10 Doctor Who Episodes That Had The Balls To GO THERE

When Russell T Davies returned to Doctor Who for the 60th anniversary, there was much talk about how he would best celebrate the show’s 60 years in an exciting way.

He could have played it safe: bring back all the still-living Doctors and fill the episodes with cameos and fan service. However, given that the previous year marked the BBC’s centenary celebrations with the return of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and First Doctors (along with a host of classic companions, plus the Daleks, Cybermen and Master for good measure), there was a real risk of the show repeating itself with two nostalgic cameo-fests back-to-back.

So what was Mr Davies to do? Bring back the man who really did not want to go, David Tennant, alongside fan-favourite Catherine Tate for a trilogy of specials and lock them in the middle entry entirely by themselves at the edge of the universe.

Wild Blue Yonder abandons big anniversary fanfare for unsettling cosmic body horror. The Doctor and Donna face the 'Not-Things', shape-shifting entities at the edge of creation that copy their forms with grotesque, distorted limbs and warped psychological mind games. There are only two actors and four characters in the entire thing. It almost shouldn't work, but it absolutely does.

It was a massive gamble for a big anniversary, and it would've been so easy to just phone up Matt Smith and have him and Tennant bounce off each other for an hour, as had proved so successful ten years prior – and many fans were clamouring for something similar in 2023.

Instead RTD took a much more daring route, proving that even after six decades, the show’s greatest strength is trapping two brilliant actors in a spaceship to run up and down a corridor.