"Wild Blue Yonder" is the second of the 60th anniversary specials of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 2 December 2023, and was written by Russell T Davies and directed by Tom Kingsley. David Tennant stars as the Fourteenth Doctor, alongside Catherine Tate as Donna Noble. Set directly after the events of "The Star Beast", the episode focuses on the Doctor and Donna being stranded by the TARDIS on an abandoned spaceship at the edge of the universe, where they encounter a pair of sadistic, shapeshifting duplicates of themselves. It is dedicated to Bernard Cribbins, who posthumously appears as Wilfred Mott, following his death in July 2022. The episode was watched by 7.14 million viewers and received positive reviews from critics, with praise being directed toward the performances of Tennant and Tate. A novelisation of the episode was written by Mark Morris, which was then turned into an audiobook read by former companion actress Bonnie Langford.
Plot The TARDIS lands in Isaac Newton's apple tree in 1666. As the Doctor and Donna depart, they accidentally cause Newton to name gravity "mavity". Malfunctioning, the TARDIS lands on a spaceship at the edge of the universe. As the pair explore a vast corridor, the TARDIS vanishes. The Doctor and Donna find an old robot walking very slowly down the corridor. There are no signs of life anywhere on the ship and periodically they hear single-word, unintelligible announcements accompanied by the ship reconfiguring itself.
The Doctor and Donna split up and encounter doppelgängers of each other. Calling themselves 'Not-Things', they lack the concept of size and shape, and cannot avoid deforming. Briefly reuniting, the Doctor and Donna realise the Not-Things are taking on their thoughts as well as their form. A reconfiguration of the ship splits the pair up again, and when they both apparently re-encounter one another, they struggle to tell if the other is a Not-Thing. All four meet and the real Doctor and Donna identify each other. The Doctor tries to use superstition to trick the Not-Things by saying they have to stay behind a line of salt. The Doctor realises the ship's captain killed herself to stop the Not-Things copying them and taking control of the ship, and also set in motion a trap. The Not-Things realise the trap is a very slow self-destruct sequence intended to kill them, and that the robot is the trigger. The announcements are a countdown to that self-destruction. The Doctor speeds up the countdown as the Not-Things race to stop the robot. The TARDIS returns just before the ship explodes, and the Doctor mistakenly takes Donna's doppelgänger instead of Donna. However, he soon realises and rescues the real Donna just as the ship explodes. The Doctor mentions regretting that he invoked a superstition at the edge of the universe with the salt. The pair return to Camden Market, two days after they originally left, and are greeted by Wilfred Mott, who is overjoyed to see them. As he tells the Doctor he knew he would come back and save everyone, a riot starts and a plane crashes.
Production
Development Plot and cast details were deliberately kept secret in the build-up to the episode, leading to speculation it would feature cameo appearances of previous incarnations of the Doctor, with Davies later saying that he had conflicting plans for the episode and originally considered including an appearance by the First Doctor and a robot-filled cellar. Before the episode was broadcast, director Tom Kingsley made a statement attempting to calm speculation, and afterwards Davies explained that the secrecy was because it was "the simplest of the lot", as he had scrapped all other concepts in order to focus on the core premise of Tennant and Tate's characters being alone with the Not-Things on the spaceship. Some critics described "Wild Blue Yonder" as a bottle episode because it used limited sets and had a small cast. The episode primarily uses VFX and computer-generated imagery to create the appearance of the spaceship's interior; Davies stated that this was inspired by the 1978 serial Underworld, which also used special VFX techniques to portray the episode's setting. The episode references The Timeless Child and the Flux from his predecessor Chris Chibnall's era of the show, with the Not-Things taunting the Doctor about events that happened during these episodes. In one scene, the Doctor invokes a superstition by laying a line of salt to halt the Not-Things. In the following episode, "The Giggle", this is revealed to be the cause of the appearance of the Toymaker, and has larger repercussions in the following season. The VFX and Art teams collaborated on design for the sets, primarily the main hallway. Pre-visualisations were made in order to create references for scene outlines. The design of the ship used in concept art for the episode remained consistent throughout production, with Davies describing the goal as aiming for an "ideal" with the design. 3D models were taken of Tennant and Tate and were used by the VFX and props teams to create the Not-Things's body abnormalities. Tennant and Tate used physical props to simulate the inhuman aspects of the Not-Things, such as plastic teeth and an oversized controllable arm. A prosthetic leg with extra knees was created for Tate, and a prosthetic face was used to double for Tennant. Production designer Phil Sims and graphic designer Stephen Fielding created a language of glyphs to decorate the ship. These glyphs were inspired by horse hooves, with Sims citing the pilot of the ship's equine appearance for this. The old robot, nicknamed "Jimbo", was constructed as a puppet in order to make sure the design did not appear human. An aluminium frame was constructed from scratch, and 3D printing and fibreglass moulds were used. The final prop was controlled by a team of five puppeteers, who controlled the joints individually.
Casting
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