Warning: Spoilers for all three Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials to follow.
With no disrespect intended to Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker, it’s fair to say the 10-year stretch from Doctor Who‘s 50th anniversary to its 60th anniversary was a rocky one.
For whatever reason, the eras of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors perhaps didn’t achieve the widespread popularity of what had come before, so that’s why there was unanimous excitement when former showrunner Russell T. Davies was announced to be returning to the series full-time starting in 2023, bringing back David Tennant with him for three birthday specials.
These three specials comprise the entirety of Tennant’s tenure as the Fourteenth Doctor, then, (well, at least for now), and thankfully they do not disappoint. Each special recaptures the spirit of the golden original Tennant/Davies era of the 2000s and reminds us of the overall magic of Doctor Who.
But, hey, we’ve gotta rank them, right? It’s what fans do. So here, after careful deliberation, is each special ranked from “worst” to best.
3. “Wild Blue Yonder”
It goes to show the universal acclaim of each of these episodes that the special bringing up the rear of this list is the one that fans have immediately embraced into their hearts as one of the most atmospheric and dramatic episodes the show has delivered in years.
At once a showcase of Doctor Who‘s newfound Disney-sized budget, allowing for virtually every shot to involve costly CGI, and an intimate two-hander relying on the stellar performances by Tennant and Catherine Tate, “Wild Blue Yonder” is the bottle episode of the specials trilogy and is the most traditionally Who-y of the three. With the TARDIS landing on a creepy, abandoned spaceship and a plot that borrows from Alien and The Thing, it really could come from any era from the series’ past 60 years. And I mean that in the best way.
The one downside of the episode was that, due to intense secrecy surrounding its plot, fans allowed themselves to get carried away with theories about returning Doctors or villains, none of which transpired. “Wild Blue Yonder” is the least celebratory of the the trilogies, then, which necessitates its low ranking, even if it is an effective love letter to the immortality of the classic Doctor Who format.
2. “The Star Beast”
Let’s say it up front. Is “The Star Beast” perfect? No. The way the threat of Donna’s metacrisis meltdown is dealt with in the climax is both bizarrely simple after 15 years of build-up and also handled with a dated and muddled “men are idiots” joke that conflicts with the episode’s beautiful non-binary themes.
And yet I find it impossible not to love every second of “The Star Beast.” Davies’s script work and Tennant and Tate’s portrayals of the Doctor and Donna are so confident and compelling it’s like they’ve never been away. The idea to base the episode around an old comic book story from 1980 (created by Watchmen’s Dave Gibbons, no less) is a genius move, as the adorable but duplicitous Beep the Meep proves to be a hilarious and timely parody of Disney cutesy storytelling.
After the Whittaker era sadly lacked a strong focus on the journeys of its companions, and their relationships with the Doctor, “The Star Beast” rooting its story in the entrenched friendship between the Doctor and Donna is like finding an oasis in the desert. Thanks to this episode, Doctor Who fans everywhere finally knew what it was like to time travel, as we were all taken back to 2008.
1. “The Giggle”
What could be a more special 60th anniversary special than “The Star Beast?” How about one that brings back a villain from the show’s very beginnings, finally does right by an underappreciated classic companion, and only goes and regenerates into a secret multi-Doctor story in its last 15 minutes?
We all knew Neil Patrick Harris was going to be an OTT delight as the Toymaker, and he doesn’t disappoint, making mincemeat of the scenery with his cartoon German accent and Spice Girls dance number. In any regular episode, he’d steal the show. But then we have Tennant breaking our hearts all over again when he’s seemingly about to die again, for the final time… Until he doesn’t.
Yes, in a move that shatters six decades of Whoniverse canon, the Fourteenth Doctor lives on alongside the Fifteenth Doctor, allowing for a thrilling third act that sees Tennant and an instantly electric Ncuti Gatwa team up to save the day. The pair of them have such an exceptional chemistry that it makes you wish they’d rename the series Doctor Whos and keep Tennant around forever.
“The Giggle” may well be the most crowd-pleasing, broadly entertaining episode the show has given us since “The Day of the Doctor” in 2013. In bringing the past 10 years of Doctor Who full circle, then, it seems the recent rockiness is now firmly behind us. Here’s to the next 10 (or 60)!