10 Doctor Who Episodes We Were WAY Too Harsh On

At the time of the 60th Anniversary Specials’ airing, Wild Blue Yonder seemed like a bit of an odd one out. Sandwiched between the return of Donna Noble in The Star Beast and the Toymaker’s return (and Fifteenth Doctor’s arrival) in The Giggle, it was hard not to see the comparatively conventional middle entry as a bit of a placeholder – a single standard adventure to fill the space between two important event episodes.

In the time since though, the fandom has broadly come to view Wild Blue Yonder as the best of 2023’s specials. While the aforementioned big events were certainly exciting to watch live, the episodes that surrounded them weren’t necessarily anything special – and at times arguably struggled under the weight of all the introductions, reintroductions, and major lore changes.

By comparison, Wild Blue Yonder stands out in being simply a very good episode of Doctor Who. It’s intriguing, scary, exciting, and the only real opportunity for David Tennant and Catherine Tate to slip back into their old roles and have a properly traditional Doctor-companion dynamic, unencumbered by bi-generations, returning '60s villains, and half the cast of Series 4.

It's also got Wilf at the end too. Love to see Wilf!

And as the RTD2 era went on it turned out that Wild Blue Yonder might actually be the most important of the three specials, with the Doctor’s salt line having monumental influence on the subsequent series.