Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder and a bit more about The Star Beast

Okay, I’m writing the first bit of this on Friday night, ahead of this next episode, both because I want to talk a little bit about the build-up to it and also touch upon some further thoughts about last week’s initial Special. So let’s get into that.

As often tends to be the case with me, I have an initial reaction to a piece of media the first time I see it. And then, after I’ve gone back and seen it again, and read some of the discourse that winds up in the air about it, my opinions crystalize a bit more and come into sharper focus. So while everything that I said about The Star Beast last time still stands, there are a few places where I’ve maybe shifted my position a little bit.

Which is to say that most of my initial problems concerning the pacing of the episode have largely evaporated. Looking back, it moves at just about the same sort of breakneck clip that any of the initial Russell T Davies season episodes moved at, in particular the Tennant seasons when the bedrock of the show had been re-established for people. It really doesn’t waste a second getting into things. But the real thing that it hits spot-on once again is the emotional beats. Admittedly, most of those were perhaps more tailored for returning viewers than for newcomers, but the thing that made DOCTOR WHO a huge success was always the fact that it punches precisely in the feels. As Russell makes very clear in the book “The Writer’s Tale”, while he wants the plot to make a modicum of sense, he’s well aware that the audience will follow the story anywhere, even across the most egregious lapses of logic and common sense if the viewership is feeling something. Russell’s DOCTOR WHO always excelled at this, Steven Moffat’s incarnation was very good at it, and even Chris Chibnall’s best moments and episodes nail this part, though his era wasn’t as precise. And on that level, The Star Beast delivered in spades.

There’s obviously been a lot of talk about representation in this episode, and while there are definitely a moment or two that I would have hit differently–I’m thinking in particular of the bit about “a male-presenting Time Lord could never understand…”. which seemed like a bit of an unnecessary swipe, I have to respect the hell out of RTD for throwing himself directly into the fray of the struggle for representation, as he’s always done–but even more so here. In these times when Trans people are being so demonized and excoriated, for a mainstream show to take such an unflinching position concerning the absolute humanity and essential value of such people is applause-worthy. I must admit, I have also delighted perhaps a bit too much watching all of those angry loudmouths who were looking at Russell’s return as a return to “classic values” as opposed to the “woke” approach of the Chibnall/Jodie era utterly losing their minds, and Russell’s studied indifference to them. Because screw those people. DOCTOR WHO is a show for everyone, and about everyone.

On a much more mundane note, just as I am absolutely convinced that the pre-titles flashback and explain-the-history sequence (which looked, at best, a bit dodgy) was a last minute addition to the episode in order to allay the fears of folks somewhere in the production pipeline, so too am I dead certain that somewhere, there exists a first draft version of this script where the TARDIS we enter at the end of this episode was the Jodie TARDIS, and it was Donna spilling the coffee on the console which not only sent the ship flying wildly across time and space but which also set up for the new control room. and I’m certain that, early on, Russell or somebody else on the team said the hell with it, let’s trot out our best from the outset, which is why the TARDIS interior changes without any cause. Because who cares, we’ve got a great new set to show off! I feel pretty confident that there’ll be a moment towards the end of today’s episode that will be where that reveal would have come initially.

Which leads me to the best bit about Wild Blue Yonder: even with all of the spoilers and inside information I’ve managed to glean over this yearlong wait, I know next to nothing about it, and neither does anybody else. And that is thrilling. So much so that fans are putting forth such ridiculous theories as to what the episode might contain that director Tom Kingsley had to make a statement indicating that there weren’t going to be any surprise returning Doctors or companions in it, just to try to reset expectations. In my own line of work, I’m a big proponent of not wanting to give away any story information prior to release, and I curse the need to show off more and more material in order to get people to pick up the books. And the same is true for movies and television. If you release a trailer, I’m probably going to watch it, but I’d usually be happier going in with not idea of what the story is going to be about. It’s a necessary Catch-22. But in this instance, Russell and his team have actually pulled it off, and I am delighted to watch an episode of DOCTOR WHO about which I know almost nothing beforehand.

In many ways, for me, it harkens back to when Tom Baker regenerated. I didn’t get to start watching DOCTOR WHO until my family relocated to Delaware in 1981. There, the local PBS station would run whole stories edited into movies on Saturday afternoons, whereas the New York station that we still got played two episodes every Saturday morning. So I was watching the first Baker season at the same time that I was watching the last, with no real ideas that’s where I was. I had heard at that point that Baker had been replaced by Peter Davison, but I had no idea that it happened in the story Logopolis. So when we got to the end of the story and the Doctor fell off that transmitter to his death, it was genuinely surprising and thrilling for me, as was his transformation into Peter. (And, as Russell theorized, I really didn’t care that the Watcher didn’t make a lick of sense, even with Nyssa’s last-minute ADR line added in, because I was invested in the moment.)

Anyway, that’s a ton to have written already, and I haven’t even yet seen the episode. So we’ll continue things after the dotted line once I’ve had the opportunity tomorrow to take it in.

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It’s now Saturday and I’ve just finished watching Wild Blue Yonder.

Small, stupid things first; I’m again quite sure that the Isaac Newton pre-titles sequence was a late-in-the-game add-on, even if Russell did use it for the fun running Mavity gag throughout he rest of the episode. Honestly, I think the episode is better without it, and the CGI here was the most dodgy in the show. Also, having watched teh episode, dead certain that the reveal of the new console room would have come when Donna was picked up at the end of the episode, at least at the outset of these stories.

As for the story itself, I thought it was quite good. After last episode, this one’s entirely a two-hander between David Tennant and Catherine Tate, even though they play two different versions of themselves. It was appropriately creepy and scary, though still maintaining the level of a kids’ show. Russell’s DOCTOR WHO has always shown his roots as a series for children, which may seem strange to some coming from the later Moffat and Chibnall seasons, which tended to try to pitch a bit more adult. But I think it’s a wise move, and showcases an understanding of the DNA of the show. There’s no reason why it can’t get dark or sophisticated, but it needs to keep its roots in the fun and adventure and color. That really is where it works best.

More than anything, it reminded me of having first watched what today is probably my favorite episode of the TWILIGHT ZONE, “Mirror Image”, which concerned a woman in a lonely bus depot being stalked by her doppelganger from a parallel plane of existence. That episode struck a real chord in my heart at five or six-years-old, and the sequence where the Doctor chases his alternate self down that long corridor evoked its ending, where Martin Milner similarly fruitlessly pursues his own doppelganger out into the night.

Apart from the creepy-factor, and the Doctor being stripped of his usual bag of tricks in the TARDIS and the Sonic Screwdriver, the best bits of the episode were once again the smaller moments of emotion–in particular how donna, both as herself and her duplicate, probed the Doctor’s history in the time since she last saw him. I happen to know where they’re going with these references to the Flux and the Doctor no longer knowing his place of origin, but they were effective still. I also quite liked that we really don’t learn much of anything about either the invaders nor the people who built the ship. Sometimes, less is more, and this all leaves the door open both to the viewer’s imagination and also to a later return and expansion on some of these concepts.

And, of course, great to see Bernard Cribbins again, if only briefly, as Wilfred Mott. Hopefully this isn’t all that we’ll get to see of him.

I suspect that, when I get an opportunity to check out the reactions of other people across social media, I’m going to find a whole lot of people will have been disappointed by this episode, as just like last week, it was simply an episode and not canon-breaking or canon-defining at all, as most thought it might be given all of the secrecy. But my viewing experience, at least, was definitely enhanced by knowing so little about the episode, and I wish this could become more of the norm.

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Also, while we won’t get to see him in action until next week and her until Christmas, every image that’s been released of this pair so far just makes me love them. Just from these images and brief moments (that wink in Adventure in Time and Space–!) , Ncuti Gatwa is the Doctor–just look at that expression there! And he and Millie Gibson are so totally in synch. I’m completely in the boat for them already.