Wild Blue Yonder - a review

This is the one we knew nothing about.

We found out early on that there were to be three special episodes for the anniversary, thanks to clapper boards seen on location. We knew that the third of these starred Neil Patrick Harris, and a tweet from RTD2 quickly led to the guess that he was playing the Toymaker. We also saw actors dressed as Wrarth Warriors and the Meep on location - with the clapper boards indicating that the old DWW comic strip The Star Beast was being adapted as the first special.

But the second episode remained a mystery. All we had to go on were some cryptic teasers and then the fuller trailers, which only depicted Tennant and Tate in some futuristic environment. 

The poster-style artwork then added an odd, crooked robot, and determined fans found one other actor involved thanks to their agent's website.

A very brief synopsis, and the final trailer, indicated that the TARDIS disappears - leaving the Doctor and Donna trapped somewhere referred to as Hostile Action (as in HADS, the ship's HA Displacement System, which shifts it away from danger). 

And that was it.

In the week running up to Wild Blue Yonder, Radio Times informed us that there was no preview, and we didn't get the usual batch of publicity images until a few Doctor / Donna shots dropped out.

Like Nature, fandom abhors a vacuum, so the lack of information got people speculating like crazy. Perhaps this level of expectation might prove impossible to satisfy...

Well, now we know...

Last week's episode ended with the TARDIS going out of control thanks to Donna spilling coffee onto the shiny new console, and Wild Blue Yonder follows on directly from this. (RTD2 had said that although each special would be standalone, they would have a cliffhanger into the next).

Before arriving on the spaceship, we have a brief encounter with Isaac Newton. The Fourth Doctor had already claimed to have inspired his work on gravity - but this could always have been taken as a joke.

No doubt some will object to the colour-blind casting of the great scientist. I'm okay with it, but can see how making some children think he was of their ethnicity when he really wasn't might be an issue for some. (The programme gave up teaching people about science a very long time ago, but educating about history at least managed to last a little longer). 

Newton misremembers the word "gravity" and we then see Donna use the new term - "mavity"... This was something discussed between Vicki and Steven in The Time Meddler - how a change in history will instantly feed through all future history to the present.

This is picked up in the Unleashed episode as Tennant tries to explain the concept to Tate.

When we do get to the spaceship, we're immediately reminded of Event Horizon. 

(I certainly was. Not only is it designed like one long corridor, and it's apparently abandoned, but turns out there's a nightmare on board - something which very much messes with your mind. It hails from another dimension, and can take on the appearance of someone you know. Sound familiar?).

There's a lengthy build up to the introduction of the threat. We have to make do with the mystery of a seemingly deserted ship lying on the edge of the universe. Except we've been party to the fact that someone or something has been watching the TARDIS pair.

It's a two-hander for the first half hour, as the Doctor and Donna struggle to work out what's going on. But then we suddenly see that there are two Doctors, and then - after a short while - two Donnas... 

The way this is handled is very well done. The Doctor and Donna have split up to carry out some task. The second Doctor turns up first, and we instinctively know there is something just a little off with the way he acts. But then he mentions something only the Doctor would know, and so we relax...

However, we then cut to where the real Doctor is, and suddenly realise that that was a false Doctor with Donna after all. Then, just as we're thinking there's a shapeshifting creature on the ship, the second Donna turns up.

The way in which the duplicates initially struggle to get to grips with their unfamiliar humanoid forms was nothing new. We've seen bodysnatcher scenarios (especially John Carpenter's The Thing) within the series before. As well as Flatline, it was also impossible to view this episode without thinking of Midnight. 

It was that episode, with bells and whistles. 

That's not to say that this was completely unoriginal. It may have borrowed from other works, but the packaging certainly felt fresh. Great design and VFX. The four-way dynamic was interesting. We had two mysteries to solve throughout the episode: who were the duplicates, and what was going on with the robot and those occasional random words. The resolution to the latter was pretty clever, though who the beings were, how they functioned, and why they did what they did was the bit we'd seen before. 

If there's one issue I have with this episode, it's the way it hinges on these two mysteries. Once you know what's happening, how often do you think you might watch this again? 

Having nothing going on elsewhere, and with no other characters to relate to, this may not be the sort of episode you revisit very often. 

I'm sure a more psychological horror isn't going to go down well with everyone - especially those who were hoping to see an old monster / companion / Doctor. 

(Chamber pieces don't go down well with everyone. In the DWM poll recently, Heaven Sent came out top story of the last 60 years. Setting aside the stupid voting system they imposed this time, designed so that it didn't upset Colin Baker or the entire previous production team, I had no problem with this, having given the episode top marks myself. It has a remarkable performance by Peter Capaldi, and script by Steven Moffat. Even though they liked it, some fans just couldn't cope with a newer story being top dog, and wanted to see a Bob Holmes story instead). I think some people will criticise Wild Blue Yonder not for the episode on it's own merits, but for how much it deviates from their expectations. 

You can't fault a story for failing to be something it was never meant to be. Just because it didn't match your expectations... that's your problem, not the episode's. 

Not every actor pairing could have pulled this off (I'm visualising another Doctor and companion pairing right now, and OMG it's dreadful...). Tennant and Tate can, and do. 

The episode ends with a glorious but bittersweet reunion, for there in Camden waiting for the TARDIS is Wilf Mott. Unleashed featured a short, but heartfelt, tribute to St Bernard. It also gave us a pretty pointless clip from The Giggle. We did get a trailer this week following the episode itself, though in the gap between programmes rather than as part of the closing credits. (Still not heard the closing theme properly). This showed the start of the regeneration, which takes place in the TARDIS, then a shot of Ncuti's Doctor.