Doctor Who Revolution of the Daleks Review

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13th Doctor, Black Dalek, Captain Jack, Chris Chibnall, Daleks, Doctor Who, Doctor Who New Years Day special;, Doctor Who Series 12, Doctor Who Series 13, Jodie Whitaker, John Barrowman, John Bishop, New Daleks, Revolution of the Daleks, Series 12, Series 13, TARDIS, The Timeless Children, Thirteenth Doctor, Torchwood

Doctor Who Revolution of the Daleks

Review by Paul Bowler.

The Doctor and her friends face the return of the Daleks in the 2021 New Year’s Day special Revolution of the Daleks, written by Doctor Who show runner Chris Chibnall and directed by Lee Haven Jones whose Doctor Who credits also include Series 12’s Spyfall Part Two and Orphan 55. Locked up in a high-security alien prison, the 13th Doctor is isolated with no hope of escape. Back on Earth her companions Yaz, Ryan, and Graham are doing their best to continue their lives without her. Its not easy though, especially when they uncover a dark plot involving a Dalek!

When we last saw Jodi Whittaker’s 13th incarnation of the Time Lord in the Series 12 finale, The Timeless Children (2020), she’d been locked up in a space prison by the Judoon following the epic battle with the Master (Sacha Dhawan) and the Lone Cyberman’s (Patrick O’Kane) army of Cybermen in the ruins of Gallifrey. Although Revolution of the Daleks was filmed long before lockdown, we can perhaps sympathise with the Doctor’s plight and her sense of isolation in this friends without idea what’s happening back on Earth.

Meanwhile Graham (Bradley Walsh), Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Ryan (Tosin Cole) have had to adjust to life back in Sheffield while the Doctor is in space jail, and this episode highlights just how resourceful they can be in her absence.

Yaz is still determined to find out what happened to the Doctor, but the gang soon find themselves busy investigating a sinister scheme that’s been brewing with the Daleks. Trouble is, how can they possibly fight a Dalek without the Doctor’s help? Fortunately Captain Jack, played by the brilliant John Barrowman MBE, also makes a return for this New Year’s Day spectacular as the Doctor’s friends prepare to face their greatest challenge of all time!

As well as the welcome return of John Barrowman as Captain Jack, Revolution of the Daleks features a wealth of guest stars including Sex and the City’s Chris Noth who returns as scheming business man Jack Robertson from Series 10’s Arachnids in the UK (2018), making their Doctor Who debut are star of the stage and screen Dame Harriet Walter as a corrupt government minister, and TV star Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (The Trial of Christine Keeler) who plays the young scientist Leo Rugazzi.

Chris Chibnall’s pacy script for Revolution of the Daleks is packed drama, emotion, and bold action-set-pieces. We really become invested in the Doctor’s plight as she struggles with her incarceration, Jodie Whittaker gives a superb performance, and it turns out the Time Lords been in prison for a very long time indeed! Mandip Gill is also great as Yaz, who refused to give up on the Doctor in the last ten months since they returned to Earth in a spare TARDIS, and has almost becomes obsessed with finding her. She also keeps the gang together and takes the lead in their investigation into the Daleks. Fortunately, with with some help from an old friend, the Doctor manages to break out of jail and return to Earth. However, the reunion with he friends isn’t all plain sailing, and the Time Lord is still struggling to come to terms with the fact that everything she once knew about herself has now changed forever.

As you’d expect John Barrowman is quite simply “Fabulous!” as Captain Jack. His guest appearance in Fugitive of the Judoon was one of the biggest highlights of Series 12, and while the Jack who returns in Revolution of the Daleks is slightly older and wiser he’s still every bit as fun and flirty as ever! There’s a lovely scene in particular where Jack talks with Yaz about how she feels about the Doctor, and of course Jack knows all too well the thrill of travelling with the Time Lord in the TARDIS and also how it can feel when the Doctor leaves you.

Revolution of the Daleks not only picks up after the events of The Timeless Children but its also a sequel to 2019s New Year’s Day special Resolution, we get to find out what happened after the Dalek attacked GCHQ, and director Lee Haven Jones deftly balances all the drama, character arcs and Dalek action in fine style. 

This new year themed special of course features the return of the Doctor’s deadliest enemies, the Daleks! Last time we saw a Dalek was in 2019s New Year’s Day special Resolution, which saw the 13th Doctor confronted with a lone Reconnoissance Scout Dalek. Now boasting an updated casing reminiscent of that same steampunk Dalek design, this new glossy black Dalek design makes its debut here in Revolution of the Daleks when a fiendish scheme is unleashed to manufacture “defence drones”, but when the Recon Daleks mutant remains finds a fresh human host and begins cloning itself a new Dalek menace soon threatens the entire world. Even with Captain Jack on their side the Doctor’s friends find themselves  thrown in at the deep end, battling against impossible odds as a mass inter-Dalek conflict unfolds around them, and they must hold off the Daleks at all costs until the Doctor can find a way to defeat both of the waring Dalek factions.

Of course the Doctor eventually uses some clever slight of hand to save Earth in the nick of time help her friends fend off the Daleks, but this New Year’s reunion with her “Fam” will sadly be short lived, as this episode also marks the final appearance for Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole as Graham and Ryan in the show. Their departure is an especially moving moment, and I doubt there’ll be a dry eye in the house as it unfolds.

Packed with thrills, spills, Easter eggs galore and a few surprises too, Revolution of the Daleks is a landmark event for the 13th Doctor’s era. It’s great to see Doctor and her friends go up against the Time Lords deadliest enemies, the Daleks, before the status quo introduced in The Woman Who Fell To Earth (2018) is changed forever. A spectacular sequence featuring the Daleks that was filmed on the Clifton Suspension Bridge is another big highlight of this New Year’s Day special, we also get to see Whittaker’s Doctor meet Captain Jack at last, there are fond farewells for the TARDIS team, and new adventures ahead for the Doctor and Yaz. Revolution of the Daleks is an emotional, action packed treat. It ties up many of Series 12’s loose ends, whilst also providing a moving coda for Ryan and Graham that beautifully bookends their travels with the 13th Doctor, and nicely paves the way for the next chapter of the 13th Doctor’s adventures. Series 13 will also see the Doctor and Yaz welcome a new travelling companion to the TARDIS when actor and comedian John Bishop joins the cast as ‘Dan’, and the new series will appear on BBC One later in 2021!

Images Belong BBC

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About The Author

Hi, I’m Paul Bowler, blogger and reviewer of films, TV shows, and comic books. I’m a Sci-Fi geek, a big fan of Doctor Who, Star Trek, movies, Sci-Fi, Horror, Comic Books, and all things PS4.You can follow me on Twitter @paul_bowler,or at my website, Sci-Fi Jubilee, and on YouTube and Facebook

Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks Trailer

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13th Doctor, Captain Jack, Chris Chibnall, Daleks, Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker, John Barroman, Revolution of the Daleks, Thirteenth Doctor

Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks Trailer

The new trailer for Revolution of the Daleks is here at last! The Thirteenth Doctor and the fam are back to kick-off 2021 with a special action-packed episode on New Year’s Day – Revolution of the Daleks! 

When we last saw the Thirteenth Doctor at the end of series 12 she was trapped in a high-security alien prison. Now in this upcoming festive special episode, Yaz, Ryan and Graham are  on Earth and continuing their lives without her. But a threat involving a Dalek is brewing. Can the Doctor escape her prison and how will her friends fight a Dalek without the Doctor’s help? Fortunately Captain Jack’s back, but even with his help the Doctor and her friends are about to face their greatest challenge of all time…

Staring Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Bradley Walsh (Graham), Mandip Gill (Yaz) and Tosin Cole (Ryan), with a guest cast featuring John Barrowman MBE as Captain Jack, along with Chris Noth as Jack Robertson, stage and screen star Dame Harriet Walter also makes her Doctor Who debut with TV star Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (The Trial of Christine Keeler).

Revolution of the Daleks will air on New Year’s Day 2021, the special episode is a standalone episode and direct sequel to Resolution, and marks the debut of a special new Dalek design. 

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About The Author

Hi, I’m Paul Bowler, blogger and reviewer of films, TV shows, and comic books. I’m a Sci-Fi geek, a big fan of Doctor Who, Star Trek, movies, Sci-Fi, Horror, Comic Books, and all things PS4.You can follow me on Twitter @paul_bowler,or at my website, Sci-Fi Jubilee, and on YouTube and Facebook

Doctor Who Fugitive of the Judoon Review

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13th Doctor, Captain Jack, Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Fugitive of the Judoon, Doctor Who Fugitive of the Judoon review, Fugitive of the Judoon Review, Jo Martin, Jo Martin as the Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, John Barrowman, Judoon, Series 12, TARDIS

Doctor Who Fugitive of the Judoon

Review by Paul Bowler.

The Judoon are back! Stomping their way into Series 12 of Doctor and present-day Gloucester, in Fugitive of the Judoon. This time the Judoon are hunting someone on the run. So the Doctor and her friends arrive amidst the chaos caused by the intergalactic police forces presence on Earth, and must act quickly to bring the situation under control. But who is the mysterious fugitive and why are the Judoon so intent on finding them?

Fugitive of the Judoon marks the welcome return of the Judoon, first introduced to Doctor Who back in 2007’s Smith and Jones, and seen most recently in 2015’s Face The Raven. Written by Vinay Patel (Demons of the Punjab, 2018), her second story for Doctor Who makes excellent use of the Judoon‘s return to the series, its filled with fun moments, whilst also brining some new aspects to the creatures and their motives. With location filming in Gloucester, Fugitive of the Judoon is probably the most contemporary story so far in Series 12, and director Nida Manzoor strikes just the right balances between the episodes lighter tone, humour and action.

Indeed, the Judoon make a surprisingly effective challenge for Jodie Whittaker’s 13^th incarnation of the Time Lord, Whittaker’s Doctor shines with strength and warmth throughout this episode as she tackles the aliens rampage, and there’s also some great confrontations with Judoon Captain Pol-Kon-Don (Paul Kasey) – voiced by Nick Briggs.

The Doctor and companions Ryan (Tosin Coyle), Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Graham (Bradley Walsh) continue to show what a great and resourceful TARDIS team they make in Fugitive of the Judoon. Prior to the TARDIS intercepting the Judoon’s warning signal, the Doctor’s “fam” notice how preoccupied she’s become, and when they confront her the Time Lord confesses that she’s been trying to locate the Master. The Doctor believes he may have escaped the Kasaavin’s dimension because of the personal nature of the message he left – although she still doesn’t tell her companions that her homeworld of Gallifrey has been destroyed. Fugitive of the Judoon also leads to a surprising blast from the past for the Doctor’s new companions when first Graham, followed later by Ryan and Yaz, are unexpectedly teleported to a spaceship piloted none other than Captain Jack Harkness!

Yes that’s right Captain Jack, played by the brilliant John Barrowman, returns to Doctor Who after nearly a decade in Fugitive of the Judoon having commandeered a space vessel complete with a Quantum Scoop, and an important message for the Doctor. Seeing John Barrowman return as Captain Jack was a great surprise and made for some of the episodes standout moments, especially when Jack thinks that Graham is the Doctor! But with naoprobes set to bring Captain Jack’s mission to an impromptu end, he quickly informs the Doctor’s companions they must warn the Time Lord to beware of the lone Cyberman. It seems an Alliance of some kind has virtually annihilated the Cybermen, using something they sent back through time and space to destroy them, all save for one!

The guest cast features Jo Martin as Ruth Clayton, a Gloucester tour guide, and Neil Stuke as Lee, Ruth’s husband, an interesting everyday couple living seemingly ordinary lives in the cathedral city of Gloucester. The Juddon are not here for a tour of the local attractions though. At first everything points towards Lee being the alien fugitive the Judoon are after, and it seems they will stop at nothing to apprehend him. However, when the mysterious alien woman who hired the Judoon, Gat (Ritu Arya), intervenes and Lee is killed it becomes clear that Ruth is the one the trigger the happy rhino-faced space police are actually looking for.

Although the Judoon have featured a few times in Doctor Who, Fugitive of the Judoon is the first time they’ve really played a major role in a story for a while, and Vinay Patel‘s wittily crafted script brilliantly showcases these gruff alien space police as their mission causes them to lock horns with the Doctor. The scene when the Judoon corner the Doctor and Ruth in the cathedral is another highlight. Their scans see through the tour guides biological cloaking field, fortunately Ruth is beginning to remember her true identity at this point, and spectacularly turns the tables on the Judoon.

From here Fugitive of the Judoon plunges down the rabbet hole and the pace hardly lets up for a moment. A journey to a lighthouse and a blank grave, where a buried TARDIS with a rather classic looking interior is discovered, which all leads to a tense showdown on the Judoon spaceship, and the shocking revelation that not only is Gat a Gallifreyan, but that Ruth was actually a Time Lord in hiding is and really another incarnation of the Doctor! To say that Doctor Who continuity just got turned inside out during this moment is something of an understatement here, there were countless time twistingly referential nuances woven into the story, and I’m still not sure how I feel about all these jaw-dropping surprises. It was fun, if a little bewildering, to have so many unexpected surprises in Fugitive of the Judoon. No doubt Chris Chibnall will probably deliver some Moffat style temporal twist that will ensure that everything in Fugitive of the Judoon eventually makes sense, but until then there are lots of questions that will remain unanswered – for now at least.

I thought Jo Martin was great casting as Ruth /The Doctor though. Her dual roles in this story were cleverly scripted, and her performance as another incarnation of the Doctor alongside Jodie Whittaker’s startled 13^th Doctor was riveting! Quite how Jo Martin’s incarnation of the Doctor fits into the series’ extensive web of continuity remains to be seen. Fugitive of the Judoon seems to hint that she’s an earlier version of the Doctor, possibly earlier than any we’ve seen before! I still think this is unlikely. Could this second female Doctor in fact really be the first female Doctor, and how could the 13^th Doctor have forgotten about her? Could it be that Ruth is a secretly unacknowledged version of the Doctor like John Hurt’s War Doctor from the 50^th Anniversary story The Day of the Doctor (2013), or is she bizarrely linked somehow to the unknown Doctor’s we briefly glimpsed in The Brain of Morbius (1976)? We never actually saw the 2^nd Doctor, Patrick Troughton, regenerate on screen in The War Games (1969) either, so maybe Ruth existed before we saw Jon Pertwee’s 3^rd Doctor begin his exile on Earth in Spearhead From Space (1970)? My money is on Ruth being from some other dimension, especially with the return of the Master, Jack and now Ruth’s debut as a hitherto unknown version of the Doctor, it really does seems that time is indeed swirling and closing in around the 13^th Doctor and her friends. Blimey, I could speculate about this all day, and don’t even get me started about the unexpected return of Captain Jack Harkness – heaven only knows where he fits into all this!?

With the Judoon menace eventually sent packing, the Doctor is reunited with her companions and I really liked how everyone compared notes back on board the TARDIS. The Doctor is still reeling just as much as Ryan, Yaz, and Graham are about Ruth’s real identity, but the bond between this TARDIS team feels stronger than ever now as they set off to investigate multiple alerts detected across three continents on Earth.

I was expecting Fugitive of the Judoon to be a fun and frivolous story, nothing more. Instead this marvellous adventure by Vinay Patel and director Nida Manzoor turned out to be a riotous mid-season roller coaster ride that had me hanging on every word. Fugitive of the Judoon has given Series 12 of Doctor Who a thrilling boost with its game changing shocks, surprises and Judoon near the Moon.

It was wonderful to see John Barrowman as Captain Jack again as well. My only gripe was that he didn’t actually meet the 13^th Doctor, so fingers crossed he will be back at some point in Series 12 to team-up with Jodie Whittaker’s incarnation of the Time Lord.

As you all probably know, I’m a big fan of the Cybermen, they are my favourite Doctor Who monster. So you can imagine the references in Fugitive of the Judoon to the fate of the Cybermen and Jack’s dire warning about the universe being in peril, insisting that that the Doctor mustn’t give the lone Cyberman what it wants, has me considerably intrigued – even more so than all the shenanigans involving Ruth’s incarnation of the Doctor and her place in the grand scheme of things. Fugitive of the Judoon was a fun, mind-bending episode for sure, Series 12 really seems to be hitting its stride now, and I can’t wait to see what dangers await the Doctor and her companions when they eventually face the lone Cyberman!

Images Belong BBC

Follow @paul_bowler

About The Author

Hi, I’m Paul Bowler, blogger and reviewer of films, TV shows, and comic books. I’m a Sci-Fi geek, a big fan of Doctor Who, Star Trek, movies, Sci-Fi, Horror, Comic Books, and all things PS4.You can follow me on Twitter @paul_bowler,or at my website, Sci-Fi Jubilee, and on YouTube and Facebook