I didn’t understand it either.
I did understand Rose shared a psychic link with Donna. Somehow that allowed the dangerous memory mojo from killing Donna. That energy transferred into Rose.
How her gender identification factors into that is a mystery.
Doctor Who requires hanging on and enjoying the ride. Details are often fabricated from the writers pen. A police box travels through time, but a hiccup makes it arrive at a critical moment and place. So the Doctor can save the day. 
When Donna started glitching in the past, it happened to be when she was saying the word “binary”. Here is a joke clip based on that moment, posted on Youtube 15 years ago.
Since entirely by coincidence the word they had her repeating 15 years ago happens to have a significant social meaning today, they decided to do something clever with it. It is a version of the “I can be killed by no man” thing.
Of course, that was added to later on when they asserted that nobody that “presents as male” can concieve of just letting a problem go, but a woman and a non-binary can (and then they just stopped having the problem through the magic power of being not male) which is a whole other thing.
I think people are taking that a bit too seriously- one of Donna’s key characteristics is that she doesn’t take the Doctor seriously: she loves him platonically, and trusts him implicitly, but she doesn’t adore him as a demiGod. It’s perfectly in character for her to tease him for his errors and ding him when she’s outsmarted him (particularly when she’s in DoctorDonna mode and explicitly cleverer than him due to Time Lord knowledge and humsn cussedness) - and that’s how I read Donna and Rose’s statement that a male-presenting person couldn’t figure out how to shed the dangerous metacrisis energy. She’s chaffing him, like always.
That’s right. The trans status of Rose was incidental to her status as the offspring of the Doctor/Donna.
You’re missing the point: Doctor/Donna was male and female as one. Rose had male DNA and a female body. That’s why she could do what she did.
I still laugh at Rise of The Cybermen episode when Rose’s dad calls “come here Rose” and it’s a Yorkie.
Rose’s crestfallen face 
If I’m merely repeating what you intended, I apologize.
I took this as a slam on men, possibly white men. Men tend to keep power and try and find a way to use it for their (good) reasons. There must be a way to keep the power AND do good with it. It would never occur to a man to just give up the power and walk away.
That was my take on it.
I think Stargate SG-1 was great at this. They would refer to old episodes and make it mean something else when looked at a different way. Or mock themselves for something they had happen and didn’t put enough thought into it. Wormhole X-Treme comes to mind.
I like that they were able to tell the new story by going back and using something that had happened previously, intentional or not. A great callback to something previous and also brings it forward to now.
Watched the second episode and found it brilliant! I enjoyed it a lot! Again, fun energy!
It makes me sad to think that Smith, Capaldi, and Whittaker never got someone like RTD writing for them. A few good things here and there during their time as the Doctor but not as consistent as what happened during RTD’s years.
Also very subtly when Donna advises the Doctor something like “you can wear a suit that tight up to the age of 35…and no further.”
Which would be about David Tennant’s age when he last played the Doctor like 15 years ago.
The Wild Blue Yonder
I liked this episode quite a bit, felt like a proper stand alone Doctor Who episode. I actually preferred this one to the first one.
Did anyone else watch yet?
Nice to see Wilf again, by the way. They filmed the scene with him back in July of 2022. I wonder if they knew he was ill and wanted to show him again, especially him getting closure by seeing the Doctor one more time.
I want whatever Russel is smoking.
Holy crap that was so imaginative that it made my head hurt trying to keep up.
How in the hell can someone dream up a story like this? Brilliant, It’s right up there with The Silence.
The Doctor is noticeably more contemplative and sometimes seems bewildered by the peril that he’s in. There are occasional flashes of exuberance and joy. David is doing a great job portraying the two sides of the Doctor’s personality.
I haven’t seen this somber side of the Doctor since he (Matt Smith) was facing the trip to Trenzalore.
Is.tnere only one more Tennant episode? Then we bid farewell to David and Catherine? The new guy has the Christmas special? It’s usually used to introduce a new Doctor.
Nice seeing Wilf one last time.
David’s older face suits the Doctor quite well. He’s more reminiscent of the original Doctors.
David and Catherine are close in age. She’s almost 54 and he’s 52.
Probably watched a few of the hundreds of other times the plot device has been used before?
I believe there were a lot of hints about the Doctor’s history hidden in the dialog between the characters and the replicants. Donna knows a lot more than she admits. They already told us that Rose shares those buried memories with her. I expect that will be important in the up coming season.
I’m a little surprised the Doctor’s painful Time War memories are back in the narrative. I thought that had ended with Chris Eccleston’s Doctor. Although Matt Smith expressed a lot of grief and weariness in his last season. Unless he’s done something horrible more recently?
I wish they’d bring back Doctor Who Confidental. I would have enjoyed seeing the blue screen production for the spaceship. What set pieces were really there? The real doors and elevated slides textured with blue screen were a interesting trick.
The references in this episode were to last season’s Flux and Timeless Child plotlines I think
I’ll look up the episode summaries and catch up. I quit watching Doctor Who after Matt left. I did watch a couple episodes with each new Doctor. I’m not up to date on those backstories
Thanks
They have Doctor Who Unleashed on BBCThree. Which probably doesn’t help.
Youtube has a few parts
That’s what I was hoping to see. Production is always interesting.
Bernard Cribbins appeared quite alert and well in the interview. I’m surprised he passed away so soon afterwards. At least he was working till the end.
My prediction holds:
Tenant will regress back into Jodie Whittaker, who will then properly regenerate into the next Doctor.
We’ll see in a week.
I enjoyed it! Lots of fun! Loved the villains and what was happening. Also, reintroducing HADS!
I also watched some of the BTS stuff, it popped up on YouTube for me, and like listening to RTD talk about it. I got the book where he talked about writing the Christmas special with Kyle Minogue and it was great. In the “things that bother me about SciFi” thread, there is talk of things like this. In this book, RTD talks about how he did do research to make it as accurate as he could. The one I remember was he looked up the differences between meteor, meteoroid, and meteorite to know which word to use. The point is that he did look things up and would stick to “real” until he wanted drama. At least it was a conscience choice on his part.
So, is gravity now just going to be mavity in the Whoniverse…? (And is there precedent for this sort of thing, changing something in the past and having it affect the present?)