Pop Vultures

Doctor Who, S04 E11: Turn Left

This week: What would have happened if Donna had never met the Doctor? We find out when she accidentally creates a Doctor-less universe. Apparently, Catherine Tate would have shouted a whole lot more.

We begin in the Street of Chinese Stereotypes, where Donna and the Doctor are having a fine old time sightseeing. Donna is accosted by a particularly offensive dragon lady/fortune teller, who offers to tell our heroine’s fortune. “Don’t you want to know if you’re going to be happy?” asks the fortune teller. “I’m happy right now, thanks,” says Donna. Aw. But when the fortune teller presses her and says that it’s free for people with red hair, Donna reluctantly agrees.

The FT asks her about a special man in her life, and, seemingly hyponotising Ms Noble, asks her to cast her mind back to the crucial moment that led to their meeting, which turns out to be the day she went for an interview at the big city firm where she met her future husband (because of course she met the Doctor at their wedding). Donna’s mum Sylvia wants her to take a job at a local firm instead, saying that no men will ever look at a temp (wow, very progressive career advice there, Mrs N). Donna’s giving her mum a lift on her way to the interview, and when they reach a crossroads Sylvia urges Donna to turn right towards the local company rather than left towards the City. Back in the fortune teller’s lair, the FT urges Donna to change her own past and, yes, “turn right and change the world.” While all this urging is going on, we see Donna from the point of view of something that’s scuttling along the floor towards her. Then, as the creature attacks, leaping onto Donna’s back, it’s back to the car and - oh noes - Donna turns right. Credits.

It’s Christmas! Donna is down the boozer with her pals, toasting her new promotion. In another universe, she’d have been getting married today, but of course this Donna doesn’t know that. One of her friends keeps looking weirdly at Donna’s back; apparently she has always claimed to be able to see ghosts, but Donna is skeptical, reminding her of the time she apparently saw “the ghost of Earl Mountbatten at the boat show.” Hee. Someone comes in to the pub and announces that there’s an amazing Christmas light display in the sky - it’s the Arachnos ship whose queen Donna helped battle in another life, and it’s about to start firing deadly laser beams at the general public. Everyone runs off screaming but Donna is mesmerised. The ship is blown up, and Donna seems to be drawn towards an army of UNIT soldiers who are carrying a body to an ambulance. The Doctor saved the day without Donna – but he died before he was able to regenerate. As Donna looks out, the Doctor’s arm drops out from beneath the coverings and the sonic screw driver falls to the ground. Suddenly a girl runs up to Donna. It’s Rose! But I hardly recognise her because Billie Piper has lost so much weight in her face that it seems to have changed shape, and she seems to have developed a lisp. Seriously, she’s totally different. Anyway, Donna tells her that someone called the Doctor is dead, and poor Rose is devastated (”I came so far”) and tells Donna that “this is all wrong.” Then she disappears.

Time has passed, and Donna’s just been fired from her job. Catherine Tate bellows a bit, but this is still quite a funny scene, especially when she asks why they don’t fire someone called Cliff instead, because she doesn’t know what he does all day. “Sorry Cliff,” she says, with perfect timing, before adding, “Actually, no, I’m not, what do you do all day?” In her tantrum, she’s oblivious to the fact that something very strange is happening in London - essentially, the opening episode of series 3. The rain is going upwards, and a hospital has disappeared. The rest of the people in the office are all horrified by this news, but Donna’s wrapped up in her own troubles and doesn’t care. She stomps off home with her box full of possessions.

Back at home, she watches the news with her family. There’s one survivor - a young Doctor (last seen in that first episode) whose life was saved by a medical student called Martha Jones. She’s dead, along with everyone else, and so is Sarah Jane Smith and her young pals from the Sarah Jane Adventures. Bernard is appalled. Donna goes out for a walk and meets, yes, Rose, who’s all fake smiles. She tells Donna to use the raffle ticket that somehow turned up in the box of work crap. Donna’s a bit annoyed by this mysterious woman, but Rose is all enigmatic and vanishes again. But she takes her advice, and wins a trip to a luxury country hotel for Christmas, where the family watch in horror as the news shows a huge model of the Titanic zooming towards Buckingham Palace. Oh yeah, and there’s a maid who can see something on Donna’s back and gets hysterical in Spanish at the sight. She later points meaningfully at Donna and glowers. I’m not sure I approve of the way this episode treats non-English women, to be honest.

Anyway, the hotel guests gather outside to see a huge mushroom cloud erupting over London. “That’s everyone we know,” says Sylvia, stunned. “London is gone.” You know, what made this episode so good was the fact that it showed the horrible, soul-destroying, petty reality of huge disaster. In some films and programmes, huge swathes of the population disappear and everyone seems to get over it pretty quickly. But here it’s always acknowledged that, for example, a mushroom cloud means that everyone you know, all your friends, all your relatives, are dead. It feels real.

Obviously some time has passed and the family has reached the top of a noisy queue in a makeshift office, where they’re told they’re being evacuated to Leeds. Donna kicks up a ruckus and demands to go to Glasgow instead, but to no avail. “You’re not going to make the world better by shouting at it,” says her mother, in what I would like to think is a response to the critics (including me) of Ms Tate’s general shoutiness, to which Donna replies “I can try.” I can’t help admiring her refusal to give up and shut up, even if the results are kind of annoying. We learn that all of southern England is uninhabitable because of radiation. Donna, Sylvia and Wilf disembark from their bus at the top of a slightly run-down Victorian terraced street. My dad grew up on a street of two-up-two-downs exactly like that and my aunt and cousins still live on one, so it actually seems rather homey to me. A local makes a derogatory comment about the refugees and Donna snarls, “Shut up, Vera Duckworth.” Donna, I like you and everything (well, your other, kinder, more open-minded self), but you just wish you were as awesome as Vera Duckworth. They arrive at their house and realise they don’t have a key, but the door is thrown open by a cheery Italian stereotype, Mr Santo, who welcomes them warmly. The Nobles are horrified as they realise they’re going to sharing the small house with about 20 other people and are going to have to sleep on camp beds in the kitchen. “We’re refugees,” says Donna. “We’re nothing.” Aw, man. Wilf says don’t worry, the Americans will help - but then we discover that the Adipose have hit the US, which is now in a state of emergency what with all those people dissolving into cute little fat things.

At night, Donna and Sylvia are in bed, fully dressed because the house is so cold. Donna tries to comfort her increasingly desolate mother, telling her she’s going to get a job and life will get back to normal. There’s a rowdy sing song going on in the sitting room next door, which drives Donna to finally stomp in yelling (as usual), until we see that Wilf is behind Mr Santo, leading the singing. Cut to Donna, now singing along in the middle of the throng, all of whom are bellowing out ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. It’s a really sweet, funny scene, one of the few glimpses of goodness and fun in the whole episode.

The fun comes to an abrupt end when they hear shooting sounds from outside. It turns out that we’re now at the time of the Sontaran Stratagem, and there are soldiers shooting up all the cars. Suddenly one of the soldiers looks totally freaked out and tells Donna to turn around, because there’s something on her back. Oh, the creepiness. Everyone’s yelling and screaming and it’s all very stressful. Donna turns around, there’s nothing there, and the soldier apologises, clearly confused. Wilf gives out to him while Donna wanders off.

She meets, you guessed it, Rose. They sit on a park bench just as the whole sky lights up. Except this time, it’s not the Doctor and that nerdy inventor kid who’ve saved the day - it was “the Torchwood team. Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, they gave their lives. Captain Jack Harkness is transported to the Sontaran homeworld. There’s no one left.” Oh, noes! Donna cries, “What do you keep telling me for? What am I supposed to do? I’m nothing special, I mean, I’m…nothing special! I’m a temp! I’m not even that! I’m nothing!” Poor Donna. The way she talks about herself in this episode is really sad. “”Donna Noble, you’re the most important woman in the whole of creation,” says Rose. But she doesn’t say why, or anything useful. Why so enigmatic, Rose? It’s kind of annoying! Donna asks why she’s being told all this, and Rose says it’s because “I used to be you.” Donna is rightly confused. Rose, unnecessarily enigmatic yet again, tells her that she met the Doctor: “A man in a suit, tall, thin man, grrreeat hair… Really great hair.” Hee. Although there are times when his hair is unnecessarily pineapple-esque. Rose asks Donna if her grandad still has his telescope, and says that she wants Donna to come with her. Donna refuses. Rose then tells her that the end of all universes is drawing near, because something’s coming. Something worse than anything that’s come before. It’s the darkness. And when it comes? “You’re going to die,” says Rose. Then she disappears. I have no idea why she said that, because yet again it’s pointlessly enigmatic, it’s scary, and it’s not a good way of persuading someone to cooperate with you. I actually wondered was this some scary fake Rose.

Things in Britain are getting even worse. The government are deporting all foreigners – “Britain for the British!” says Mr Santo – except there’s nowhere to deport them, so they’re going to labour camps. Oh, man. Mr Santo and Wilf salute each other. I start sniffling. The still cheerful Italian stereotype gets on the back of the truck with the family, surrounded by their suitcases. It’s an all too familiar image. “Labour camps,” says Wilf, who’s thinking the same thing. “That’s what they called them the last time.” He looks heartbroken. Bernard Cribbins owns this episode. I sniffle even more as we see Mr Santo’s face fall once the truck starts up and he embraces his family while they’re driven away. Donna belatedly realises what’s happening (seriously, how did it take her so long?) and runs after the truck to no avail. That was one of the best scenes in this episode. Back in the house, Sylvia stares blankly ahead of her. “I suppose I’ve always been a disappointment,” Donna says to her. And Sylvia says “yeah,” in a horrible, blank voice. Russell T Davies, I take back everything bad I’ve said about your tendency to cheese. This is good stuff.

Donna and Wilf gaze at the stars. Then they realise something bad is happening - the stars are going out. We see Donna turn around and say “I’m ready.” She’s facing Rose, who takes her to a UNIT base. Donna’s vast greatcoat gives her a bit of a Captain Jack look. I’m sure the fanfic has already been written. They greet a UNIT officer. Captain Mgumbo, who leads them towards…. the Tardis. There’s a great moment when this version of Donna sees the inside for the first time. Rose smiles slightly patronisingly, but it’s still a cool moment. But not that cool, because the Tardis, which was rescued from the Thames after the Doctor’s death, is dying itself. Aww.

Donna asks Rose about the Doctor. “Were you…?” Rose just sort of looks sad/smirky. Are we meant to assume that they were? I do find the whole Doctor/Rose OTP thing a bit annoying, even when it’s in terms of companion rather than romance. The thing on Donna’s back gets all clicky at the sound of the Doctor’s name. Rose asks if Donna wants to see what’s on her back. Ick. She does, so is taken into a circle of mirrors linked to the last remnants of the feeble Tardis. Donna sees the giant stag-beetle thing on her back and freaks the hell out. And who wouldn’t?

Catherine Tate is very shouty in this scene, but there’s a real emotional punch when Donna screams at Rose. “You liar! You told me I was special! But it’s not me, it’s this THING! I’m just a host!” Aw, poor Donna. She’s just never got enough external validation. Rose says, “No, we’re getting separate readings from you. And they’ve always been there since the day you were born. I thought it was just the Doctor we needed but it’s the both of you. The Doctor and Donna Noble - together.” And she tells Donna, “He thought you were brilliant. You just needed him to show you that.” Awwwww. Again.

Donna screams at the UNIT people to turn the device off, and they do, but the thing is still there. Rose gets all Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life and tells Donna about the choice she made to turn right instead of left and how this meant she never met the Doctor and saved the world. She has to make sure her past self makes another choice. How? By going back in time.

Now she’s all hooked up to the Tardis, and the makeshift nature of this time travel technology - all awkward wires and cables - seems weirdly convincing. You can actually imagine this being an early prototype of some sort of time travel device. Anyway, Donna’s all excited and ready to go, and says, “I’m ready, ’cause I understand now. You said I was going to die, but you mean this whole world. It’s gonna blink out of existence. But that’s not dying, a better world takes its place. The Doctor’s world. And I’m still alive! That’s right, isn’t it? I don’t die if I change things!” But Rose, a riddle wrapped in an irritating enigma, just looks sadly at her and says, “I’m sorry.” But it’s too late, the lights flash, and Donna is back in time. In a London full of people. She raises her hands in triumph a la Hiro from Heroes. Hee! She realises she’s in the wrong place, and she’s got just a few minutes to get to the crossroads.

Donna runs and runs, and she’s almost there when she accepts she’s not going to make it. She sees a big truck coming along and realises what she has to do. She breathes, “Please,” and runs out in front of the truck. Oh, poor parallel Donna! You were shouty but you were as noble as your name in the end. Sniff.

Back at the crossroads, the accident has caused a huge traffic jam. “Well, that settles it,” says original Donna. “I’m not getting stuck in a traffic jam.” She turns left.

Other! Donna is dying. Rose looms over her, and if Rose can move through time and space so easily, and actually knew in advance what was going to happen, why the hell didn’t she cause some sort of diversion to stop Donna going right? I think I kind of hate this new Rose. She leans over and tells Donna to remember “two words,” a message for the Doctor, which she whispers in her ear.

Back in the fortune teller’s tent, and ding, dong, the evil space beetle is dead. The dragon lady fortune teller is terrified. “You are so strong! What are you? What will you be?” she cries sinisterly before running off and leaving her entire shop to a woman she sees as a scary stranger. The Doctor pops his head in, all ‘Oh, hello, I’ve been looking at Chinese stereotype shops, have you lived for several years in a parallel dystopic universe?” Donna hugs him. We share her joy.

The Doctor is poking the evil beetle with a stick. He tells her that it’s a creature who lives on stolen time and possible choice (Like the weeping angels!) but usually it doesn’t make a huge difference to anything, but in this case, it did. “Somehow I think there’s way too much coincidence around you, Donna.” Hmmmm. Donna is all embarrassed and says she’s nothing special, but the Doctor tells her she’s brilliant. “That’s what the woman said,” says Donna. The other world is fading like a dream, but she remembers some bits, like the stars going out and this woman warning her about the darkness. The Doctor says that other world doesn’t exist and nor does this woman, but Donna insists she does, because she wasn’t from there to begin with, and she said that all the universes were in danger. The Doctor kind of freezes and asks what she looked like. “She was blonde,” says Donna. David Tennant’s face is brilliant in this scene as suspicion and realisation dawns. Increasingly agitated, he asks Donna the woman’s name. She doesn’t know, but she now remembers the message.

“Two words…” she says. And I really and truly did not see what was coming next: “Bad Wolf.”

The Doctor runs out, and the words Bad Wolf are absolutely everywhere: in posters, on flags, even on the front of the Tardis, where they have replaced all the lettering. It’s absolutely freaking awesome, even though when you think about it it doesn’t really make much sense. Has Rose scattered the words through time again? Or has she done something to the Tardis, so it’s translating everything into Bad Wolf? Oh, I dunno. I just know it was a really cool scene. When the Doctor and Donna head into the Tardis, it’s all red and scary. Confused, Donna asks what Bad Wolf means.

“It’s the end of the universe,” says the Doctor, and I don’t exactly get why that is, but it was a damn good ending to this episode.

Next week: everyone who’s appeared in Doctor Who and its assorted spin-offs turns up. Also, daleks. Awww, yeah.