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tygerbug · 5 months

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DOCTOR WHO: Wild Blue Yonder (2023): The second of three specials for Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, featuring David Tennant and Catherine Tate returning to the roles they played in 2008 (and thereabouts). It's already clear that this is a return to form (and/or format) for the long-running sci-fi series, and that three specials with these returning actors isn't really enough. We're going to be left wanting more. But I'm glad we're getting these; it's a proper celebration of when the revived series was at the height of its popularity. It feels like a regular episode, and it feels like Doctor Who at its regular best. Lightning in a bottle episode.

Before this one aired, very little was known about it, apart from photos of Tennant and Tate aboard a spaceship. The plot to other specials had leaked, but the plot here was unknown and the cast had been redacted, leading to two lines of speculation. One was that there's nothing to know, and this would be a simplified "bottle episode" focusing on Tennant and Tate only. That's an unusual choice when you only have three specials with Tennant, and are flush with Disney money. A "bottle episode" is usually only done to save money. The other theory was that this is a proper 60th Anniversary Special with other returning actors who needed to be kept a secret. (Russell T Davies says in the "making of" that he was tempted to bring back the First Doctor, William Hartnell.)

Ten years ago, the fiftieth anniversary special "Day of the Doctor" was criticized for only bringing back David Tennant and focusing on the past eight years of the series only. This is a little unfair in retrospect, since Billie Piper, Tom Baker and Paul McGann also returned, and the other Doctors are at least represented by archive footage and special effects. (There were also a few cameos in the "Adventure In Space In Time" docudrama.) But the lack of actual new material with Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy was parodied at the time in a comedy minisode, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.

More recently, the final Jodie Whittaker episode, "Power of the Doctor," managed a lot more cameos by returning actors. There was also, this year, the "Tales of the Tardis" miniseries, featuring brief segments with returning actors. Too brief, without time for an actual story, offering only brief emotional reunions under emotional music.

As it turns out, "Wild Blue Yonder" is indeed a "bottle episode," although not a cheap-looking one. All that Disney money is used on lots of greenscreen and CGI environments, plus lots of practical spaceship corridor sets and a practical robot puppet. The cinematography's still a bit murky but the spaceship locations look great. This is perhaps not the right decision when you're making a 60th Anniversary Special, but it's exactly the right decision when you have three episodes with these actors and want them to feel like proper Doctor Who. This one feels a lot like the acclaimed 2008 episode "Midnight," where Donna was absent and The Doctor was aboard a train, contending with a malevolent force who was mimicking him. (The heavy use of green screen, and the three-eyed robot, and some of the story beats, also feel like one of the worse Fourth Doctor stories, Underworld.)

This sort of story brings out something nasty in Russell T Davies, and in David Tennant. This is a creepy episode, with a foreboding soundscape and unnerving performances. And that's great for Doctor Who. The show is remembering that it's a horror show, and serves up some unusual CGI and practical effects as well.

During the more sentimental scenes in a Russell T Davies Doctor Who, or during something like Tales of the Tardis, you could be forgiven for wondering whether Doctor Who has forgotten how to be scary, or to let a story breathe like in the "classic" episodes. This episode should allay those fears. It's mostly about letting David Tennant and Catherine Tate do their thing as actors, plus some showy effects and production design to use up that Disney money.

Somehow, Davies also finds time to piss off the quote unquote "fans" who complain that Doctor Who has gone "woke." For a start, there's a jokey opener with Sir Isaac Newton, who is not white here. (It plays out a bit like the Destination Skaro sketch a few weeks ago.) Russell, if you want to include more diversity in a historical storyline, you know there were lots of people of color in the past who you could highlight, right? Rather than doing something silly like this? Anyway, it results in a running gag (which has already caught on among fans), and in the Doctor and Donna starting to discuss how gay the Doctor might be (and has been), before the plot intervenes. (There's a running theme here about how the events of the Chibnall and Moffat eras have affected The Doctor, and about how this Doctor might be different from the Tenth that we knew.)

One must wonder if Davies is doing this purposely to generate some publicity and headlines in the alt-right press, pissing off a few of the worst people in the world to get people talking about the show. Especially since, with a black Doctor coming in, played by Ncuti Gatwa, the Youtube N*zis would be mad about the series anyway. Then again, Davies was always like this and it's not a break from his usual writing style to get him writing jokes like this.

But there's something else too. Davies takes a few moments to point out that the events of Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who did happen - The Flux and the Timeless Child - and that The Doctor has PTSD about them. This is really throwing a bone to the previous showrunner in a way that Chibnall did not do. I am convinced that Chibnall did not watch the last few series of Steven Moffat's Doctor Who, resulting in sloppy continuity. Davies makes it clear that he has watched Chibnall's Who, and that the major storylines (which went unresolved at the time) are still a going concern and a part of who The Doctor is now. (The Doctor being a woman recently has already been referenced several times, and is part of how the character is now interpreted.)

When the series was revived in 2005, Davies wrote The Doctor as someone haunted by the Time War between Gallifrey and the Daleks, which resulted in Gallifrey being wiped out from the universe (something undone in the 50th Anniversary special, perhaps unbeknownst to Chibnall). The Doctor was haunted by what he did, and it brought a sense of mystery back to the character, and hinted at a dark side which had been lost over the years. Davies is now using the Chibnall episodes for this purpose, which is really clever, considering that for many viewers these episodes were a lot of sound and fury signifying very little. The events of Flux, and the Cyber-Gallifrey situation, didn't really "register." Using them as backstory which haunts The Doctor is a nice touch.

The late Bernard Cribbins also turns up, in what is presumably his final Doctor Who appearance. If there's no further footage of dear Bernard, this will be a minor continuity problem, as it seems to lead directly into next week's special. But it's nice that the appearance isn't just a sentimental reunion, and that Bernard's last scene is a Doctor Who cliffhanger.

I am a little concerned that these specials haven't left much empty space to suggest that this Doctor and Donna were travelling together in stories we didn't see, to be filled in by the likes of Big Finish. But oh well.

Next week: The Giggle, involving Neil Patrick Harris as The Toymaker, originally played in 1966 by Michael Gough. While that story is mostly lost now (the final episode remains), the character's return was teased at the time, and even planned during Colin Baker's truncated tenure in the 80s. This villain is a real match for the Doctor and expectations are high.

UNIT is involved, including Kate Stewart, Shirley Anne Bingham (from the Star Beast) and returning 80s companion Bonnie Langford - a welcome sight. It's been the status quo for awhile that our returning UNIT characters are all women. I know it's hard to replace Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and that attempts to do so have fallen flat, even back in the 70s. It's tough to get that balance of an old-fashioned military man, whom the Doctor can befriend and rely on, but also be at odds with. And we presumably won't be seeing John Barrowman and Noel Clarke again. But I feel like they ought to make an attempt. (I'm reminded that Mark Gatiss had a go at this in Capaldi's last episode.)

What's interesting, at least so far, is that this 60th Anniversary hasn't been a Five Doctors type situation, with cameos from returning actors and lots of references to old material, except in the sense of bringing back Tennant and Tate, and some lesser-known enemies from the 60s and 80s. The third special may buck that trend, but I get the sense that these specials are celebrating Doctor Who's past by simply being good Doctor Who stories, in someting like the 2008 format. I've appreciated that, so far, they've been worth of Tennant and Tate's talents. If it's just three episodes they're making use of that time. It almost feels like a full year's series.

Oh, and the promo for next week teases the next Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa.

#doctor who #wild blue yonder #catherine tate #david tennant #tenth doctor #russell t davies #donna noble

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