Written by Russell T. Davies
Directed by Tom Kingsley
Donna: "There's something so bad, the TARDIS ran away?"
The Doctor: "Yes."
Donna: "Then we go and kick it's arse."
Well, here we are, the mysterious second special. An episode so mired in secrecy, you'd think it was going to be the Doctor Who version of Avengers: Endgame but nope, not even close.
Instead what we got was an episode arguably more comparable to past classics such as Midnight and Heaven Sent. I honestly it's more akin to the former but I've seen online comparisons to the latter episode as well. It's smaller scale and far stranger compared to the more crowd pleasing The Star Beast.
We get a brief scene in 1666 England where the Doctor and Donna crash into an apple tree and cause a lot of apples to land on Isaac Newton (Nathaniel Curtis). Aside from the word "gravity" being replaced with "mavity", the scene doesn't serve a huge purpose. It's just a harmlessly fun little opener.
The bulk of the episode then took place in a spaceship in the depths of nowhere. Oh and due to the HADS, the TARDIS abandoned the Doctor and Donna while repairing itself from that coffee it didn't like. Still though, a vast creepy spaceship with barely any characters was a good way to mix things up for the Doctor and Donna.
I mean there was Jimbo, the oldest and slowest robot we've encountered in a long time but there was also the main threat. The main threat being unknown entities, desperately trying to correctly get the Doctor amd Donna's shape whie also accessing their memories and repeatedly trying to kill them as their origins and a backup to defeat them was slowly being revealed.
The use of slowness was clever in how it was done but this was also the second episode where Donna was very nearly a goner. The Doctor just about managed to rescue her by the skin of his teeth here. Oh and while the baddies were blown, the highlight wasn't even the main story.
The highlight was the final appearance of Bernard Cribbins Wilfred Mott, who got to see the Doctor and Donna one last time. I had a tear in my eye for that. Then the episode went and set up the final special with things being quite mad and chaotic in the streets of London.
- The episode had an "In Memory Of Bernard Cribbins 1928-2022" at the end credits.
- The Fourteenth Doctor found Isaac Newton hot. The man has good taste. He's a bisexual icon. Or gay.
- The events of both The Timeless Children and Flux were referenced throughout the episode.
- Daniel Tuite, Ophir Raray and Tommaso Di Vincenzo are credited as acting, beast and contortinist doubles for David Tennant and Helen Cripps as acting double for Catherine Tate.
- Donna has access to the memories of the Doctor beyond his tenth incarnation but described it as like looking at a furnace.
- Chronology: 1666 and 2023 England and the edge of nowhere.
Wild Blue Yonder (yes, the song it was named after also featured in here) was definitely a very strange episode to watch. Not the cameo fest many wanted but the quirky outlier episode that many can love or hate. David Tennant and Catherine Tate acted their asses off here. There were some good jump scares and the last scene with Wilfred ended it on a bittersweet note.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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