Who Review: Wild Blue Yonder
Picking up where we left off last episode, thanks to Donna spilling tea on the console, the Doctor and Donna are spinning madly through space in a malfunctioning, out-of-control TARDIS. They pause for a moment to meet Sir Isaac Newton before ending up on a spaceship. The Doctor and Donna disembark but the TARDIS needs to repair itself. The Doctor sticks his sonic screwdriver in the TARDIS’s keyhole to initiate the process. But then the TARDIS’s HADS system kicks in–the system that recognizes a hostile environment causing the TARDIS to leave until the environment is no longer hostile. Our heroes are stranded, but only as long as there is danger. The solution: figure out why they are in danger and resolve it. But that might be easier said than done…
SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those who haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!
“Wild Blue Yonder” is the second of three 60th anniversary specials featuring the Doctor and Donna. The action takes place on a spaceship with a long corridor that periodically flips its wall tiles. When this happens, a voice comes over the speakers saying something in a foreign language neither the Doctor nor Donna understands, and a robot at the far end of the corridor takes a step. Most of the episode is consumed with figuring out what is going on, a task that’s complicated by the appearance of Doctor and Donna doppelgangers. These duplicates are shape-shifters that have difficulty correctly figuring out proportions. First, they make their arms too long, then the Doctor doppelganger opens his mouth too widely. It becomes apparent that these creatures are the threat, especially when they start reading the Doctor and Donna’s thoughts. The Doctor eventually finds the ship’s captain floating outside the ship, her decomposed body contained in a space suit. It appears she had initiated a way to destroy the creatures and killed herself to prevent the creatures from reading her mind and finding out what she had done.
Eventually, the Doctor and Donna figure out that the captain had started the ship’s self-destruct mechanism. Since the creatures have difficulty with slow-moving thoughts, the captain adjusted the countdown to be in slow motion to prevent the creatures from working out what was happening. The voice the Doctor and Donna heard was the countdown, the numbers unrecognizable because they were in the native language of the ship’s original crew. And the robot was slowly making its way to a panel where, at the end of the countdown, it would press the button to trigger the explosive and destroy the ship and all on board. The Doctor takes a risk, sets the countdown to normal speed, and he and Donna race to prevent the creatures from stopping the robot. They eventually succeed and as the robot presses the button, the TARDIS, sensing the danger has now passed, reappears and the Doctor and Donna jump aboard just before the ship explodes. The Doctor almost takes the wrong Donna, but he realizes her wrists are slightly too large.
That’s essentially the story, and it’s a good one, full of creative ideas and an interesting puzzle to solve. The special effects were noticeably above standard, on par with any Marvel movie. They saved money on actors since David Tennant and Catherine Tate are the only two you see for most of the story, but this was probably by design not due to budget constraints. Many fans enjoy the Doctor-Donna dynamic and an entire show where it’s mostly just them gives ample opportunity to enjoy their on-screen chemistry. If any Doctor and companion combination could pull off an episode like this, it’s these two.
The vibe of the story reminded me of “Midnight,” a story from the 10th Doctor’s era in which the Doctor went off alone on a ship that was then taken over by an unknown and unseen entity. While we can see the creatures here, we only see them as duplicates of the Doctor and Donna, just as the entity in “Midnight” was only “seen” by taking over the voices of people on the ship. And also like “Midnight” we never really get to know what these creatures are. “Midnight” was one of the best stories of that season, so the comparison is a compliment.
On the whole, “Wild Blue Yonder” is a great improvement over the last story. There were a couple of things that troubled me, but RTD managed to keep the preaching at bay and seemed more like the writer who gave us episodes like “Midnight” and “The Christmas Invasion.” I hope he continues on this trajectory. The last story gave me a great deal of cause for concern. This one restores my hope somewhat… but only somewhat. That caveat refers to the couple of things that troubled me. The first thing was very minor but could be indicative of the attitude of the production team, and that’s having a mixed-race actor play Sir Isaac Newton. As we all know, Sir Isaac Newton was white. Unless there’s a good story reason for ignoring this obvious historical fact in a show about time travel, it comes across to me as gratuitous and virtue signaling. This kind of “race-swapping” wouldn’t be tolerated if it was a white actor playing a historically black character, so why is it okay this way? Again, it’s a minor issue because this is fiction, and ethnicity aside I had no problem with the portrayal and the scene as a whole. Will the fact that “gravity” is now “mavity” be important in the next special..?
The second issue is of greater concern and has to do with the suggestion that the Doctor might be gay. This came up in a discussion between the Doctor and Donna about Isaac Newton. The Doctor refers to him as “hot” and then, surprised at what he just said, says “Is that what I’m like now?” Donna starts to suggest that such thoughts might have been just below the surface, but their conversation is broken off. Again, nothing is said explicitly, but the suggestion of a gay Doctor is there. I’m hoping this was just some silly banter and not an indication of where RTD intends to go with the next Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, who happens to be gay. The issue for me is not so much the Doctor’s sexuality, but the fact that any attention at all is being given to the subject. Throughout the history of the show, the Doctor’s sexual preferences have never been a part of his character. Not that he doesn’t have preferences, but they aren’t relevant to the show. This is for family viewing, so who the Doctor likes to hook up with is completely irrelevant and totally unnecessary. Yes, this is 2023, and gay characters are in everything now. But that doesn’t mean you have to start infusing non-sexual characters like the Doctor with sexuality just to “keep up with the times.”
But, one might object, what about River Song? I can’t say I was all that comfortable with that story either, for many of the same reasons. Sure, the Doctor must at some point have taken up with someone; he has a granddaughter, after all. But we don’t need to know the details. Just let the Doctor be the Doctor and quit using this much-loved British institution as a vehicle for social and political correctness or woke politics or turning it into a thinly veiled rom-com.
In the final scene of the story, the Doctor and Donna return to Earth but they arrive back later than when they left. Donna’s grandfather, Wilf, greets them and explains that the world has gone crazy. As explosions go off around them, Wilf pleads with the Doctor to do something about it. This sets us up for the last of the specials which will feature The Toymaker (aka The Celestial Toymaker), and the Fourteenth Doctor’s regeneration. Some might have been surprised to see Wilf since Bernard Cribbins died last year. In fact, the episode was filmed shortly before Bernard’s death, making this one of the last performances he gave.
In short, this was a good story, worth watching, and perhaps an indicator of better things to come…? Let’s hope!
Did you see this episode? What did you think? Share your respectful comments below…
