Seeing Doubles

Bringing David Tennant back to Doctor WhoThe longest running sci-fi franchise (at least in terms of sheer seasons), Doctor Who has seen cancelations, relaunches, and reboots, but the core of the series remains the same: a madman in a box traveling through time and space. to play a new incarnation of the Doctor -- not his original 10th Doctor form but a new 14th Doctor -- implied a greater story to be told. Why would the Doctor return to one of his former faces if there wasn't something much larger at stake? We were going to get Fourteen for three episodes, a trilogy of 2023 holiday specials, and one would expect those specials would tackle the mystery about his returning face and what it could mean for the series moving forward.

Or not, as the two episodes we've gotten so far -- last week's "The Star Beast" and this week's "Wild Blue Yonder", have seemed reticent to actually explore the matter. Sure, there's been a couple of off-hand comments about it, but none of the actual delving into the mystery, no exploration of why the Doctor would want to return to a familiar old face. It's confusing, to say the least, and not at all what this fan of the series was expecting from the show this time around.

To be clear, I'm not complaining abut the episodes we've gotten so far. The first special was a fun reunion, and "Wild Blue Yonder" is a great, classic Who-style episode. But when you put out this grand mystery you should be expected to actually make it something of a focal point for the length of Fourteen's tenure. We know we only get three episodes, since the last special will end with Tennant's 14th Doctor regenerating into Ncuti Gatwa's 15th, so whatever the creators have planned (most specifically Russell T. Davies and his grand schemes) they need to get into it with the next episode or it's all going to feel flat.

As far as this second special is concerned, though, it is a lot of fun. The Doctor (Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate) crash into the middle of a ship (quite literally appearing in the middle of a room and slamming into a wall) all because, in the previous episode, Donna accidentally spilled coffee all over the TARDIS control console. Stuck on this ship for a while as the TARDIS heals and rebuilds herself, the two decide to go out and explore. What they find is a massive, abandoned, derelict ship. No one is on board except for a single, very slow moving robot. And there's no indication as to what happened.= to everyone else.

Exploring the command deck of the ship, they find that the ship is floating out past the edge of the universe, and that it's be purposefully set into a kind of shut down mode so it can't be used. The Doctor and Donna each take tasks to try and fix the ship and get it moving in the right direction, but as they work, copies of the other two visit each other. They act normal, chatting and acting normal, right up until they say, "my arm's the wrong length." That's when they reveal their copies, and improper ones. They're actually carnivorous race, the "not-things", and they're trying to perfect their copies of the Doctor and Donna so that they can think like them, act like them, and get the ship working properly. And if they do, the universe, all of it, is doomed...

So it does feel weird to have just a normal, standard episode of Doctor Who in the middle of a short, specials season. The series did pull a similar trick back in the day, when Tennant's 10th took a victory lap of specials before he ended his run. So in that regard this doesn't feel so far outside the bounds of the series' structure. But at the same time, Tenth was just adventuring, not knowing his time was coming to an end. Here we have a mystery, something we want answers to, and the specials should regard that, right? Nope. We get a normal, very well done, episode of Doctor Who, and, absolutely, I'm struggling to let that go.

To an extent I can because, yes, this episode is pretty great. The creep factor when each of the clones shows up and starts talking to Donna and the Doctor, helps to set the tone for the episode. What we get are a series of trapped room moments with the Doctor and Donna trying, and failing, to determine if they person they're talking to is real or not. Interestingly Donna is better at the game than the Doctor is, less trusting and better able to see the flaws in the clones. That makes her pretty useful in this adventure and that's great.

The series plays them as a kind of vampire race, and the not-things are legitimately creepy, having weird, shape-shifting powers that keeps the heroes, and the audience, on their toes. Growing, shrinking, changing the appendages, and even melting, these feel like a monster out of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which is apt since, in another setting, this would absolutely feel like a dungeon crawl episode. Two heroes, trapped exploring a series of rooms, looking for the exit. That's a neat concept.

What drives the show, though, is the chemistry of the leads. Tennant and Tate are great together and here they're literally the only actors we see the whole time. They get to play themselves, and evil copies, and it's fun to watch them move back and forth between these two different characters, constantly screwing with the audience as they defy expectations. I enjoyed the performance so much and I don't see how they could have done this episode with a different set of characters from the series. The friendly bond between the Doctor and Donna hasn't really been the same with any other partnering of companions. Two against two wouldn't have worked in Eleven's era since he traveled with Amy and Rory. The bond between Eleven and Clara, or her with Twelve, wasn't the same either. And River would have never fallen for any of this, time traveling herself out of the adventure before it even started. This is a story perfectly crafted for these two characters.

But as good as it is, it does feel like filler. It's great filler, fantastic even. If this were an episode in a larger season of stories, like if Tennant's 14th Doctor got a full series instead of a trilogy of episodes, I wouldn't have a complaint in t he world. Please, slow-play the mystery of why Tennant's face came back. Let us have adventures of just these two hanging out across space and time. That's perfect. But here, with a limited run of episodes... maybe we should have done more exploring of the major mystery. Just maybe.

We have one more special coming and one has to hope there's a good pay off for the mystery. We don't get it here, of course, but if Davies doesn't really have an answer and just writes his usual silliness to get himself out of a corner, I'm going to be disappointed. These are great characters and they really do shine in episodes like this. I just wonder if the build up for this trilogy is going to be as great as the final execution.