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- Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who “Wild Blue Yonder”
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Dec 2, 2023 · Warning: spoilers for “Wild Blue Yonder” to follow. Following the events of its predecessor, “The Star Beast,” “Wild Blue Yonder” sees the Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) and...
Dec 5, 2023 · In 'Wild Blue Yonder,' we see where the coffee-shocked TARDIS takes Donna and the Doctor... and what they have to face to get out of it. So here's what happened in Wild Blue Yonder in case you've seen it and missed something, or just want to know what happened. Spoilers ahead for Wild Blue Yonder
- tiffany.babb@reedpop.com
- Contributing Writer
- Overview
- Synopsis
- Plot
- Cast
- Worldbuilding
- Notes
- Continuity
- Home media releases
was the second of the three 2023 specials of Doctor Who, broadcast on 2 December 2023 as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations.
marked Donna Noble's first full adventure as a companion following the Doctor restoring her memories, with Wild Blue Yonder continuing immediately on from the end of The Star Beast. Wild Blue Yonder is also the first televised story to explicitly show a male incarnation of the Doctor being attracted to another person of the same sex, with the Fourteenth Doctor shown agreeing with Donna that Isaac Newton was "hot". Regarding Newton's brief appearance, Wild Blue Yonder also set a new status quo by having Newton accidently retcon the word "Gravity" into "Mavity".
also allowed both David Tennant and Catherine Tate to play both the Doctor and Donna respectively, but also the main antagonists of the story, the not-things, making Tennant the seventh actor of the Doctor to have played both the Doctor and one of the main antagonists in a story, following William Hartnell in The Massacre [+]John Lucarotti and Donald Tosh, Doctor Who season 3 (BBC1, 1966)., Patrick Troughton in The Enemy of the World [+]David Whitaker, Doctor Who season 5 (BBC1, 1967-1968)., Tom Baker in Meglos [+]John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch, Doctor Who season 18 (BBC1, 1980)., Peter Davison and Colin Baker in Arc of Infinity [+]Johnny Byrne, Doctor Who season 20 (BBC1, 1983)., and Matt Smith in Nightmare in Silver [+]Neil Gaiman, Doctor Who series 7 (BBC One, 2013)..
Notably, after being referenced in the previous story, Wild Blue Yonder saw the return of Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott, marking Wilfred's first appearance in the series since The End of Time [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who Christmas Special 2009 and New Year Special 2010 (BBC One, 2009-2010). in 2010. However, his appearance would be posthumous, as Cribbins passed away in 2022 after filming his scenes and before being able to film other scenes featuring Wilfred that had been written prior to his death, making Wild Blue Yonder the final onscreen appearance of Wilfred (although a body double was used briefly for the character in the following episode [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).) and the final acting credit of Bernard Cribbins. Wild Blue Yonder was consequently dedicated to Cribbins' memory.
The TARDIS, out of control, abandons the Doctor and Donna on a faraway, mysterious spaceship, with deadly secrets in every corner.
The Fourteenth Doctor and Donna Noble crash the Doctor's TARDIS in an apple tree in 1666, just as Isaac Newton was reaching his famous epiphany. Donna is delighted, in spite of the fact that that TARDIS is going haywire, and insists on making a joke about the gravity of the situation she and the Doctor find themselves in as they depart. Newton, still thinking about his epiphany, reflects on these last few words, trying to recall them. For his new discovery he has a name - "Mavity".
The TARDIS then lands in an unknown spaceship, heavily damaged; the Doctor and Donna narrowly avoid a fire blast from the TARDIS incinerating them as they jump out. The Doctor places his sonic screwdriver into the latch in order to prime the TARDIS to regenerate and heal itself from the damage it has sustained. As the Doctor works, Donna wonders why the TARDIS played "Wild Blue Yonder", recalling how her granddad hated it because it reminded him about the war. The Doctor eventually triggers the TARDIS' self-repair and they leave the room to take a look around the ship. However, they quickly race back after hearing the TARDIS dematerializing as a result of the Hostile Action Displacement System. The two of them at first despair, until the Doctor explains to Donna that there's a good chance the TARDIS will return to them if they resolve whatever hostile action they have encountered. The two set off into the ship with renewed determination, marching down a long corridor. As they walk, the environment shifts around them and a loudspeaker blares "fenslaw". Because the TARDIS isn't present to translate the word, and because the Doctor doesn't speak the language, neither he nor Donna knows what "fenslaw" means.
The two come across a small hovercraft and a slow moving robot marching down the hallway. The pair find their way to a cockpit and try to decipher what they can from the ship's computer. There are no life signs on board, and the airlock had been opened once three years ago. The Doctor realises that the ship is one that had fallen through a wormhole and ended up on the edge of the universe, where not even starlight has yet propagated long enough to reach.
The intercom blares "coliss" and the ship shifts again. The two wander into a room filled with drawers of baseplate repetition filaments. The Doctor asks Donna to move all the ones in a lower drawer to to a higher one, as the ship is on idle and needs to be powered back up. The Doctor finds another room with a spindle and works on adjusting it. As Donna moves the plates, it grows colder, which she murmurs about. The Doctor enters to acknowledge the change in temperature to her. As the two talk, the Doctor grows quiet, letting Donna lament on what her family would do if she failed to return to them, especially noting how, while her daughter would have to move on, her husband and grandfather would wait for her return every day. The Doctor then mumbles that his arms are too long. However, the Doctor is actually still back in the room with the spindle, and still working on adjusting it, as it grows cold and Donna appears to enter. The Doctor begins to ponder what would happen to the TARDIS if he never saw it again, fiddling with the panels as he fantasises it outlasting numerous civilisations while Donna uncharacteristically remains silent. Eventually, Donna mentions that her arms are too long. The Doctor turns to look at her and sees her arm to be stretched beyond all proportion, realizing that this isn't Donna.
Both the Doctor and Donna from the two rooms run back to each other, with their doppelgängers slowly following behind. They claim to be not-things that have come from the nothing outside. They chase the Doctor and Donna, who use the hovercraft to try and outpace them, but the not-things grow and twist in size, keeping pace, before eventually tangling together and blocking each other and the whole of the corridor, slowly beginning to untangle.
The Doctor and Donna climb upwards to a vent, but, as the intercom blares "brate" and the environment shifts, they become separated. The two walk around separately, trying to find the other, and two pairs of Doctors and Donnas unite. The four try to convince their partners that they're real, through conversation or other means. Donna manages to surmise the Doctor in front of her is fake when he fails to maintain the tie he removed. To scare her, the not-thing duplicate contorts his body and mocks Donna's stupidity. Meanwhile, the real Doctor initially believes the Donna before him is a copy before she changes his mind by revealing, because of Meta-crisis, she knows about his role in the Flux and his history as the Timeless Child. Convinced, the Doctor goes to hug her, only for the not-thing's illusion to fail. He trembles in rage at her, running as she mocks his past. The Doctor eventually stops running, before exploding with rage, striking a wall over and over. As the intercom blares "gilvane", he recomposes himself and carries on searching for the real Donna.
•The Doctor - David Tennant
•Donna Noble - Catherine Tate
•Wilfred Mott - Bernard Cribbins
•Isaac Newton - Nathaniel Curtis
•Mrs Merridew - Susan Twist
•The Doctor Acting Double - Daniel Tuite
•Upon referring to Newton as "Sir Isaac" before his knighthood, the Doctor quips "spoilers" at him.
•Newton mishears Donna's joke about "the gravity of [their] situation", and instead names his theory as "mavity". Donna later refers to the ship having artificial "mavity", which the Doctor picks up on, just as she gets confused when he slips up and says gravity field before he corrects himself to "mavity field".
•The Doctor once spent three years in orbit because the HADS prevented him from landing anywhere.
•Despite being infinite, the universe still has an edge. The Doctor credits the explanation to Camboolian flat mathematics.
•Being the DoctorDonna gave Donna concurrent access to the everything the Doctor went through after they parted ways, but she cannot see these memories clearly, comparing it to "looking into a furnace".
•Donna was born in Southampton when her mother was visiting her aunt Iris.
•Wild Blue Yonder was dedicated to the memory of Bernard Cribbins, who passed away over a year before transmission. Russell T Davies revealed that there were more scenes written for Cribbins to be in, but the decision was made to reduce Wilfred's role after it became clear Cribbins' health would prevent him from being on-set for extended periods: Cribbins would ultimately pass away shortly after production wrapped on the specials in July 2022,[source needed] making his appearance in Wild Blue Yonder the final performance in his career.
•Wilfred still appears in The Giggle by way of a stand-in and archival recording of his voice.
•The title of the episode was named after the song "Wild Blue Yonder". The song in question is both referenced and played by the TARDIS in the special itself.
•Unlike the other two 60th Anniversary Specials, The Star Beast [+]Russell T Davies, adapted from Doctor Who and the Star Beast (Pat Mills and John Wagner), Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023). and The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023)., the marketing of Wild Blue Yonder was kept incredibly vague and revealed very little about the plot. The BBC wished to maintain the surprises of the story and Davies wanted one of the specials to be a complete mystery. According to director Tom Kingsley, the secrecy had naught to do with "any surprise returning actors or villains", but because "[they] thought [audiences] might find it fun to watch it without knowing what's going to happen next".
•In the preview released in DWM 597 for Wild Blue Yonder, a teaser of the plot featured a cast list consisting of Tennant, Tate, and three other names that had all been replaced with a "[REDACTED]". These were later revealed to be Nathaniel Curtis, Susan Twist, and Bernard Cribbins.
•This preview also revealed a teaser of the plot and a snippet of dialogue between the Doctor and Donna.
•This isn't the first episode to reveal that the Doctor was involved with Isaac Newton's discovery of gravity; in TV: The Pirate Planet [+]Douglas Adams, Doctor Who season 16 (BBC1, 1978)., the Fourth Doctor claimed to have thrown the apple onto Isaac Newton's head, and subsequently explained gravity to him over dinner. However, this is seemingly contradicted in Wild Blue Yonder as the Fourth Doctor is not present in any scene, nor does the Fourteenth Doctor acknowledge this fact.
•The Doctor repeatedly mentions Donna spilling coffee on the TARDIS console in The Star Beast [+]Russell T Davies, adapted from Doctor Who and the Star Beast (Pat Mills and John Wagner), Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023)..
•On learning that he and Donna have arrived in 1666, the Doctor advices Newton to avoid London, referencing the Great Fire of London the Fifth Doctor inadvertently started with the Terileptils in The Visitation [+]Eric Saward, Doctor Who season 19 (BBC1, 1982)..
•The Doctor finds himself enthusiastically agreeing that Isaac Newton was hot, causing Donna to comment his preferences were "never far from the surface". Indeed, the Doctor, while not explicitly admitting it, has demonstrated an attraction, or at least not been bothered to partaker in romantically inclined exchanges, to individuals of the same sex before, notably Jack Harkness in The Parting of the Ways [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005)., Frank in Evolution of the Daleks [+]Helen Raynor, Doctor Who series 3 (BBC One, 2007)., Rory Williams in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship [+]Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who series 7 (BBC One, 2012)., and Yasmin Khan in Legend of the Sea Devils [+]Ella Road and Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who Easter Special 2022 (BBC One, 2022)..
•Donna comments on how the Doctor could snap his fingers as a way to communicate with the TARDIS, something they both learnt he could do in Forest of the Dead [+]Steven Moffat, Doctor Who series 4 (BBC One, 2008)..
•The Doctor and Donna are stranded because the Hostile Action Displacement System activated, a feature of the TARDIS that first appeared in The Krotons [+]Robert Holmes, Doctor Who season 6 (BBC1, 1968-1969)..
DVD and Blu-Ray
This story was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the United Kingdom on 18 December 2023, along with The Star Beast [+]Russell T Davies, adapted from Doctor Who and the Star Beast (Pat Mills and John Wagner), Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023). and The Giggle [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who 2023 specials (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).. The Bluray release is encoded to Region B, atypical of BBC releases which usually do not have any kind of region encoding on the disc. Contents: •Rachel Talalay's Scene Breakdown •Chanya Button's Scene Breakdown •Tom Kingsley's Scene Breakdown ••The Fourteenth Doctor Reveal •••The Giggle In-vision Commentary •The Star Beast In-vision Commentary •David and Catherine's Flashbacks •Yasmin Finney Introduces Rose Noble •Designing the Fourteenth Doctor •Set Tour with Yasmin Finney •The Star Beast - Behind The Scenes Trailer •Wild Blue Yonder - Behind The Scenes Trailer •The Giggle - Behind The Scenes Trailer •The Cast Introduce the Villains in 'Wild Blue Yonder' •Behind The Scenes Fun with David and Catherine •Video Diary with David Tennant's Stand-in •TARDIS Set Tour with David Tennant and Phil Sims •Ruth Madeley Introduces Shirley Bingham •Neil Patrick Harris Introduces the Toymaker •Becoming the Toymaker •60th Specials Recap with David Tennant
Digital releases
This story is available on BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom, in Ultra High-Def (4K). It is also available on Disney+ in other territories.
Dec 2, 2023 · Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who “Wild Blue Yonder” The second of Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary specials has arrived, delivered in almost total secrecy that did a lot to stoke...
Oct 4, 2024 · After a burst of fire erupts from the TARDIS as it plays the military song, Wild Blue Yonder, the Doctor tries to recalibrate (yes, again) the blue box with his sonic, leaving it attached at the keyhole.
Dec 4, 2023 · Fourteen and Donna have only their wits and their bond to battle their evil twins with, and the more they panic and think, the more powerful their foes become. Every time they get separated and reunited, they have to test each other to see if they are with the right one, not the scary evil one.
Dec 2, 2023 · The duo explore the abandoned and empty hulk as they attempt to understand the mystery of what exactly has happened here. This focus on the Doctor and companion, or companions, completely alone for a long sequence of investigation echoes 1975’s The Ark in Space, and 1982’s Four to Doomsday.
