Wild Blue Yonder - Blog Posts
Every time they hugged each other my heart sobbed violently
Donna Noble and 14th Doctor in "Wild Blue Yonder" 🫂
Just a completely normal drawing where nothing is wrong and that is definetly donna
Some thoughts about The Wild Blue Yonder (spoilers, obviously):
Star Beast was goofy. The story was a little but clunky, you can definitely tell the trans stuff was written by a cis man, and the ending was for sure a cop-out, but I didn't care. The good outweighed the bad for me. I was just having fun watching these characters I love again. THIS EPISODE THOUGH??? Even better than the last one. The scene where Donna and the Doctor both think they're just talking to each other and we don't know exactly what's going on? Genius. I was so intrigued. The "my arms are too long" line? Terrifying. Fucking chills down my spine. The uncanny valley Donna and The Doctor were so freaky. Catherine and David's acting??? TOP TIER!! I actually thought the Doctor might have left with fake Donna for a second. They fucking got me with that twist. WILFRED'S FACE WHEN HE SAW THE DOCTOR??? Priceless. I had tears in my eyes. I can't wait to see what's next!!
Wild Blue Yonder!!!
okokok I have officially watched it here are my thoguhts:
AHGHAHAGHAGHAGHGAHAHHGHGAH
me and my dad are big fans of Alien and The Thing so we were watching it and pointing out shit like how those dark corridoor things with the blue and green lights looked like the nostromo and stuff aghahghgahah sci-fi my beloved
the mimicry thing??? holy shit?? so cool????????? I think te weird crab crawl thing was defo a reference to the exorcist
exiistential horro rmy beloved <3<3<3 I think the scene before they meet the mimics where they're looking out at the empty space was soooo cool. I felt genuine dread it was just,, incredible.
When there was that scene when it was abt to explode ad it was all slow motion I was freaking out so bad oh my godddddds
ok loooove the way David was playing the mimic ver of the doctor, like doing little things to make his expression and tone just slightly off, it was soooo cool
I looooove the design of the Captain w/ the skull that kinda resembled a deer or goat I think??
OH MY GOD OH MY FUCKING GOD BERNARD CRIBBINS!!!! I JUST I JUST OH. MY. F U C K I N G . G O D.
Shed actual tears when he came on screen.
augauhaughauag
I'm gonna have to spend all of tomorrow trying to ignore spoilers for Wild Blue Yonder ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
Just thinking about Wild Blue Yonder and the Welsh tradition of Mari Lwyd (the horse skull that visits your door), and the Doctor treating the no-things like evil spirits with the salt and then being worried about invoking a superstition at the End of the Universe…
…and then there’s the captain of the ship, literally a horse skull, knocking at the door, invoking this tradition that is shrouded in mystery and is thought to have been originally meant as a way of warding off evil spirits…
We drifted here, in the lack-of-light, passing no-time. But we would feel it from so far away... your noisy, boiling universe. We want to travel there, to play your vicious games and win.
Wild Blue Yonder
"Wild Blue Yonder" dealt with some of the emotional fallout of the Flux, so I want to rewind a bit and look at what that means for the Doctor.
I know that the Timeless Child and the Flux are contentious topics. I'm not here to argue either way. But now those storylines have decisively not been retconned, and with both of these fresh in my memory, I feel the need to offer some context for anyone who may not have seen it, and to recontextualize it for myself and anyone who has.
NotDonna: You don't know where you're from. The Doctor: How do you know that? How does anyone know? How does Donna know?
In "The Timeless Children", we find out that the Doctor was discovered as a child alone under a wormhole, and adopted by a woman named Tecteun. There was an accident where the Doctor fell from a cliff and regenerated, and subsequently Tecteun performed "experiments" on them to try to understand regeneration. The show minces words about this but she killed a child a whole bunch of times is what happened. Her experiments created the Time Lords and allow them to engineer their regeneration properties. The Doctor has no memory of any of this, and only finds out via the Master and information stored in the Time Lord Matrix.
The Doctor, predictably, doesn't tell anyone about this revelation. She makes a speech to the Master about how this makes her more, we get a single shot of her looking a bit tired in the TARDIS, then she immediately gets thrown in prison.
Ultimately, the Doctor doesn't know where they're from or who their parents are. And the very fact that they're not from Gallifrey is information that no one in the universe should have. Everyone who knew is now dead.
NotDonna: I saw it in your head. The Flux. The Doctor: It destroyed half the universe because of me. We stand here now, on the edge of creation, a creation which I devastated, so yes I keep running, of course I do! How am I supposed to look back on that? NotDonna: It wasn't your fault! The Doctor: I know!
A fun fact about the Flux is that the Doctor did not cause it. So why does he blame himself? Because the person who caused the Flux was Tecteun.
The reason why Tecteun wanted to destroy the universe is because the Doctor interfered with things too much. Too much morality. Too inspirational to people. She calls them a virus. So her solution to the problem of the Doctor is to destroy the universe, with the Doctor inside, and take her ship to a different universe to start fresh. She also was the one to steal all the Doctor's memories of previous lives in the first place. She's dismissive and patronizing and clearly does not care about the Doctor on an emotional level at all. Tecteun is a piece of work, and the implications of her actions and how they've shaped the Doctor have the potential to go deep.
Thirteen doesn't get too much of a chance to react to any of this, because there is plot going on. And shortly after they reunite, Tecteun gets killed by a different villain. So there was no emotional closure in the moment, and there's now no possibility for the Doctor to make sense of her actions. The Doctor does not tell any of her friends about any of these events. She keeps promising to tell Yaz but does not.
"Wild Blue Yonder" is the first time we, as the audience, hear the Doctor discuss the Flux. And their perception of events is skewed at best. The Flux wasn't caused because the Doctor made a mistake and a lot of people were killed, which is what you can argue for many other situations. The Flux and the devastation of the universe was caused by their mother, who promptly turned around and told them it was their fault for being such an interfering nuisance. We know that the Doctor is often an unreliable narrator, but this is beyond that. These are the words of an abused child who has internalized the narrative that the abuse was their fault.
So the Doctor being able to talk about this with Donna, who has seen what happened, who knows him, and tells him that it's not his fault — it means so much to him. He wants it to be her so badly. And then NotDonna laughs in his face. You can see the devastation. He thinks for one moment that he can finally talk about this with his best friend, and it's snatched away from him. He gives himself a moment to break down in the corridor, and then you can see the walls rebuilding as he suppresses it all again.
At the very end of the episode, back in the TARDIS, he's trying very very hard to be nonchalant. I'm curious. The NotDonna could remember all these things that happened to me while we were apart. Can you? Just wondering. Things happened, but I'll be fine. In a million years. It's not a joke.
He wants so badly to be able to talk about this. You can see it in all the lines of his body language. He's keeping himself together but is prepared to fall apart in an instant. He doesn't want to actually tell anyone, but if Donna just magically knew already, and could tell him it wasn't his fault — well, that would make the world of difference. But she doesn't know, and he can't bring himself to tell her. And so the cycle continues.
Oh, I see. When something is gone, it keeps existing.
Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder (2023)
Just thinking about Wild Blue Yonder and the Welsh tradition of Mari Lywd (the horse skull that visits your door), and the Doctor treating the no-things like evil spirits with the salt and then being worried about invoking a superstition at the End of the Universe…
…and then there’s the captain of the ship, literally a horse skull, knocking at the door, invoking this tradition that is shrouded in mystery and is thought to have been originally meant as a way of warding off evil spirits…