What a wonderful surprise at the close of the episode – Wilf (the late, great Bernard Cribbins) reunited with the Doctor once more! Sure, we knew Cribbins would be appearing this season, but I hadn’t expected him to be around at this stage of the game (with hopefully another appearance in the finale of these three specials next week). I’m not ashamed to admit I teared up when Donna, the Doctor, and Wilf were, once again, together on our screens. But as lovely as that moment was – and as troubling as it is that someone (ok, we know it’s Neil Patrick Harris’ the Toymaker) is causing all of humanity to fight against each other – that wasn’t what “Wild Blue Yonder” was really about. But that reunion was a capper on a hell of a Doctor Who episode, one that managed to get the balance of humor and horror just right, one that allowed David Tennant and Catherine Tate to absolutely shine, and one that had a madcap ending to a truly compelling adventure to the edge of the universe. In short, this was a combination of all that makes Doctor Who great. Boy, have I missed having Russell T. Davies at the helm of this series.
Once it was revealed that we were dealing with shape shifting villains who could also read the minds of their victims, I’ll admit I was a tad worried about all the ways a story like this can go off the rails. It can lean too heavily into the comedic (the villains start making fun of the main characters or doing silly impressions that make the very scary thing they are doing – taking our heroes’ identities away from them – less impactful). It can get too bogged down into the identity confusion (one of the key touchstones of writing this type of story is always have a way to make it clear just who the imposter is – something Davies made sure of in each instance, save for the final Donna situation*). And you can have one too many instances where the real character begs the other real character to believe them, only to have the first real character fall for the duplicate (something Davies avoided completely until the close of the episode, which I’m sure took a great deal of restraint). Now, it helps to have two leads with the comedic and dramatic chops of Tennant and Tate to help sell the silliness of this story (“My arms are too long.”) and the sinister (pretty much any time the duplicates were caught out and reacted with true malice towards our heroes). The tone and the performances were pitch perfect throughout.
*Did we need the Doctor to take the wrong Donna on board only to snatch the correct one out of there at the last second? Not really. Sure, it gave Tate the chance to really emote in the face of tragedy – something she is sensational at – but it didn’t add that much to the plot and I didn’t buy that real Donna wouldn’t have also said “It just is” as the reason why Mrs. Bean is a funny name. We didn’t need the mix up and last second save for the revealing conversation the pair would have in the Tardis, it just added a bit of an odd ending to that portion of the story – a story that was meant to help show just how close this pair is.
But let’s talk a bit about that conversation Donna and the Doctor had in the Tardis. Now, I haven’t been keeping up all that much with Doctor Who since the latter years of the Matt Smith era of the series, so I had to do a bit of reading to see how and why the Flux was such a traumatic element of the Doctor’s past, but I understand why it being referenced would throw him for a loop here. Especially if it came from, somewhere within Donna’s own memories. Putting that little seed of doubt into the Doctor that perhaps Donna didn’t really lose all of her DoctorDonna-ness at the end of last week’s installment is also troubling for all of us. Now, it might end up being nothing, but I don’t know if Davies throws that little nugget into the story for no apparent reason. That’s not his writing style. Which makes me a bit worried about just what is going to happen next week, in our final installment of the adventures of the Doctor and Donna. Sure, Donna might come out of this fully unscathed and able to live her life once more, now remembering the wonderful times she spent with her great buddy the Doctor. But something tells me that we might see the door close on this particular friendship for good in next week’s adventure. We know the Doctor is regenerating one more time – and that the Doctor always wants to do so alone – so his face will be changing into Ncuti Gatwa. But I’m hoping Donna isn’t secretly hiding that she still has her memories as the DoctorDonna and that those memories won’t put her into danger one more time. After all, we still don’t know just why the Doctor is wearing this particular face once more. Maybe it was just so that he could pair up with the DoctorDonna to stop the Meep. Or might there be another reason yet to be revealed? This is Doctor Who and it wouldn’t be a huge finale without some real danger and lingering questions.
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