Tags: Doctor Who »»»» Doctor Who Season 12
Fans of Big Finish audios were probably on the edge of their seats during Fugitive of the Judoon to see if The Celestial Intervention Agency would be named. Instead, in the episode Gat was only identified as working for The Division. But since it's obvious that The Time Lords would have a secret agent agency, let's talk about that.
In the episode Fugitive of the Judoon we meet a woman, Ruth, who is a tour guide showing folks the sights of ancient Gloucester. During the episode we learn that Ruth was actually a Time Lord in hiding using a Chameleon Arch, and she was living with Lee who was also a Time Lord. It turns out the two had been working for some kind of "agency", and that another Time Lord named Gat was their "boss" (sort of).
The Director of this agency - they only use the phrase The Division - sent Gat to hire a platoon of Judoon (from the Moon) to track down The Ruth-Doctor, because she had escaped and gone into hiding. The Ruth-Doctor used the Chameleon Arch to go into hiding, and Gat was only able to track them down because of some gizmo Lee kept around. The contract was for The Fugitive (The Doctor) to be captured and returned to The Division.
Reading between the lines of the episode -- it isn't explicitly said what The Division is -- it is clearly some kind of secret agency that does secret missions on behalf of Gallifrey.
Gat: I serve for the Glory of Gallifrey
That's the end of the televised information about The Division. But - we do have a couple things to consider.
First is - why wouldn't The Doctor know about The Division? Okay, I get that this Division is highly secretive and that only a limited circle of Gallifreyans would know about it. Since The Doctor has been on the run from Gallifrey for a long time, why would he know about it?
Thing is that The Doctor had been named The President of the High Council of Time Lords. For a couple episodes of the Fourth and Fifth Doctor's time, he actually served in that role. Until he ran away again. In The Five Doctors, we see a representative of the High Council attempt to trick The Doctor into coming back to Gallifrey to resume serving as The President. As the President, wouldn't he have been briefed on any secret agency?
The folks at Big Finish have created in their version of Time Lord Lore an agency called The Celestial Intervention Agency (a.k.a. CIA). The Eighth Doctor in particular has had lots of interaction with them.
This CIA fits the same mold as we see in The Division. Highly secretive, performing secret missions, highly comfortable with guns and other terrible weapons, and so forth.
In televised Doctor Who the Time Lords are shown as preferring to stay on Gallifrey, and especially to stay in the bubble of the cities. The areas around the cities are shown as wastelands where outsiders live. Very few Time Lords go traveling to see other worlds and places.
But - Time Lords are shown as having meddled in the affairs of societies all across the universe. Not all of the meddling can have been done remotely. Some of that meddling has to have been done by agents going into the field.
Therefore it makes sense that there would exist one or more secretive organizations of Time Lord Agents.
But - would it make sense for such agencies to exist without the knowledge of The President of the High Council?
And would someone as clever as The Doctor not have heard of such an agency?
Curious. No doubt we'll learn more about this in the final two episodes of the season.
