The Fantasy Review’s review of Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special 2, Wild Blue Yonder.
Wild Blue Yonder was the second of three 60th Anniversary episodes released in 2023 and written by Russell T Davies.
Previous episode: The Star Beast – Review & Recap
Spoiler-filled Recap & Review of Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special 2, Wild Blue Yonder
Isaac Newton & Mavity
This Wild Blue Yonder review and recap begins with one of the strangest cold openings of Doctor Who, where Donna and the Doctor land in the TARDIS on top of a tree, knocking apples onto Isaac Newton.
Donna’s “have you got the controls set to “famous”, or what?” is precisely what we’re all thinking with the Doctor’s luck! So, they are recalibrating the TARDIS, or something, chatting away with Isaac Newton, and they make a fun joke about him being able “to appreciate the gravity of the situation,” – because they are children.
Isaac, however, misheard gravity, and in trying to remember decides upon… Mavity! I promise, you won’t hear the end of this joke for a long time.
Additionally, keen-eyed viewers will remember Mrs Merridew for future episodes.
The TARDIS Played us a War Song
The TARDIS, flashing orange, crashes into the interior wall of a spaceship and the Doctor and Donna run out to get away from the smoke. All that fuss over a bit of spilt coffee.
After a burst of fire erupts from the TARDIS as it plays the military song, Wild Blue Yonder, the Doctor tries to recalibrate (yes, again) the blue box with his sonic, leaving it attached at the keyhole.
Despite supposedly not wanting to go off on an adventure, the Doctor and Donna can’t help themselves and go off to explore the spaceship. The long corridor looks amazing, especially for Doctor Who! You should watch the Doctor Who: Unleashed episode for Wild Blue Yonder to see how they did it with the greenscreens because it’s pretty awesome.
They see a small dot in the distance and go to see if it is “a person or a thing.” While they saunter on down the corridor, being watched by something mysterious behind the walls, Donna says she found Isaac Newton “hot” and the Doctor surprises himself by agreeing.
“Well, it was never that far from the surface, mate.”
Donna is not wrong there!
They hear the TARDIS dematerialising and run back to see it disappear. Donna is furious and we see them argue about who’s fault it is and what they are going to do now. How I have missed a companion who will shout at the Doctor – these two are the perfect combination for this show and it’s almost sad we only get them back on screen together briefly.
They both stop arguing at the same time – like the best friends would, when they know there is no point – and the Doctor kisses Donna’s hand and holds her close. This is a new Doctor, not the more detached 10th Doctor, but someone who has gone through three regenerations and billions of years (Heaven Sent).
HADS
The Doctor tells Donna that there is one hope for getting Donna home again. The TARDIS has a mechanism called the HADS (Hostile Action Displacement System) – designed to protect the TARDIS if it feels it is in danger.
So, as Donna quite rightly put it, something on that ship is so bad the TARDIS ran away. And what does the best companion say in the face of that?
“Then we…go…and kick it’s arse!”
To be fair, this is the woman who destroyed Davros’ new empire of Daleks… She’s got this covered!
They walk back down the corridor towards the person/thing in the distance and suddenly, everything moves after a computer voice says, “Fenslaw.”
I love how the puzzle pieces of this episode all fit together. This is a millionth rewatch for me and I’m still astounded by how well planned this mystery is.
The Doctor presses a button on the floor and a golf buggy pops up. I love how, even in a darker, more mysterious episode like this, there is still silliness. I need the silliness to come back and stay in Doctor Who. And the absolute JOY on Donna’s face is a delight!
Hello, Jimbo!
They drive down and see the person/thing is a little robot. It doesn’t respond to them at all, but takes a step forward. Then, the Doctor summarises the plot of the entire episode:
“Someone got a very old robot out of storage to walk very slowly down a very long corridor.”
How can an episode about this premise be interesting? Because Russell T Davies wrote it, and sometimes he can be an absolute genius.
They leave the little robot behind and drive down the rest of the corridor to the cockpit. This set is just fantastic. The blue lighting, the chambers in the walls… even the floor looks good! They reuse this room and some of the chambers for Space Babies, because Doctor Who is used to being on a tight budget – also, why waste such great designs?
The Doctor takes a look at the computer, works out how to read the numbers/language, and looks first for life signs. Finds none but the two of them. We find out someone opened an airlock door three years ago – another piece to the puzzle.
Then, they take a look outside with a drone. Donna notices that there are no stars where they are, and if they are in space, like they must be, where are the stars?
One of the possible explanations the Doctor gives is that they are in a mavity well… This show is so dumb, I love it.
Then he gets the right answer. They are on the edge of the known universe – at the edge of creation (of which, there probably isn’t much left after the Flux and other events in the Whoniverse lore).
Midnight?
While the two of them ruminate on what it means to be standing on the edge of creation, where no one else has ever been, on a spaceship that had an airlock open and close three years ago, they hear a banging sound and go back to the corridor to investigate.
This banging sounded eerily similar to the banging we hear on Midnight, so a lot of fans, including me, thought this creepy episode might be a sort of sequel to that classic (also written by Russell T Davies), but it isn’t.
The computer voice says a word again (Coliss), the robot takes another step, and they are still clueless.
Doubles
This is where the creepy stuff begins. The Doctor and Donna go to look around a different room that I don’t understand, but I think it’s meant to be the ship’s computer, or servers, or something.
Anyway, the ship is on neutral, so they’re getting it on full power by moving some rectangles (14’s words, not mine). While Donna moves rectangles, the Doctor goes looking for a spindle.
First, we are with Donna, who should be alone. She breathes out and the air is suddenly cold. The Doctor then comes back in and sits on the floor while she moves the rectangles about.
Donna talks about Rose, Shaun, and her mother, wondering how long they will wait for them in the alley. This conversation is reminiscent of Rose wondering about her mum back home during The Impossible Planet, when they are trapped with no TARDIS.
We then cut to the real Doctor, who is still in the other room…
These scenes are spliced together, so I will split the recaps up so it makes more sense when reading:
Donna’s Room
Somehow, the person/thing that looks like the Doctor in Donna’s room knows about Wilf, and he asks about him. It’s so unbelievably tragic that these conversations, full of emotion and love and warmth towards family and each other, are not between Donna and the Doctor, but with malevolent entities.
And then we get the creepiest line in the episode:
“My arms are too long.”
The Doctor’s Room
The air gets cold for the Doctor too and someone/something that looks like Donna comes in.
While Donna talks about her family, the Doctor talks about the TARDIS and what might happen to it, wherever it has gone. This just shows how lonely he is. He has no one close to him anymore, no one to think about when he’s adrift like this.
“She’s the only thing I’ve got left.”
He says this line right after talking about the TARDIS, but I think he was talking about Donna. She, his best friend and his only companion while adrift, is all he has left right at this moment, and he knows her life will flash by in a blink of an eye for him, but that’s all he’s got, because the TARDIS is gone.
The Donna impersonator asks him if he misses his home, Gallifrey. How does it know about Gallifrey? It’s at this point viewers assume that these creatures, whatever they are, can either read or steal the memories of the people they pretend to be.
My Arms Are Too Long
Oh, Wild Blue Yonder is gonna scare a whole generation of kids and they’re never going to stop watching this show!
The Doctor and Donna impersonators reveal their arms are too long (those prosthetics look amazing!) and the real Doctor and Donna realise they are in danger.
The impersonators reveal themselves to be “no-things” and are very interested in the Doctor and Donna being not nothing.
“Oh, I think you’ll find we’re quite something.”
Sure, some of the CGI with the jaw dropping to the floor, and a scene now where the no-things get massive and chase the golf cart is a bit ridiculous, but isn’t that kind of the point of Doctor Who? You need to mix the silly with the scary, and over the years since 2005, they have been trying to find a balance so kids are scared, not traumatised!
The no-things chase Donna and the Doctor in the golf cart, growing larger and larger until they are too big to fit down the corridor. They have no concept of shape or size. The CGI and the green screen in this particular scene, with the Doctor and Donna looking at their enlarged doppelgangers isn’t great, but I still love it.
If it’s a good story, why get upset about some weird GGI?
Brate
The Doctor and Donna run for it, heading for a ladder, but the walls move again with the computer saying, “Brate” and the two of them are separated.
The Doctor makes his way through a small side tunnel and the air gets cold.
Donna moves through her tunnel and hears footsteps approach her, but they disappear, and then the air gets cold.
He enters a room at the same time as not-Donna.
Donna enters a different room at the same time as the not-Doctor.
I love these scenes. Watching them all try to work out who is the real Doctor or Donna is hilarious, full of the kind of comedy that Tennant and Tate do so well together.
However, we then get a conversation between not-Donna and the Doctor where the no-thing mentions that the Doctor does not know where he is from. It isn’t Gallifrey. This is Russell T Davies giving a nod to Chris Chibnall’s Timeless Children storyline, and doing more with it emotionally than was done before.
We also get confirmation from the Doctor’s own mouth that the Flux “destroyed half the universe,” so how much is really left now?
Tennant’s acting is just brilliant. He plays the tired, worn down Doctor who wants to give up very well. It’s because of his dialogue and Tennant’s acting in moments like this that really make the ending of The Giggle work so well.
The end of this scene when the Doctor says, in a quiet, quivering voice, “Donna, is that you?” is the most vulnerable and emotionally weak we have ever seen the Doctor. He just wants to give his best friend a hug and she turns out to be one of the no-things. It laughs in his face as it sinks into the floor and your heart breaks for him in that moment.
Donna, in the other room, keeps on talking and right now it is a superpower. She distracts the not-Doctor by trying to explain her complex birth story to the point where his tie, which he dropped on the floor, disappears and she notices.
The not-Doctor does that creepy bridge-like thing, with its head between its back legs, and crawls (runs?) after her down the corridor.
The Doctor Needs a Hug
The Doctor has a pause while running down a corridor and we see the emotional impact of his conversation with not-Donna. Someone please give this man a hug!
He has never lost control like this. Never. Okay, maybe that time he killed a Time Lord as a distraction so he could bring Clara back to life… but he had been in a time loop for billions of years and just got out, so who can blame him?
But even then, that was cold, calculated rule-breaking. This emotional outburst is raw, almost savage, as 14 hits and kicks the wall screaming. There is something primal in it. He just needs a break.
Buuuut… Salt!
All four of them run into the same room at one time. The Doctor manages to work out which one is Donna by picking the one who can think two opposing things at once, and then he gets out the salt.
“In our universe, it is said that vampires, demons and ghosts cannot cross a line of salt until they’ve counted every single grain.”
Now, I know this needs to happen for all the fantasy elements to come into the next season with Ncuti, but does it make sense that the no-things would fall for this, even if they think it could be a bluff?
Because the Doctor specifies which creatures cannot cross the salt, and the no-things are none of those things – it’s literally in their name. So, why do they stop?
The Doctor uses this opportunity to try and find out what the no-things want, but the response is just, “you tell us.”
It is revealed they became “bad” because of all the darkness, the war, the bloodshed, the fury and hate that they saw and heard from the universe. It shaped them into what they are.
The Pilot
After the no-things work out the lie of the salt, the Doctor and Donna run for it and end up in the cockpit. The weird thing is, as the Doctor says, the no-things don’t try and get past the glass door to the cockpit.
They stand there, “locking into shape,” and watching, waiting. And not knowing why drives the Doctor mad! Then he works it out: they needed to scare them so they would think, and the more they thought and the adrenaline pumped, the more the no-things could copy them.
But, now the Doctor has to stop thinking. Do we think that is possible?
“How can you not think in a ship full of questions?”
The no-thing-Doctor has a very good point. This plan probably isn’t going to work. And of course, after they tease the Doctor just a little bit with all the questions, he gives in. What other option is there? They can’t stand there forever.
There is that banging again and the Doctor opens a window to see the captain of the ship. It was the captain that opened the airlock – to kill themselves – three years ago.
We get another mavity reference, with the Doctor saying “caught in the gravity field” and Donna being very confused.
Think, Think,Think!
The no-things need the Doctor to keep thinking, to put all the pieces of the puzzle together so they can finally know what the captain did before killing themselves.
The Doctor can’t help himself – he just has to be clever! So, he works out that the captain, scared of what the no-things might do to the universe, set up a very, very slow countdown to a self-destruct sequence.
The words they keep hearing (fenslaw, colliss, brate) are the numbers 10, 9, 8. The robot is the trigger to the bomb, moving slowly down the corridor so the no-things wouldn’t work out the plan.
The Doctor speeds up the countdown and they all sprint down the corridor to the robot. It’s when all hope seems lost that the TARDIS materialises, playing Wild Blue Yonder. The Doctor then skates the TARDIS towards the two Donnas, which is a method of transport I think we should see more of!
He has to pick between the two Donnas and initially picks wrong. Even though we all knew he would rescue the real Donna, Catherine Tate’s performance as she screams for the Doctor to come back sent shivers down my spine.
The ship explodes, the no-things are defeated, and the Doctor and Donna embrace on the TARDIS. You can see how emotionally exhausting all that was – for them both – on their faces. It’s not like it used to be. Donna has Rose and a husband now, and the Doctor has spent too many years running from his trauma.
And the Doctor might have just made his biggest mistake to date:
“I invoked a superstition at the edge of the universe, where the walls are thin and all things are possible.”
Home in Time for Tea
The Doctor and Donna have an emotional moment where he asks her if she knows what’s happened to him since they last met, because of the DoctorDonna. I think that he wants her to say yes, but she doesn’t,
However, she is his best friend and understands him enough to see his pain and trauma without having to know what happened. She asks him how long before he recovers from it all, and he says, “a million years.”
Just while the viewers are emotionally vulnerable already, the TARDIS lands back in the alleyway in London and the Doctor sees an old friend.
The absolute joy of seeing Bernard Cribbins as Wilf one more time is indescribable. And the joy in his face too, the man who knocked four times, to see “that lovely face!” again!
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, however. The world has gone mad, with everyone fighting each other.
Concluding Thought to this Recap and Review of Wild Blue Yonder
Wild Blue Yonder is one of the best episodes of Doctor Who that Russell T Davies has ever written, and along with stories like Midnight and The Waters of Mars will become a regularly rewatched classic.
