"Wild Blue Yonder" did the most important thing Doctor Who can do
Before I get into why “Wild Blue Yonder,” aka part 2 of the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary special, is so incredibly important, please allow me to present my Whovian bona fides.
I was up late one night during summer vacation when I was about 8 years old. That was part of the joy of summer vacation: staying up way past my normal bedtime and watching TV I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to watch. (I come from the days before the internet and video on demand. It was a dark time…but also kind of great.) It was just about 11 at night and I was in my brother’s room, in front of his tiny black and white tv set. I flipped through the TV Guide and saw something called “Dr. Who” was about to start on Channel 12. No description, but the name was intriguing, so I turned it on. It was episode one of The Ark in Space, starring Tom Baker.
As entry points go, I couldn’t have asked for a better one. Ark in Space is a cracker of a story, and Tom Baker is, well….when it comes to playing the Doctor, there is Tom Baker and then there is everyone else. I’ve been a fan ever since.
But something started going awry with Doctor Who ‘round about the time Stephen Moffat took over as show runner. It wasn’t all bad right out of the gate, but before long there were dinosaurs on spaceships and Clara was the most important person ever. There were bright spots during the Capaldi era — Michelle Gomez’s Missy was a joy to behold — but by and large, Doctor Who was increasingly bogged down by its apparent believe that it needed to be important. Everything had to mean something or connect to something or come back around in unexpected ways. It all got to be very heavy and plodding.
And, ugh, Jodie Whittaker. Look, she’s a great actress, but her run as the Doctor sucked. It just did. It was like they’d lost the plot entirely. This was the era when a companion “not having good balance” was put out there as an interesting character trait. Seriously.
I stopped watching. I’d hung in there for years sustained by my love for this character that was a crucial part of my emotional foundation as a person. The Doctor taught me that who you are — the choices you make, your intent, your effort, how you show up for other people — matters, regardless of the eventual outcome. Or, to use a line from the show itself, “Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall.” But I just couldn’t hang in there. I was watching out of a sense of obligation, not because I actually liked it. I don’t know what show that was on my telly, but it wasn’t Doctor Who.
“Wild Blue Yonder,” on the other hand, is Doctor Who through and through.
Yes, there is something big going on — the Doctor has his old face back, which is not the way regeneration is supposed to work, so clearly something is up — but that’s way in the background. The episode itself is just a pure sci fi romp. The Doctor and Donna find themselves on a huge and apparently abandoned spaceship. The TARDIS has buggered off, Cloister bell a-ringing, so they are, for the moment, stuck. And they are not alone.
What ensues is Who at its finest. There are so many questions to be answered: Why is the ship changing its shape? Why is that little robot taking so long to walk down the hall? What happened 3 years ago when the airlock opened? And why is it suddenly so cold in here? All of those questions get answered, but not before there’s lots of running and danger and the Doctor getting to be terribly clever.
Boil the best episodes down and that’s what they are: questions, running, and the Doctor being clever. That’s “Wild Blue Yonder” in a nutshell.
And that simplicity, that return to fundamentals, is the most important thing Doctor Who can do at this point, because it means that maybe, just maybe, the show is back on track. That it isn’t bogged down by each episode having to be part of an EVENT. I don’t know who thought that seasons of Who *had* to all be leading up to some big reveal or happening or dramatic conclusion, but they were wrong. Those kinds of storylines work when they’re unusual, a deviation from the norm. When every single season is just some new huge THING, it starts to become meaningless. Even worse, it all stops being fun.
“Wild Blue Yonder” is fun. It’s smart, and mysterious, and a little scary, and poignant, and fun. It’s been ages since Who felt like this. Part of that is unquestionably thanks to David Tennant, who’s always understood the assignment, and Catherine Tate, who brings a gravity (sorry, mavity) to this older Donna Noble that adds some wonderful depth to the duo’s chemistry. This, this is how a good episode of Doctor Who is supposed to make you feel: a little bit scared of all the things out there in the universe, but even more excited about discovering them.
It’s supposed to make you feel like you’re 8 years old and have just stumbled upon something so wonderful, you’ll be telling stories about it for the rest of your life.