Chatter Box Film

This is a spoiler review for the second 60th anniversary special of Doctor Who titled Wild Blue Yonder. See the review for the first special here: The Star Beast.

Wild Blue Yonder had very little marketing and there was a great deal of mystery/speculation leading up to it. This has turned out to be a slower isolated, strange, disturbing and somewhat horrifying special.

With this isolated story, there’s a lot more focus on both The Doctor and Donna, allowing David Tennant and Catherine Tate to shine. These dramatic scenes give them time to be able to reconnect on a more platonically intimate level, compared to The Star Beast special, and the dialogue is written so much better.

As for the antagonists, these were quite scary in the beginning, due to their comical and creepy characteristics.

These villains are somewhat similar to the Midnight episode in 2008, which also starred David Tennant’s Doctor; mainly because of the mimicing. It did feel like they were back to being in older Russell T Davies episodes of Doctor Who again.

Wild Blue Yonder’s antagonists was also like Matt Smith’s episode The Rebel Flesh (2011), which was written by Steven Moffat and Matthew Graham; due to the freakish clones that the characters dealt with.

The CGI was not good at various points, especially with those antagonists, although done well for the close-up prosthetic work. When they were running during the large scale set scenes, was rough in front of a green screen compared to some of the fantastic practical sets that were built in other parts of the special.

The Tardis scenes looked brilliant, both in and out, with the way it transitionally warped into scenes and the fiery composites combined with refreshing music and sound fx, they did a great job with this!

Final thoughts

A cold open in the beginning and the running joke that continued throughout about it, was a nice touch, which slightly lightened up the tone of this second special.

This was a much better episode compared to The Star Beast, it had me in a rollercoaster of emotions and the suspense in the final act was intense; seeing The Doctor and Donna go through an ordeal of panic.

It was also very heatwarming to be able to see the late Bernard Cribbins’ Wilfred Mott back for one last time.

However, apart from being able to see one of my favourite Doctors return and there finally being more of Donna and her families story continued. I don’t think these specials have been as great so far to watch, compared to the ones that have come before, which feel like well-developed and less rushed stories, such as the 50th special The Day of the Doctor, and The End of Time part 1 and 2.

The last special titled The Giggle, which releases on December 9 at 6:30 PM; where Neil Patrick Harris debuts his iteration of The Toymaker.