The Cutprice Guignol

I truly feel as though I have been living under a warm, Tardis-shaped glow since last week’s episode of Doctor Who.

It just…hit for me, you know? It was fun and throwback-y without ever getting too lost up it’s own emotional throughline, and Catherine Tate and David Tennant were everything I wanted them to be and more. Watching The Star Beast felt like having a glass of mulled wine pushed into your hand (my excuse to share my favourtie non-alcoholic mulled recipe) by your favourite aunt. Probably because Miriam Margoyles was there. I just loved it.

So the question arises: can the follow-up match it? Well, let’s get into episode two of the sixtieth anniversary special, Wild Blue Yonder, and find out.

This episode, directed by Tom Kinglsey of my beloved Stath Lets Flats excellence, follows the Doctor and Donna as they’re dumped into a spaceship at the edge of the universe before the Tardis makes a break for it and leaves them stranded with creatures able to mimic them down to their very thoughts. And, I’ll say it – it wasn’t as good as The Star Beast, let’s just put it out there. No, it was better.

This episode is an extraordinary salute to the relationship between the Doctor and Donna – and to the chemistry between David Tennant and Catherine Tate that underpins it. Outside of a closing vignette, they’re the only two characters we encounter in Wild Blue Yonder, and the script calls for pretty much everything you could ask for from these two. Russel T Davies really saw how much the fandom were clamouring for a return of the Doctor and Donna, and then raised us one of each. I loved it. They get to do drama, comedy, pathos, horror, staggering around with great big long arms – truly, all the basics in any actor’s repertoire, and they take it to that sublime level that only these actors in these roles can. The slight twists to Fourteen as a Doctor versus Ten are really working for me, too – he still feels very much like a version of that Doctor, but there’s an emotional openness that keeps him from feeling like a simple re-do and fan-pandering (fandering?).

But, beyond just Tennant and Tate, there’s this weird and wonderful quality to Russel T Davies’ writing that was on full display here – not afraid to play with form and style, but with a character-driven focus underpinning it all. It’s playful but polished, experimental but completely in command of the form, and this feels like such a triumphant return for Davies as a showrunner for Doctor Who and as a writer for the show in genera;. The dialogue between the Doctor and Donna here was a joy to listen to, and their relationship remaining platonic but no less loving or important for it picks up on a thread I always saw as so central to their connection fifteen years ago. It felt like such a throwback to their original run together in season four, but a refined version with a longer and more complicated emotional history that informs this reunion. Plus, an in-depth Isaac Newton joke where the Doctor comes out as being attracted to men in his current form – it’s got Russel T Davies written all over it, and I mean that in the most complimentary way I can as a person of, well, that persuasion.

Visually, this was an episode I really enjoyed too – the slightly ropey CGI is something I am keenly willing to forgive in Doctor Who, given what a big part it was of the original show I fell in love with, and the warping, outsized versions of the Doctor and Donna swung between silly and genuinely unsettling with every shot. The spaceship had an eeriness to it, a haunted house that just happened to be high-tech with the trick bookcases (well, wall sections) to match, and this new soundtrack is hitting just right for me. Even though the stories don’t exactly have the enormous feel I expected for the sixtieth anniversary special, it’s not a problem for me at all, because what we’re getting feels like the most buffed-up, proudly polished version of the show I could ask for, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate it in all it’s glory.

I must make a small note here about the inclusion of Wilf in this episode, too – I watched this episode with a handful of huge Who fans, and I’m sure we weren’t the only ones to let out a sigh of happiness when he appeared on the screen. He’s a huge part of why Donna is such a beloved assistant, and to see him back here, however briefly, felt like a true piece of Whovian joy.

A brief note, too, about the Timeless Child reference this episode. I know that plotline has been a contentious one amongst the fandom, but it’s one I always found pretty interesting, and I was really let-down when Chris Chibnall didn’t provide a more absolute ending to it in his series. I thought the unpopularity of this plot might lead to it being sidestepped with the return of David Tennant and Russel T Davies, but there was a very pointed nod to it here, which I’m glad to see. In the time since the end of his time with the series, Chris Chibnall’s work on the show doesn’t seem to have been looked on with a lot of love, and it’s nice to know that Russel T Davies isn’t eager to leave behind the hard work he put in on the show, whether it was popular or not.

This was about the most perfect episode I could have asked for as part of the sixtieth anniversary special: a gloriously fun, wildly entertaining, exquisitely performed, and a celebration of so many things that made this show such a cultural force since it’s return nearly twenty years ago. We’re at two out of three in terms of these specials working for me, and I’m hoping we’re going to stick the landing next week – how are you feeling about these specials so far? Did you love this episode as much as I did? Let me know in the comments!

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(header image via Radio Times)