Wild Blue Yonder

My arms are too long…

The Not-Doctor/The Not-Donna

This review contains spoilers for Wild Blue Yonder. If you have not seen the episode yet, come back when you have watched it!

Synopsis

The Tardis takes the Doctor and Donna to the furthest edge of adventure. To escape, they must face the most desperate fight of their lives, with the fate of the universe at stake. 

Review

Wild Blue Yonder is an episode that has quite a lot of excitement around it due to the fact that so little was said about it in the lead up to broadcast. We knew what the setup of The Star Beast was and the vast majority of fans will know who is coming back in The Giggle, but in the recent preview, the guest cast of this episode was listed as simply ‘redacted’. It’s this kind of teasing that was a hallmark of both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat’s runs and I feel that it was sorely missing in the Chris Chibnall era.

Ultimately, I think that the teasing is a double-edged sword. Whilst it can encourage fans to speculate wildly about returning Doctors, monsters and adversaries, when that doesn’t come to pass, it can lead to disappointment. I think we’re so accustomed now to people telling us that they’re not in something, or making no comment that we just automatically assume that they are under a non-disclosure agreement and we don’t accept that they might just be telling us the truth. I have heard and seen some fans react negatively to this episode because it wasn’t what they expected and it doesn’t feel celebratory or special enough to be in this run of three specials. Whilst I can certainly see where they are coming from, I would understand their disappointment more if Wild Blue Yonder was a poor episode rather than a strong character-driven bottle episode.

There were a few parts of the story that did not work for me. The cold open with Isaac Newton didn’t really work for me. I think that this sequence was not particularly humorous, albeit the call back to mavity later in the episode did make me laugh, but the cold open itself felt a little too smug – it would not have felt entirely out of place in Series 2 – and I’m not sure my enjoyment of the episode would have been affected if that callback hadn’t been there at all. Another aspect that did not work so well was the stretching effects on Tennant and Tate did not always entirely work or convince. This is a minor quibble as they look a lot better than they did in The Almost People and The Rebel Flesh, but especially when the Doctor’s jaw stretched, it just looks a bit too cartoony for my personal preference. Maybe with a mostly entirely set-based and CGI reliant story, the budget could not extend to make this work better. Finally, I found the resolution a bit too quick, which is a problem that this story shared with The Star Beast, but the fact that the Doctor noticed such a small inconsistency was a nice little twist. The sequences with the not-Donna on the TARDIS didn’t entirely work for me, but that might be because they weren’t supposed to feel like the real Donna.

So what’s out there?

Well, that’s difficult. For you, because if the universe is everything then the concept of an everything having an edge is…kind of impossible. But that’s the language of 21st Century Earth and you don’t know anything yet. Not being rude, you just don’t.

Donna Noble and the Fourteenth Doctor

Whilst Moffat gets a lot of plaudits for writing terrifying episodes, especially during the first few series of the revivial, Davies is more than capable of doing the same and proves it in Wild Blue Yonder. There is a really unsettling feeling from the first few moments of this story which does not lift until we return to London. The story certainly works to set itself up with a good mystery of the empty spaceship on the edge of the universe, where the airlock was opened three years ago. It introduces us to some creepy creatures, whose origins are not entirely fully explored or explained, but are capable of duplicating our two leads and using their memories to create a sense of uncertainty within the story and the watching audience. This story is a two-hander for the majority of its runtime and manages to work really well. In two-handers, both parties need to be on top of their games, and that is certainly true of both Tennant and Tate here. Watching the Doctor and Donna explore an abandoned spaceship and trying to work out the mystery of why it came to be that way is really entertaining. The initial stages of the story seem quite slow, until you realise that this is all very deliberate and that this is the saving grace that saves the day.

Davies strips the Doctor of his usual ways out of the sonic screwdriver and the TARDIS and forces him to have to think his way out, but then gives him a foe that will use that power of the Doctor against him to try and use the TARDIS to escape. The scenes in which the Doctor and Donna think that they are talking to each other when they are attempting to get the ship moving again serve to effectively build up the tension. That moment where it is revealed that neither of them are who the other thinks they are really works well. That moment when the Not-Doctor starts talking about food with the real Donna is really sinister, and then the story goes a bit ballistically mental, with the Not-Things chasing the Doctor and Donna through the ship. Davies uses this story to emphasise that humans are capable of multiple contradictions, using Donna as an example, considering herself to be stupid but equally brilliant. Of course, revealing this to the creatures almost backfires when the Doctor takes the Not-Donna onto the TARDIS in the concluding moments. There are great moments where the real Doctor and Donna try and work out how to convince the other that they are the real one, but ultimately, the story realises the difficulties when your copies think exactly like you. Whilst they struggle with arms, jaws and surfaces, the Not-Things are a real threat not only to the Doctor and Donna but the whole of creation. They are drawn to our universe by our hatred and war, noting that “love letters don’t travel very far”. They are born from a place of cynicism, and perhaps experience following the optimism of the first Russell T Davies era. I loved the idea of the slow countdown to the ship’s self-destruction, crucial to this story’s resolution.

The atmosphere of this story owes a lot to director to Tom Kingsley, who does a lot of this through point of view shots and utterly sells the scale of the spaceship that the Doctor and Donna find themselves stranded on. There are spy shots, through grates and cubyholes and shots that feel as though the camera is sneaking up on the Doctor and Donna and add to the eerie feeling as they feel as though they are being watched. This all brings to live the horror that permeates the script. The shot of the outside of the ship as the the drone flies around it, floating in perpetual blackness looks gorgeous.

The Doctor in this story and The Star Beast has reflected on how much has changed in the time that the Doctor last wore this face. Through the course of conversations with the not-Donna, he reveals more about his past, including referencing the Timeless Child reveal and the events of Flux. At the end of the story, when Donna wants to talk to him about what he’s been through in the intervening time, the Doctor reveals that he is not okay. When talking to the not-Donna, he reveals that the impact of the Flux and the blame he feels personally for the devastating effect this had on the universe has deeply affected him and later that it would take a million years for him to recover. The way the conversation is played is really lovely and feels truthful to the Doctor and Donna’s friendship.

It’s funny, because I wonder where the TARDIS goes at random. Maybe it lands on some outcrop by the sea and there’s a tribe and they worship it for a hundred years. Then they grow up and try to burn it. Then they get wise. They preserve it. Then they build a city all around til the TARDIS is just a tiny dot surrounded by skyscrapers and monorails. Time passes and the city falls. It all gets swept away. And there’s the TARDIS still on its outcrop by the sea. She’s the only thing I’ve got left.

The Fourteenth Doctor

Ultimately, this could be seen to be the difference between the Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors: the Tenth Doctor has the ego, bravado and belief that he will always save the day, whilst the Fourteenth has a sense of uncertainty that he will ever be able be the same. The Doctor is ultimately more flawed here, and that leads to him to invoking superstition in an unstable area of space and time, which presumably leads us into The Giggle. The one constant for him has been his TARDIS, and I really loved the speech about his faithful ship that the Doctor delivers. By having the Doctor stripped of this and his screwdriver means that he has to rely on his wits and the fact that the countdown is in a language that the Doctor does not know makes him all the more vulnerable. Tennant still brings a sense of confidence to the story as the Doctor but there is underneath it all a sense of fallibility that I felt was never there in the Tenth Doctor.

I’ve got to say – this is the biggest nightmare of my life. But…I look quite good.

Donna Noble

I realised that, during Donna’s time as the Doctor’s companion, she was never truly separated from the TARDIS in the way that, say, Rose Tyler was in The Satan Pit. It also occurred to me that, even if she had, she would perhaps not have minded so much as she does not have anything that she is keen to get back to. Fifteen years on, and with a husband and daughter waiting at home, Donna needs that certainty that the Doctor can get her back. That sense of being trapped is probably not helped by the Doctor stating that they are 100 trillion miles away from her home. We learn that Donna has been considered to be a problem by Sylvia since her birth, which would of course have lasting psychological damage on someone like Donna who constantly doubts her own ability. Tate plays Donna really smartly and sensitively, and ultimately make me like her character all the more.

Verdict: I really like Wild Blue Yonder, which is a strong two-hander between Tennant and Tate. I have some quibbles with it, but the story is creepy and effective and tees up the finale to this miniseries really nicely. 9/10

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor/Not-Thing), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble/Not-Thing), Nathaniel Curtis (Isaac Newton), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott) & Susan Twist (Mrs Merridew).

Writer: Russell T Davies

Director: Tom Kingsley

Composer: Murray Gold

Original Broadcast Date: 2nd December 2023

Behind the Scenes

• The episode is dedicated to Bernard Cribbins. Cribbins, who appears as Wilfred Mott in this story, sadly passed away on 27th June 2022. Russell T Davies confirmed post-broadcast that these scenes were the only ones that they were able to film with Cribbins before his death.
• The story features the Doctor facing off against a foe taking his own shape. The Doctor has previously done this in The Massacre, The Enemy of the World, Meglos and Nightmare in Silver.

Cast Notes

• Nathaniel Curtis has appeared in the Big Finish audio plays The Five People You Kill in Middlesborough and Cuckoo (Torchwood) and Haunt and Last Line of Defence (UNIT: Brave New World).

Best Moment

I mean, I’d be lying if I didn’t say Wilf. I was not expecting him to turn up until the next episode and seeing him in the closing minutes of this one was really lovely.

Best Quote

There’s something on this ship so bad that the TARDIS ran away?

Yes.

Then we go and kick it’s arse!

Donna Noble and the Fourteenth Doctor

Previous Fourteenth Doctor review: The Star Beast