Review: 'Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder'

Doctor Who, you didn’t disappoint. I will admit I wasn’t sure what was happening when the TARDIS ejected them to the American Air Force song “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder,” but that was soon forgotten as we got into a hair-raising story. You know, these scary stories are the ones I have missed the most. Davies can make scary stories, but they always have a point. This is what Doctor Who is really good at and is the mark of a good science fiction show. They leave you questioning what is to be and if it could happen.

I’m going to go with the major story first. What do you do when confronted with the worst evil there is? What is the worst evil, you ask? It’s the evil that comes from within yourself. Let’s face it! The Doctor and Donna had no clue what they were up against when suddenly another pair or version of themselves appeared. They knew that something either entered or left the ship due to the opening of an airlock. The evil had caused the captain of the ship to choose to die in space. Why – he saw the evil from within.

The Doctor and Donna weren’t left to question this for long. Each ends up in a different area with an entity that is an exact match for their missing partner. It’s the old separate and conquer except these entities did some very interesting convulsions with their bodies. Their arms were too long. They scampered like dogs. Their faces chased the real Doctor and the real Donna. The Doctor and Donna have seen some strange things and soon realize that the two entities were copying their looks for ulterior purposes. Of course, they had questions that quickly became clear. Why did they mock The Doctor and Donna and want to read their brains? The answer: they feed on the information within your brain to see what you know. By knowing what you have seen and done, they pick their next destructive path.

Now the entities just didn’t want to take The Doctor and Donna's lives. That’s too easy. They wanted to become The Doctor and Donna. In the ongoing story of Doctor Who, evil always wants to destroy. The Non-Doctor/Donna team had seen the wars and enemies that our Doctor knew. Non-Doctor and non-Donna wanted to be a part of the destruction. By the non-beings taking over The Doctor and Donna, they thought they would wreak havoc on all just for the fun of it. The nice twist is that The Doctor, as always, figured this out and told Donna not to think. 

Now, if someone told us “Not to think,” of course our minds would probably run amok. Donna showed that traveling with The Doctor had shown her the wisdom of Zen, but like always, The Doctor’s brain couldn’t shut down. In finally seeing what was going on, he won the battle and set the self-destruct robot to work. In thinking, though, the non-entities saw the destruction coming. The TARDIS reappears and the “real” Doctor gets aboard but has non-Donna with him. He also found a clever way to circumvent the evil. He checked his partner’s arm length and non-Donna’s arms were “too long.” By doing that, the TARDIS ejected non-Donna and saved the real Donna.

The captain of the ship had seen this and began to set things in motion. The captain had sent a robot to push the self-destruct button. Unfortunately, the non-beings had slowed that down in the hopes that somehow, they could hitch a ride on another unknowing ship. With a repaired TARDIS appearing, The Doctor set the pace and the race to the end was set. My question is: was more damage done to the edge of the universe? We’ll have to wait and see.

But let’s move on, shall we? This episode gave David Tennant (The Doctor) and Catherine Tate (Donna) award-winning performances. I love these two together, but when there are four of them – well what more could we ask for as the skills show through? That two were evil gave us a chance to see just how exceptional the actors were. It’s fine to step into a character but it’s hard playing opposite your own character while in a different perspective (in this case evil). Add to that they were supposed to convince their other selves that the non-beings were the real person. So much to dissect with this but let’s say it was hard for the viewer at times to see who was whom.

And now on to the “elephant in the room” since Jodie Whittaker left the role. We have had a big controversy arise ever since The Flux and The Timeless Child were introduced. Was the Doctor’s history unknown to himself? Would The Doctor’s history be erased with a new Doctor? We don’t even know exactly how many Doctors there were before William Hartnell’s Doctor. We had the appearance of a woman Doctor with ties to a mysterious group called The Division. We had hints that The Doctor wasn’t even Gallifreyan, but an orphan found and tortured to allow the Time Lords to have extended lives by regeneration. Would Russell T. Davies ignore this story as so many wanted or would it become a part of The Doctor Who verse? And how could The Doctor allow The Flux to really destroy part of the universe? 

Well, Davies isn’t ignoring it as we learned last night. During the non-Donna conversation on the TARDIS, she gave herself away. She questioned The Doctor’s history and the destruction that the Flux caused. She had read it in his mind. Only this all happened after our Donna returned from her adventures in time and space. She did not absorb these memories of the Doctor, and the others were hidden even from him. Since this had happened three Doctors later, there was no way that “our” Donna could have known. Thus, that was a telling point for him. Non-Donna was reading his thoughts, and he was still trying to come to terms with what had happened. In the end, it saved our Donna’s life. 

Another nice twist is that the TARDIS can now repair itself. By inserting the sonic screwdriver in the keyhole, the TARDIS read the evil and departed until it had repaired itself. Yet, does this mean that the TARDIS is completely fixed? New set and idea yes, but we have always had a TARDIS that had a mind of its own. Could Clara’s memory have fixed that or another quirk? That’s for time and space to tell.

I also loved who was waiting (two days later) when the TARDIS returned to Earth. It seems appropriate that Wilfred “Wilf” Mott, Donna’s grandfather, was the one waiting. Donna was worried about her husband (Shaun) and Rose but had thought that Wilf would stay until they returned. Well, he had done much more. Wilf had sent Shaun and Rose to safety as the world was running amuck with violence and destruction. Wilf stayed behind to wait for the Doctor and Donna’s return. 

It was so appropriate that Wilf was the one to be there. He’s had his own experiences in the TARDIS and The Doctor admired and loved him. Wilf, Donna, and Sylvia are the ones who seem to represent family to The Doctor. Wilf explains what has happened as more damage starts to happen with a plane crashing. The Doctor pushes him into the TARDIS. Will he make an appearance in ”The Giggle?” I only wish that Bernard Cribbins had not died. This is a nice eulogy to a man who always added spice to Doctor Who history. The legacy of the episode being dedicated to him shows the high regard that the series holds for him.

So next we have “The Giggle” with the Toymaker. I have to admit I love Neil Patrick Harris and know just how evil he can be. After all, I saw him in Doctor Horrible during the last writer’s strike!