Series 4, episode 11? I think the biggest thing to take away from “Wild Blue Yonder” is that it doesn’t feel like a special. It feels like another episode of 10 and Donna, which is a wider criticism I’ve seen of 14 here. Written by god himself (sorry, Russell T Davies) “Wild Blue Yonder” is another “Midnight” but without something grabbing you the first time you watch it. It was directed by Tom Kingsley, mostly known for comedies or dramas, Kingsley is lumped with what is sort of a horror episode. Base under siege certainly, but taking cues from Murray Gold’s soundtrack, it was very horror-based.

As we saw at the end of “The Star Beast,” Donna dropped her coffee in the TARDIS, we’re whisked away, and we find out the 14th Doctor has, sort of, a Queer Eye for a not-straight-guy. Whisked away again, we’re thrust onto an old ship that is a bit rusty. It creaks, and there is something in the air that just isn’t right, so the TARDIS runs away. We’re trapped and alone, there are no stars, there is nothing around aside from a rusty old robot slowly marching down a miles-long corridor, and some odd words being spoken very slowly.

Let’s be honest, it felt like nothing for a good 15-20 minutes. You have that lovely little bit with Nathaniel Curtis and then you have this wondering about a spaceship, which is mostly unrelated. The punchiness of “The Star Beast” was gone and so was the danger, the fun, the… well, everything. Most notably the audio mixing for TVs, which is downright atrocious. We had some of this during Jodie’s run, but I thought it was partially due to an uninspiring soundtrack taking up something in the frequencies, but no, Murray Gold is as overpowering in the mix too.

On the first viewing of “Wild Blue Yonder,” I was getting the broad strokes, but for the life of me, I couldn’t even tell why the episode was called that. I’m not the only one to have complained about this either, as I’ve heard others and previously I’ve been asked about this same thing. It is the last I’ll talk about it, but this audio issue was a real downer for the episode as a whole for obvious reasons. I’d like to say otherwise, but it did subdue the experience.

So the TARDIS disappears, we’re left in the mystery and Jimbo, the robot that slowly marches, continues until we get to that bit where it all just feels a bit off. The Doctor has licked the thing, told Donna to move the futuristic floppy disks up into the next drawer, and he’s gone to play with some pipes. Then what looks like him returns, and looks despondent, then a despondent Donna goes to talk to him in the room with the pipes while Donna talks to the despondent Doctor. I’m sure I’ve just made my editor ask a bunch of questions.

The “Midnight” comparison is easy because it is another monster on a thing where 10/14 is trapped and the monster goes unexplained. This time it is a pair of doppelgängers, I’ve seen some call them “The Isn’t” or something like that. For the sake of clarity and conciseness, we’ll call them the doubles. On the second watch, they became far more interesting because I knew which two were the real ones and which ones were the fakes. The “horror” of it might not have landed for me until the end, but still, it became a better episode finally knowing what was going on.

Last little dig at the audio, I promise. The big issue that a lot of people have had coming out of it, is the CGI and the more “whacky” elements that take us back to the bin that was in that scene alone. It was much like that episode with Rose, The Doctor, and that weird ship that had no captain in it during World War 2. Horrible people not being mentioned aside, the big arms, the knees, the jaw, the massive doubles that got stuck, Tennant talking out of his ar… augmented face. It looked a bit crap.

I know the production design looks a lot better, it is as if there is money on the screen, but complaining about that CGI in Doctor Who of all things baffles me. The point is that it isn’t meant to look good. If you want CGI up the wazoo to look reasonable to good, then go watch a blockbuster film. I’m not defending all of it though. I think Tennant’s double bending over backward really felt like a tonal shift and a half, more so than Donna’s double doing the puddle thing with 14. Some of it I can accept because it is the point of the story.

“Wild Blue Yonder” tries to bring this sense of seriousness and gravity to everything, but still has this Doctor Who-ness about it. The jaw, the arms, and the massive versions stuck in the sci-fi corridor give that 80s/90s weirdness like the Brad Silberling Casper film, all of which counteracts the very serious points. In one scene Russell made The Timeless Child story and The Flux so much more important, and he did so in an episode with David Tennant on all fours. I’m pretty sure the latter point is someone’s wet dream.

My point is, you can’t just have these very serious dark horrible moments where Donna’s double is asking 14 about The Timeless Child and The Flux without puncturing that tension with something very Doctor Who. As much as I’ll say that 10 and 14 are practically the same, (so why are they numbered differently?) I will say that Russell’s writing has matured. I said it last week, he knows he can use Shirley’s disability in the plot without making it something grandstand-y. The same can be said here since he does a lot with very little: Two actors, four characters, and a robot.

Shall we get to the storm that is apparently important to the internet this week? I think Nathaniel Curtis is lovely, I think he’s a lovely little version of Isaac Newton. The internet at its finest: “Why is Isaac Newton Black?” Well, one he’s English and Indian, (so not Black) and two, why does it matter? If you’ve seen any of these arguments online in the last week it is claimed “it’s not historically accurate!” Neither is a blue box that travels through space and time, which is on fire up a tree, or the countless other examples of historical figures in Doctor Who.

“Oh well if Rosa Parks was—” First off, she was in the show when you weren’t watching and secondly her story depends on her skin. Discovering gravity was never dependent on Newton’s skin. More importantly, I don’t see anyone complaining that Rosa Parks was played by Vinete Robinson, who is English. Shouldn’t we have the same nonsense argument there? No, of course not, because it never mattered. Moreover, we don’t complain about Robinson’s racial background because she was playing a Black woman even if her mother is White and her dad is Black.

There was never a headline “How dare the Woke BBC cast a mixed race woman as a Black woman,” even though race was integral to the character of Rosa Parks. Yet we do get it for a character whose entire purpose has nothing to do with his race. Why is that? The purpose of Isaac Newton in this cold open joke is for three things: To discover gravity, have Tennant get the horn for him (despite the historical evidence to suggest sex repulsed him), and set up the world we return to at the end.

The thing that gets me is that historical accuracy doesn’t matter, not really. Van Gogh never stabbed an invisible chicken, Dickens never blew up ghosts, Liz II’s coronation never led to people’s faces being eaten by the TV, Billy S never actually fought witches and had to hear “Good old JK!” Obama never turned into a White English man with the rest of the world either. That’s just since 2005. I’m no expert, but I don’t think the primals in “The Cave of Skulls” should be speaking English either for historical purposes.

Back to the episode before I get an aneurysm from fighting stupid people. I think despite thinking the CGI and the prosthetics of the arms and leg were ok, the doubles worked best when they just stood there. There was something unsettling about that and despite what the last 10-20 years of horror might tell you, that unsettling feeling is far more effective than Murray Gold’s soundtrack being punched up far too high. It wasn’t just effective because that’s the “aha!” moment. It settled and let them be menacing beyond their chasing.

The ship itself was ok. When Tennant and Tate were just standing there early on looking down the corridor, I thought “Ok, yeah, that’s on a volume.” Quickly when they start moving around and reacting to it, you can see it isn’t, and on Unleashed it is just a massive green screen. I like Phil Sims’ production design, he did the last episode and led the design of the new TARDIS which… I have one issue with that new TARDIS: Where do you sit down? I get that it is accessible for wheelchairs, but there is nowhere to sit down.

On the whole, once I sat down for a second viewing of “Wild Blue Yonder,” I liked it, but I’m not fawning over it like Twitter seemingly was. It did make me cry though. I’m not a monster, and it still makes me cry nearly a week later. I knew we were getting Wilf again at least once and I sat on the floor of my living room last Saturday just bawling my eyes out seeing him again. Seeing him reacting to Tennant poking his head out of the TARDIS. Bernard Cribbins was special.

Ultimately, there is something to like about “Wild Blue Yonder,” but when your first viewing is hampered by poor audio mixing, something pulls you out of the horror of these doubles trying to escape this nothing that surrounded the ship. As I said, it didn’t feel like a special, it felt like another episode from series 4. A good episode of series 4, but just another episode that decided to give more credence to Chibnall’s ideas than Chibnall ever did. Then of course, I cannot forget to mention Bernard Cribbins’ final scene which continues to break me every time I think about it.

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Doctor Who "Wild Blue Yonder"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Wilfred Mott.
• That scene without thinking, doing a lot with so little.
• Tennant and Tate's performances.

Cons

• God awful broadcast mixing, Jesus!
• Some of the CGI and practicals overstayed their welcome.