Last seen on screen in 2022’s The Power of the Doctor, Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor returns as a full-fledged incarnation in Doctor Who: Most Wanted. With stories from Robert Valentine, Rochana Patel, and Lisa McMullin, Doctor Who: Most Wanted takes the Doctor out of her comfort zone, making her a fugitive of Gallifrey, on the run for her very life. It’s a trilogy of stories that span time and space, from the depths of a space prison to a void outside the universe itself. It’s the Fugitive Doctor’s time to shine, and shine she does. Though the stories sometimes feel a bit generic as far as Doctor Who stories go, Jo Martin’s performance breathes such life into the Fugitive Doctor that it’s easy to forgive the box set’s uneven ambitions.

A Doctor on the Run

On the run from a clandestine Gallifreyan organization known as the Division, the Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin) finds herself careening across space and time, desperate to hide from those who would do her harm. First, she tries to escape a space prison in Robert Valentine’s “Fast Times”. Then, she seeks aid from an old Slavic legend in Rochana Patel’s “The Legend of Baba Yaga”. And lastly, she finds herself lost in a dimension outside the very universe itself in Lisa McMullin’s “The Dimension of Lost Things”. Along the way, a Gallifreyan bounty hunter, Cosmo (Alice Krige), stays hot on her trail, dedicated to bringing the Doctor to justice. Can the Doctor outrun her mysterious past? Or is this the end of the road for the renegade Time Lord?

Doctor Who: Most Wanted sees the return of Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor – an idea begging to be made since her very first appearance in 2020’s Fugitive of the Judson. Unfortunately, this first volume of Big Finish’s ongoing Fugitive Doctor series foregoes exploring her time as a Division operative (as last seen in Titan Comics’ Doctor Who: Origins) and, instead, opts to focus on her time as a fugitive from the Time Lords. As a result, the stories kind of feel like any other random Doctor Who story. The Doctor’s always been a fugitive of sorts; a renegade Time Lord through and through. What differentiates the Fugitive Doctor from her later incarnations is her time as an agent of the Division. And yet, these adventures take place after those events, merely focusing on the Doctor trying to recover her missing memories from her time as a Division agent.

A Bit Too Standard

Sure, the Fugitive Doctor’s missing memories are a large part of what makes this specific incarnation of the Doctor interesting. But it’s a beat explored quite well in 2021’s Doctor Who: Flux. And it’s a series of questions we as the audience know will never be answered – or if they are, they’ll immediately be forgotten. Still, the Doctor’s missing memories form the basis of Most Wanted’s central arc – the Doctor has done something so bad that the Division wants her captured at all costs. Only she can’t remember what that thing might be. So, how can she make amends for something she doesn’t even know that she’s done? It’s an intriguing question and one that opens the door to a lot of unusual and exciting possibilities for a Doctor Who series. Unfortunately, outside of its final story, Most Wanted doesn’t really go down any of those paths.

Instead, it largely feels like a collection of stories from any other Doctor’s tenure, just with a layer of Division intrigue added into the background. “Fast Times” is a prison break, the likes of which we’ve seen before. Valentine’s script, however, is quite exciting and more than makes up for that familiarity. Meanwhile, “The Legend of Baba Yaga” plays out like a pretty standard Doctor Who historical with more uneven results as Patel’s script dawdles and lacks tension. It’s only in McMullin’s “The Dimension of Lost Things” that the box set starts to luxuriate in what makes the Fugitive Doctor stand out from her other incarnations. But overall, Doctor Who: Most Wanted feels like a collection of pretty standard Doctor Who stories with a slightly darker twist.

Final Thoughts

Led by a breathtaking performance by Jo Martin, Doctor Who: Most Wanted begins a new era for the Whoniverse; an era of the Doctor’s life previously unexplored. Robert Valentine’s “Fast Times” and Lisa McMullin’s “The Dimension of Lost Things” are easily the set’s highlights, but all the stories are enjoyable enough – even if they often feel like business as usual for Doctor Who. With the mystery of the Fugitive Doctor’s missing memories looming over her, it’ll be interesting to see how Big Finish builds on the ideas laid out here. As it is, Doctor Who: Most Wanted gets this new era off to a fun if uneven start.

Doctor Who: The Fugitive Doctor: Most Wanted is available now from Big Finish Productions.