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Wild Blue Yonder was the second of the three 2023 specials of Doctor Who, broadcast on 2 December 2023[1] as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations.
Synopsis
The TARDIS, out of control, abandons the Doctor and Donna on a faraway, mysterious spaceship, with deadly secrets in every corner.
Plot
The Doctor and Donna crash the TARDIS in an apple tree in 1666 right as Isaac Newton was reaching his famous epiphany. They ask him what year it is, and from his answer figure out his identity. Donna is delighted in spite of the fact that that TARDIS is going haywire. She insists on making a joke about the gravity of the situation her 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 places his sonic screwdriver into the latch in order to prime the TARDIS to regenerate, to heal itself from the damage it's sustained. They take a look around the ship before hearing the TARDIS dematerializing as a result of the Hostile Action Displacement System. At first the two of them despair, but the Doctor explains to Donna that if they resolve whatever hostile action they've encountered there's a good chance the TARDIS will return to them. 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". Neither of the two knows what this means - the TARDIS translates but has left, and the Doctor doesn't speak this language.
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, 100 trillion lightyears from everything else - not even starlight has yet promulgated a distance great enough to reach them.
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 - 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 acknowledges the change in temperature to her. And as the two talk the Doctor occasionally mumbles about his arms being too long.
The Doctor is still back in the room with the spindle and is still working on adjusting it as it grows cold and Donna enters. He's surprised at how fast Donna was. The two chat, and 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 have come from nothing, to be Not-Things. 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.
They 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. But each of the Not-Things make mistakes as they're about to convince the others. The Doctor and Donna flee again, the intercom blaring "gilvane".
The four find themselves together in a room, and the Doctor and Donna figure out which of them is real by knowing enough about how the other acts. As the Not-Things begin to advance, the Doctor lays down a line of salt, insisting that they can't cross it without counting every grain. At first the two are dismissive, saying it's a superstition. But the Doctor insists, it's a superstition, and it's real, both at once. The Donna Not-Thing bends down and begins to count as they interrogate the Doctor Not-Thing, who they notice is slowly acclimatizing. The Not-Thing explains that they want to play the games those in the universe do, that they've given shape to the Not-Things. The Donna Not-Thing blows away the salt, and the duo advances as the intercom blares "stond".
The Doctor and Donna run back to the cockpit and lock themselves in, the Not-Things standing outside, slowly copying them more and more as the pair stresses and thinks. In order to combat this they try to think as little as possible, but find themselves unable to do so - the ship just has so many questions. They find the captain of the ship, who killed herself previously in order to feel a maximum sense of adrenaline. The Doctor realises (at the same time as the creatures) that the ship is slowly counting down to an explosion. Now they know, all four run after the robot Jimbo - the Doctor and Donna to let it explode the ship; the creatures to stop the explosion from occurring.
The robot presses a red button and explodes the ship. The TARDIS materialises as a result of the Hostile Action having been entirely displaced and the Doctor runs aboard. Kicking on the ground to gain momentum, he rushes towards the two Donnas, who each claim to be the real one. He ascertains which is real and takes her aboard, leaving the other to die, who complains of her fate.
The Doctor then rematerialises the TARDIS near this real Donna, throwing the fake one out, just in time to save her and leave as the ship explodes.
After a chat in the console room, the Doctor and Donna emerge from the TARDIS, back near the alley from which they took off at the end of the previous episode. Wilfred Mott is there to greet them, sitting in a wheelchair. It turns out that there is some unknown offensive action occurring in the scene, with people fighting and bashing away - what caused this and how can the Doctor and Donna put it right?
Cast
- 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
- The Doctor Beast Double - Ophir Raray
- The Doctor Contortionist Double - Tommaso Di Vincenzo
- Donna Acting Double - Helen Cripps
Uncredited cast
to be added
Crew
| Executive Producers Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter with Joel Collins and Phil Collinson |
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| Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources. |
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Note: Standby art director Ifan Lewis was erroneously credited as "Ifan Lewis Lewis" |
Worldbuilding
- The Doctor once spent three years in orbit because the HADS prevented him from landing anywhere.
- Isaac Newton misheard Donna make a joke about gravity, instead naming it "Mavity".
- Donna was born in Southampton.
Cultural references
Notes
- This episode was dedicated to the memory of Bernard Cribbins, who passed away over a year before transmission.
- Unlike the other two 2023 specials, The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"] and The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"], 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 Russell T Davies wanted one of the specials to be a complete mystery.[2] According to director Tom Kingsley, the secrecy had naught to do with "any surprise returning actors or villains", but because "we thought you might find it fun to watch it without knowing what's going to happen next".[3]
- This story's debut was mentioned alongside the other 2023 specials in the non-fiction feature Back in Business published in Doctor Who The Official Annual 2024 on 7 September 2023.
- The preview of this episode released in DWM 597 revealed a teaser of the plot and a snippet of dialogue between the Doctor and Donna.[2]
- It also revealed 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.
- The title of the episode was named after the song "Wild Blue Yonder".[2] The song in question is both referenced and played by the TARDIS in the special itself.
- David Tennant called this special "unlike any Doctor Who episode ever", referring to the specials as a whole as "Russell [T Davies] off the leash".[4]
- This was the second story to stream exclusively on Disney+ outside of the United Kingdom.
- First given in an advertisement on the BBC, the robot featured in promotional materials was named "Jimbo".[5] This name was later given in the story by Donna and the Doctor to the robot.
- In Doctor Who Magazine Issue 597, Davies teased five words that would play a part in the special: Southampton, vegetable, bean, starlight, and Flux. He also revealed that the history of both the Flux and the Timeless Child would be "dealt with very slightly in this episode".[6]
Myths
to be added
Filming locations
to be added
Production errors
to be added
Influences
to be added
Continuity
As per Forum:Non-valid Continuity sections, categories, and prefixes#Continuity sections, this section needs to be written from an out-of-universe perspective.
- The Doctor and Donna are stranded due to the HADS activating as it had done before in Cold War [+]Loading...["Cold War (TV story)"], The Magician's Apprentice [+]Loading...["The Magician's Apprentice (TV story)"] and The Witch's Familiar [+]Loading...["The Witch's Familiar (TV story)"]
- The Doctor licks a substance to determine its properties, a trait that was present in their tenth incarnation seen in The Christmas Invasion [+]Loading...["The Christmas Invasion (TV story)"], The Idiot's Lantern [+]Loading...["The Idiot's Lantern (TV story)"] and Planet of the Dead [+]Loading...["Planet of the Dead (TV story)"]. This carried onwards into their eleventh incarnation such as in The Eleventh Hour [+]Loading...["The Eleventh Hour (TV story)"] and Day of the Moon [+]Loading...["Day of the Moon (TV story)"] as well as their thirteenth incarnation, like in It Takes You Away [+]Loading...["It Takes You Away (TV story)"].
- On learning that he and Donna have arrived in 1666, the Doctor advices Isaac Newton to avoid London. This is due to the Great Fire of London which he inadvertently caused in The Visitation [+]Loading...["The Visitation (TV story)"]
- When posing as Donna, one of the not-things mentions that the Doctor was not born on Gallifrey which they learned in The Timeless Children [+]Loading...["The Timeless Children (TV story)"]. In the same conversation, the Doctor states that the Flux "destroyed half of the universe because of me", referring to the events of The Vanquishers [+]Loading...["The Vanquishers (TV story)"].
Home media releases
DVD and Blu-ray releases
This episode, along with The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"] and The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"], was released on Region 2 DVD, and Region B Blu-ray and steelbook on 18 December 2023.[7]
UK 2 DVD cover
UK Blu-ray cover
UK steelbook cover
Gallery
- Main article: /Gallery
Footnotes
Notes
References
- ↑ @bbcdoctorwho on twitter.com
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 DWM 597 - Preview of Wild Blue Yonder, Page 20
- ↑ @kingsley_tom on twitter.com
- ↑ David Tennant’s Doctor Who Return ‘Is Unlike Any Episode Ever’ on empireonline.com
- ↑ carlinjack1 on twitter.com
- ↑ Doctor Who's second 60th anniversary special will have Flux connection on RadioTimes.com
- ↑ Doctor Who 60th Anniversary specials available to pre-order on Steelbook, DVD and Blu-ray on doctorwho.tv