Television

New DOCTOR WHO Photos Reveal the Return of the Judoon

by Kyle Anderson
May 21 2019 • 3:05 PM

It feels like we just met Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor and we’re already forced to wait patiently. We hate waiting patiently. But anxious or otherwise, a new episode of Doctor Who isn’t gracing our screens until at least Christmas. It’s possible it’ll be New Years again, but who can say? What we do know is series 12 isn’t coming until 2020. Gah! The waiting is murder. But the BBC seems to know this and has given us a tantalizing (if somewhat unsatisfying) tease:

Yes, everyone(?)’s favorite rhino-headed space cops the Judoon will square off against the Thirteenth Doctor in…an upcoming episode. Oh, and the Judoon has a mohawk. That’s literally all we know. BBC America tweeted two pictures of a showdown between a shackled Thirteen and a Judoon with a mohawk. Whether this scene comes from the Christmas special or from an episode in next year’s full series, we don’t know. We also don’t know if the Judoon are villains in the episode or just performing their usual task of intergalactic peace keepers. We simply don’t have enough data.

The Judoon first appeared in 2007, in Doctor Who‘s third series premiere, “Smith and Jones,” opposite David Tennant’s Doctor. The aliens spoke a language of one syllable words ending in an “O” vowel. That was one of their only attributes. They next appeared in series four’s “The Stolen Earth,” and have made cameo appearances here and there from 2010 to 2015.

It’s curious, given how tight-lipped showrunner Chris Chibnall has been about both series 11 and what could come next, that we’d get a photo like this with no explanation or context showing the return of a Russell T. Davies-era alien. Until the New Year’s special, “Resolution,” which gave us a revamped Dalek, none of Whittaker’s foes to date were recognizable aliens. This leads me to believe the Judoon won’t represent a major threat to the Doctor and might not even feature for very long. But when you have roughly a year until a show returns, speculation is the best you can get.

Images: BBC America

Kyle Anderson is the Editor at Large for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!