Doctor Who (2023): Wild Blue Yonder

Episode:

873

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Serial:

302

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Writer:

Russell T Davies

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Director:

Tom Kingsley

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Air Date:

02-Dec-2023

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the second of Doctor Who's 60th Anniversary specials, Wild Blue Yonder! Hang on, isn't that a Futurama episode?

I've been doing a great job of avoiding learning anything about these specials but I didn't have to try too hard with this one. Seems that they've been extra secretive with it, which raises questions about what they've been hiding. I do know that it way written by showrunner Russell T Davies however, just like the rest of the specials. In fact, all of Doctor Who's specials in the modern era were written or co-written by the current showrunner at the time. What this means is, it's going to be a while before I see someone else's name at the start of one of these episodes.

There will be SPOILERS below for this episode and earlier ones.

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Oh, they're just skipping the full ident now? Now I feel a bit dumb for writing so much about it during my Star Beast review.

The episode itself begins in England in the year 1666. Hey, that's the same year as the Fifth Doctor story The Visitation. That's the one where the Doctor loses his sonic screwdriver and helps start the Great Fire of London. I'm sure other things must have happened in it as well, but nothing's jumping to mind.

They've retconned Isaac Newton?

They had a choice between bringing in someone who looked like Newton or casting one of the leads from Russell T Davies' It's a Sin as a cameo, and they chose the fun option. So I'm not entirely surprised they went with the fun option with the famous apple as well, having it land directly on his head, followed by all the rest as the damaged TARDIS comes to nest in his tree.

Okay, I can't say that this is working for me, and by 'this' I mean the concept, the comedy, the campiness... I already mentioned the casting. I don't even like the colours. It's all a bit too goofy for me, and I'm a Legends of Tomorrow fan.

The bit ends with the Doctor and Donna making a quip about "the gravity of the situation", before flying off in their smoking time machine and leaving Newton struggling to remember what they said. "Savity... havity... mavity!"

Look, even I know that Isaac Newton didn't invent the word gravity, and I learned all my history from Legends of Tomorrow. It's related to the word gravitas, meaning "weight" and "seriousness". As in "the seriousness of the situation". Man, I hate this scene.

OPENING TITLES

The TARDIS slams into a metal sci-fi wall somewhere, just like in the Children in Need special, and then spits out so much flame that you can see it in the windows on the side and they're not even real.

It's also playing the song "Wild Blue Yonder", apparently. Wikipedia tells me that it's the theme of the U.S. Air Force and I'm going to have to take its word for that. I don't know anything about the song and I'm not sure I've ever heard it before. But hey, the episode's title has been explained.

Once the fire has died down the Doctor gets the lock open with a non-sonic screwdriver and then inserts his sonic screwdriver to get the mending process started. Usually when the TARDIS gets damaged he just goes and has an adventure for a bit and then it's fine, but I guess this is a bit more wrecked than usual. No more coffee in the TARDIS!

Wait, hang on, the lock came off with a screwdriver? What?

Damn, the CGI makes me think that this is a crossover with Star Trek: Prodigy. They've definitely found themselves on a spaceship and there's no one else in sight. Well, except for whatever that is in the distance.

We're reminded here that time travel has consequences, as Donna calls gravity "mavity". That's something that the Doctor's going to have to get around to fixing at some point, before the joke wears out its welcome. Regeneration has consequences as well, as the Doctor catches himself thinking that Isaac Newton was hot and wonders if that's a new personality trait. Donna's thinking no, not entirely new.

They wander off down the eerie endless corridor a little, but race back when they hear the TARDIS dematerialising without them.

Sometimes a writer might decide to downplay their characters' reaction to dramatic events for the sake of getting on with the story or keeping the mood light. Not this time though! RTD's script asks his lead actors to go for it, and the two friends ultimately have to take a breath and calm themselves down before the yelling really starts. The Doctor's lost the thing that matter most to him in the universe because Donna got clumsy with her coffee, and he's furious. Meanwhile Donna's freaking out because he's trapped her on a spaceship somewhere and she might never see her family again. But it all leads to a really sweet moment where he calms her down and explains... the HADS.
 
It stands for Hostile Action Displacement System, and it makes the TARDIS disappear whenever there's danger... which is always. That's why he's only had it turned on like once in the classic series and maybe two or three times since then. But resetting the TARDIS might have activated it again.

Donna points out the "Hostile Action" part of the name, realising that there's something here scary enough to make the TARDIS run off. And if the only way to get it back is to kick the hostile's arse then she's going to go do that.

10 minutes in and the episode is still just these two on their own. The actors must have had so many lines to memorise.

They hear a voice saying "Fenslaw" and the corridor around them starts transforming, with tiles flipping over and sliding around. So that's weird.

Donna points out that the Doctor should know what the word means even without the TARDIS around to translate for him, as he knows millions of languages. The Doctor reveals that he knows 57,000,000,205 languages, which is a lot. 56,994,000,205 more languages than C-3PO knows. If you mastered one entire language every second without ever taking a break it'd take you 1800 years to learn that many. But he doesn't know what the word "Fenslaw" means.

The Doctor does figure out how to make a hovercar appear by pressing a panel in the floor, so they've at least been spared from walking the whole way. Where were these things back in Waters of Mars?

They reach the mysterious figure they saw in the distance and it turns out to be a very old robot. It looks way older than the ship and it's apparently been walking for a very long time, as it takes just one step forward during the whole time they're investigating it.

Every Doctor and companion pairing is a little different. Sometimes she's more of a student (Leela, Ace), sometimes she's his girlfriend (Rose, Yaz... kind of), and in Donna's case, she's his best friend. She's not equally smart anymore, but she still feels like his equal. She's coming up with theories, giving him possibilities to ponder. And then she rushes over to the hovercar so that she can be the one in the driver's seat.

I thought that this was leading to a joke where she drove straight into a wall or something. But nope, she handles the alien hovercar just as well as he did, and even takes a moment to take the piss out of his catchphrase.

Hey, there is an end to the corridor! I was actually getting worried.

They've found the ship's cockpit, which has a big window at the front so they can look out into space. There aren't any stars out there however. It's not because they've entered an expanse of theta radiation or a pocket dimension or anything like that. They're just so far out that the light from the nearest star hasn't reached them yet.

The Doctor tells Donna she's 100 trillion years from home, but nothing about the speed she'd be travelling, so that information isn't much use. You could be 100 trillion years from the shop down the road if you really take your time. Just ask that robot out there.

But for now I'll assume they're 100 trillion light-years away. That would put the ship three times further out than the Sontaran ship in Flux, which was 938 times further away than the most distant object we know about. RTD just had to one-up Chibnall. Incidentally, we already knew that the TARDIS could go to the end of time and now we know it can go to the edge of the universe as well. While on fire. It's a capable little box.

They hear a banging noise and rush out, but there's nothing. The bridge computer said that there are no life signs but an airlock was opened three years ago so something might have gotten in. This episode has a bit of a horror feel to it I've noticed.

Then they hear another word, "Coliss", and the corridor starts transforming again. You can see the rotating panels clipping into the walls this time though, it's a bit of a ropey effect. Though to be fair, the error doesn't leap out at you. And the robot takes another step.

The Doctor wonders if the words are a countdown. Donna suggests that it's a warning.

They find a room with racks of computer stuff sitting in goop, and the Doctor asks Donna to start moving all the filaments from the bottom drawer to the top drawer to try to get the ship's systems operational again. Meanwhile, he's going off to another room to find a spindle.

He's soon back through and the two of them talk about who'll come back to the alley to wait for the TARDIS while they're gone. She thinks Shaun would drop by every day, Rose would move on, and Wilf would pretty much move in until they came back.

Then there's a weird edit as it cuts to the Doctor working in the blue room with both characters present, even though they were both in the orange room. It threw me off a bit at first, but I've seen editing like this before so I didn't think too much about it. Especially as the episode's firmly in 'two friends chatting about stuff' mode at the moment.

The Doctor talks about the TARDIS and how he has no idea what it gets up to when it disappears like this. He tells her a nice story about how he imagines it being found by a tribe and eventually outliving the civilisation they build around it.

Donna says that her arms are too long.

Back in the orange room, the Doctor's arms are too long as well. So that's some surprise nightmare fuel for you. At first I thought the fake Doctor and Donna were hallucinations, but at this point who even knows what's going on?

The two time travelers reunite and the Doctor tries to communicate with their doppelgangers, but they don't seem entirely friendly. We get a bit of body horror as the fake Doctor's jaw literally drops and fake Donna tries to figure out how many knees she should have, and I get the impression they're deliberately screwing with them to unnerve them. They're using the Beetlejuice technique.

The closest thing we get to a name for the two of them is 'Not-Things'. The Doctor replies that he and Donna are quite something and then they make a run for the hovercar.

Okay, this isn't the way I saw this episode going. This isn't how I saw any episode going! None of this is good!

Well, that's not entirely true. The effects are very good for Doctor Who.

Damn, the episode's turned into a Pixar movie!

This is a case of higher budgets and better technology unlocking new story ideas. They just couldn't do this before now.

Doctor Who (1963) 10-06 - Carnival of Monsters, Part Two

Well okay, Doctor Who has never been entirely restrained by the limits of what was possible. If the technology didn't exist to do something convincingly, they'd go and do it anyway

This still isn't entirely 100% convincing to be honest, but it's close enough. I wouldn't want this to be more believable.

Man, this is so weird. It's an actual episode where a giant Doctor and Donna chase the real ones down a corridor and then grow bigger and bigger until they're stuck. This is something I'm actually watching.

Donna's still asking the right questions, wondering where their extra mass came from. The Doctor theorises that they're converting heat into mass, that's why it gets colder when they're around. They've also figured out that they've got their memories too... which doesn't explain why they hate them so much.

The two of them decide to make a retreat for now, climbing up to a vent. But then they hear another word over the speakers, "Brate", and the walls start moving around again! This really is a proper horror episode.

Of course, the trouble is that when they do meet up again they can't tell if they are who they appear to be. It's like the Zygons all over again. And we're not let in on who is who either.

There's a clue in the lighting, with one pair in an orange-tinted room like the real Donna was in earlier and the other room blue-tinted like the one the real Doctor was working in, but there's no reason to assume it'll be the same this time.

The orange room Doctor decides to prove he's the real one by taking his tie off.

Meanwhile, the blue room Donna proves her identity by revealing that the Doctor isn't from Gallifrey! She got an update of his memories when he restored hers and she knows everything that happened to him, including the reveal of the Timeless Child!

Okay, I did not expect RTD to go there. I'd packed that reveal away in a box in my mind along with the Eighth Doctor revealing that he's half-human, but now I guess I have to consider it a part of the lore. I'm sure there are some positives that RTD will be able to mine from it; Chibnall definitely never went digging for them.

Blue room Donna also mentions the Flux, and the Doctor actually confirms that half the universe was left destroyed. It's taken two years but we finally know the state of the universe after that arc wrapped up! He also reveals how tormented he is by the guilt, even though he knows he's not to blame.

Fortunately, blue room Donna dissolves into a puddle of goop just as the Doctor starts believing that she's real. She's a Changeling from Star Trek!

This means that the orange room Donna is in there with a Not-Thing. Thankfully she figures it out by herself when she notices that the tie he took off has vanished. Noticing things is the most important skill for a companion to have and she just passed the test. It's not a skill she's always had, in The Star Beast she was too wrapped up in her own life to even notice a spaceship crashing down overhead, but now that she's gotten her memories restored Donna is back.

The Doctor's not doing so well however. As soon as he's alone he absolutely freaks out, attacking a wall and screaming. This isn't a direction I thought this was going in at all.

Thirteen never had that much of a reaction, she just put a brave face on and carried on, but everything that happened is hitting Fourteen like a ton of bricks and he feels reponsible for all the destruction. All those uncountable deaths.

Doctor Who (2005) 13-01: Flux - Chapter One

At least Neptune didn't have anyone living on it.

You know, I'm starting to think that this was just a random planet and the Flux didn't actually touch anything in the Solar System.

The Doctor takes a moment to pulls himself together and then just walks off like nothing happened. So there's some insight into what he's feeling, what he's hiding, and how he's dealing with it. 

The ship says "Gilvane" and the robot takes another step.

Oh, another new set, that's cool. Or a redressed set at least. Also, everyone's back together again, so there's at least one Doctor and one Donna in this room. And they're all standing in opposite corners, because wouldn't you?

The Doctor confuses the Not-Things for a second by introducing the concept of believing two opposite things at the same time. Donna believes she's an idiot but she also believes she's brilliant, and it's fake Donna's reaction to this that tips her off as being the wrong one.

Now that they've figured out who is who once again, the Doctor draws a line between them with some salt he was just carrying around in his trousers. Even without the coat on he's still got a full video game inventory in those pockets.

The idea with the salt is that supernatural beings can't cross it without counting every grain, which is a superstition and also true... maybe. Fake Donna knows that Donna doesn't believe it, but then Donna points out that she's stupid, so what does she know? The poor Not-Things must be so confused right now, and fake Donna gives in and starts counting.

It turns out that the Not-Things have been picking up on all the misery and hate in the universe and it's made them what they are. Even in the Doctor and Donna's forms, with all their memories, they're still evil. Also, Donna's worked out why they're in their forms: they want to steal the TARDIS and escape.

Fake Donna blows the salt away and sends them backing away towards the wall.

Just then the computer says "Stond" and the walls start transforming again, spinning the Doctor and Donna to safety! Incredibly convenient, but at least it's well established.

Oh no, wait, it's just spun right around putting them back in the same room. Okay, that was actually funny. Plus it tricked the Not-Things for a moment and they're able to make a getaway.

So now they're sealed in the bridge behind one of those glass barriers that come down in the middle of rooms sometimes. Donna wonders why the Not-Things are deliberately scaring them, while the Doctor points that they've become too much like them to have the strength to break through the barrier. Donna actually wants an answer to her question though and the Doctor realises it's important. The faster they think the easier they are to read, that's why the ship was on standby!

They're facing an enemy that uses their own intelligence and problem-solving against them. The more they figure out, the more the Not-Things know. This means they actually present the Doctor with a challenge he's not capable of beating, which is to not think. Some super-intelligent characters like Spock could meditate and calm themselves, but not the Doctor. He's always on, especially when Not-Things are yelling questions at him.

The Doctor works out what's been making the banging noise: the captain of the ship, who went out the airlock without a helmet three years ago and has apparently managed to decompose in a vacuum. Unless she always looked like a horse skeleton. She must have sacrificed herself so that the Not-Things would have no one to copy.

The computer says "Ratico" and the robot steps forward again.

The Not-Things can't understand slow things and the captain figured this out, setting her ship to slowly configure itself into a bomb. The Doctor explains that he was right earlier, and the words they've been hearing are a countdown. 'Ratico' is the number 5.

The robot was the bomb's fuse, sent on a three-year journey down the corridor, walking too slowly for the Not-Things to comprehend. But they know its purpose now and they race off to stop it.

So the Doctor speeds up the countdown. "Vandeen", "Bliness", "Sensill"...

Now the tables have turned, as the Doctor and Donna sprint after the Not-Things to stop them from getting to the robot.

Fake Donna stops to get the Doctor, but he shoves her aside and keeps going without even slowing down. Donna mentioned at the start that she was going to find the hostile and kick its arse, and it turns out that she wasn't lying. She floors her evil twin with a punch.

Meanwhile, the Doctor's so good at running that he almost outruns himself, until the creature gives up on trying to be a perfect copy and switches to running on all fours. So it's over then, nothing the Doctor can do.

But the Doctor figures out that if the Fake Doctor can't stop the self-destruct in time, then the hostile action is over, and a time machine would know that.... and return!

I have to admit, that I was a bit confused here. The explanation goes by so fast that I didn't quite catch what he was talking about, and this robbed the moment of its joy. I was just like "What?"

The best that I can figure, as soon as the Not-Thing's defeat was inevitable, the TARDIS considered the hostile action resolved. Even though the ship's about to explode and he's about to invite one of the hostiles on board. And it decided to materialise right in front of the Doctor instead of in the room they parked it in, because it does what it wants. In Cold War it materialised at the South Pole while they were up near the North Pole.

The Doctor grabs his sonic from the door, gets in, and starts pushing the floating TARDIS along the ground like a skateboard until he reaches the Donnas.

The Doctor has to come up with a way to tell them apart quickly, before the self-destruct goes off, and neither of them have a black eye after that punch so they're both still identical. He decides to ask who the head of the choir who had her sing Wild Blue Yonder in primary school was. And then why the name "Mrs Bean" is funny.

"It just is" is the winning answer and he pulls Fake Donna to safety, leaving Donna in an exploding starship at the edge of the universe.

Yep, that's definitely an exploding ship.

This is actually a scary moment, as it lasts long enough for you to start wondering what the story possibilities of bringing a Fake Donna back are. There's no way that Doctor Who's actually going to kill off a companion in an exploding spaceship... for a second time (RIP Adric), but then again Donna already had a death fakeout last episode when it seemed like the metacrisis got her, so maybe this is how her story is going to end.

But the Doctor's looking at limbs on the TARDIS's scanner. Which might explain why he didn't just grab both Donnas. He didn't need to get the right one on board, he just needed to get one of them in front of the sensors to confirm their identity.

I missed this the first time to be honest, I just thought the Doctor was being clever and spotting the inaccuracy with his eyes. Her arms are too long.

The Doctor lifts up the entry walkway to send Fake Donna tumbling out, and I bet the TARDIS loved that. "That's for pouring coffee on me and setting me on fire!" it thought. Maybe.

Incidentally, the console room's looking pretty good right now! It healed up nicely.

As Fake Donna goes out, Donna rushes in and he gets them to safety before running over for a hug as the spaceship blows up.

Boom! The captain's three-year plan reaches its fiery conclusion, very slightly sooner than intended, and the Not-Things burn. Maybe they're dead, maybe not, either way they're not flying to our universe in this spaceship. Or the TARDIS.

Afterwards, the Doctor is a bit tormented about his choice to draw a line with salt, as invoking a superstition at the edge of the universe where the walls are thin could have horrible consequences. Uh, what?

I'd say this was leaning a bit close to fantasy here, but how many wizards ever make it to the edge of the universe? No, this is straying into Magicks of Megas-Tu territory, where only a show like Star Trek: The Animated Series is bold enough and crazy enough to go. I'm not into it.

It turns out that the real Donna doesn't know about the Flux and the Timeless Child and the Doctor is happy to keep it that way. Well, maybe 'happy' is the wrong word, but he evades all Donna's attempts to get him to open up about what happened to him during the Moffat and Chibnall eras. All he'll admit is that it was a lot and he's not okay.

Then they arrive in London right back where they came from, give or take a day.

And they find Donna's grandad Wilf outside! He was waiting there, just like Donna predicted!

The Doctor regenerated into Matt Smith to save this guy, and here he is 15 years later, still doing well. I really didn't expect to see Bernard Cribbins show up in Doctor Who again, so it's pretty amazing they made this happen. The actor didn't live much longer but he got to play the role one last time.

Wilf's really glad to see them, as the world's gone crazy and they need the Doctor to save them.

Right on cue, chaos breaks out in the streets and an aeroplane comes down overhead, exploding nearby. It's another cliffhanger ending!

There's nice big dedication to Bernard Cribbins in the end credits, after an unusually short list of actors.

Half the cast in this one were doubles, including a Beast Double and a Contortionist Double, and any characters outside the leads appeared in less than 4 minutes total. That means David Tennant and Catherine Tate had about 95% of the lines! There aren't many stories that can match that. Edge of Destruction in the classic series, Heaven Sent in the 2005 revival... that's all I've got. It makes this feel like something special, though special isn't always good...


CONCLUSION

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Well, we did get a multi-Doctor story for the anniversary. Kind of.

The Star Beast wasn't the huge celebration of the series' past I was hoping for and neither is Wild Blue Yonder. Though it is noticeably respectful to what came before it. Well, aside from actual people in history, but I'll shut up about that.

I could have lived with the Timeless Child never being mentioned again either, but it is nice for the consequences of the Flux to finally get some clarification. It's taken a while, but we finally have a clear idea of the state of the universe after Flux and how it's affected the Doctor! In retrospect, it should've been obvious to me that Russell T Davies would mention the events of the Chibnall era, as this is exactly the kind of horrible traumatic backstory he can use to torment his poor sad hero. But even though RTD has been respectful to Chibnall's work, he's taken the opposite approach here, stripping everything back to just the main characters and one plot.

The episode has a very different tone to The Star Beast, with the first half putting the heroes on a creepy empty ship with no one to talk to but each other, and the second half being more outright horror as they face their evil doppelgangers. Cosmic horror, psychological horror, body horror... whatever you want, it's got. Even some horrible comedy with the recurring 'mavity' gag (I'm joking, it was fine). I noticed that the music has a different tone as well, with Murray Gold shifting to the correct gear to make the episode work. But despite the slowly unfolding mystery and the shapeshifting alien threat, this never loses focus on the two friends stuck in the middle of it.

It introduces a new Doctor Who monster: an utterly evil opponent with the protagonists' memories and an incentive to provoke them, so there was a lot of potential here to really delve into what's on the characters' minds, and what they're trying not to think about. That's what you'd hope would happen anyway. Fortunately the episode actually delivers! The Doctor's guilt over the Flux is laid bare, along with how he's keeping it bottled up. Donna doesn't get as much, as she's mostly dealing with a lack of self-esteem about her intelligence, but she's definitely not just tagging along to tell the Doctor how smart he is. The episode's about both of them equally, showing off how special the David Tennant and Catherine Tate pairing is, and it's always just the two actors in a scene even when the villains are there with them. The producers really got their money's worth out of them as they're going through a whole gauntlet of emotions on one side of the screen while they're also on the other side mocking themselves! This is the kind of story you get when a writer is aware they've got two hours left with two beloved characters, and understands what makes them so beloved.

It's a bit weird though, that the whole adventure was basically pointless. The captain had already put a plan in place to defeat the Not-Things, so all the heroes did was complicate things. Even the chase at the end had no point to it. The heroes would've done better to just stay in the cockpit and wait for the TARDIS. Usually the TARDIS takes the Doctor where he needs to be, but in this case it really was out of control.

I have to be honest, I didn't love the episode. At least, not right away. But it did grow on me as it went on and I have a feeling I'll like it even more on a second watch. Right now, however, this is where it ranks in my list:


Anniversary story ranking so far:

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1. The Day of the Doctor (10)
2. The Night of the Doctor (8)
3. Wild Blue Yonder (7)
   
4. The Three Doctors (6)
   
5. The Five Doctors (6)
   
6. Silver Nemesis (6)
7. The Star Beast (6)
   

I've punished Wild Blue Yonder for its terrible teaser by knocking it down to a 7, not that it makes any difference to its well-earned position. There were a few other things that bothered me a little, but I can't deny that when it gets good, it gets good. Though if I end up doing this list again in ten years time for the 70th Anniversary, I'll probably leave Star Beast and Wild Blue Yonder off, because they're not even trying to be anniversary stories.

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COMING SOON

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the last of Doctor Who's 60th Anniversary specials: The Giggle. Then afterwards I'll finally be free! No more Doctor Who reviews to write. It's over. Until the Christmas special that is.

Please leave a comment if you want to.