September 26: "Wild Blue Yonder"

In the promotional material for these three specials, there was a lot made out of the fact that the first special was an adaptation of Doctor Who and the Star Beast, complete with photo-friendly aliens, while the third special played up the fact that Neil Patrick Harris was the main guest star.  This second special, however, received comparatively little in the way of advance publicity, making it something of a mystery.  It turns out that's because there's really not any special aliens or guest stars in this: it's basically a chamber piece, with just four characters -- and two of those characters are played by the other two actors.  And yet despite the lack of flashiness, this might be the best of the three specials.

It's not completely guest-star-free, mind: we do get a cold open with Isaac Newton greeting his housekeeper Mrs. Merridew (played by Susan Twist -- this will become important next series) before going to contemplate the universe, only to find the TARDIS crashing into the apple tree he's sitting under.  To Davies' credit, he at least has Newton come to his gravity realization before the Doctor arrives, but nevertheless the scene is rather silly and actually slightly at odds with the tone of the rest of the piece.  The "mavity" "joke" is one thing³⁰¹, but the Doctor and Donna seem much cheerier about their situation here than when the episode actually starts.

But the main thrust of this episode is the Doctor and Donna, trapped on a spaceship at the edge of the universe while the TARDIS, mending itself after Donna's coffee spill, departs thanks to the Hostile Action Displacement System (another little callback to the show's past).  There's a really great moment where the two of them start to tear into each other before the Doctor visibly pulls himself short and moves on, apologizing to Donna.  I also like the part where Donna realizes what the HADS activating means: "There's something on this ship that's so bad the TARDIS ran away?" Donna asks.  "Yes," the Doctor replies.  "Then we go," Donna states, "and kick its arse!"

But despite Donna's proclamation, there's nothing immediately obvious threatening the pair of them.  Instead, we're presented with a puzzle: a giant, seemingly abandoned spaceship out so far no stars are visible, with an unknown language occasionally speaking, an old robot moving very slowly, and the spaceship periodically rearranging itself.  The ship was placed in shutdown, three years ago an airlock opened and closed, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be anyone there.  However, during the Doctor's efforts to bring the ship back online (with an utterly delightful moment where, after Donna asks if the substance coating some rectangular circuit-board-like things is dangerous, the Doctor says, "No," tastes it, and starts to choke -- with the music swelling dramatically -- before revealing he's just faking it to an annoyed Donna), we start to see something strange: the Doctor seems to be in two places at once.  But this isn't some sort of time travel scenario: instead it seems there are two doppelgangers on board, a Doctor and a Donna.  "I don't know why, but the arms are so very difficult," the fake Doctor says, as his arms become unnaturally long, dragging along the floor.

The real and fake Doctors and Donnas encounter each other. ("Wild Blue
Yonder") ©BBC

And from that moment on, things shift and become first a form of body horror, with heavily distorted Doctor and Donna copies chasing the real thing down the long central corridor, and then a more psychological terror, as the Doctor and Donna become separated from each other, meaning they can't tell if they next meet the real version or the copy.  The body horror is one type of terror, with distended limbs, bulging eyes, and joints not bending properly.  But to me the psychological terror is more effective, because it's not just that these "not-things" (as they refer to themselves as at one point) look like the Doctor and Donna -- it's that they're copying their minds as well as their forms.  This means they can't even do the usual "tell me something only you would know" trick, because the not-things know everything the real versions know.  Davies not only takes this opportunity to increase the tension but also explicitly refer back to the events of the last two series:

DONNA: You don't know where you're from.
DOCTOR: How do you know that?  How does anyone know?  How does Donna know?
DONNA: Back on Earth, when I was the DoctorDonna, I saw your mind.  I've had 15 years without you, and I saw everything that's happened to you since and, oh, my God, it hurt.
DOCTOR: You're saying this to break me down.
DONNA: We haven't stopped to talk.  We haven't had a chance.  It's always like that with you, running from one thing to the next.  I saw it.  In your head.  The Flux.
DOCTOR: It destroyed half the universe because of me.  We stand here now on the edge of creation, a creation which I devastated.  So, yes, I keep running.  Of course I do.  How am I supposed to look back on that?

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Wild Blue Yonder)

I'll be honest; I half-expected the Flux in particular to be just quietly forgotten, so it's nice to actually have it come up again, and to see that it actually did deeply affect the Doctor.  The moment after he escapes from the not-Donna and then gives in to his anger for a moment, punching and kicking a wall and letting out an anguished scream, is a striking one, played to perfection by Tennant.  But then both Tennant and Tate deserve kudos for playing both versions of their characters so well, pitching their copy performances at exactly the right level to be frightening without going too far.

It helps that this script is written so well.  There's something compelling about a doppelganger story that you can't reason your way out of.  It means the Doctor can't just outthink the not-things, because if he's thinking something then so is his copy.  The Doctor tries to resort to trickery, such as with the salt superstition, but ultimately it becomes a matter not of outwitting the not-things at all, but simply working out what the captain of the ship did when she found the not-things were on her ship.  We get a satisfying explanation for why the not-things are trying to scare the Doctor and Donna, and how the captain outwitted them: the not-things need things to be fast in order to copy them, so the captain deliberately set the ship to self-destruct very slowly, hoping the not-things wouldn't work out what was going on.  The clues are there, and nothing about this feels arbitrary or a cheat.  The worst you could say is that the Doctor and Donna don't really do much to stop the not-things; it's more just that they work out what the captain did and then make sure her plan is carried out.  But that's not much of a complaint, and it's honestly one of Davies' tighter scripts, bringing to mind other standouts like "Midnight" or "Gridlock".

So it's well-written, it's superbly acted, it looks gorgeous for the most part -- with only a couple dodgy effects shots -- and, after a cryptic bit of foreshadowing ("I invoked a superstition at the edge of the universe, where the walls are thin and all things are possible.  I've just got this feeling"), it's even got an appearance from Bernard Cribbins, making his final appearance as Wilfred Mott, filmed shortly before he died in 2022.  What more could you want?  It may not be the flashiest story ever, but the mood "Wild Blue Yonder" creates is more than enough to compensate.  This is one to treasure.

Right, that's two-for-two so far.  Can they go for a hat-trick?







³⁰¹ This bit gets more daft the more you think about it.  First of all, the word "gravity" predates Newton's use, so it's not like he coined the word; he just coined that particular use of it.  (The word comes from the Latin gravitas, or "weight" -- hence Donna's comment to Newton.)  But moreover, while Newton used the word to define the physical property, there are earlier uses that convey a similar meaning, so the word isn't completely novel.  So for Newton to think the word is "mavity" -- something that has no likely antecedent in Latin, Greek, or, say, French -- instead of a word he's likely already familiar with, albeit in a slightly different context, is absurd.  (And unfortunately, this is going to turn into something of a running gag even beyond the handful of times it happens in this episode.)