
No, but that's post-Sonic. So I'm going with the... If it's an alternative universe thing,
you don't have this problem. At some point, something happened to the Doctor's timeline
when she was either William Hartnell or Patrick Droughton. And this created an alternative branch
of her timeline. And at some point after that, she regenerated into the Joe Martin Doctor. I'm
regeneration because there's got to be some echo of of uh colin baker's testing tasting clothing
for her to be wearing that shirt let's let's go with what we know um we know that the master
discovered something that was a huge lie from the time lords yes this has got to be a part of this
This is, I mean, see how it's impacting the current Doctor.
Think how something like this would happen if the Master found out that there was some, again, still not knowing what it is, but that there's like another Master running around, which we'll come back to in a minute.
But, you know, if our Doctor is floored by this, the Master could be floored by it.
And if he blamed our Time Lords, then he might destroy them.
And since they sent something back through time, the Alliance, to do something, could it be that this is a thing that the Time Lords were going to do or did do in order to stop the Cybermen thing, which created an alternate timeline?
It's going to be a convoluted mess and it's going to get undone.
Could be that.
I mean, the questions that immediately occur to me are, I'm now thinking because of what happened to the master in The Doctor Falls,
that the master, the O master that we're seeing here is from the same timeline as the Joe Martin Doctor.
It's possible.
Except that the timeline that Joe Martin Doctor is from seems to have a, either the time or the timeline seems to have a Gallifrey that isn't destroyed.
So if the O Master is from the alternative timeline.
He destroyed the wrong Gallifrey.
Did he destroy? Yes. Did he destroy the wrong Gallifrey? Yeah.
Okay. So here's my, this is honestly.
Go on.
What I was going to say is that this mystery doesn't really, it really does not make me care any more about this mystery.
There is only one thing that I came out of this episode going, hmm, that's interesting.
All the rest of it seems completely disposable to me and at every level.
I just want to know one thing.
Who the heck is Lee?
Lee is, he's a Gallifreyan who is the equivalent of...
faithful companion of the doctor john smith no no no no no no no no no no no i don't mean it that
way i mean if this is an alternate timeline who is lee the master romana oh i see the way to call
a faithful companion why but if if they if i can see okay so you're you're taking the fact that
lee is gallifreyan and you want there to be a parallel so you want the doctor in this alternate
timeline if indeed this doctor is from an alternate timeline to still be traveling with one of the
same people she travels with in this timeline even though the divergence of the timeline is
sufficient that she's ended up regenerating into someone else yeah but then you did just postulate
that with that closed sense it must be the sixth doctor so there are you're you know you're saying
they're parallels or you think there's parallels or you're looking for parallels so i'm only i'm
yes yes i was more i was more going for the joke there but okay but i suppose the thing that
suggests that this doctor is earlier is because the tardis has changed less than yes jodie wick
sonic but even but even then it's an alternate timeline she could have regenerated a couple of
dozen times and just not done as much redecorating correct um but so let's carry this one step
further if it's an earlier doctor it's a divergent version of some earlier doctor prior to terror of
the autons has the master gone bad remember the master was the doctor's friend but in gallifrey
Are you saying the master went bad in or immediately prior to Terror of the Autums?
Not in necessarily or immediately.
I'm just saying somewhere along the line.
We don't know where that happened.
If this is an earlier version going back as possibly as far as the first or second doctor.
Yes, it could be the master who did not, you know, something happened.
Gallifrey went to war.
Obviously, they were fighting something.
He's carrying a medal, a war medal that he's sentimental about.
Yes, good point.
So there's something.
They worked for Gat.
Gat's obviously military for the honor of Gallifrey and stuff.
So it all feels like they were in the Secret Service spy thing.
And not that there's any parallel there.
And that maybe at the end of this, that gets wiped from the Doctor's memory as payment for saving Gallifrey again or something.
I don't know, but it's possible that in that scenario, the Master may have been part of the Time War.
In some sort of old timeline Season 6B theory nonsense.
Necessarily as antagonistic to one another.
And, of course, in the modern series, we get that clear sort of romance, romance thing going there that, you know, in this alternate.
Yeah, well, in this alternate universe, Ruth doesn't know, although presumably Lee does.
So, yes, I feel like he's taking advantage of her.
I also want to point one thing out when you say you think it's an earlier doctor.
And I agree with those two points.
It's definitely an old TARDIS console room.
God, it looks so good.
It even looks so much better than the one they did in Capali's era with the stolen TARDIS.
It's presumably some evolution of that, but yeah, it does.
Well, but it's got some of the stuff from way, way back in the Hartnell era.
I think there's a couple shots where you've got those kind of booth-like things.
And oh, yeah, no, it's a beauty.
It's just absolutely, you know, just trash the darn.
It's gorgeous.
That's what it could do.
Swap the TARDISes before you wipe out the other doctor.
But there's another clue that you missed.
Well, maybe you didn't miss it.
But I thought it was very interesting.
When did this happen?
When did the doctor, when did the Ruth doctor come into existence as Ruth Clayton, not as the doctor?
Because we have a clue.
she actually said when it was,
although when it probably was,
when she moved to Gloucester.
You mean when she activated the chameleon arc?
When she moved to Gloucester.
So in other words,
when she moved to Gloucester in 1999?
No, December.
December 1999.
Mid-December 1999.
Do we know any stories that took place
in December of 1999?
Oh, I like it.
I like it.
How interesting.
I thought that was true on the nose.
If it had been at the end of December 1999, it would have been perfect.
It was oddly specific, giving it a date like that.
So, yeah.
It's got to have a purpose.
Or just a red herring.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Although I would have said end of December 1999.
You know, that would have been because we know that the Doctor Who movie occurred December 31st, 1999.
and I think maybe as early as the 30th,
but wouldn't have been mid on the other side of the planet.
In fact,
but,
but yeah.
Yeah.
I can't,
I can't see what,
I can't see what the significance of it is,
but it must be significant.
It feels like a clue.
It definitely feels like a clue.
And there might well be a connection there.
I mean,
the other,
the other thing is she's quite a kick-ass doctor.
I don't know if that's Venusian Aikido,
But I can't imagine Jodie Whittaker knocking out six rhinos.
I can't imagine any of them except Pertwee.
Yeah.
So that's more sort of alt three.
I also have a hard time with the I handed you a gun that's going to blow up in your face.
I can sort of didn't Tenon do something like that in the Poison Sky.
it's possible i i can imagine it but it's it's definitely it's definitely more harsh than um
than miss all rainbows and trousers that don't reach would uh would do and then there's that
scene the doctor doesn't use guns i know that don't tell them come on it's like um like they
couldn't hear that um the doctor as we know does use guns so it's nonsense right that's a lie right
that's that's completely false but still yeah yeah it's just so much so much for me not to like in
this honestly um i i i just i didn't dislike that i thought you remember remember what we said during
spyfall when i when i said that i felt like chibbers was having a temper tantrum yet he didn't
like what moffat had done bringing gallifrey back and whatnot this still feels like that this feels
like vandalism not creative no no i i i disagree because because because this time around he's
he's he's following moffat's lead in if if he is adding in a doctor that we didn't previously know
about that's homage to moffat moffat did that i think more than that it's it there's a lot of
rtd stuff in here because you know the jadoons rtd captain jack's rtd chameleon arcs well actually
i don't know why paul cornell didn't get a credit um because he wrote both of the versions of human
nature i think and that's where it comes from but i don't think they mentioned it in uh uh utopia
either. Well, the chameleon arc that
the master uses.
Cornell didn't get a credit for that.
No, but I mean, why didn't he get a credit
in this episode?
But I'm saying they used the chameleon art in
Utopia, or whichever one that was,
or The Last of the Time Lords, and he didn't get
a credit there either. Oh, I see.
So why would he get a credit here? Oh, yeah.
Well, I guess because they
specifically mentioned it
in this one. They specifically
mentioned it in that one, too.
Too long ago. I'd have to re-watch it.
I could rewatch it. I like that episode.
I might rewatch it.
Although I need to rewatch
Curse of Fenric because of the sad
passing of Nicholas Parsons.
Is there...
Are we supposed to treat this as a two-part episode?
I think it's a...
I think it's a
set-up episode, but I don't
think we're getting part two next week.
Okay. You think that's just a complete coincidence?
That's my feeling.
that they led one episode into the next,
which is very rare in this age of Doctor Who.
It is rare, but there's got to be some explanation
of why they will now have spent, what, six stories on Soul 3?
It's cheap.
Well, they've obviously spent a lot of time traveling around.
Well, I don't know whether...
Yeah, how cheap is it when the part of Soul 3
you do all your filming on is in South Africa.
Well, they went to somewhere in Bosnia or Czechoslovakia
or something for the, well, where was that one?
Didn't they go to the Canaries for Orphan 55?
I think they did.
I think they've gone to several places.
I think space travel is a lot cheaper, actually.
Well, I think they're making up for elsewhere, though.
Space travel mostly happens in Aquarium Wales,
and that's dead cheap.
Yeah.
I think they're making up for it elsewhere though
because I just
every episode I keep
thinking
they've cut a little corners here and there
and
this one too, I mean the Captain Jack stuff
I mean I get why they did it
because of the secret and not letting it know
but at the same time those scenes
feel like they were done on the cheap
Oh no I like
I do want to mention one thing about that
on the Captain Jack
cameo
the surprise like i say the scene was written to be a surprise they did it to be a surprise chibnall
has been working his little butt off to keep everything secret yeah this year i mean the the
the next time trailers aren't interesting because there's nothing in them to make you want to watch
them the the the teasers aren't very interesting because there's nothing to make you want to watch
them they're so they're so penurious with their with what they give out that they're disinteresting
and this is why and this is why because he's working on these secrets but if nobody watches
because nobody cares and and we'll mention we'll mention the doctor who's social media here in a
second when graham plops down in the middle of that empty set and you hear the voice and it goes
Hey, I'll just hold on there.
I got laser spikes.
You got to keep the thing going.
Things lasery, spiky thingies.
And I'm going, that sounds like Captain Jack.
There is no actual reason for them, for him to be hidden away.
It's literally there so that the audience will be listening to it going,
Hey, that sounds like Captain Jack.
And then the reveal.
Yeah.
And wasn't it good?
Eh.
he could have he could have literally had his back yeah he could have had his back to the console
and graham pops up and lands on the floor and what's going on there i think it's me captain
jack how would that been any different than giving us a couple lines where you kind of
go and watch out for the laser spikes and stuff i i don't know it just i liked it okay one so one
thing um because i saw man did i see a lot of complaints about this i will i will you know
admit that I may have, through some means, managed to watch a BBC version of this episode.
And so that's talking about noon, where I live on Saturday. And it does not air in the United
States till I think 8pm on BBC America, I believe, in the United States. And if you don't have BBC
America, which I don't, it doesn't come out on iTunes until midnight or possibly even 1am,
depending, I think it's California time. So, uh, you know, quite late. I watched it
in a two hour window of when it, it aired. So basically immediately after it aired,
probably 15 minutes after I watched that. Well, one, I got a, I got a text message from Ben saying
WTF. And, uh, and then I, uh, and then I, uh, I popped on my Facebook and the literally the first
post there was from Dr. Who going, well, now that Captain Jack's back in Dr. Who, find out
the amazing stuff about Captain Jack. And I'm looking at that and there's just like 50 to a
hundred comments following that up going, thank you so much. This hasn't aired yet. Dr. Who's
who account and i mean very very mad very very mad people and and rightly so kind of rightly so
because a mistake they made but i mean that's terribly ill-mannered i think and and it was
like i said there's nothing to it except the surprise there's no value to that scene except
for the surprise and captain in terms of the story but he's not really back i mean he's just
like it's a cameo it's a captain jack cameo it's like oh yeah all right fine but the the whole
thing is the whole point of it is the surprise and they absolutely ruined it for everybody outside
of britain and they ought to know that social media doesn't work that way and and yeah shame
on the bbc for that really really bad uh handling of that but especially considering how hard chibbers
worked to keep it a secret yeah yeah clearly clearly that wasn't that wasn't his intention
that was some marketing muppet well you know something if we and here's the thing i i would
be willing to bet because i i don't see the i i've really gotten 100 official ratings but
they aren't great at least on the first view on the bbc um this year and last um you know they've
They've been trailing.
And I don't know what's happening on BBC America,
but I can totally see them being higher
for this episode in the United States because of that.
Oh, Captain Jack's back.
I'm tuning in.
I can absolutely see that.
And, you know, now we're talking about the question
between what is the balance between not having spoilers
and actually getting people to watch
and getting what needs to be done to keep a show going.
Well, I'll tell you what I want.
I want no spoilers.
I'm going to watch it anyway.
Yes, but we're probably an exception.
A lot of people are casual viewers
and a lot of people are,
oh, watch it if it's convenient.
It's not must-see TV for most people.
And these sorts of things make it,
oh, great, the Daleks are back next week.
I'll make an effort to watch this.
Which is why all these Dalek episodes get called Exorcism of the Daleks or something.
Right.
And any surprise appearance by a Dalek is never a surprise appearance because they never, never managed to keep those ones secret.
And wouldn't it be nice if they did?
I personally felt that there was a sidecar in this, but, you know, this discussion.
But anyway, have you got anything else on Fugitive of the Jadoon?
Oh, yeah.
so um you mentioned lee and and one thing that just uh i've got a few things badly but one thing
just occurred to me while you were while you were talking literally while you were talking you know
that um so you weren't listening you were just okay no go ahead i well i was multitasking my
good man i was multitasking i i know that men aren't supposed to be able to do that um and so
I was probably doing everything I was doing badly.
But there was a sort of super fan,
apparently, I don't know much about him,
a chap called Paul Condon, who died last year.
And after whom the Jadoon captain was named,
who is Captain Paul Condon.
Probably not connected, quite possibly a coincidence.
But tell me, if you can,
the names of anyone you can think of
connected with designing the dvd covers for doctor who releases think of any no no i can't
you heard of lee binding uh now that you mentioned the name i have heard the name lee binding he didn't
he do some of the early steelbooks didn't he do some of the early steelbooks yeah quite possibly
he's doing all the time i remember the big blue box podcast was having a strop about the fact that
they'd replaced and i think it was lee binding that got kicked out and replaced by somebody
did some really awful ones or something but oh no i think i think that was clayton hickman on the
sharder possibly i think well no there definitely was somebody complaining on on big blue blocks
big blue i think i think there was a lovely cover that clayton hickman did with a knitted scarf for
sharder and they and i think that was the steel book and they junked it and replaced it with a
lee binding drawing which is you know a pretty nice cover too but it was a shame because
I saw Clayton Hickman posted
what he'd done on Twitter
and I thought it was pretty
nice and the fact that I've now mentioned
these two names, does that give you a clue
where I'm going with this? Lee Clayton
Is that a coincidence?
Probably not
It just struck me
Let's face it, the name Lee Clayton
is a cover
See, it's a cover name
Ha ha
if it's a tribute in any way i know clayton hickman won't appreciate it because he wasn't
watching it because he stopped watching doctor who um i just got this cover off no no no no i
just i don't think he i don't think he's that into the current uh current past few series
i i just i i thing on the re-watching with lee is is how cleverly they've written
everything about the Ruth Lee relationship and the way in which he appears to be acting out of
one motivation. And then when you rewatch it, it all works again. Now you know what his actual
motivation is. Oh, there is one other thing. Everything that interests me about this story,
everything that interests me about this story is lee i don't know who lee is and more importantly
i want to know what weird books he checks out of the library yes also also weird books and he
cuts his own hair yes it is like describing me basically it's like are you i'm not gonna ask
the the the puzzling thing for me about lee was actually um the the bio shield bit i could have
done with an explanation of that i understand how it was that when she scanned ruth the doctor
identified her as being 100 human in human nature the person looking after the doctor
is well benny slash martha who are 100% human not that it matters but had she scanned them both
they would have been human in this one it's pretty clear that lee is gallifreyan because
yep she and gap both received identical training service medal etc etc so there's some mechanism
that's not a chameleon arc but which has the equivalent biological shielding to a chameleon
arc and it's not a chameleon arc because he still has all of his proper memories genuine bona fide
memories and that so that was a that was the that was the one thing that i thought it it it was
probably confusing in a way that was unintentional um it just needed i think they were trying to make
it less confusing by just making it consistent that there's a bio encryption on there but
if you look back at the actual history of that mechanism it should have you're right it should
have been completely different i i'm gonna say also by the way that that i can forgive ryan but
i don't forgive yas um what are you what are we forgetting them for for how rubbish they are at
searching a house which by the way they have four minutes to do and in that four minutes
yas manages to find a box hidden at the back of a cupboard or something and ryan figures out that
they've got cash flow problems right but neither in four minutes in less than four minutes but
neither of them spots the gun that lee goes for in the dresser in the side table drawer
right he reaches for it and cat goes oh sit we had the same training it's like
how did they miss the alien gun how does ruth not see the alien gun sitting in the living room
drawer.
Problem.
Problem with that.
I mean, in a way, it should have been Yaz who found out the cash flow problems, because
that's a much more copper thing to do.
But you're mentioning that does tie me into one of the things that I wanted to complain
about about this episode, which is my standing complaint about Yaz, which is that she's a
officer and in fairness after about 20 minutes in this episode she does remember that she's a
police officer and says i'm a police officer and goes out and tries to talk police to the jadun
but there's other language human police she's human police but the whole thing about bringing
back the jadun is that the jadun are police and all of the commentary about the jadun
has to do with excessive police brutality and it's not that far-fetched some of it I'm thinking
and so there's an interesting thing about the portrayal of the police in the show here because
on the one hand we have I think for the first time in the tv series someone who is a police person
as one of our heroes so we're putting some faith in someone who has some faith in the
the police service so when when the doctor says you know the judoom is space police or whatever
and they're terrible and graham says but i thought you said they were the police we need to see yas's
reaction at that point i want to see what her expression is when she said that in fact why
doesn't she have the line about them being the police i i i don't i don't get the sense
that and you know this this is this is written by um uh vishnay patel but with
chris chibnall this new tell wrote um ah the one about partition last last season
uh i've forgotten its name anyway it was also very good um but chibnall chibnall even if patel
doesn't pick these things up chibnall blinking well or two because yaz is his character
they don't seem to remember that she's a police officer and probably has thoughts about the
police and and you know we have a certain amount of if if he did in right if did if he did indeed
write the episode last year about the partition of india that was kind of you could argue that
that's a Yaz-centric story.
Yes.
So, and could be forgiven in thinking, write what you know, or write what interests you.
I'm surprised that Yaz wasn't important in this story, except let's face it, the whole
companions all had to get written out so they could be off doing a cameo with Captain Jack.
But, yeah, yeah.
And I was going to ask, actually, do you feel that Yaz's accent is getting thicker?
No, I hadn't noticed that.
It felt it that way to me this time.
It may just be her natural, her natural.
I haven't, I'm not, I haven't heard how her accent has changed.
And I haven't actually seen her interviewed all that much.
So I don't know how her accent differs from the characters.
But is she, is she getting closer to her natural accent?
Because I could understand that if she's just relaxing a bit in the part.
Could be.
It just felt a little stronger than usual this week.
Anything else?
It's a tiny nitpick, and I feel bad ending on a tiny nitpick.
But so, I mean, we've got the Mardi Doctor at the beginning again.
And thankfully, you know, we appear to have blown that away a bit
with the whole don't lie to us.
thing but during that exchange Yaz says was that you know is that where you're going he's saying
you'll be back in now but you never are and I'm thinking blimey it's a time she she could go and
spend weeks being Mardi and wandering around the ruins of Gallifrey and still be back in 59 minutes
if she if she chose to because how long she spends on something has no has no relevance if she's
going off in the time machine and equally this i'm not sure i managed to get this far down on
my list of complaints about spyfall but equally in spyfall when they're when they're making their
excuses about oh why ryan can't be playing basketball and why graham is telling the doctor
that he's got to you know have all his jabs because he's going away for a bit and why
Yaz has to have this explanation about being about going off on secondment is absolute nonsense
because every time Clara went off with the doctor he brought her back 20 minutes after she left or
whatever it is why why is it the doctor keeps bringing them back after all this time to their
obvious inconvenience it makes no sense yeah i yeah they're not consistent are they they're not
consistent um i kind of i mean i'm just like i'd like a far line about how the how maybe the doctor
has has oh the tardis has got more erratic in that so the doctor's trying to get them back 20 minutes
later but accidentally gets them back two months later and that's why you mean like a year later
and rose yeah well yeah because that was that was super duper storytelling i mean that just it was a
it wasn't rose it was um well it took for three or seven but um but that yeah you know that got
me right in the feels when the doctor kind of suddenly realizes what he's done and you you get
kind of jackie's reaction to seeing rose after her being missing for 12 months i mean i just thought
wow you know there's a there's a dimension to to being torn away from your family to go time
traveling around the universe you don't don't think about yeah then that was that was excellently
planned out that was excellently planned and and that's also one of the reasons why
you know the doctor's tardis has never been that reliable the fact that the 11th could drop or in
12th, well, the 12th, could drop
Clara off with precision.
Well, they did it with Amy and Rory, too, because they
were getting older and everybody else was not.
So, I mean, yeah, Eleven could do it, too.
So, I...
It totally makes sense that if you were going to
write a story about time travel, you would sit down
and you would go, yep, you would just return
them to the exact same moment in time and everything
would be fine, but it
doesn't kind of fit in the way Doctor Who has
always worked, and it
is a problematic
issue when
You need, and when I say need, I mean you're using a contrivance to make the TARDIS arrive somewhere so that you have a story to tell.
About being in the wrong place.
Yeah.
Wrong time.
Yep.
Wrong place, wrong time.
That's where the TARDIS is supposed to be.
Always.
I'm done.
Okay.
I got nothing.
I'm done.
I got nothing else.
So, Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
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