Previously: A one way ticket to creepyville.
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Turn Left
Marines: Future, at an unidentified Asian locale. (K: Hooray! Not!White places are always exciting to me.) Donna and the Doctor are walking through a market and generally being so damn happy and adorable that it hurts me. We know that the Doctor has all of these adventures with his companions and we, as the audience, seem to stop in on them when things go wrong. They reference, though, and there is this sense that there are other, generally “normal” adventures. I know everything is about to go to shit in one moment, but this brief moment of pure travel adventure gave me feelings.
Anyhow, and now that I spent 100 words on 20 seconds of episode, Donna wanders up ahead of the Doctor. He’s at a stand with a spikey fruit in his hand, laughing with a merchant. A fortune teller stops Donna and asks if she wants to know if she’ll be happy in the future. Donna says no thanks. She’s happy right now. (Feels.) (K: SAME.) The fortune teller persists, though, and says the reading is free for people with red hair. Donna giggles and enters the tent. The Fortune Teller looks around shiftily.
Inside the tent, the Fortune Teller examines Donna’s hand and tells her she is fascinating. (K: I, meanwhile, am distracted by Fortune Teller’s wonderful nail polish…) Plus, she sees the most remarkable man in Donna’s life. She wants to hear about him from Donna, specifically about what led her to meet him. Donna says it was lots of things, but then later decides that it was really that temp job she had at H.C. Clements. As she says this, Donna gets sucked into a flashback, in a kind of out-of-body way. When she comes back to, the Fortune Teller tells her it must be the incense. HOKAY.
We switch points-of-view and are now seeing Donna from a creepy crawly POV. We hear the skitters of insect legs and I hate it.
The Fortune Teller keeps prodding Donna to think of the choices Donna made to get the job. We head back into a flashback as Donna explains that around the time she got the temp contract, she was offered another job as well, through one of her mother’s connections. Through the Fortune Teller’s direction, Donna reaches the moment where she chose the temp job over the permanent job. It’s almost literally at a crossroads where she’ll have to turn right to take the job her mom wants and turn left to go to H.C. Clements. Sylvia badgers Donna in the flashback, but Donna stands her ground and turns left.
Kirsti: I overrelate like whoa to Donna’s relationship with her mother.
Mari: Back in the tent, the Fortune Teller asks Donna what would’ve happened if Donna had turned right. Donna finally decides that this is creepy (about 3 flashbacks and a crap ton of incense too late…) and tries to pull away from the Fortune Teller. The creepy crawly is now crawling up Donna’s back and we see it’s little legs position themselves on Donna’s shoulders. They look stupid and fake AND I STILL HATE THEM. NYARGH.
Donna panics a little but she can’t go anywhere. The Fortune Teller tells her to change her mind and turn right. We go back into the flashback and this time, Donna tells Sylvia she’s right. She flicks on her other blinker as the Fortune Teller’s voice over tells Donna to turn right, never meet that man, and change the world.
Donna turns right and we DOO WEE OOOOH.
K: It’s possible I screamed with excitement during the credits for reasons that will become apparent in the course of this episode.
Mari: After the credits and Kirsti’s screaming, we’re at a Christmas celebration of some sort. Donna is bringing a bunch of drinks to her table of friends. Donna announces that she can afford to buy a second round because she’s been promoted to the big boss’s personal assistant. They cheers, but one of her friends is looking at her strangely. She’s giving Donna Big Eyes and looking suspiciously at her back. Donna asks WTF is going on, but the girl can only say that it’s like there is something on Donna’s back she can’t see.
This is all interrupted by someone yelling for everyone to come outside and have a look. It’s the Christmas where everyone thought there was some kind of Christmas star, but it was really an alien ship. The spider-web-ship starts attacking and everyone goes running, except for Donna who just stands and looks. And her friend who is still looking at Donna’s buggy back. She helpfully tells Donna there is something on her back and then goes running.
Donna decides to run toward the spider web spaceship. We watch as the military shoot the spaceship out of the sky. Donna ovehears a red beret using a walkie talkie to call in an update: they’ve stopped a giant red spider, but someone didn’t make it out alive. Paramedics carry out a covered body on a gurney. A hand drops out from beneath the blanket and drops the sonic screwdriver. It’s the Doctor. HE’S (probably not) DEAD!
K: I have questions about WHY the Doctor didn’t regenerate, but mostly this scene makes me think of Tennant’s outrage in (I think??) the commentary because THAT’S NOT HIS HAND AND NO ONE CALLED HIM TO SET TO PRETEND TO BE DEAD.
Mari: Precious.
Donna walks away, kind of in a daze, as a blonde woman comes running toward her. When she’s close enough, she comes into focus, and we see that it’s Rose (!!!!) (K: Hence my credits screaming). Rose asks what happened. What did they find? Donna says they found some bloke they called the Doctor, dead. Rose is visibly shaken so Donna tries to smooth it over saying that they didn’t say his name. It could be any doctor. (K: Rose’s “I came so far...” causes me physical pain.) Rose looks appraisingly at Donna and asks what her name is. Donna returns the question and Rose says she’s just passing by. But this is all wrong. The creepy crawly on Donna’s back rattles away. Donna asks why Rose keeps looking at her back and turns around to see if something is back there. When she looks again, Rose is gone.
We cut to Donna yelling at her boss that he can’t sack her. Her boss tells her not to make a scene, but Donna is determined to. This goes on until the whole building rumbles. Everyone runs to the window and sees that the sky is full of weird clouds. This is the day the hospital disappeared. Donna keeps yelling about being sacked.
Next cut is to news coverage of the hospital disappearing. Everyone is watching it as Donna loudly packs up her desk and announces all the things she’s taking from the office. Her boss tells her to have some respect for the vanishing hospital, but just then, the building shakes again. Donna guesses that the hospital is back and that’s confirmed by the news coverage.
K: I kind of love Donna’s lack of fucks. Like, it’s terrible, obviously. But it makes PERFECT sense that she’d be focused on getting fired right now and not major intergalactic incidents. Also, her “well, isn’t that WIZARD” is glorious.
Sylvia is going through Donna’s things sadly, telling us that at least Donna’s got a hole puncher and a raffle ticket. Wilf yells at her (and Donna) for harping on the firing when a whole hospital disappeared and went to the moon. Things have apparently been extra alien-y in the last few years, presumably since the Doctor has died. Donna disregards all this too and comments on how calm Sylvia seems to be about Donna getting fired. Sylvia says she’s given up on Donna. Rude.
Surviving continues with his interview to say that someone named Sarah Jane Smith appeared at the hospital, saying she knew how to stop the MRI machine. Sarah Jane’s body was recovered from the hospital. (K: Ow, my feels.) Donna tries to hopefully suggest some fish and chips for dinner, but Wilf is too sad over the news and Sylvia’s too sad over Donna’s sacking.
Later, Donna’s out on the streets alone. She’s about to walk by an alley, when strange blue light flashes. Out comes running Rose. Donna recognizes her immediately. Rose asks Donna how she’s been, the whole while, looking at Donna’s back. Donna calls her on it again, saying that this keeps happening to her. People keep looking at her back but she never sees anything on there. Rose switches gears and asks Donna what she’s doing next Christmas break. Donna is confused. Rose tells her she should probably get out of town. Use that first place winning raffle ticket and get out of town. Donna is sufficiently freaked, especially since Rose won’t give her name. Donna tells Rose to leave her alone and walks away.
Christmas. The Nobles pull up to a fancy hotel and Sylvia tells Wilf to play it cool and classy, which includes not mentioning that they won the hotel stay in a raffle and taking off his reindeer ears.
Adorable.
K: I say “No, I shan’t. It’s Christmas” pretty much year round, and considering none of my family watch Doctor Who, they all think I’m a nutter.
Mari: That’s a wonderful saying. You keep doing you.
Christmas morning, fancy hotel room. There’s a knock on the door and Donna tells Wilf to get it because she ordered breakfast. Sylvia is still in bed. Donna is up and getting ready in the bathroom. She doesn’t want to waste time in bed. Wilf, after lightly complaining about sleeping on the couch, finally gets the door. The maid comes in with breakfast and at the same time, Sylvia’s tuned into a news report. Donna chats away happily as Sylvia gets more and more panicked about what she sees on TV. To add to the confusion, the maid starts trying to tell Donna that there is something on her back, but she only speaks Spanish. For a second, Donna seems to be able to see the creepy crawlie on her back, but then the maid runs out of the room and the moment is gone.
Sylvia insists that Donna come and look at the TV. Donna gets there and we see the shocking news: a replica of the Titanic is falling out of the sky. They watch as the replica crashes into Buckingham Palace and the video cuts out. Wilf heads to the window and what he sees is not good. They all run outside and now we see the big explosion and smoke cloud that means London is gone.
We cut to some time later as Donna, Sylvia and Wilf sit in a makeshift government office. They are being relocated to Leeds. Donna protest, but the government worker says that with millions displaced, you don’t get to pick and choose where you go.
K: I kind of love the idea of all these people being refugees in their own country. But not wanting to move to Leeds is TOTALLY fair.
Mari: Off to Leeds. Once there, the Noble family gets assigned housing, but it’s shared housing. A very overly enthusiastic man shows them their “room,” which is really some camper beds squeezed into a tiny kitchen. Donna is despondent, but Wilf tries to comfort her by saying that America is sending them aid soon and things will be well.
And another cut, this time to a news report about a bunch of Americans dissolving into (still really adorable) fat. So, no help from them.
That night, it’s Sylvia who is hopeless. She keeps remembering people and thinking about how dead they are. She even mentions the damn disappearing bees. Donna tries to cheer her up by promising to go find work or saying the government will work it out. Sylvia isn’t buying it. They hear loud singing from the living room. Donna gets up and starts yelling, but Wilf is back there, looking a little sheepish as he says that he loves a good singalong.
K: No one can resist Bohemian Rhapsody. No one.
Mari: Donna and Sylvia join and there are smiles for about 3 seconds before we hear machine guns firing.
Happy Man, Donna and Wilf go running outside. They see a solider firing at a car. He explains that the ATMOS system is going crazy and releasing toxic gas. The soldier sees the thing on Donna’s back and starts yelling at her to turn around RIGHT NOW. Everyone freaks; Donna slowly turns around. When she does, there’s nothing there. Wilf starts yelling at the soldier like the little badass he is, but Donna is distracted by some snap, crackle blue light coming from a nearby alley. She takes off to investigate.
When she turns the corner, she does so like she knows exactly what to expect: Rose.
Rose and Donna sit together and talk. Rose explains about the ATMOS gas that’s choking most of the world, but there is a small group of people working to stop it. In fact, just then, the atmosphere burns up and Rose sadly tells us that the last of the Torchwood group sacrificed their lives, with Captain Jack transporting to the Sontaran home world.
K: Oof. This episode is very “EVERYONE THE AUDIENCE KNOWS IS GONNA DIE”-y and it hurts, you guys. So much.
Mari: Donna asks why Rose is always wearing the same clothes and what the heck her name is. Rose still won’t answer, but she does tell Donna about the tall skinny man with the great hair who was supposed to stop all these tragedies. Donna was supposed to be there, under the Thames to save him.
Mari: But also, it is great hair.
Donna has a flashback of the spider alien and the Doctor standing in the waters of sadness. She calls out to him that he can stop now, but she’s thrown back into the present. She basically can’t deal with all of this and tries to leave but Rose stops her with the real bad news that something worse is coming. Rose has been pulled through universes because all of them are in trouble. The Darkness is coming. Catherine Tate slays this next bit as she frustratedly asks what the heck she’s supposed to do about it. She’s just a temp and not even that now.
K: Oh, Donna. I have so many feelings about this “I’m nothing” speech. I may, in fact, overrelate again.
Mari: Rose tells her that she’s the most important woman in the whole of creation. Donna replies, “don’t. Just don’t.” She says she’s tired and when she says it, my hay fever flares up for whatever reason. Rose needs Donna to come with her, but Donna is basically like, “no. Shan’t.” Rose says Donna will in 3 weeks time and asks if Wilf has still got that telescope. Donna says he won’t let it go. Rose repeats that in 3 weeks time, Donna will come, but she has to be certain, because when she leaves, she is going to die. Rose fades out. As a side note, like how great would that fadeout power be IRL? Just imagine.
K: I’d use it to terrify students. “Return your overdue books. I’ll be watching….[vanishes]”
Mari: That’s a librarian after Giles’s own heart.
Donna’s house. Happy Man is spinning her about and saying goodbye in a too cheerful way as he explains that they are being shipped to labor camps as England has been declared to be for the English. Donna is letting all of this go over her head, but Wilf’s eyes are filling with tears as he says goodbye to Happy Man and watches him climb on the back of a truck with his family. Wilf says labor camps is what they called them before too. Donna notices that Happy Man is actually crying over his wife now. She yells at the soldiers and asks where they are taking the truck full of foreigners, but no one will answer her.
K: Wilf’s face during that scene is HEARTBREAKING. Any time there’s mention of wars or labour camps or soldiers, Bernard Cribbins fucking SLAYS it. For good reason.
Mari: I just looked Bernard Cribbins up and noticed his military service so the feelings just intensified.
Inside, Sylvia is basically checked out. Donna says still hasn’t found work and Sylvia was right that she should’ve worked harder at school. Sylvia just says, “yeah” without looking back at her daughter.
That night, Donna and Wilf are sitting together outside with his telescope. Donna is moping some more about how useless she is, but Wilf is distracted. He was just looking at the constellation Orion, but it’s disappeared. Donna and Wilf both look up at the sky and notice the stars are blinking out.
Donna turns around and finds, of course, Rose. Donna says she’s ready.
Rose takes Donna to a super secret operation location. There we meet a Captain Erisa Magambo and also, the TARDIS is hooked up to a bunch of machines. (K: Rose snaps “I’ve told you, don’t salute!” at the captain and my hayfever strikes again. So much like the Doctor…) Rose tells Donna to go on inside the police box and after some hesitation, Donna does. We just hear her “no way!” reaction as she comes back out a second later and examines the outside of the box. When she heads back in, we go with her, and see that the inside is off, dusty and really sad looking. Donna exits again and when Rose asks her what she thinks, she responds, “can I have a coffee?” Donna, I love you.
Back in the TARDIS, coffee in hand, Rose explains a little more about the Doctor and the TARDIS. Donna wonders what the Doctor was doing with her if he was such a genius. Rose says she’s a genius too, it just took the Doctor to show her that. Not my favorite statement in the world, but okay. The point is that the Doctor brings out the best in people.
Donna asks if he and Rose…… and Rose lets the …. carry on until the creepy crawly on Donna’s back starts clickety clacking. (K: God, that silence KILLS me. Because Rose and the Doctor really were … It was potential. An almost. A could-have-been that never got the chance to happen.) Rose pats Donna’s back and asks if Donna wants to see it. She quickly responds no, takes a breath and says okay.
Outside, they’ve got a whole set-up going with mirrors and space technology, or whatever, so that Donna will be able to see the bug. They turn the thing on and it takes Donna a moment to gather her courage to look, but there it is: a giant beetle piggybacking. Donna freaks out as Rose explains that they don’t know everything about it, only that it feeds off time, seems to be in a state of flux, and made Donna turn right one day when she should’ve turned left.
Donna is full on yelling now, telling Rose that she lied. She said Donna was special when all along it was just this bug strapped to her back. Rose calmly says that’s not it. They are getting separate readings from Donna that have been there since the day she was born. They need the Doctor, but they also need Donna. She begs them to turn off the special mirrors so she can stop seeing the giant creepy crawly now.
K: Catherine Tate’s acting throughout this episode is phenomenal, but she’s particularly wonderful in this scene.
Mari: Once that’s done, Donna asks what’s next and Rose tells her she’s going to travel in time, back to the day when she’s meant to turn left at one minute past 10. They’ve got Donna all set-up with a special time traveling jacket and a glass of water because it’s always important to hydrate (?). Back into the circle of mirrors she goes (because it’s actually a time machine) and Rose leaves her with the parting information that they don’t actually know if this is going to work and it’s up to Donna to do whatever to make Past!Donna turn left.
Donna yells that she’s ready because she gets it now. If she goes back in time and makes Past!Donna turn left, this whole world “dies” by blinking out of existence, but she’ll still be alive. Right? Rose looks at her somberly and simply says, “I’m sorry.” Donna cries that she can’t die because she’s got a whole future of traveling with the Doctor. It’s too late for further clarification, though, because the space mirrors… boot up. Also, this is why you should get plenty of clarification before you time travel, children.
Off Donna goes! She lands in London, on all fours. She cheers at having survived the time travel part of it, but realizes she’s landed half a mile away from where she needs to be, and she has four minutes to get there. (K: Typical TARDIS assist…) We watched the scene from the beginning play again, as Past!Donna gets in the car with Sylvia and argues about going left or right. Future!Donna knows she’s not going to get to herself in time and it’s then that realization dawns. Rose warned her she was going to die and now she sees a big waste truck coming toward her. Future!Donna steps into the road and is hit.
K: God, what a brutal ending for her. She had so much hope when Rose told her she was someone special, someone who could change the world. And then this.
Mari: This creates an instant traffic back-up. Future!Donna is on the road and Rose comes over to her. She says to tell “him” just two words. She whispers them in Future!Donna’s ear so we can’t hear them and F!D closes her eyes.
Past!Donna says that she isn’t going to sit in a traffic jam so she’s decided to turn left. She turns and Donna, sitting in the Fortune Teller’s tent, screams. Everything rewinds and we end in the tent, with the creepy crawly falling off of Donna’s back as the Fortune Teller cowers. Donna asks WTF just happened and Fortune Teller says Donna was so strong. She asks what Donna even is before running off, which, I don’t know. I don’t think I’d let that lady off the hook.
Donna stares at the creepy crawly until the Doctor pops in and asks if everything is alright. She gives him a big hug and he laughingly asks what the hug is about. Donna says she doesn’t know and hugs him again.
Later, the Doctor sits and pokes at the creepy crawly as Donna says she’s forgetting everything like you forget a dream. The Doctor explains that the creepy crawly just changes life in small ways and the universe compensates around it. But not with Donna. Donna gets a big parallel world. She tries to demure, but the Doctor thinks there is too much coincidence around her, like something is tying the two of them together. Donna says she’s nothing, but the Doctor affectionately assures her that she’s brilliant. This triggers a memory of Rose telling her the same thing.
Donna tells the Doctor about this woman and her warning that the stars were going out all over every universe. She said to warn him that The Darkness was coming. The Doctor starts to suspect. You can see it all over his face when he asks Donna what the woman’s name was. Donna says she doesn’t remember, but she does remember that she said to tell the Doctor two words: Bad Wolf.
The Doctor runs out of the tent and there, all around them, all over the TARDIS are those two words. Bad Wolf.
K: HIS FAAAAAAAAAACE. The heartbreak and the hope simultaneously. Tennant just slays it.
Mari: All of the acting in this episode was really well done. Catherine Tate cycle us through all of these different emotions, Rose is this more somber, sober, knowledgeable person than we knew and the Doctor is in this episode for like 5 minutes and just pulls on my heart the whole time.
I realize that not a ton happens in this episode as we end up right where we started, but I really enjoyed it. I love Donna so this Donna-centeric episode was wonderful and I think it sets the table nicely for what we know is upcoming in this next couple of episodes. You know. The sadness.
K: This episode is rough on the feels. Really, really rough. But it’s so great. And so incredibly female dominated, which is always wonderful to see. But yeah. Sadness. Lots of it.
Mari: SEE YOU NEXT TIME.
Next time on Doctor Who: An old enemy and a whole gang of old friends in S04 E12 – The Stolen Earth.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.