‘Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder’ review: Absolutely brilliant

Something that I hadn’t really realized in the lead up to Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary specials is that the move to Disney+ is actually the show’s best chance in a long time to get in front of a brand new audience. Sure, the Jodie Whittaker run did get to launch alongside the platform formerly known as HBO Max but that came alongside all the other content that launched all at the same time for that platform. Compared to that, Disney+ is giving Doctor Who the red carpet treatment: weekly releases, official trailers, front page placement, even its own special Disney+ ident.

Combine that with the fact that in the ten years since last putting on the sand shoes, David Tennant’s profile has risen significantly and it’s entirely possible that Good Omens fans are tuning in to see him in his most popular role. Thankfully Russell T. Davies isn’t me and seems to have considered this because the second anniversary special, “Wild Blue Yonder,” is one of the best examples of why Doctor Who still matters after all this time. 

Bottling lightning

On paper, “Wild Blue Yonder” is a bottle episode — an episode that cuts down on everything from sets to extra actors to save the season’s budget — which is not a criticism. Doctor Who has famously done fantastic work with these constraints, and “Wild Blue Yonder” isn’t an exception to that. There’s only a few locations on the derelict spaceship that The Doctor and Donna find themselves stranded on after some old fashioned TARDIS shenanigans. But that only adds to the tension and creep factor when what is on the ship with them is eventually revealed, — a cosmic horror which takes on their own forms and spends the episode terrorizing the two in an attempt to learn how to be enough like them to trick the TARDIS into taking them into the wider universe.

That said, this isn’t actually a bottle episode. The production value really has gone up for Doctor Who, likely thanks to that Disney deal. Like the series’ new intro (god help you if your streaming bitrate isn’t great), the wider shots of the spaceship are almost too overproduced. The ship’s big hallway reconfigures sporadically throughout the episode, helping to add to the tension by throwing the Doctor and Donna into a The Thing scenario by separating them, but doesn’t exactly look great compared to the more physical effects in close shots.

Normally I’d be willing to give Doctor Who a pass, because it’s trying to do big ideas on a normal TV budget. Yet, it’s clear that Doctor Who’s production is much closer to prestige streaming TV now than before, so we do need to judge it as such. Those physical effects are great though, allowing Tate and Tennant to be menacing and creepy in ways that other attempts to put The Doctor in a baddie role only could hope to reach. This eclipses Matt Smith’s Mr. Clever in “Nightmare in Silver,” which I once considered a gold standard. 

‘Wild Blue Yonder’ is a mirror story

Davies and the BBC were being incredibly cagey about “Wild Blue Yonder” up to the special’s release; it was shown the least in trailers and had the most vague synopsis as well. This, obviously, led to speculation running wild, which left some fans disappointed finding out that it’s no big canon upset after all. I don’t know exactly how, because to me “Wild Blue Yonder” is the only reason I need for everything making up these specials to have happened.

Tennant and Tate’s natural chemistry is hard to deny in mostly good episodes like “The Star Beast” but it is the root of why this special works so well. The structure of the episode carefully builds up by giving plenty of room for the two to do their gleeful and chaotic routine, even setting up a joke that will be used to cut the tension when needed later on, and these two really are fantastic together. It’s a perfect tee up to the inversion of their dynamic, which is not just the physical effects and menacing behavior that the two get to do but how these “No-things” reveal that despite their closeness, Donna and The Doctor aren’t perfectly in sync. 

Time has passed for both of these characters; Donna finally has a reason to want to go home, and The Doctor is always getting into some kind of new nonsense. This gives them both a heartbreaking interaction with who they think is their friend — Donna trying to process her anxiety by thinking about how her family might move on without her and The Doctor once again feeling listless and burdened by the events of the previous “The Flux” season. It’s a brilliant way to get these two haughty characters to put their guard down and talk and makes the whole The Thing sequences in the middle work all the more.

Any Doctor and companion could have done this episode well, but by using this particularly unique set up of a repeat Doctor face and repeat companion adds so much weight to the proceedings. Exactly as I hoped from “The Star Beast,” the point is to use this dynamic to explore The Doctor and the people they love in a way that otherwise couldn’t be done. 

Setting up the end

On top of that, Bad Wolf Productions even managed to set up the final special in a great way by giving everyone one chance to say goodbye to the Tenth Doctor’s final companion (even if Wizards of the Coast didn’t want to put it on his card) Wilfred Mott, played by the late Bernard Cribbins. Wilf gets the honor of setting up the big spectacle special we’ve all been waiting for, but it really is just so heartwarming to know that before Cribbins’ passing, there was a chance to get him on screen. He’s a fan favorite, and his appearance pays off Donna’s earlier soliloquy and is the right kind of soft landing after the tension that made up the bulk of the episode. 

“Wild Blue Yonder” is a great mix of horror, science fiction, humor, and narrative — the real strengths of Doctor Who as a series. That makes it, despite the general expectation of spectacle in anniversary episodes, an amazing story for the anniversary. This is exactly what should be put in front of not only old fans that may be fatigued from recent developments in the Doctor Who canon but potential new fans just desperate for something to watch on Disney+ that isn’t Bluey. This episode is exactly why people love Doctor Who. Just like “Rose,” “Blink,” “Midnight,” or “The Eleventh Hour,” “Wild Blue Yonder” will go on to be an episode fans hand to their friends to finally sell them on this weird little series and likely, it’ll work. 

‘Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder’ is available to stream now on Disney+.

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Images courtesy ©BBC Studios Worldwide