Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder – 60th anniversary special recap | Television & radio

The lack of advance detail about this episode had led to wild speculation about it possibly featuring returning actors, characters and monsters, while Doctor Who magazine even had a redacted cast list last month. Some pondered whether Ncuti Gatwa might put in an early cameo as the Fifteenth Doctor opposite David Tennant. In the end, it was a multi-Doctor adventure of sorts, just perhaps not in the way some people had been hoping.

Effectively a two-hander for Tennant and Catherine Tate’s Donna, it explored a theme we’ve seen before in Who during stories such as Listen or Flatline – that there is something nameless and shapeless lurking at the edge of our understanding of the universe, and it is coming to get us. This time, though, it came disturbingly in the misshapen form of Tennant and Tate themselves.

The show’s bigger budget was evident on screen, as that was surely the longest corridor the Doctor has ever run down, and the hover-car put the Segways the Doctor and Donna rode in her 2006 debut, the Runaway Bride, to shame. The robot looked like it would have been fun if it had been given anything much to do, but that it was doing not very much, and doing it very slowly, turned out to be the point.

This story hinged on the performance of the two stars and the work of the design and VFX teams. Tennant and Tate were impeccable. The look, feel and realism of the shape-shifting menace varied. As specials go, it didn’t feel as special as the Star Beast had the week before, but it finished with a lovely dose of the much-missed Bernard Cribbins, and the set-up for what looks to be next week’s explosive finale of the Fourteenth Doctor’s brief but welcome era.

Sum it up in one sentence?

The Doctor and Donna get the runaround on a giant slowly self-destructing spaceship … and find they are chasing themselves.

Life aboard the Tardis

It didn’t take place in the Tardis, and it wasn’t with the real Donna, but as promised by Russell T Davies in advance, this episode firmly asserted that the destruction of half the universe during Flux, and that the Doctor was not born on Gallifrey, are facts in the Whoniverse. This will disappoint a vocal section of fandom that were rather hoping the new showrunner was going to airbrush out or undo the Timeless Child concept introduced during Jodie Whittaker’s tenure by Chris Chibnall.

Fear factor

Remembering that there are children in the audience, this special managed to balance the chilling idea that someone – or something – is gradually becoming the perfect facsimile of you, with the frankly laugh-out-loud unexpected giant stunt arms.

Mysteries and questions

This didn’t feel like it had any elements in it setting up story or character arcs, with the main mystery being why the Doctor usually uses the sonic screwdriver to read every alien spaceship control panel they come across if they can just do it themselves by translating some numbers. And is it really “mavity” now?

Deeper into the vortex

• The Hostile Action Displacement System of the Tardis was first introduced in 1968 Second Doctor story the Krotons, and barely mentioned again until it was the reason for the Eleventh Doctor and Clara to get stranded on a sinking submarine in 2013’s Cold War.

• The Fourth Doctor once told Romana in the Douglas Adams-penned the Pirate Planet that he had to give Isaac Newton “a bit of a prod” to discover mavity – by climbing up a tree, dropping an apple on his head, then explaining it to him “afterwards at dinner”.

• The actor playing the Doctor has faced off against themselves playing the villain before, notably with Patrick Troughton playing both the Time Lord and the evil dictator Ramón Salamander in 1967’s Enemy of the World, and Tom Baker getting made up to look like a cactus as the anti-hero in 1980’s Meglos.

Next time

Neil Patrick Harris! The Celestial Toymaker! A doll sending the whole world mad with its giggle! And presumably, as it has been in the trailers, we get to see Jemma Redgrave back as Unit’s Kate Stewart in their swish new Avengers Tower knock-off in London, and hopefully a little more Bernard Cribbins.