We have the second of the 60th anniversary specials, Wild Blue Yonder, and I have to say, not only is this a clear cut winner of being the Fourteenth Doctor’s best story, but this is the best episode I’ve seen from the show in a very long time! And I don’t mean that cynically, this is legit an excellent episode and made these three specials worth it in the end.

Following on from the end of The Star Beast with Donna spilling coffee on the console, and admittedly a silly and not very good pre credits scene with Issac Newton introducing a new running joke that gravity is now mavity (which was funny the first couple times but now seriously needs to be retconned), the TARDIS crashes on a spaceship sat at the very edge of the universe. As the Doctor begins repairs on the TARDIS, the hostile action system kicks in and the TARDIS leaves them behind, meaning something on this quiet and empty ship is so dangerous that it caused the TARDIS to run away.

What I loved about this episode right from the get-go was how gentle the pacing was for the first half or so, given the nonstop pacing of the Chibnall era and even The Star Beast, it was very welcome to have an episode that actually slows down and takes it’s time developing itself as the Doctor and Donna explore this seemingly deserted spaceship and it gives David Tennant and Catherine Tate time to really start reconnecting with nothing around to distract them. Wild Blue Yonder out of all the specials had the least amount of advertising and very little was given away heading in, which understandably led to a lot of speculation about possible surprise appearances given the 60th anniversary celebrations. But while we don’t get anything crowd pleasing, what we get instead works so perfectly with the context of not knowing much going in.

We get one of the best sequences I’ve ever seen in the show where as we go from area to area with the Doctor and Donna exploring this spaceship, we then start to cut back and forth between rooms that are lit in two different colours (blue and gold), made to look like this is part of the exploring montage. But then the Doctor says that very out of place line “My arms are too long” which we then cut to the other room where Donna says the same thing and we get that shocking reveal that Donna’s arms are unnaturally elongated and that this isn’t the real Donna, and at that point it just hits you with the twist that we haven’t been watching a montage, we’ve actually been watching two different conversations happening at once where the Doctor and Donna discover they’ve been talking to alien duplicates of themselves! Creatures that have taken their appearance, but don’t properly understand the physics of this universe and so they keep contorting and growing limbs in different shapes and sizes.

As ridiculous as the Issac Newton opening was, I do see the point of it looking back as the silly tone is mean to lure you into a false sense of security before throwing you into a cosmic horror story as the Doctor and Donna are being chased by these creatures that aren’t properly defined or explained, all we know is that they’re malevolent and can mimic our protagonists, which leads to some tense moments where the Doctor and Donna are split up and seemingly run into each other again, but they can’t be sure if they’re with the monster version or not.

This leads to one of Tennant’s best moments as the Doctor where he seems to open up to Donna about all the emotional baggage he’s been carrying in recent years, especially with the Timeless Child revelation and the Flux event destroying most of the universe, and now he’s happy to have Donna back in his life again, only for Donna to melt into the floor mocking the Doctor and revealing herself as the monster version, which results in the Doctor hiding away somewhere and then just letting out all his anger and frustration. Considering how emotionally closed off the Thirteenth Doctor was with these life altering discoveries she made about herself, it was very satisfying seeing Fourteen just let it out in a very intensely performed scene.

This was just such a feel-good episode, after many years of mostly bad, occasionally decent and a couple good but highly flawed episodes, this one was just a very satisfying watch and one of Modern Who’s strongest outings, also seeing Bernard Cribbins as Wilf one last time cinched it for me.