'Wild Blue Yonder' (Story Code 13.11) by Russell T Davies

“There’s something so bad on this ship that the TARDIS ran away?” - Donna

Donna’s spilled coffee has caused the TARDIS to go out of control. The ship crashes into a tree in England, 1666, allowing the Doctor time to triangulate his ship’s position, while Donna contributes to Isaac Newton’s idea for ‘mavity’. The TARDIS flies off again, and it soon smashes to a halt inside a metal chamber; the Doctor and Donna only just jump out in time, as a blast of flame belches out of the ship after them, to the tune of ‘Wild Blue Yonder’. Saddened at the damage to his brand-new console room, the Doctor leaves his sonic screwdriver in the ship’s locking mechanism, to allow it time to rebuild itself undisturbed. Outside the chamber is a massive corridor; the Doctor and Donna see a figure in the distance, but before they can investigate the TARDIS dematerialises, taking the Doctor’s sonic with it. With no way to retrieve his ship, the Doctor hopes that the TARDIS’ Hostile Action Displacement System caused it to vanish - if they can find out what triggered it, the ship may return…In the corridor, the duo watch as the walls and machinery reconfigure themselves, and alien words ring out - but without the TARDIS the Doctor is unable to translate them. The duo are unaware something is watching them… Finding a hover-buggy, the Doctor and Donna approach the figure: a squat, three-eyed robot that Donna nicknames ‘Jimbo’; but it fails to acknowledge them, preferring to take a solitary step forward instead. Continuing down the corridor, the travellers eventually find a control room; the Doctor accesses its console and starts working out the language old-school, starting with base ten numbers. The Doctor learns that the ship is empty, the last onboard activity the opening and closing of an airlock three years ago. Activating an exterior camera drone, the Doctor confirms they are on a spaceship: the vessel got lost in a wormhole, and is now stuck at the edge of the universe, on the verge of nothingness. Hearing a clang, the Doctor and Donna race back to the corridor, in time to see the machinery reconfigure again; further along, the robot takes another step... With Donna’s help, the Doctor begins powering up the ship. While she works, Donna talks to the Doctor about going home - just as the Doctor is working in another room, talking to Donna about Gallifrey. These duplicates quickly give themselves away, their arms distending unnaturally, their behaviour now aggressive. The Doctor and Donna quickly regroup, making a hasty exit in the hover-buggy as their evil copies come after them; but these ‘not-things’ grow even larger, and when the Doctor-copy’s giant hand grabs the buggy, Donna’s efforts to hit it with a metal bar prove fruitless. Luckily, the copies soon grow so large that they fill the corridor, their crushed bodies stuck fast, unable to move. The Doctor tries to reason with the duplicates, but they are starting to think just like their originals, and they work out how to shrink. The Doctor and Donna race for a ventilation shaft, but the corridor shifts again, sending them in different directions. Making their separate ways through the ship’s infrastructure, the Doctor and Donna each meet their friend again - but are they real or fake? Donna works out that her Doctor is a copy when his tie disappears after he drops it; meanwhile, the Doctor’s ‘Donna’ talks about the Timeless Child and the Flux, then partially turns into a gloating puddle of goo. All four finally come face-to face in another room, but this time the Doctor and Donna are even quicker at identifying their real friends. The Doctor tries tricking the evil Not-Things through their shared memories, using the belief that a line of salt stops vampires, demons and ghosts; but the copies are getting smarter, and they see through his ruse. The Doctor and Donna deduce that the Not-Things want to become like them because they want the TARDIS - the creatures want to escape from the nothingness outside, and run riot in the universe. As the ship reconfigures again, the Doctor and Donna run to the control room, sealing themselves behind a transparent bulkhead before the Not-Things can get to them. The Doctor and Donna work out that their adversaries are terrorising them because being scared makes their thoughts race, making them easier to assimilate. The two friends try calming their thoughts, but the Doctor can’t stop thinking about the situation, even more so when the banging noise returns; he opens the roof shutter, and sees an alien skeleton in a helmetless spacesuit drifting outside, caught in the ship’s gravity/mavity field, its untethered line-clip banging against the hull. After deducing the corpse is the ship’s captain, who committed suicide so that the Not-Things couldn’t escape, the Doctor realises that the ship is on a countdown to self-destruct, slowed-down so the creatures don’t realise what is happening. As the copies race off to stop the robot, the Doctor takes the only option left: to speed up the countdown. Then a frantic chase ensues, as the Not-Things try to reach the robot before it can reach the detonation button: while the two Donnas have a punch-up, the Doctor closes in on his copy, only to watch as it switches to all fours and speeds off. The Doctor stops his pursuit, having realised that if he runs out of time, the HADS will return the TARDIS to him; he’s right, and as the robot presses the detonator, the TARDIS materialises in the corridor. Jumping inside, the Doctor propels his ship towards the Donnas, picking the right one and dematerialising the TARDIS just as the spaceship starts to explode. The fake Doctor is caught in the conflagration, but as the flames rush down the corridor, it is the real Donna who frantically calls out for the Doctor to come back for her! Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor realises his mistake; making a fast return, he ejects the fake Donna and to allow the real one to jump inside, and the TARDIS departs just as the spaceship blows up around it. Having narrowly escaped destruction, the Doctor has a bad feeling about using salt to evoke a superstition at the end of the universe. Shrugging it off, he takes Donna home; they arrive in Camden, where they are reunited with Wilf, who has been waiting desperately for their return. As fights break out among the people on the streets, and a plane falls out of the sky, Wilf tells them that the world is coming to an end…


David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Bernard Cribbens (Wilfred Mott), Nathaniel Curtis (Isaac Newton), Susan Twist (Mrs Merridew), Daniel Tuite (The Doctor Acting Double), Ophir Raray (The Doctor Beast Double), Tommaso Di Vincenzo (The Doctor Contortionist Double), Helen Cripps (Donna Acting Double )

Directed by Tom Kingsley

Produced by Vicki Delow
Executive Producers Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins and Phil Collinson
A Bad Wolf / BBC Studios production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
2nd December 2023 @ 6.30 pm

Notes:
*Featuring the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna, with Wilf

*This is the first time actress Susan Twist appears, this time as Mrs Merridew - watch out for her...

*This story is the second of the 60th anniversary specials, and is sixty minutes long

*It was also made available in Ultra-High Definition (UHD) on the BBC's iPlayer, and streamed on Disney+ outside the UK and Ireland on the same day