We are so back. Sure, the next season of Doctor Who isn’t supposed to drop until sometime in spring 2024. But to help us transition into the upcoming era, we’re getting three-anniversary specials and a Christmas special this month. Returning showrunner Russell T. Davies is hitting the ground running. Last week’s special was an ensemble adventure involving the Doctor, Donna Noble, multiple members of Donna’s family, and of course, the deceivingly adorable Beep the Meep. In contrast, this episode rests almost entirely on the Doctor and Donna’s shoulders. Good thing they’ve got giant arms! (Or at least, their evil twins do.)
David Tennant and Catherine Tate are flexing their acting skills as both protagonists and antagonists because this adventure introduces a pair of villains that can copy bodies and memories. Perhaps these so-called Not-Things are distant relatives of the creature from “Midnight� Either way, it’s a thoroughly creepy premise. But in classic RTD fashion, the episode bounces between tense moments and playful humor, making it fitting that its title is a nod to a war song that’s still jaunty enough to be performed by a children’s choir.
“Wild Blue Yonder†picks up with the TARDIS crashing into an apple tree near Isaac Newton, who has enough melanin to inspire some uninspired “Doctor Woke†think pieces. The Doctor and Donna deliver a punchline about gravity in unison, and Newton promptly misremembers this new word as “mavity.†The whole scene feels like an opening sketch from another beloved BBC export — one more pun, and Noel Fielding could’ve walked out and announced it was sci-fi week on The Great British Baking Show. But the tone instantly shifts when the flaming TARDIS drops the Doctor and Donna off on a spaceship at the literal edge of the universe.
Much like Doctor Who itself, the TARDIS is in the process of rebuilding itself. That inadvertently reactivates a feature that causes the TARDIS to dematerialize when it senses hostile action, taking the sonic screwdriver with it. The Doctor and Donna are stranded and aware that they’re in danger. Not ideal. Donna is understandably panicked by the gravity (or mavity) of the situation. The show takes the opportunity to helpfully remind us that even though Fourteen has a familiar face, he’s still a different Doctor. When Donna tries to brush the Doctor off, he kisses her hand and holds it on his chest, offering both physical and verbal reassurance. Yeah, some of his past regenerations could never.
After a scan fails to detect other life signs on the ship, the Doctor decides that he and Donna should split up and complete tasks in different rooms. They meet back up, but something’s off. They don’t usually let the other ramble for that long without interrupting with a bit of banter, do they? Sure enough, the not-alive Not-Things reveal themselves by complaining that their arms are too long, with the camera cutting to the astonishingly elongated proof.
At first, it’s easy to identify the Not-Things. They’re puffed-up, distorted versions of the Doctor and Donna that clog the hallway. But their duplication gets better with each try. And with the ship’s walls periodically shifting, the Doctor and Donna eventually find it difficult to distinguish between body bender and BFF. (By the way, a spaceship where passengers are completing tasks, moving through hidden passages, and having heated arguments over who is an impostor? Oh, RTD definitely played Among Us during lockdown.)
Despite their comically stretchy bodies, the Not-Things struggle to wrap their heads around the concept of nuance. Most concerningly, they’ve decided that the universe is only about fury, hatred, and violence. Their restricted system of thinking makes them falter when presented with any seeming contradictions. How can Donna think she’s both dumb and brilliant? Why is the Doctor suggesting that a superstition can also be true? At one point, the Not-Doctor’s tie disappears after he drops it on the floor. In one of the more unsettling moments of the episode, he realizes his mistake: “When something is gone, it keeps existing.†The episode constantly emphasizes that things don’t always fit into mutually exclusive binaries. It feels like a thematic extension of the last special, which presented a nonbinary solution to the meta-crisis: The DoctorDonna couldn’t survive, but the introduction of Donna’s daughter, Rose — a third party — saved her mom’s life.
Conveniently, the Doctor and Donna don’t actually have to think of a way to take the Not-Things down. The ship’s previous captain has already done that by programming the ship to turn itself into a bomb, slowly enough that the object-permanence-challenged Not-Things haven’t figured out what’s happening three years later. The captain also took her own life before her plan could be copied from her mind. Unfortunately, the Not-Things find it easier to duplicate targets who are thinking, whose blood is pumping. The Doctor can’t stop himself from realizing that a slow-moving robot on the ship is a bomb trigger, which means the Not-Things reach the same conclusion. The Doctor speeds up the countdown, and the TARDIS senses that the Not-Things won’t have time to stop the detonation. This means the hostile action is over, so the TARDIS comes back! The Doctor hops on board with the wrong Donna, and the console alerts him to a tiny mistake in her wrist length. Just as the bomb goes off, he ejects the Not-Thing and scoops up his real companion.
Safely back in the TARDIS, the Doctor seems to be on the precipice of an emotional milestone. Earlier on the other ship, Not-Donna accessed the DoctorDonna’s memories and forced the Doctor to think about the consequences of Chris Chibnall’s era, including the Flux and the fact that the Doctor no longer knows where he’s from. The conversation affected him so much that he stopped to kick a wall afterward. I’d make a joke about men doing anything instead of going to therapy, but it was honestly pretty satisfying to see the Doctor finally reckon with the emotional fallout, even if he has to take it out on an inanimate object. Look, half of creation was destroyed, and his entire understanding of Time Lord history was rewritten … he can have a little tantrum, as a treat. Plenty of fans certainly did.
It feels like the Doctor is thinking about opening up about all of this to the real Donna because he carefully asks if she, too, remembers his past 15 years. When she says she doesn’t, however, he falls right back into old patterns of avoidance. Donna even accuses him of timing the TARDIS’s landing so he doesn’t have to talk about what happened. He doesn’t deny keeping her at arm’s length — in that sense, even before the Not-Thing, the Doctor’s limbs have always been too long.
To be fair, the universe does enable his behavior. There’s always a distracting fire that needs to be put out somewhere, and this episode is no exception. When the TARDIS finally lands, Wilf is parked outside waiting for his granddaughter and his favorite alien. We barely have time to enjoy Bernard Cribbins’s sweet posthumous appearance before explosions and fights break out in the street. Wilf reveals that “everyone’s gone mad†and the “whole world is coming to an end.†As easy as that, the Doctor has another excuse to put off processing his feelings.
Cut for Time (Lord)
• The Doctor is so unserious for pretending to be dying after licking that filament. The music added a dramatic touch that helped with the payoff of that scene and several others, so props to the sound designer.
• I appreciate the parallels between the Doctor and Donna’s conversations with the Not-Things. When Donna is wondering what her family (Rose, Shaun, and Sylvia) would do without her, the Doctor is thinking the same thing about his loved one (the TARDIS). The Doctor is reminded of the Timeless Child, and Donna gets to recount her own emotionally fraught origin story (sleep with one eye open, Auntie Iris).
• I’ve heard that some people didn’t love the look of all the body stuff, but I, for one, am glad it didn’t look too realistic. I’d rather be laughing at the Not-Doctor melting into a backbend and galloping around on all fours instead of having nightmares. Incidentally, I can’t believe those giant hands weren’t CGI.
• The Doctor surprises himself by admitting that he finds Isaac Newton to be “so hot.†Perhaps we’ll explore that more with Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor … also, does that mean the Fourth Doctor was bluffing about explaining gravity to Newton after dropping apples on his head? He just wanted to flex in front of Romana, lol.
• I didn’t expect to get so emotional about the dedication to Bernard Cribbins in the end credits! Hoping to see more of him in the next episode.
• It seems like the chaos on Earth might have to do with the salt superstition the Doctor invoked at the edge of the universe, and I’m worried about it.