The Dangerous Nothing

Now that's what I call a Doctor Who special. Yesterday's "Wild Blue Yonder" was well above average, a wonderfully creepy puzzle reminiscent of The Mind Robber or "Chimes at Midnight".

It didn't start auspiciously. The cold open, with a tone similar to the Children in Need sketch, showed the TARDIS crashing into the tree that dropped an apple on an inexplicably brown skinned Isaac Newton. It led to a recurring gag about how the word for gravity had changed to "mavity" (are they going to remember that forever going forward?). But it was clearly Russell T Davies thumbing his nose at a segment of the fanbase. It was pointlessly flippant, as was the Doctor's disregard for implications to the timeline for disrupting a major historical event. Of course, as Mr. Data told us, Newton actually getting hit in the head by an apple is apocryphal. So I think Davies was making a broader statement about how nothing in art has to be true so long as it's good art. With which I would agree. But this gag wasn't good art, which is a shame because the other 95% of the episode is absolutely amazing.

Just one episode after Davies established a whole new set of powers for the sonic screwdriver, he deprives the Doctor of it, the TARDIS, and even his overcoat from which he might produce any manner of other gadgets. We go from flippancy and no stakes to a palpably grave situation (or mave situation?) as the Doctor and Donna find themselves stranded on a spacecraft adrift in the darkness beyond the edge of the universe.

Ultimately they encounter a species so fundamentally alien, they seem to be manifestations of nothing. Their attempts to copy the Doctor and Donna are incredibly, effectively creepy. One moment they seem to know everything, the next they reveal that their seemingly intimate knowledge is no more than a tactfully deployed echo that seems to be motivated by an extreme, enigmatic malice.

There's a moment I loved where one of the aliens won the Doctor's trust. And as a viewer, I was right there with him, scrutinising the evidence, and I was fooled too. So a little later, when he's kicking the bulkhead in rage at the betrayal, at his own weakness, you feel it. Oh, it was so very good.

The Doctor's methods for thwarting the aliens were even more satisfying for it, but they're quite good in themselves. I loved how he used the salt barrier and his final logical test about the contradictory nature of the human mind was good. That scene was like the next step in an evolution of a particular kind of repeated sci-fi scene, on Star Trek and Doctor Who, of the alien or machine who's finally beaten by the hero's logic puzzle, like the "One person always lies and the other always tells the truth" puzzle. That's not going to work on these things, which makes them all the scarier. And more of an affront. They want to take the place of humanity and they have absolutely no concern for what matters to humanity. The perfection of their mimicry is a really chilling insult. I suppose Davies could be talking about AI but not making it explicitly about AI, as he certainly could have on Doctor Who, makes it all the better.

Wow. What a magnificent early Christmas present is "Wild Blue Yonder".

The new Doctor Who specials are available on Disney+ in most of the world and on the BBC iPlayer in the UK.