“There’s something on this ship that’s so bad the TARDIS ran away?”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
This second Special to celebrate Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary perfectly demonstrated the show’s flexibility by being almost totally different from the last. A far future, alien, sci-fi setting rather than contemporary Earth; only two (ish) characters rather than the previous ensemble; and some of the weird, weird concepts that only science fantasy can do. Diverted by Donna’s coffee-spilling goof at the end of the previous ep, our dynamic duo found themselves trapped on a ghostly, seemingly empty starship at the very edge of the universe – only to find they weren’t as alone as they thought.
“No-one’s ever been out this far before,” mused the Doctor, staring out into the formless void of infinity. Actually mate, you have – several times in fact. Just off the top of my head, Planet of Evil, Underworld, Frontios, Utopia, and probably more have shown the TARDIS crew reaching the very edge of the universe before, with similar awestruck – and ominous – declarations from the Doctor.
But in those stories, that setting was almost incidental, and not explored very much beyond establishing the plots. Here, Russell T Davies’ script attempted, for the first time, to explain what the very edge of the universe would be like – and how, in a supposedly infinite creation, an edge could even exist. All right, the Doctor’s burbling about “Camboolian flat mathematics” might sound impressive, but is actually not a real thing – but then neither is the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, and we’re all fine with that. It’s the perfect get-out clause to say that the Doctor has a grasp of multi-dimensional physics millennia in advance of, say, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
With all that established, a writer is pretty much free to make up the rules, and that’s what we got here, with the inspired concept that this was so far out, the universe’s starlight hadn’t even reached it yet. But, void though it might be, that didn’t mean there was nothing there. Life, of a sort, had found a way.
In essence, this ep was a series of puzzles, much like those beloved of Steven Moffat. What was the spaceship doing there? Why was nobody on it? What were those words being intoned by the ship’s computer? Why was everything moving so slowly? It’s the kind of plot Doctor Who does very well, with the viewer sharing the thrill of discovery with the characters onscreen.
This is Doctor Who though, so there had to be a baddie. And the two we got were among Russell’s most inspired creations, formless beings who could only properly exist by copying physical lifeforms, with all the resultant confusion involved in learning to exist like us for the first time.
The fact that the only templates they had to copy were the Doctor and Donna made this ep basically a two-hander – it’s just that there were two of each of them. The ‘no-things’ at first seemed neither bad nor good, and in fact their introduction slyly inserted them into the story for some minutes before we realised they weren’t the Doctor and Donna.
The reveals that they weren’t could easily have been comical. Calmly, off-handedly remarking that “my arms are too long”, both demonstrated the kind of prosthetics that would have been equally at home in Red Dwarf, or even Monty Python. But the reveal managed to somehow be far more unnerving than comic, particularly as the pair, unable to control their forms, grew to gargantuan proportions to chase our heroes, ultimately frustrated by becoming so large they got stuck in the ship’s central corridor. Again, that could so easily have been a laugh-out-loud moment, but it was a tribute to Tom Kingsley’s skilfully spooky direction that it was actually quite disturbing.
Given all this praise, it’s perhaps a bit churlish to point out that we’ve been here before too. Alien beings taking on the forms of our heroes – and the resultant confusion – is a plot device almost as old as science fiction itself. Star Trek used to do it on a regular basis, and Doctor Who itself has had a go plenty of times – The Android Invasion, Meglos, Let’s Kill Hitler, anything involving the Autons. Even the Daleks have created plenty of duplicates of the TARDIS gang at various points.
So while well done, we weren’t in new territory here. However, the familiar attempts to weed out the imposters with “tell me something only you would know” were derailed nicely by the way these creatures had also absorbed our heroes’ memories. Again, not entirely new, but this played to another of Russell’s strengths as a scriptwriter, as it allowed both characters (real and unreal versions) to reflect at length on who they were, and the journeys that had brought them here.
Thus, we got the Doctor confronting directly the events of recent seasons, in a defiant demonstration of RTD’s assertion that he’s not going to “undo” anything established in his predecessor’s time as showrunner. So, Gallifrey is still gone (again), the Doctor is still an unknown quantity from some other universe or dimension, and the Flux still has wiped out half the universe.
For all my frequent criticisms of Chris Chibnall’s run, I actually had no problem with the “Timeless Child” arc revealing a new origin for the Doctor – it didn’t contradict anything that had gone before, just built on it. And I didn’t have a problem with the basic idea of the Flux – just that it was executed so poorly and incoherently. What I did dislike about both concepts was that neither seemed to have much in the way of consequences. The show – and the Doctor – went on, without reflecting on them much. That’s not how real people, even Time Lords, behave.
Here, we finally got an acknowledgment of the fact that both had affected the Doctor deeply, as he poured out his guilt about the Flux in particular. I’ve heard many remarks that David Tennant has really upped his acting game in the intervening 15 years since he last played the Doctor – nowhere was that more evident than here. The Flux had destroyed half the universe, and while the Doctor wasn’t directly responsible, it had happened because of him/her/them. That’s got to hurt. Of course, he was similarly indirectly responsible for the destruction of half the universe in Logopolis, but the show rarely did reflection on consequences in the early 80s. It’s in keeping with the deeper characterisation of the modern show that it did here – though really, Chris Chibnall should have done more about it at the time.
Donna too got to indulge in plenty of character exploring introspection, and Catherine Tate too was well up to the job, giving us a more reflective Donna in keeping with 15 years having passed. She’s more self-aware than previously, without losing that gobby, defiantly assertive personality (“Let’s go and kick its arse!”). And it was a crucial key to the solution of the plot that Donna – and by implication, all humans – was capable of believing in two things at once. In this case, that she was both stupid AND brilliant. That was a lovely moment, well-written and well-played. She was also given a believable sense of low self-esteem, something she always had and clearly hasn’t completely got over. It was revealing that she considered punching out her duplicate to be “therapeutic”.
The look of the thing was pretty impressive too, with a convincing sense of scale on the CG generated ‘set’ of the ship’s central corridor. In the classic era, such effects were achieved with forced perspective paintings at the end of corridors, giving the illusion that they went on far further than they actually did. It was a reasonable approach for the time, though made rather obvious by the fact that, however long the corridor seemed, the characters all had to be bunched together at one end of it. Here we got a much more convincing sense of perspective as the pair gazed at the tiny dot in the distance that was the robot; or the chase between the various combinations of Doctors and Donnas showing one as a smaller figure far behind the other. Nicely done.
Of course, the very long ship with a big central corridor is a well-worn trope too, probably established by the Discovery in Kubrick’s 2001. Since then, we’ve had the likes of the Event Horizon in the film of the same name, and the Cygnus in Disney’s silly but much-loved The Black Hole. But I’ve no problem with that – Kubrick set all sorts of precedents that continue to be used because, well, they work. It’s also possibly The Black Hole we have to thank for the well-worn, rusting robot that was such a crucial plot element – think of that movie’s dilapidated ‘Old BOB’.
Also very familiar – though not badly done – is the idea of the Doctor meeting a well-known historical figure, and actually setting history in motion, something even Donna lampshaded with her sarcastic query of “have you set the controls to ‘famous’?” I’m not actually sure what the point was behind the comic prologue showing the pair cascading apples onto the head of Isaac Newton, unless it was a way to temporarily wrongfoot the audience into thinking that this was going to be a lightweight historical comedy in the vein of The Shakespeare Code.
It was a throwaway bit of fun though, which I don’t have a problem with. I gather some fans have their knickers in a twist that Newton was played by a non-white actor, which I’m guessing might have been RTD’s sly intention all along, but fair’s fair, the show’s not exactly ever been that accurate at portraying history. Besides, as I saw my friend Steve Roberts comment on social media, historically, we know that Isaac Newton, the discoverer of gravity, was a white man, but we don’t know about the Isaac Newton who discovered “mavity” 😊
Besides, I have absolutely no problem with seeing Newton portrayed by the gorgeous Nathaniel Curtis from Russell’s own It’s a Sin, who both Donna and the Doctor acknowledged was “hot”. Nice to see that this version of the Doctor at least is explicitly attracted to men (“Is that who I am now?”), though as Donna remarks, “it was never that far from the surface”. Of course that doesn’t mean he’s only attracted to men – we’re a long way away from the days of “you’re a beautiful woman, probably”, which is fine by me but I can imagine might annoy the same fans that had a problem with Curtis’ casting!
Ultimately, Wild Blue Yonder was an effective, spookily directed story with some inventive concepts. It might not have been wildly original, but if you’re going to tread this familiar ground, it’s good that it’s as well done as it was here. There was imagination aplenty, four great performances from two actors, and some insightful writing that used the story to shed light on the characters. There were a few loose ends – just why did the TARDIS play Wild Blue Yonder, otherwise known as the official song of the US Air Force and correctly identified by Wilf as a war song? It seemed a bit out of character for the Doctor to be so enthusiastic about a song that contains the line, “At ‘em now, give ’em the gun, give ‘em the gun!”…
Speaking of Wilf, though, what a joy to see Bernard Cribbins in a last hurrah as a character as beloved as his actor. The show was shot in July 2022, the very month that Cribbins died, and I gather this was the only scene he was able to complete before his death at the ripe old age of 93. But what a scene, and how beautifully played by all three actors. It brought a tear to my eye, as did the credits’ dedication to Cribbins. Farewell, old soldier.
Next week – it’s the last of these three specials, and presumably the farewell (for now?) of this returned iteration of the Doctor. We know the Toymaker’s back, and perhaps this too is the Doctor’s fault – he acknowledged that maybe invoking superstitions at the edge of the universe, where “the walls are thin” may not have been the best idea. We know that the Toymaker’s domain exists outside the universe – is the Doctor responsible for bringing him through to reality? Whatever the answer, I’m looking forward to seeing the culmination of this intriguing side trip for Doctor Who before Ncuti Gatwa debuts…
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