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Recap / Doctor Who 60th AS "Wild Blue Yonder"

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Doctor Who recap index
Fourteenth Doctor Era
60th Anniversary Specials: 1 | 2 | 3
<<< 2022 Specials | Series 14 >>>

Wild Blue Yonder

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/f9tnw8axmaevm4o.jpeg
♫ Off we go into the wild blue yonder, climbing high into the sun... ♫note 
Written by Russell T Davies
Directed by Tom Kingsley
Air date: 2 December 2023

Donna Noble: There's something on this ship that's so bad, the TARDIS ran away?
The Doctor: Y-Yes.
Donna Noble: Then we go... and kick its arse!

The one where the Doctor and Donna discover that their arms are too long.

This is the second episode of the 2023 Specials trilogy created to celebrate the 60th Anniversary, and the second episode to be broadcast on the Disney+ streaming service. Notable for not having many details revealed prior to its broadcast and "very slightly" following up on several elements of the Chibnall era, including the Flux and the Timeless Child arc.

The year is 1666, and Isaac Newton has decided to go and have a sit down at a nearby apple tree. As he reads beneath it, an apple falls onto his head and he starts to get an idea… That is, until the TARDIS violently crashes into the tree above him. The Doctor and Donna emerge and, in rapid succession, warn him to stay away from London, accidentally tell him he's going to become a "Sir", make an Obligatory Joke about him understanding the "gravity" of the situation, and promptly pop off, leaving a confused Newton to try and remember that delightful word they used. Savity? Havity? Oh that's right. Mavity.

The TARDIS’ next stop is a derelict spaceship. Since the faithful Time Ship is still very much in the middle of blowing up (and playing "Wild Blue Yonder" for some reason), the Doctor sets the ship to start regenerating itself. As the Doctor opens the TARDIS's key cover, Donna notes that she sang "Wild Blue Yonder" in choir, with Miss Bean teaching. Bean loved the song because it sounded cheerful. Her grandfather, Wilf, didn't; it was a war song. The Doctor takes note, leaving his screwdriver in the latch before the two leave to explore the ship's very long corridor, just like the old days. Before they can get too far, however, they hear the TARDIS dematerializing and rush back to see their ride quite literally vanish before their eyes.

As Donna panics, the Doctor tries to calm her down, theorising that the TARDIS reactivated the Hostile Action Displacement System as it repaired itself — the HADS, of course, being a system which causes the ship to flee in the midst of extreme danger. Which, as Donna notes, means they've landed in the middle of extreme danger. Realising that they need to deal with whatever is on the ship in order for the TARDIS to come back, the two head back into the hallway, which seems to shift and change around them, timed with a loudspeaker occasionally speaking strange words they don’t understand due to the lack of the TARDIS’ translation circuit, while the Doctor can only theorise it might be a countdown of some kind. They also find an old, rusted robot which is walking very slowly down a long corridor, also in time with the words.

Arriving at the bridge, they realise that the ship has seemingly fallen through a wormhole to the very edge of the universe. No starlight reaches them there, and getting back to Earth would take over a trillion years at best. More disturbingly, the ship registers no life signs, the last known activity was when the airlock door opened and closed three years ago, and there is a strange banging they can't find the source of. The Doctor and Donna separate to repair individual components of the ship. While Donna works, the air chills and the Doctor re-enters the room. The two talk about her family — Donna wonders how long Rose and the others will wait for them in the alleyway and when exactly they'll stop, but notes that Wilf would likely never give up on them. The Doctor responds that he can’t wait to meet him, before cryptically stating that his arms are too long. At the same time, the Doctor is... still working away. The air chills. Donna enters. The two talk about Gallifrey, and whether he misses his old home. The Doctor notes that it's complicated and asks her if she's sure she's finished her work in the other room. Donna only notes that her arms are too long. She's not wrong; her left arm is massively disproportionate, stretching out from her body. Horrified, he quickly tries to comfort her before considering that, just maybe, she isn't the real Donna.

The Doctor calls for her, leading Donna to briefly wonder just how he's managing to throw his voice before the "Doctor" stands... and reveals that his arms are, likewise, oversized, with his knuckles dragging the floor. She rushes out to find the real Doctor, both cornered by their duplicates. The two fakes introduce themselves as the Not-Things, beings from beyond the universe who are trying (and failing) to copy the pair's forms. Although the Doctor tries to reason with them, the Not-Things become more and more hostile, until he and Donna are forced to flee down the corridor, with the Not-Things in hot pursuit, slowly growing in size until they become tangled, wedging themselves between the corridor's walls. The Doctor, being the Doctor, takes a moment to inspect them before a hand — Donna's hand — plops to the floor. They're getting loose. The two try to escape into a nearby vent when the ship's walls shift, separating them yet again. One Doctor reunites with one Donna in two separate rooms and, now knowing what they're up against, they attempt to interrogate each other.

In one room, the Doctor removes his tie, letting it clatter to the ground — the Not-Things may view clothes the same way they do skin, after all. After a bit of back-and-forth, both determine that they need to provide knowledge that the Not-Things don't have access to, which is easier said than done. In another room, Donna asks where the Doctor's from, and the Doctor, naturally, responds "Gallifrey". Except Donna knows that's not the truth. It turns out, when the Metacrisis reactivated, Donna gained all of the Doctor's memories and experiences from her departure, including the events of the Flux and the history of the Timeless Child. The Doctor spills his guilt and goes in for a hug... and Not-Donna's form falls apart. The Doctor, heartbroken, runs off. Meanwhile, Donna goes on an extended monologue about the specifics of her birth, noting that she's "definitely the real Donna", before observing that the "Doctor's" tie has gone — completely gone, like it's stopped existing. Which it has. The Not-Doctor performs an act of extreme contortionism, spitefully asking why the Doctor would even consider travelling with someone as stupid as Donna, before crawling after her, Exorcist-style. The Doctor then takes a moment for him to finally take in the pain and losses he obtained from his more softer previous incarnation (such as the fact that his own "species" were wiped out by the Master, the fact that said species abused him for years as a child, the Doctor himself not being an actual Gallifreyan to begin with, and finally, failing to stop the Flux from happening, resulting in half of the universe being nuked), as he painfully screams and throws an aggressive fit.

Both the real and fake Doctor and Donnas meet up in the same room, leaving them to figure out who's who. One of the Doctors sets off on a Motor Mouth tangent, and Donna exasperatedly notes that she must be the real one, since she's so stupid she can't keep up. One of the Doctors notes she's called herself stupid, and both determine how very Donna that is. "Except," the Doctor says, "Donna does not think she's stupid." Or, rather, she does, but it's entirely possible for person to see themselves as stupid one moment, and the next believe equally strongly they're brilliant. People do it all the time. The Doctor and Donna hug and hold off the Not-Things by leaving a line of salt between them — demons and monsters can't cross a line of salt without counting every grain. Yes, it's a superstition, the Doctor notes, but it's also true. After a tense moment, Not-Donna begins counting the salt. The Doctor, naturally, has questions — the first being, if they came from nothing, as they claimed, why are they so mean? The Not-Doctor explains that they were drawn towards and moulded by the strong hatred, anger, and war emanating from the "normal" universe. With that knowledge, they plan to return to the universe and wage war — one that they will "win". Donna protests that there's more to the universe than hate and war, but the Not-Donna simply responds that "love letters don't travel very far." "And neither," she adds, "do your lies." She blows the line of salt away and the Not-Things (now equipped with razor-sharp fangs) advance towards the Doctor and Donna.

The two escape back to the bridge, where they block off the Not-Things approach with a glass wall. Here, Donna begins asking questions: If the Not-Things really wanted to become perfect copies of them, why come out and scare them? Why not just sit in a corner observing them, never making their presence known? The Doctor realises that the Not-Things need them to be afraid — adrenaline keeps them thinking, even makes them think faster, making them easier to copy. The way to stop them is to not think. Simple, right? Unfortunately, the Doctor and Donna are on a ship full of mysteries: Who opened the airlock? What's with those words on the loudspeaker? What's with the robot? And what... is that banging? The Doctor, after some resistance, ultimately gives in as the Not-Things encourage him to "THINK THINK THINK THINK THINK THINK THINK!" in chorus.

The Doctor opens the moonroof to reveal... the ship's captain. Or, rather, her corpse caught in the Gravity Field (sorry, Mavity Field). It turns out she was responsible for the airlock door opening three years ago, having thrown herself into the void. Looking into the Not-Doctor's face, the Doctor realises that neither of the Not-Things actually know why she did this. The Doctor begins to figure the mystery out, verbalizing every discovery (despite Donna's obvious displeasure, she knows what his brain is like). If the Not-Things don't know why she did it, that must mean they weren't done copying her, and knew she had a plan to stop them that they couldn't know about. With the Not-Things egging him on, the Doctor puts the pieces together. The captain knew the Not-Things couldn't understand slowness, so she programmed everything to be slow. The words, the robot, even the ship has been slowly changing itself to become a very slow... bomb. The Doctor was right all along, it is a countdown, and that robot is only a few numbers from blowing the whole ship to hell.

As the Not-Things run to stop it, the Doctor changes the countdown to speed up, before the two set off after the imposters. Donna becomes embroiled in a fight with the Not-Donna, but the Doctor nearly catches up to his copy. Abandoning his attempts to copy the Doctor's form, the Not-Doctor drops to all fours, quickly outpacing him. Exhausted, the Doctor realises that, provided the Not-Doctor doesn't reach the robot, the danger would end the moment the countdown did. And a sentient Time Machine would know that. Cue the TARDIS, quite literally like an angel descending from heaven, as it rematerializes. Jumping on board, the Doctor navigates it towards the two Donnas à la Marty McFly, and begins asks them two questions: "Who is Miss Bean?" and "Why is Miss Bean funny?" One Donna attempts to intellectualize it. The other responds that "It just is." The Doctor takes the latter aboard and takes off.

One small snag: he's left the real Donna behind. The countdown reaches its end and the ship explodes — just far away enough for Donna to helplessly watch the approaching fireball. Meanwhile, on the TARDIS, the Not-Donna slowly approaches the Doctor, only for him to turn and tell her that something showed up on the TARDIS scans — Her arms are too long. The TARDIS promptly returns to the exploding ship and ejects the Not-Donna, picking up the real one moments before it's is fully engulfed.

As the pair finally head back to Earth, the Doctor becomes concerned that his invocation of a superstition at the edge of the universe may have had some dire effects, but shrugs it off. He also asks if Donna has the memories of everything that happened to the Doctor in the fifteen years they were separated, as the Not-Donna claimed, but Donna denies this.

Returning to the alley a day or two after they left, they are overjoyed to find none other then Wilfred Mott waiting for them. Happily reuniting with the Doctor and Donna, Wilf exclaims that he had always had faith that he would return, just in time to save them all. Wait, what? Right on cue, the shops around them begin exploding and people on the street start running around and fighting each other at random. Wilf explains that everything's "going mad", and begs the Doctor to save them. As a plane crashes above them, the trio rush behind the TARDIS for protection.

To be concluded in "The Giggle".

Tropes:

  • Ambiguously Bi: Averted, in that the subtext is finally made text here. The Doctor admits to Donna that he found the young Isaac Newton hot, clearly surprising himself. Donna mentions that everyone knew, but chose not to bring it up.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Donna claims that, while she did see all of the Doctor's memories, it was far too overwhelming for her to get any details. On the other hand, she's very gentle in asking if the Doctor is okay, which raises the possibility that she did understand the memories, but knows that the Doctor isn't ready to talk about everything that's happened.
  • Ambiguous Syntax: The Not-Donna briefly wonders how many knees a human is supposed to have. Not-Doctor replies "Two".
    Not-Donna: Two in total, or two on each leg?
  • Arc Words: "Slow" , as it ties into the Captain's ultimate attempt to stop the Not-Things.
  • Artistic License – History: Either no-one on the episode's production team seemed to know that the word "gravity" was already well-known to Isaac Newton (predating him by thousands of years, as it was derived from the Latin word "gravitas", which means "weight") or the Rule of Funny in regards to "Mavity" overruled it.
  • Bait-and-Switch: After licking some goopy machinery parts, the Doctor gags and chokes, leading the audience to believe that he's poisoned, with the background music making sure you believe it. He then reveals that he was teasing Donna, and goes back to investigating the machine parts.
  • Beneath the Mask:
    • The Not-Thing impersonating Donna reveals that she's still got a lot of self-worth issues going on. Donna agrees that smacking her in the face is "cathartic".
    • It turns out that the Doctor is very much not shrugging off the destruction of half the universe by the Flux, no matter how well Thirteen hid it; Fourteen is clearly traumatized by the event, and especially the fact that it was indirectly the result of the Doctor's own actions.
  • Beyond the Impossible: The TARDIS, once again, brings the Doctor and a companion to a place and/or time it isn't supposed to go. Previously, it was trillions of years into the future, after all the stars have burnt out. This time, it's beyond the edge of the universe; so far out, light hasn't gotten out there yet.
  • Big Red Button: The ship's self-destruct is activated via one of these.
  • Bluff the Imposter: Attempted, but fails as the Not-Things have already copied all of the Doctor and Donna's memories. They still don't quite understand how people think, but they're able to pick up on details, and are learning.
  • Body Horror: Justified, on two fronts:
    • Because they are beings from outside the universe, the Not-Things have no real concept of shape, size, or mass, and are basically figuring things out as they go.
    • It's also revealed that the Not-Things explicitly want to terrify both the Doctor and Donna to make them think faster, enabling the Not-Things to copy their brainwaves more quickly.
  • Borrowed Catchphrase:
    • After accidentally blabbing to Isaac Newton that he'll one day become a "Sir", the Doctor uses River Song's "Spoilers" to excuse himself.
    • Donna uses the Doctor's "Allons-y" ("as the idiots say") catchphrase.
  • Brick Joke: Donna says she figures, while her mother and Rose will just move on if she doesn't come back, Shaun and her grandpa will camp out in the alleyway for the rest of their lives. On their return to the modern day, she finds Wilfred is, in fact, there waiting for them.
  • The Bus Came Back: Bernard Cribbins makes a return at the very end as Wilfred Mott.
  • Call-Back:
  • The Cameo: Wilf shows up at the end, clearly happy to see both the Doctor and Donna, before telling the both of them that things have gone horribly wrong.
  • Character Catchphrase: "Don't, really, don't" makes a return here, with the Doctor attempting to discourage dropping her "Appreciate the gravity of the situation" pun before ultimately joining in on it himself.
  • Character Development: The Doctor shows theirs from all the previous revival series Doctors, who would've refused to even acknowledge their angst until directly confronted with it. Here, Fourteen does admit to Donna that stuff happened and he is emphatically not okay with it, rather than trying to claim he's fine.
  • Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Doctor and Donna making it back to Earth, although the TARDIS misses it by a day or two. Sounds fine, right? Wrong. Wilfred complains about the world possibly coming to an end (again), as chaos ensues all around them.
  • Continuity Nod:
  • Cosmic Retcon: One of the most trivial examples in the series — The Doctor and Donna accidentally alter history so the word "gravity" is instead "mavity".
  • Dissonant Serenity: The Not-Doctor, when breaking down, is a big fan of employing this when he's not going Large Ham.
  • Distinction Without a Difference: Donna expresses disbelief that the Doctor doesn't know what the intercom is saying because he knows "twenty-seven million languages". The Doctor corrects her:
    The Doctor: I know 57000000205... but not this one.
  • Drama-Preserving Handicap: Thanks to the HADS, the TARDIS takes off, taking the sonic screwdriver and its translation circuits with it, making things difficult for the Doctor and Donna.
  • Dutch Angle: Used as the Doctor and Donna explore the ship's corridors.
  • Eldritch Location: The edge of the universe is where the light of the stars hasn't reached and the walls of what's real and not are much thinner, to the point where the Doctor briefly wonders if introducing a superstition is a bad thing.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
    • As the Doctor explains the ins and outs of the HADS, Donna correctly deduces that the TARDIS has landed in the middle of hostile action, which naturally gives the Doctor pause.
    • The Not-things exploit this trope, as the more their victims think, the better they are able to copy them, including their memories and thinking patterns. For the naturally curious Doctor, this means the Not-things get closer to understanding the ship captain's Thanatos Gambit at the same time he does.
  • Exposition Beam: Turns out when, she became the DoctorDonna again, Donna also got all the memories of everything the Doctor had had happen to them between "Journey's End" and the previous episode, all at once. She claims she was unable to make out any details, though the Not-Thing's questions to the Doctor earlier cast at least some suspicion on that.
  • Extremely Short Timespan: In the time that the Doctor and Donna have been away ("a day or two out"), a Hate Plague has somehow managed to take over the entire world. Granted, it's not surprising that the plague worked so quickly, given who's revealed to be behind it in the next episode.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Both the Doctor and Donna are a bit too busy working on the ship's mechanisms to note that the person they're talking to has a problem with their arms being a little too long, and Donna thinks the "Doctor" saying this is just him griping about his current appearance.
  • Failsafe Failure: Once again, the Hostile Action Displacement System is great for protecting the TARDIS, and utter crap at protecting its crew.
  • Fatal Flaw: The Not-Things have a pretty shaky grasp of how reality is supposed to work, particularly regarding the passage of time and how sequences of events relate to each other.
    • Donna is able to unmask the Not-Doctor because his tie vanished after he dropped it due to not realizing it should continue existing when separated from him.
    • The ship's captain set the self-destruct to detonate extremely slowly, with the implication that the Not-Things would've stopped it if it had run at normal speed, as the long pauses between steps of the detonation prevented them from understanding what was happening.
  • Faux Affably Evil: The Not-Things. When the Doctor and Donna encounter them, they speak quite conversationally about trying to understand the forms they're imitating, but then immediately grow in size and attempt to kill the Doctor and Donna. Later on, they reveal their true, nasty colours.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Early on, the Doctor briefly posits that the untranslated speech coming through the loudspeakers could be a countdown.
    • Not-Doctor complains that the arms are the hardest for them to replicate perfectly. Despite having otherwise perfected copying her counterpart, Not-Donna is exposed in the TARDIS because her wrists were less than a millimeter longer than they're supposed to be.
  • Free Wheel: The hovercart doesn't have wheels, but, when it falls apart, the effect is achieved by one of the headlights falling out and rolling away.
  • Ghost Ship: The mystery of the week; a giant spaceship at the absolute end of space, with no crew and a mysterious voice announcing something, and an odd banging noise every now and then.
  • Glamour Failure: The Not-Things suffer this throughout the story, and it's what the now-infamous "my arms are too long" line stems from: the Not-Doctor's hands have grotesquely enlarged and expanded to the point where the Doctor's knuckles are dragging on the floor, and Not-Donna's left arm has stretched to the point where it's comparable to a spaghetti noodle. And that's just the first example.
  • Grandfather Paradox: Donna and the Doctor introducing the word "gravity" to Isaac Newton leads to him misremembering the word as "mavity," so they say "mavity" instead for the rest of the episode.
  • Hate Plague: For the Cliffhanger ending, a restaurant explodes, and then the restaurant staff start randomly fighting. Then everybody starts fighting as Wilf tells the Doctor and Donna that things have gone to hell since they've been gone.
  • Heroic BSoD: Donna goes through one as she tries to Face Death with Dignity, and the Doctor and Donna have a very understandable one once their back in the TARDIS.
  • Heroic Suicide: The unnamed captain of the ship airlocked herself to prevent the imposters from copying her and learning her plan to destroy them via the ship's time-delayed self-destruct mechanism.
  • Humanoid Abomination: A deconstruction. The Not-Things are alien beings from beyond our universe... which means they have basically no understanding of it and a severely limited ability to act within it. ("Oh, I see! When something is gone, it keeps existing.") The threat comes not from their eldritch nature, but from the risk of them shedding their eldritch nature and becoming a normal part of the world.
  • Humans Are Bastards: The reason why the Not-Things turned out so misanthropic — echoes of our faraway universe influenced the Not-Things to emulate the worst aspects of humanity.
    Donna: We are more than that!
    Not-Donna: Love letters don't travel very far.
  • Imposter Forgot One Detail: Done twice.
    • Not-Doctor forgets to keep his "tie" in existence when talking to Donna. This is what clues her in to his fakery.
    • Not-Donna nearly fools the Doctor into leaving Donna to die... until he realizes her wrists are 0.06 millimeters too wide.
  • In Spite of a Nail: Had the Doctor and Donna not crashed on the ship, it still would have exploded — it would've just happened slower.
  • Ironic Echo: Meets a Call-Back to Ten's last adventure when Not-Thing Donna taunts the Doctor by describing the Doctor as "having owned" the universe. Ten expressed the opposite sentiment to the Simms Master.
  • Isn't It Ironic?: Discussed — the contrast between the use of the bright, cheery melody of "Wild Blue Yonder" in Donna's school and its origin as a war song is brought up several times, and even manages to be a minor plot point.
  • Jaw Drop: Played for Horror. The Not-Thing Doctor's jaw drops onto the floor when he's still getting the hang of taking the shape of the Doctor's body. Given that this is a realistic show (and not a cartoon), this jaw drop is incredibly uncanny, let alone nightmarish to begin with.
  • Jump Cut: Played with. At first, it seems the scene is cutting between Donna and the Doctor as they are repairing the ship's systems, with the implication that a short period of time has passed between shots, as if one character is following the other into one of two opposing rooms as they switch between tasks.note  However, it is revealed that each of them is talking to a false copy of the other, the scenes are playing out in real time, and neither of the genuine characters has moved from their initial location.
  • Jump Scare: As Donna's stuck in the bowels of the ship, with the lights out, all on her own... one of the doors slams shut.
  • Lame Pun Reaction: The Doctor tries to stop Donna making a "the gravity of the situation" pun when meeting Isaac Newton... and joins in when she finally makes it.
  • Lampshade Hanging: When the Doctor and Donna find themselves in Isaac Newton's time, Donna asks him if he's got the TARDIS' destination set to "famous".
  • Language Equals Thought: The Doctor tells Donna that 21st-century English just isn't capable of describing the concept of the very edge of the universe or what's beyond... yet.
  • Leitmotif:
    • In-universe: The "Wild Blue Yonder" song becomes one for the TARDIS, playing at the moment it crashes into the ship, and at the end when it reappears.
    • Out-of-universe: "Donna's Theme", "The Doctor Forever", and "I Am the Doctor" get several new variations, as do "This is Gallifrey" and "Every Christmas is Last Christmas". Segun Akinola's Flux motif also crops up when the Doctor confesses his guilt towards setting the Flux on the universe.
    • The music at the episode's cliffhanger, when people start fighting each other in the street, is very reminiscent of Murray Gold's soundtrack for Years and Years, a show which featured similar depictions of a collapsing society descending into violence.
  • Madness Mantra: "My arms are too long" and "Think" for both the Not-Things.
  • Meaningful Echo: When it seems that the Not-Donna has successfully infiltrated the TARDIS, the Doctor throws "Your arms are too long" back in her face.
  • Minimalist Cast: Aside from Sir Isaac Newton and his maid in the Cold Open, as well as Wilf's appearance and a few extras at the end of the episode, David Tennant and Catherine Tate are the only actors who appear.
  • Mirror Match: The Doctor and Donna go up against two things wearing their faces.
  • More Teeth than the Osmond Family: When the Not-Things have nearly perfected their forms, they are able to bare incredibly sharp, vampiric-looking fangs, perfect for killing their opponents. Of course, they also bare them once they've been caught as imposters.
  • Near-Villain Victory: The Doctor picked the wrong Donna to bring onto the TARDIS and would have unleashed a highly malevolent force on the universe had the TARDIS scanners not noticed that the Not-Donna's wrists were 0.06 mm too long. He then promptly flies back to the ship, dumps the Not-Donna out, and picks up the real Donna just before the explosion would've reached her.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: At the end, the Doctor speculates that invoking a superstition at the very edge of reality might allow something to get in. He then shrugs it off, but next episode shows his fear was justified.
  • Noodle Incident: The Doctor once spent three years in orbit because he could "never land anywhere" before finally deciding to turn off the HADS.
  • No Ontological Inertia: An interesting exploited example. The real Donna identifies the Not-Doctor when it takes off its tie to distinguish itself from the real Doctor, only for the tie to wink out of existence. When Donna notices this, the Not-Doctor curses itself for not realizing that things that are separated from a whole will continue to exist.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: The... things from outside reality, whatever they are. What is revealed just makes them even more unnerving.
  • Not So Above It All:
    • When the TARDIS accidentally appears when an apple fell on Isaac Newton's head, the Fourteenth Doctor tries to stop Donna from making a terrible pun about the circumstances before chiming in himself when she says she hopes Isaac Newton understands "the gravity of the situation".
    • The Doctor is also not above pretending to choke when eating an unknown substance to scare Donna.
  • Obligatory Joke: Donna seeing Isaac Newton causes her to make a comment about "the gravity of the situation".
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The ship's captain was able to identify the threat of the Not-Things, figure out how they worked, and calmly set a slow self-destruct before walking out the airlock three years before the Doctor and Donna crash-landed on the ship.
  • Oh, Crap!: Donna and the Not-Things react this way when the Doctor reveals the ship's self-destruct was activated and the entire vessel is a bomb about to go off.
  • Omniglot: The Doctor claims to know 57,000,000,205 languages, but not the one used on the ship.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Since the crew and captain are dead, the robot's true name is lost to time. Donna dubs it "Jimbo" and the name sticks.
  • Ontological Mystery: The Doctor and Donna find themselves in a very large, empty spaceship where weird things are happening and have to figure out why. Except they realise too late that, if the Not-Things know what they know, they shouldn't work out what's really happening.
  • Orange/Blue Contrast: When the Not-things initially confront their counterparts, Donna is in a room awash with the orange glow of the filament panels, while the Doctor is fixing water pipes in another room appropriately tinted blue. The episode frequently cuts between the two rooms to make the contrast evident. For what it matters, the rest of the ship has a greenish-aquamarine glow.
  • Our Wormholes Are Different: We don't know much about it, but it's said that one transported the ship to the edge of the universe.
  • Powering Villain Realization: The Not-Things' ability to copy people is based on their confusion and fear. The Doctor and Donna try to calm down and silence their thoughts when they realize this, but the Not-Things are able to goad them enough that it doesn't work. The previous captain, however, was able to stay completely calm and set up the self-destruct mechanism without them copying her memories of doing so.
  • Queer Establishing Moment: The Fourteenth Doctor agrees with Donna that Isaac Newton was hot, and then realises that this reveals something about his sexual orientation in this incarnation.
  • Race Lift: Isaac Newton, who was Caucasian, is played by Nathaniel Curtis, who is South Asian.
  • Retcon: Way back when, the Fourth Doctor claimed he was responsible for Isaac Newton's incident with the apple. The opening has Newton evidently stumble upon the apple moment on his own.
  • The Reveal: The cause of the intermittent banging noise is the body of the ship's captain, who sacrificed herself to trap the Not-Things on the ship long enough to kill them, occasionally colliding with the windows of the ship.
  • Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: The Doctor still remembers the word gravity even though it's been retconned into mavity.
  • Running Gag: Due to Isaac misremembering "gravity" as "mavity", history is permanently altered, with Donna expressing verbal confusion as to what a "gravity field" is, and the Doctor having to quickly correct himself.
  • Running on All Fours: The Doctor is about to catch up with the Not-Doctor, but the later drops on all fours and shapeshifts just enough for the stance to provide much greater speed than his pursuer.
  • Salt Solution: Invoked. The Doctor stalls the Not-Things by briefly convincing them that the superstition that malevolent beings cannot cross a line of salt without first counting every grain (also invoking a common vampire weakness) is true at the edge of the universe.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The TARDIS does this, thanks to the HADS function. The Doctor explains that the HADS is a defence mechanism that ensures the TARDIS's safety in the event they land in hostile territory and that he disabled the function when he was stuck in a planet's orbit for three years. The HADS is reactivated as the TARDIS begins rebuilding itself and is absent for most of the episode until the very end.
  • Self-Destruct Mechanism: The ship is equipped with one that can be programmed to run very slowly. As in, it's only just reaching the end of the countdown three years after being activated.
  • Series Continuity Error:
    • Back in "The Pirate Planet", the Fourth Doctor claimed he dropped apples on Isaac Newton's head and then taught him the concept of gravity over dinner. He doesn't appear here when the TARDIS crashes into Newton's tree.
    • The Doctor says nobody has been to the edge of the universe before but the edge of the universe has been visited quite a few times in the franchise.
    • The TARDIS's departure is stated to be the reason why the translation field isn't kicking in, even though the last time the TARDIS fled via the HADS, the translation field not only remained active, but was explicitly pointed out and explained as the Doctor's companion at the time was only just learning about it. note 
  • Shapeshifter Baggage: The Not-Things can increase their sizes by absorbing heat and converting it into mass.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sizeshifter: The Not-Things can alter their shape and size. It takes them a while to get fully acclimated to their new shape, though it's unclear how much of this was done to terrify both the Doctor and Donna to feast on their brainwaves.
  • Sniff Sniff Nom: Investigating the ship's systems, the Doctor removes a piece of machinery covered in goop. He sniffs it, sniffs it again, and then he licks it.
  • Something Only They Would Say:
    • Attempted, but the flaw is pointed out pretty quickly; if it's something only the person saying it would know, then how the hell's the other party supposed to know whether it's right or not? And if it's something they both know, the Not-Beings know it as well.
    • The Doctor appears to have come up with one that works at the last minute, asking the Donnas why "Mrs Bean" is funny. One comes up with a rather long explanation, the other says "It just is!" Unfortunately, while that appears to be a perfect Donna response, it turns out the real Donna was overthinking it.
  • Spot the Imposter: Done numerous times throughout the episode once the Doctor and Donna become aware of the Not-Things' abilities, with each attempting to discern whether the other is real when they're separated, or when confronted by two versions of the other. It culminates at the finale when the Doctor fails to pick the real Donna, briefly taking Not-Donna aboard the TARDIS, only to realize just in time that her wrist is a fraction of a millimetre too long, letting him travel back and save her just in time.
  • Thanatos Gambit: The unnamed ship captain sets a self-destruct sequence at an incredibly slow rate in order to kill the Not-things, and, to prevent them from learning through her, she kills herself by jumping out of the airlock.
  • The Teaser: This episode opens in 1666, with the Doctor and Donna, mid-crash flight, encountering Isaac Newton by crashing into the famous apple tree.
  • Thousand-Yard Stare: Both Not-Things adopt this when they break The Masquerade, although it's far more noticeable on the Doctor's duplicate.
  • Transforming Conforming: The Not-Things begin to experience this drawback as they become closer to perfect copies of the Doctor and Donna. Initially, they can grow to gargantuan size and are too dangerous to face directly, but Donna manages to deck her counterpart with a single punch by the end of the episode.
  • Translator Microbes: Subverted — without the TARDIS, the Doctor and Donna don't have them, so the ship's language is untranslated. This means that what the intermittent announcements are actually saying is unclear, providing the first mystery of the episode.
  • Troll:
    • The Doctor briefly pretends that the substance he licked briefly incapacitates him, only to bounce back and laugh.
    • The Not-Donna is a much more malicious version of this, preying on the Doctor's insecurities surrounding his history as the Timeless Child and his failure to stop the Flux.
  • Trust Password: Subverted. When attempting to determine why "Mrs Bean" is funny, one Donna attempts to intellectualize why "Mrs Bean" is funny and the other responds "it just is". The Doctor takes the latter Donna aboard the TARDIS... only to reveal that he's left the real Donna behind.
  • Undercrank: Utilized when the Not-Doctor bends over backwards in an act of contortionism to sell the Uncanny Valley nature of the creature.
  • Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: A non-physical variant — the Not-Things use the Doctor's innate curiosity about the ship to get him to think, which (as Donna notes) ultimately plays right into their hands and allows the Not-Doctor to figure out how the ship's captain intends to stop them.
    The Doctor: You know what my head's like, Donna. Once I start having ideas...
    Not-Doctor: Then I have ideas.
  • Villain Ball: Subverted. Donna asks why the Not-Things are going out of their way to emotionally terrorize the pair rather than, say, replicating them in a remote corner of the ship without ever drawing attention to themselves. Turns out, the fear and confusion are an essential part of their plan.
  • Wham Line: At the end, when the Doctor and Donna meet Wilf again. It's all very heartwarming as the Doctor catches up with his old friend, and then:
    Wilf: I never lost faith! I said, "He won't let us down, he'll come back and save us!"
  • Wham Shot: When the Doctor takes one of the Donnas with him, the other stands there yelling he's taken the wrong one. Initially, it comes across as the fake still trying to trick him... until the Donna in the TARDIS flashes a Psychotic Smirk, confirming that she is the Not-Donna.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: Just thinking can give the Not-Things more power.
"Your arms are too long."
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
BERNARD CRIBBINS
1928 — 2022

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