'Doctor Who' Season 12 Episode 5: The Judoon return and the Doctor tries to save Gloucester from them

BY NEETHA K

PUBLISHED JAN 25, 2020

We are now nearly at the halfway mark for Season 12 of 'Doctor Who', the second with Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. This week's episode is a special one as it features the return of the Judoon, the space police fans first saw in Season 3 when David Tennant played the Doctor.

The Judoon are an intergalactic police force described as rhinoform bipeds. Their precise application of the law and their highly logical battle tactics make them fearsome, however, they are not very intelligent. The Doctor had previously said they were little more than "interplanetary thugs" for hire.

In the upcoming episode, the Judoon are wreaking havoc in Gloucester while they search for someone.

Who they are searching for and why they are doing so are mysteries the Doctor and her companions, Yaz (Mandip Gill), Ryan (Tosin Cole), and Graham (Bradley Walsh) will be trying to solve as they try to protect the cathedral city.

However, it is known that the Judoon have no jurisdiction on Earth and no authority to deal with human crime and will strictly obey the laws of the planet they are on. This leads us to believe that it is likely that the Judoon are hunting an extraterrestrial entity.

The title of the episode, 'Fugitive of the Judoon', also gives us a clue. Clearly, the Judoon are trying to recapture an escaped alien. But what crime could the alien have committed that the Judoon are mercilessly hunting through the English town to capture it?

The episode was written by Vinay Patel, who wrote the acclaimed episode 'Demons of the Punjab' in Season 11, where the Doctor and her companions travel to 1947 to what would become the India-Pakistan border.

There, they met Yaz's Muslim grandmother, who was in love with a Hindu man. The episode was lauded for its historical content as well as delivering it while being evocative and haunting.

Watch the trailer for 'Fugitive of the Judoon' below: