How the new Doctor Who specials are fixing the show’s biggest misstep
Fans have been upset with the way Donna Noble’s story ended since 2008, but the three new specials offer a rare opportunity for a do-over
TV Features Doctor Who
After what had to be the most drawn-out farewell tour in Doctor Who history, David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor finally regenerated into Matt Smith in the 2010 special “The End Of Time,” but not before he had a chance to say goodbye to, or at least revisit, all of the significant companions and allies he’d known during his five-year tenure. No matter how much showrunner Russell T. Davies tried to wrap Tennant’s departure from the show (and his own) in a tidy bow, though, one major thread was left tragically unresolved—a thread that goes by the name Donna Noble.
The ending of Donna’s story has been one of the most common criticisms of the Davies era among fans, and time hasn’t done anything to diminish the outrage. Now that he’s back at the helm of Doctor Who once again, it seems as if Davies is setting out to rectify that mistake. And the first special, “The Star Beast,” which premiered on November 25, was a pretty good start.
Whether you’re a longtime Doctor Who fan or “The Star Beast” was your first-ever outing with the Doctor, you already know the raw deal Donna (portrayed by Catherine Tate) got in exchange for saving the entire universe in “Journey’s End.” After a Christmas special and an entire season as the Doctor’s companion, she was left with no memory of him or their adventures together. To save her life, the Doctor had to erase all the knowledge she gained during their time, returning her to the ordinary life she had before they met in “The Runaway Bride.”
“I was gonna be with you forever,” she tells him in her last few moments as the human-Time Lord metacrisis hybrid known as the DoctorDonna. “Rest of my life. Traveling in the TARDIS. The DoctorDonna. I can’t go back. Don’t make me go back. Doctor. Please. Please don’t make me go back.”
In the wake of this tragedy we got an indelible Doctor Who meme that’s still going around to this day: sad Ten in the rain. We’re meant to feel sorry for him, being all on his own again, but at least he knows what he’s lost. Poor Donna never got a choice. “That version of Donna is dead,” the Doctor tells her mother and granddad after dropping her off at home one last time. “Because if she remembers, just for a second, she’ll burn up. You can never tell her. You can’t mention me or any of it for the rest of her life.” Fans mourned along with the Doctor, and then turned their ire towards Davies for treating one of the most popular companions of the New Who era so shoddily.
Now, three Doctors, two showrunners and roughly 15 years later, Davies has returned to Doctor Who, and he’s brought both Tennant and Tate back with him. From a storytelling standpoint, he could have easily moved on with Tennant alone as the 14th Doctor or brought back any of his other companions for these three 60th anniversary specials, but he went with Donna Noble specifically. Why? For one thing, bringing her back provides a solid in-world explanation for the Doctor’s regeneration into a familiar old form. As we learned in “The Star Beast,” the Doctor has unfinished business with Donna, and so does Davies. Could it be that Davies actually listened to the fans and wanted to rewrite Donna’s fate? He hasn’t said so explicitly, but the episode strongly suggests that’s the case.
By the end of the first special, Donna is back to her old self, with her mind and memories intact, and trapped with the Doctor inside a malfunctioning TARDIS that could take them anywhere in time and space. The sense of nostalgia is inescapable, except for the fact that the new TARDIS set is gleaming white (or danger red), multi-leveled, and massive. That’s another way in which this era sets itself apart. The production isn’t restricted to making the most of a shoestring BBC budget anymore. Thanks to a co-production deal, it’s got Disney+ money to play with (although that may have come with some unfortunate strings, including shady residual shenanigans on the part of the studio).
It’s easy for fans to say the cheesiness was part of the old show’s charm, and that may still be true, but imagine what the show could be without budgetary restrictions. It’s a whole new world of proper special effects, bigger action scenes, more realistic creatures, and more elaborate production design. Instead of a tiny room with wobbly walls we have a gorgeous new and practical TARDIS, and that’s just the start.
Unfortunately, we won’t have long to enjoy this supercharged reunion between Donna and this version of the Doctor before he regenerates again into the 15th Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa. “The Star Beast” was the first of three specials airing on subsequent Saturdays. The next one, titled “Wild Blue Yonder,” premieres on December 2. The story and whatever surprises it holds have been kept tightly under wraps, leading to much fan speculation about other cast members who could also be making return appearances (fingers crossed for the return of John Simm as The Master). This mini arc will conclude on December 9 with “The Giggle,” guest starring Neil Patrick Harris as a villain called The Toymaker.
We’ll have to wait and see how the show deals with Donna’s departure this time, but hopefully Davies will take the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and leave her in a better place than she was when the Doctor found her. He’ll be running the show for the foreseeable future, so maybe he’ll leave the door open for another return at some point. That’s the beauty of this wonderfully wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey show—there’s no wrong turn that can’t be righted.
84 Comments
You say “misstep”, I say “just the latest in a line of decisions proving nothing in this show’s universe matters”. Last of the Time Lords… ‘til they came back they weren’t really dead.Time Lords only have 13 lives … no, it’s infinite now.The Doctor’s origin is a mystery … no, they’re now the origin of the TLThe Master actually, properly died … nope, they came back.Then the Master became good! … then became bad again.Donna can’t ever meet the Doctor or she dies… actually she’s fine now.Then there’s the number of times the Daleks have “died”.I’m sure there are more…ach, I dunno. Maybe there’s a point where stories just finish. Perhaps the Doctor should have died after the 13th regeneration and own the decision; even just do a dreaded reboot. I’ve loved the show since the 1980s, bought the Virgin books n’ all, endured the jokes and insults when the show wasn’t cool … but … I dunno. Nothing seems to matter anymore in this universe, even more than chronic offenders like Comicbooks. It’s only Dr. Who n’ all, but I can’t ge tbehind the thing anymore.
Canon doesn’t work with Dr. Who.
I love the Moffat line. “if you notice a mistake in Dr Who, it’s not a mistake, you just haven’t seen the story where the Doctor changed the timeline”.Of course continuity is going to be reset every so often. It’s been running for 60 years. Every story will be undone, redone or contradicted. That’s how the show has always worked. See the multiple ends of the dinosaurs, Atlantis etc. It was a running joke that the Master was dead after every story before reappearing with no explanation.
A wizard did it!
He’s a Nikon man!
Konica-Minolta.
Most long-running shows/movie franchises with an element of sci-fi/the supernatural work like this. Mildly irritating, but nothing to get too upset about. (Apart from the Emperor coming back in RoS – people need to burn in hell for signing off on that).
Not upset, but wouldn’t say “most” long-running shows do this, cos bar the Emperor I can’t think of changes that weren’t just open reboots of the universe. I’ve just reached that point with Who where I’m a bit done with the constant throwing out of what was previously established. And you’d think of all the SciFi franchises out there, Dr. Who would be the one most suited to a Hard Reboot.
Soaps also do it all the time (the most famous being the Dallas “dream” that wrote off an entire season).
Hell, all of Newhart was a dream!
Yeah.
And with Dr Who I always had the feeling, especially with the new seasons from 2005 on, that it was a series that worked under the premise “ah who cares, lets do whatever we want and have fun with it” and for me…yeah it works pretty well like that.
I don’t take it too serious because, the the story the whole series is based on is so ridiculous and over the top, in a very good way, that you pretty much can throw anything in it and it still works.
And I hope they keep on doing it for the years to come. Just do whatever you want. There were so many great storylines, funny scenarios, crazy situations…just have friggin fun with it.
That’s the second time the Emperor came back so other than not properly setting it up there’s no reason to be upset about it.
But at least ‘Rise of Skywalker’ had a good explanation for how the Emperor returned: somehow!
The Master broke the 12 regenerations thing back in the Baker run, didn’t he? that was in the 1970’s!
Sort of. IIRC the Master’s will to live kept him going even after his body was dying and then he started taking over other people to stay alive.
It was only during the Time War that the Time Lords granted him a new set of regenerations.
Dr. Who: Being “Ruined Forever” Since 1963
You can compare it to comic books. No one REALLY dies in the comic. There’s always a reason to bring someone back, with a fantasy/scifi explanation ready. Doctor Who is only enjoying those same tropes to keep it’s story going.
To each their own at the end of the day, of course, but most of this is just the price you pay for signing up for a long-running shared universe; for better or worse, a certain amount of malleability and reversion is kind of inevitable. The Master and the Daleks aren’t going to stay good / dead forever, because then they’re denying themselves the use of an iconic villain people still want to tell and watch stories about. The show’s not going to suddenly come to an end just because some arbitrary number some slightly contrarian script-editor came up with back in the ‘70s has come up, because that’s just it’s own kind of stupid. And deep down everyone knows it. Pulling a reboot, really, is just being a bit dishonest and giving everyone the illusion of freshness and originality, when in reality it’s the same old stuff being repackaged in a new format to make everyone feel like they’re watching something new and fresh and original. If anything, Doctor Who is at least being honest by making it part of the format. The occasional “have some more lives for basically being a decent guy, Doctor!” or “hey, there’s an isolated bunch of Daleks who somehow survived the last time they all got blown up and now they’re back!” doesn’t really hurt, it’s just part of the game at this point.The whole ‘The Doctor’s an immortal Time God who is the Original Time Lord and has eternal lives and is so amazing and brilliant and wow” is absolute bullshit, though, I’ll give you that one.
…David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor……sad Ten in the rain.You’d think this is something I’d’ve noticed before but, nope. *headasplode*
Hold on a second…
Matt Smelevenith…Peter Twelvpaldi…Jodie Whithirteennaker…
IT’S BEEN THERE ALL ALONG.
Don’t give Davies any ideas!!
And that’s why he’s now David Fourteennant.
DaXIVd TENant
Ncuti Gatwifteen.Yup, it checks out.
It was hugely emotional at the time, but sadness and tragedy have their part in drama – otherwise the drama isn’t very dramatic. I’m glad to see her back but I never thought it needed “fixing”.
I agree. It was sad for her. Enormously sad. But something Enormously Sad happens to all of us. It happens to the Doctor over and over. No one gets to avoid it, and the hope/belief was that Donna would go back to her “ordinary life,” which didn’t have to be a tragedy. The rest of us live ordinary lives perfectly happily, barring one or two Enormously Sad events, and there was no reason to think she couldn’t either. I think it said a lot more about us than about the show that the idea of an “ordinary life” seemed like a tragedy that needed repair. It made me sad at the time, but that’s when I was young and full of adventure and hadn’t experienced the magic of an ordinary life yet.Not that I’m not happy to see her back. She was a great companion.
That’s my stance as well. I think she was the best companion of the original RTD run and her departure was absolutely heartbreaking on top of the fact that it was sad to say goodbye to the character at all.Going “lol jk” isn’t fixing a misstep, it’s undoing one of the most emotionally powerful moments of Ten’s run.Let’s go all the way, have him go back and grab Amy and Rory from the past since that can be handwaved away just as easily. “Oh, the timey wimey interference has been mitigated by this flobbly whatsit!”
It’s not that she went back to an ordinary life, it’s that she doesn’t even know what she’s lost. She had this amazing, life-changing, universe-changing adventure, and doesn’t remember any part of it.
And that’s sad! I’m not saying it’s not sad. I’m just saying sad things are allowed. Sad things are a part of life.
I just think it’s an egregiously shitty kind of sad.
It’s definitely a lot.
Yeah life is sad but I never thought of Doctor Who or that Donna ending as life, but very forced plot points that again is a character taking all the agency from a decision that should not be theirs – if we consider this plot point as somehow realistic – and mostly as a melodramatic trope as subtle as poking a finger that just chopped a jalapeño into your eye to make you cry.
Fair enough! I guess we all see it differently. The Doctor is always taking other people’s agency away. It’s who he is and one of his major flaws. I didn’t think there was any reason Donna should have been spared, in terms of storytelling. That was Martha’s special thing. She was the only one who specifically chose not to let the Doctor run her life and not to spend her life following him (even though she still kind of did, but in a path she specifically chose for herself).
No he does not? The scriptwriters do, depending on what they think of the Doctor. The Doctor is never a consistent character, even in its own season. Donna has that destiny because Russell T Davies wanted to make people cry, and because he is incredibly bad at wrapping up his series.
That’s certainly one take, but it was definitely a hallmark of David Tennant’s version.
It just felt completely unearned to me. She didn’t die doing anything heroic. she had her agency taken from her by the Doctor “for her own good”.
But it *was* for her own good. She would have died. What else was he supposed to do?The thing is the Doctor takes away people’s agency all the time. It’s been talked about on the show that he goes about “saving” people his way whether they want it or not. The show recognizes it as a bug, not a feature. There’s no law that says people have to die doing something heroic, and I don’t see how dying at all, even doing something heroic, would have been preferable to living a long, ordinary, yes, but happy life.I thought it was earned in that all Donna ever wanted was to be extraordinary, and she was. She got what she always wanted. It just didn’t last forever, which is fair, because who gets everything they want forever?
I don’t know. It just rubbed me the wrong way.
Well that’s fair enough.
By the way, to be clear, the Doctor doing it “for her won good” still takes away her agency. She did not want to forget even if that meant her death. He could have respected that.
I never said it didn’t. In fact I said specifically that he does that a lot.
I am not sure what examples you are considering, but significant memory erasure just seems like such a crime.
I’m sure of the examples I’m considering, but I do agree with you that the memory erasure was definitely harsh. It was a very sad moment for sure.
I’ve never really gotten the “saving her life” = “he’s taking away her agency boo hiss!” thing, to be honest.He’s a Doctor. He saves lives. That’s the whole reason he does what he does. Of course he’s not going to stand by and let someone, much less his best friend, die if there’s a way he can save her life, however imperfectly. When it comes to a choice between ‘agency’ and ‘letting someone die when they don’t have to’, I’m kind of okay with ignoring their agency, to be honest.
James Bond is a Time Lord: discuss.
In the next Bond film, he’s going to regenerate into George Lazenby again
“This never happened to the other fella.”
“This never happened to the other fellow…”
It explains everything- Next!
Timothy Dalton. Enough said.
“Pay attention, 007: this is a sonic screwdriver…”
Fuck your orange and vodka. Sonic martini, shaken, not stirred.
“The name’s Doctor. The Doctor.”
I hate the idea that something bad happening to a character is a mistake/shoddy treatment/a terrible disservice. It’s a drama. It’s supposed to affect you emotionally.Was I sad that happened to my favourite Nu Who companion? Yes. That was the intention. It’s not a “tragically unresolved thread”, it’s an emotional ending, that kicks off the Doctor’s next arc.As for Davies undoing it, that’s not him admitting a mistake. He was Tweeting with, then talking to, Tate and they thought it’d be fun to do more episodes. You can’t do that without undoing the previous resolution.
very good way to look at it. It’s not “tragically unresolved.” That was the resolution, tragic as it might have been. And a big part of Tennant’s “god complex” through the Waters of Mars to his regeneration is because he couldn’t save Donna without erasing her memories.
“Outrage”?
Thank you, I dont remember ANY outrage when this happened, beyond fans fo the character missing her.
I have never clocked an iota of discontent with how the metacrisis was resolved. I’m fine with going back to it, but am aware that it rather cheapens a really powerful narrative ending in doing so.Good special, had fun.
I was really mad they made me openly weep about a character I started off despising for the first few episodes.
A character can get a raw deal without out it being “shoddy” or causing “outrage”. People (We) loved Donna because of her chemistry with the Doctor as best buddies traveling around space and fixing things. It’s also why Jack Harkness worked so well during the RTD days, they wanted to do the right thing, were game for just about anything, and didn’t have any (serious) romantic feelings for the Doctor. Davies definitely understood that, too, especially with FourTen describing Donna as his best friend.
“FourTen”! Love that. Thanks.
The only thing that made me sad was that Donna became a more fully realized version of her (awesome) self during her time with the Doctor. I was sorry she had to lose that growth.
why is a sad ending a “misstep”? is it because this show is a security blanket for shut-in freaks??
Fans mourned along with the Doctor, and then turned their ire towards Davies for treating one of the most popular companions of the New Who era so shoddily.Do these people not understand that she is fictional? Like if you didn’t like the story for one reason or another, fine, but the idea that it “treats a character badly” is so stupid. I thought it was a great dramatic ending. They had to get rid of her somehow, this was an interesting way of making it tragic without having to kill her.Suspension of disbelief is great but it should end when you turn the TV off.
Fictional characters only work because we create an emotional investment in the lie. And that lie is where we create the truth of the meaning of the actions done to them and decisions they make. Betraying the character is just betraying the lie we have all agreed to, in a sense. It is hard to care about a thing that isn’t real, but when you manage to pull it off then that emotion is real. It’s not going to exist outside of the space of that world, you can’t build a foundation on it, but it’s no less a vision through a window on a world that was built that the audience is sharing in.
Sure, but there’s still a point where the emotional investment still goes too far or gets a little silly or histrionic. “I’m sad and even a little angry that this happened to my favourite fictional character because I’ve grown to care for her” is good storytelling. “RUSSELL T DAVIES IS A BIG MEANIE WHO HATES DONNA AND IS DOING THIS OUT OF SPITE AND I’M GOING TO WRITE A PETITION TO GET HIM TO UNDO IT” is being a bit over-the-top about it.
Nearly every companion gets a raw deal, somehow. Pity Liz Shaw who never got to leave the planet while the Third Doctor was exiled to Earth.Donna’s disposition fit RTDs operatic sense of drama. I’m not sure it needed fixed, and the fix was a bit pat, in the end.Stuff like this goes back to Star Trek III- when Spock didn’t stay dead after Genesis all bets were off going forward across genre franchises.
I don’t think Liz even gets to see the inside of the TARDIS on screen, I’d like to think she at least she did off screen at some point so she’d know there was at least something to what the Doctor was claiming.At least her namesake got to see space in Prometheus. We don’t talk about Covenant.
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The problem wasn’t that Donna’s ending was sad, it was that Davies, at the time (IIRC) didn’t realize that it was sad or cruelly ironic. I vaguely remember some comments from him about it being OK because she got married and won the lottery, ignoring the tragedy of losing all her memories, character growth and ability to live the larger life she wanted. In terms of fiction, it seemed a mean fate because we want to go on a journey with the characters we watch and (fictionally) death doesn’t negate the journey, but taking away her memories and the realization she had the adventure she (and the audience) wanted does.
I have never clocked an iota of discontent with how the metacrisis was resolved. I’m fine with going back to it, but am aware that it rather cheapens a really powerful narrative ending in doing so.Good special, had fun.
I don’t know what kind of wibbly wobbly calendar you’ve got but neither Nov. 30th or Dec. 6th are Saturdays..
They are in ‘24 and ‘25 respectively. Might have been in the past too, but I don’t want to stare too hard into the timestream.
It was especially cutting when the show teased this was going to happen again to Clara, but then the twist is the Doctor himself is the one who gets his mind wiped, which very much came off as the show acknowledging what a crap deal Donna got. And if he can eventually get those memories back, why not her?
That I had entirely forgotten about Clara’s existence before reading this is perhaps its own kind of mind wipe
I liked the tragedy of her original fate. And I thought this was a pretty good way of undoing it (the child part, that is. The “let it go” was weak).It undermines the drama? Well, just remind yourself, she’ll still die eventually. The certainty of death undermines all happy endings.
Happy endings or nothing! Anything else is a mistake!
I think this new Donna story will allow her to get a more complete arc. Because when you think about it, the idea of travelling with the Doctor forever is its own empty dream. Sure, it’d be thrilling, but you essentially have no purpose of your own, you’re just following around someone else’s life. Now that Donna has Shaun and Rose, I think she gets the best of both worlds. She has her memories back of the important, wonderful things she did, but she also has a life of her own and people she loves.
Honestly, this is kind of one of the things that always irritated me about RTD’s original run; the way travelling with the Doctor and running around on constant eternal impossible adventures was put on a pedestal to the point that the show treated ordinary life as something to be dismissed or sneered at, like someone was a lesser person if they didn’t worship the ground the Doctor walked on and want to follow him around for the entirety of their existence. Say what you will about Moffat and how he started projecting this onto the Doctor instead, he did try to walk this aspect back a bit.
the show’s biggest misstepWiping a companion’s memories isn’t a new thing though.
Jamie McCrimmon and (my personal favorite companion of all time) Zoe “The Doctor is almost as clever as I am” Heriot had their memories wiped by the Time Lords, all except for their first encounter with the Doctor.
Poor kids.
Focusing on nostalgia for the Tennant-Tate team is a mixed blessing.
Leaving Donna on a bittersweet note was a worthy way to exit her from
the series. Much of this episode threatens to kill her tragically, only
for the solution to have made the tension much ado about nothing. All
the interesting new characters get pushed to the margins to accommodate
this anticlimax. The horror of Donna’s brain being tampered with is glossed over.
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2023/11/30/was-the-star-beast-a-doctor-who-feast/
I’ve never seen “outrage” in the community about her original exit. Sadness yes but no pitchforks. And writing a character out with a “bad” ending isn’t “shoddy” it’s called tragedy and drama.But points for not making it about “female mistreatment in fiction“. Which I’m not saying doesn’t happen but didn’t apply here. And for the positive Simms reference
As a fan from the Tom Baker era, I kinda gave up. All the retcons just got to be too much. For me, they could have ended everything after introducing John Hurt as the War Doctor. That’s about the time I tuned out. Though Ecclestone/Nine was my favorite Doctor, watching Tenant again might be fun.
I really never understood the stance that Donna got a raw deal on having her memories wiped, but then Donna was one of my least liked companions over the modern series. I just found the character grating so the idea that she could never know the Doctor again or die seemed like a fitting end to her arc. Having watched the first of these specials, I found a lot of it a bit too “try-hard” and while “why” Donna doesn’t die is an interesting idea, it’s execution and ‘a+b=c’ eureka moment was kind of cringe leaving me to feel that the BBC ‘correctness’ police had way too much influence over narrative points. Plus it would seem Davis is a fan of Lower Decks latest season given this special’s villain….