Last week, David Tennant, Catherine Tate, and Russell T. Davies returned to Doctor Who with the big-hearted, gloriously goofy Rachel Talalay-directed “The Star Beast.” In adapting Dave Gibbons and Pat Mills’ Fourth Doctor comic serial of more or less the same name (for which Gibbons and Mills were credited and paid—by the BBC and Bad Wolf, rather than Panini), the creative team laid out what they want Doctor Who to be.
With Disney money, they’ve got space for terrific creature effects and a fair few explosions. With an eye to the world as it stands, they’re very pointedly inclusive in casting and writing. While Tennant and Tate’s return is absolutely a tribute to their first run, it’s also laying the groundwork for Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor — who will first appear in next week’s special, “The Giggle.” With this week’s “Wild Blue Yonder,” the creative team flexes Doctor Who‘s storytelling muscles.
“The Star Beast” was Blockbuster Doctor Who — capital-B Big feelings, a direct threat to all of London from a deliciously cackling villain, and the day saved by both love and brains. “Wild Blue Yonder” dials its scale, scope, and tone back significantly — even factoring in the massive spaceship where the majority of the episode takes place.
“The Star Beast” saw Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor reunite with Tate’s Donna Noble and resolve a story thread last explored at the end of Tennant’s run as the Tenth Doctor in 2010. It introduced and reintroduced the extended Noble family, the military Unified Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT), and the nefarious Meep, Beep of all the Meeps (Cecily Fay and Miriam Margoyles).
In the big picture, Fourteen is wondering why Ten’s face has come back and grappling with the significant trauma the Doctor’s accumulated as the Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Doctors — in particular, the world-shaking revelations about their past that Thirteen discovered. Donna, even with her memory restored, is still drawn to strange events. Prior to their incarceration, the Meep tried to make lemonade out of their defeat by taunting Fourteen about “the boss.”
For most of “Wild Blue Yonder,” though, the big picture is on the backburner. After Donna accidentally spilled coffee on the TARDIS’ control console (despite growing a coffee maker, the Doctor’s trusty time ship did not harden itself against liquid damage), she and Fourteen are hurtled to the end of the universe. Not chronologically — though Ten and companion Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) did end up then at one point — physically. The TARDIS crash lands aboard a gargantuan, apparently deserted spaceship stranded at the literal end of space. At its stern, stars. At its bow, nothing.
To make things more complicated, the TARDIS’ hazard defense trips. It flees from something, leaving Donna without its translation matrix and Fourteen without his Sonic Screwdriver. If the danger is resolved, the TARDIS will return. But despite the inarguable evidence of some sort of peril, there only seems to be two things aboard. One: An ancient robot that is walking down a very long hallway very, very, very slowly. Two: a computer voice that neither Donna nor Fourteen understands sporadically heralding the ship drastically reconfiguring itself.
But, of course, the robot and the computerized voice are not the only things aboard when Fourteen and Donna arrive. They’re just the only things that they can understand. As Fourteen notes to Donna, twenty-first-century Earth thinking does yet not have the words or the math to describe the idea of infinity having an end. There are parts of it that even he struggles with.
And just as the Doctor and Donna struggle to wrap their minds around the idea of the universe having an edge, so too do those from the other side of that edge struggle with the idea of existence having shape, continuity, and meaning. It’s one thing to learn how to shape matter and take on the form and memories of someone who stumbled across the ship where you’ve been stranded. It’s another thing to get the arms right.
“Wild Blue Yonder” pits Tennant and Tate against…Tennant and Tate. Fourteen and Donna face their doppelgangers — malevolent intelligences from what we think of as nothing called to war by life’s most vicious impulses. The Not-Doctor and Not-Donna are spectacularly creepy — as special effects (the creative team, ably aided by the Millenium FX team and a VFX production coordinated by Douglas Russel-Fisher, cheerfully plunge deep into the uncanny valley.
And If you’re a parent who wants to prep your kid for their first Cronenberg when they’re a little older, “Wild Blue Yonder” is a darn fine introduction to body horror) and especially as performances. If they are to become the Doctor and Donna, the Not-Doctor and Not Donna must understand the minds and thoughts they’ve copied.
Tennant and Tate use curiosity as the foundation for their menace. They know what they know, but they want to know why they know that. So they have to study Fourteen and Donna. They have to balance terrorizing their would-be way into the universe with getting them to open up. They can’t just ask Fourteen about the fallout of the Flux or the secret of the Timeless Child (events from Thirteen’s run that drastically altered the series broad-scope status quo) or Donna about what her family will do if she never returns.
And they can’t just distort themselves into a horrible mass of ever-expanding flesh. They have to do both, play both friend and monster, with the ultimate aim of becoming Fourteen and Donna in everything but care and morality.
It’s tremendous fun, and fun that’s distinct from “The Star Beast’s” fun. On a thematic level, Davies’ invocation of two primal terrors (nonexistence and doppelgangers) makes for effective horror, especially as the Not-Doctor and Not-Donna get closer to Fourteen and Donna without ever losing their malevolence. There’s also an impressively groan-worthy-in-a-good-way joke thanks to poor Isaac Newton (Nathaniel Curtis) mishearing a certain word at a certain time.
Director Tom Kingsley uses the spaceship’s vast central corridor, isolated sub-areas, and eerily empty flight deck to great effect — whether giving the Not-Doctor and Not-Donna space to go gloppy and horrible or emphasizing how isolation can make even vast spaces terribly intimate. Tennant and Tate proved they hadn’t lost a step with “The Star Beast,” and “Wild Blue Yonder”‘s doppelgangers give them space to snarl and snap in a way their usual heroic performances do not.
As for their heroic selves? With her memory restored, Donna’s at peace. She’s fully herself in a way she has not been able to be in far too long and determined to get back to the family she loves. She has no patience for the Doctor’s nonsense — one of the reasons the two worked together so well — and she’s also acutely aware that despite sharing Ten’s face, Fourteen is a different person with different baggage.
Tate’s spiky warmth is marvelous. Two-thirds of the way through his tenure, Fourteen is comfortable being more open than his past selves, whether that’s casually admitting that young Isaac Newton was hot, letting out an anguished scream after the Not-Donna jabs a finger in his many traumas, or confessing to Donna that no, he is not OK, and he likely will not be OK for a long time. But he can move through that anguish in ways his predecessors sometimes struggled to.
It’s a good thing he can since, barring a very sweet reunion with Donna’s beloved grandfather and the Tenth Doctor’s last Companion Wilfred Mott (the late Bernard Cribbins, wonderful), “Wild Blue Yonder” closes with all hell breaking loose. With one episode of Fourteen’s run left, I’m very, very curious to see where this will go. How will the Fourteenth bow out? How will Gatwa’s Fifteenth step onto the stage? I’m excited to learn the answers.
“Wild Blue Yonder” is an excellent Doctor Who. Check it out.
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