Doctor Who - Wild Blue Yonder

Mavity The
Mystery Grav

Doctor Who -
Wild Blue Yonder
Airdate: 2nd December 2023
BBC plus nameless evil entities

Warning: Trying hard not to put spoilers in but I know the stuff about the cast may give away the nature of the threat that The Doctor and Donna face this week.

Right then. First of all folks... this is going to be a very short review because there’s no way I’m going to put major spoilers in this one and, as you’ll see from my points about the... erm... ‘redacted’ cast list, certain things about those credits may give a lot of things away. So I’ll keep it brief.

But what I will say is...Wild Blue Yonder is the scariest episode of Doctor Who I’ve seen since the days of Jon Pertwee, for sure. Okay... maybe that one where The Doctor gets stuck on the tour shuttle with the alien who starts absorbing him and mimicking him in the Tennant era was pretty scary too but, been a long time since an episode was this warped and I am delighted to say that. I’m sure lots of young ‘uns will be scared witless, have terrible nightmares and usher in a lot of complaints from parents to the BBC so... yeah, classic Doctor Who is back, in a way.

Okay... there are some bad things here, offset by the brilliance of the majority of the episode. But, the main problem I had with it is the opening prologue with Isaac Newton discovering... umm... mavity. I’ll come back to the mavity thing in a minute. But, you know I’m going to say it in my best ‘I’m no racist but’ accent here anyway... Isaac Newton was never black or Mediterranean or whatever colour this guy’s skin was. This is either, as I suspect, terrible and completely baffling casting on the behalf of the BBC (or more likely that other production company) or... okay... When The Doctor and Donna both make the joke to Newton about the ‘gravity of the situation’, Donna definitely said gravity, I think. Newton said mavity. And later, The Doctor had to change his usage of the word gravity to mavity to make Donna understand. What? Maybe, since it’s proved once again in this episode that Donna certainly isn’t as stupid as she’s made out to be, the possibility exists that we’re in an alternate universe where Isaac Newton had darker skin and there were later to be formed, the Laws Of Mavity. Perhaps.

I kind of hope so, in a way, because that would explain the Newton thing, for sure. Except, Donna did say gravity to begin with so... maybe not. Either way it’s really bad writing, for sure. And hopefully not really bad casting after all but... somehow I doubt it. And I say this very much because of the consequences of what people pick up from television... remember that a lot of people in their teens, twenties and thirties now believe (and I know this because I work in an educational institution), that Hitler was machine gunned to death in an exploding cinema (thanks to Quentin Tarantino) and that Sharon Tate and her unborn child was not murdered by the followers of Charles Manson and instead made lots more films into her old age (again, thanks to Tarantino) so, yeah, this kind of casting, if not done deliberately to foreshadow a parallel universe, is very dangerous in terms of damaging historical education, it has to be said.

But, forget that.

Wonderful episode... truly disturbing and I got a real touch of nostalgia for 1970s Doctor Who from this one, in terms of the creeping scariness of the episode. Okay, you could see where the ship's corridors were designed to be able to put up cost cutting backdrops (digital or painted, whatever) in much the same way that the old extended corridor in the opening titles of The Prisoner (the greatest TV show ever made) was just a blown up photo to give it depth. But that’s okay... Doctor Who is supposed to have dodgy effects, isn’t it? And, anyway, it’s the story which is where this one shone... and the dialogue for sure. Nice cameo from a certain person we expected to turn up last week too, it has to be said.

However, here comes my last grumble on this one. 

That veil of secrecy and the cast list with three actors redacted. What a load of rubbish and, once again, I feel deceived by the programme makers. And if you’ve seen the episode you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I will say, though, that it was also a very smart move on Russell T. Davies’ part because, think about it... with the small cast and the very contained environment the story takes place in, practically any small piece of knowledge about the episode would have told you everything you needed to know. There was so little in terms of story elements in it that anything at all given away would have killed it. And, I’d have to also say it’s one of the least rewatchable of the episodes, in my opinion, because there’s not so much to it. 

But, like I said, and I’ll conclude this review here, Doctor Who - Wild Blue Yonder was one of the most disturbing episodes in a very long time so, yeah, despite the vary valid grumbles I have of it, I really enjoyed this one. Kinda half looking forward to next week’s show but not happy that Tennant will be leaving it then... if indeed he does and they don’t pull a ‘split regeneration’ on the audience, so they can ‘have their cake and eat a spin off series’ too. We shall see, I guess.