Turn Left

There is something on your back.

Doctor-lite stories have evolved nicely since the misfire that was Love and Monsters. It is not often that Doctor Who plays with the "what if" card but when it does it usually does it well. Turn Left is an interesting exploration of how things would have evolved had Donna never met the Doctor and he died in the aftermath of the sans Donna The Runaway Bride.

Plot Summary

Donna and the Doctor are visiting a planet and they split up to do some sampling. Donna enters a fortune teller's house who prompts her to recall the point in her life where she made a decision that resulted in her meeting the Doctor. She focuses on the moment when she ignored her mother and turned left at an intersection, leading her to get the job in which she eventually met the Doctor. The fortune teller tells her to focus on turning right as something sneaks behind her and latches on to her back.

Six months after turning right, Donna is celebrating Christmas with some coworkers, having just gotten a promotion in her job. One of the women is fixated as she keeps thinking that she sees something on Donna's back. Suddenly, London is attacked by the webbed star ship of the Racnoss. The army manages to destroy it and Donna rushes towards the action while everyone else runs away. There she sees the army taking away the body of the Doctor, although she doesn't know who the Doctor is at this point. He was drowned in the flooding and failed to regenerate.

As Donna turns away, she sees a blonde woman run up and asking about the Doctor. Donna tells her that the Doctor is dead. Rose turns away but notes Donna's name. Donna asks hers but she disappears before saying anything.

Several months later, Donna is being laid off. Everyone is distracted as a hospital has disappeared. It reappears several hours later with only a sole survivor. That survivor notes how a colleague named Martha saved his life and how a woman named Sarah Jane Smith had stopped another woman from using an MRI to destroy the hospital. He also reports of the search by "space rhinos," triggering Wilfred's interest. Rose also reappears to Donna, telling her to use the raffle ticket she still has and use her winnings to take the family out of London for Christmas.

At Christmas, Donna, her mother and grandfather head to an inn north of London. A maid enters and is immediately unnerved by something on Donna's back. They are distracted though as the television reports a replica of the Titanic is crashing into London. The feed is suddenly lost, but the whole family sees a mushroom cloud appear where London once was.

With most of southern England irradiated, the family is relocated to Leeds where they share a house with several other families, including a large Italian one headed by the jovial Rocco Colasanto. Wilfred is buoyed by the thought that the Americans have promised aid to help Britain. However, this is dashed a few days later when over sixty million Americans are killed in the birth and collection of the Adipose children.

A couple of months later, Rose appears again as army soldiers are seen trying to disable toxic gas coming from the cars. Rose leads Donna away and informs her of the Torchwood team's demise as they destroy the ATMOS system and the Sontaran ship. Rose also tells Donna that she is the special key and in three weeks will agree to come with her to stop all this, although Donna must die.

Three weeks later, the Colasanto family is relocated to an internment camp with Wilfred noting that this was how the Nazis started. He and Donna try to find solace in looking through his telescope but they observe the stars disappearing. Donna then acquiesces and goes with Rose when she reappears.

Rose and UNIT take Donna to a facility with the dark TARDIS. They have used technology scoured from it to create a time machine. They first show Donna the time beetle on her back. Freaked out, she begs them to turn the machine off. Rose then tells her that the only way to get rid of it is to fix the universe by having her go back in time and forcing herself to turn left at that intersection. Donna agrees although Rose again alludes that she will have to die.

The time machine sends Donna back to four minutes before she makes the turn but also deposits her half a mile away from the intersection. She runs as hard as she can but realizes that she won't make it to stop herself. Remembering what Rose said, she steps in front of an oncoming truck. The truck crashes into her and cars begin to back up towards the intersection. Seeing the traffic, the intersection Donna turns left. As the original Donna dies, Rose reappears and whispers two words into her ear. Donna reawakens in the fortune teller's shop, the failure to change having killed the beetle and the teller flees in terror.

The Doctor enters and Donna tells him what happened. He notes the beetle is part of the Trickster's Brigade (a Sarah Jane Adventures villain) and how is usually just creates a blip in time that that universe compensates for to feed. Donna however generated a parallel universe. Talking about that triggers Donna's memory and she recalls Rose. As Donna talks of her the Doctor becomes concerned, demanding to know her name. Donna recalls she said "Bad Wolf." As she does so, the Doctor runs back to the TARDIS with warning signs flashing everywhere. Confused, Donna asks what is wrong and the Doctor states that it's the end of the universe.

Analysis

Turn Left has it's ups and downs but it's the type of story that every companion should have: a character study that allows them to breathe and develop, especially in a way that is independent of the Doctor. Not that being with the Doctor is bad, but it is nice to see a companion act in a way that is not influenced by the Doctor now and again. This story is probably also the most Doctor-lite of all the Doctor-lites as he is only in the first thirty seconds at the beginning and the last two minutes at the end. Any shots of the Doctor during the rest of the episode are taken from previous episodes (mostly The Runaway Bride).

It was also a nice way to bring Rose back without offering disrespect to the drama of the goodbye moment in Doomsday (as would be done at the end of the season in Journey's End). It makes sense that in a parallel universe created around Donna, it would offer a thinner veil that Rose could break through and act as the Doctor surrogate. In the end, she gets left out again as the veil is returned to it's original strength (at least until Stolen Earth).

Donna has another one of her nice moments in this episode as well. She starts more like her stroppier self as she is unchanged by the Doctor, but there is emotional growth as the world comes crashing down. This culminates when she is shown the time beetle on her back and her reaction of fear and horror mixed with the refusal to believe that she is special is quite good. Yet it is also still mixed with Donna's humor which gives much needed levity.

On that note, this is a bleak episode to watch. It more or less has to be since it needs to highlight how important the Doctor is but there are moments that are just down right horrifying. The nuclear blast in London is pretty bad, but I think the moment that just hits you hardest is when the Colasanto family is taken away. Nearly everyone in the story had been pretty dour but Rocco expressed happiness in the face of dark times. Then he is taken away and he still stays happy for Donna. It is not until he salutes Wilf that that moment even breaks him. The tragedy of that scene just oozes out without being melodramatic. In a way, it reminded me of the scene near the end of Life is Beautiful where Guido maintains the illusion to his son that he is just playing a game with the soldiers as he is being led off to be shot. The episode doesn't get in to whether the Italians are actively being disposed of or just being held, but it is not hard to imagine that it might come to that point in that timeline.

There are only two points in this story that bother me. The first is the unconvincing way that Donna changes her mind to turn right. That might be down to direction but Donna starts the conversation so feisty and Sylvia isn't any worse than she normally is but Donna just rolls over and concedes. Now obviously in the real timeline, she blew her mother off so it shouldn't be too different, but it just feels wrong to have Donna concede so easily.

My second is one that others have mentioned and that is the Doctor's death. I don't recall the situation in The Runaway Bride being so dire as to that the Doctor would have died without Donna. I can think of more obvious situations where the Doctor would have died when he was with Martha but this was supposed to be about Donna so I can leave that point. It is also hard to imagine that things would have been so bad as to prevent him from regenerating. The half-hearted aside of it happening too fast seems like garbage to me as well. The only point that makes sense to me would be that if the chamber flooded, drowning the Doctor, his regeneration wouldn't have mattered as there still wouldn't have been air to breathe. We've seen enough instances where the Doctor is vulnerable during regeneration (with The Impossible Astronaut providing a direct example of total death in the midst of regeneration) so drowning in a sealed chamber could be seen as a way to kill the Doctor properly. But it still seemed a bit off to me. At the very least, it could have been explained better by the UNIT soldiers. Any story where I have to fill in a better explanation than the one provided is falling a bit short.

Despite the shortcomings and other small bits, this is a pretty good episode. It makes for a good intro into the finale, even if the finale didn't quite live up to all the expectations. It is not an episode to watch for a first timer as there is too much dependence on knowing the Tenth Doctor era to understand the story. But once you've been through, it is a perfectly good story to pull down and enjoy from time to time.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5