Turn Left (TV story): Difference between revisions

|season number        = Series 4 (Doctor Who)

|scripturl            = http://web.archive.org/web/20130922085854/http://www.thewriterstale.com/pdfs/Doctor%20Who%204%20Ep.11-%20Shooting%20Script%20-%20Turn%20Left%20-%2030.01.08.pdf

|main character        = [[Donna Noble|Donna]], [[Sylvia Noble (Donna's World)|Sylvia]], [[Wilfred Mott (Donna's World)|Wilf]], [[Rose Tyler|Rose]]

|featuring            = [[Tenth Doctor]], [[Sylvia Noble|Sylvia]], [[Erisa Magambo (Donna's World)|Magambo]]

|enemy                = The [[Time Beetle]], [[Fortune teller (Turn Left)|Fortune teller]], [[The Trickster's Brigade]]

|setting              = [[Donna's World]], [[2000s]]

'''''Turn Left''''' was the eleventh episode of [[Series 4 (Doctor Who)|series 4]] of ''[[Doctor Who]]''.

It was the first [[Doctor-lite]] episode to focus on the main [[companion]] without [[the Doctor]], and marked the first major reappearance of [[Rose Tyler]]. It also showed a [[Donna's World|parallel world]] showing what would have happened had Donna not met the Doctor in ''[[The Runaway Bride (TV story)|The Runaway Bride]]''. In that world, without Donna to convince him to leave during his encounter with the Empress of the Racnoss, the [[Tenth Doctor (Donna's World)|Tenth Doctor]] ended up drowning in the resulting flood under the Thames, because of this, many of the Doctor's companions and friends would have died, and without the Doctor around to stop an overwhelming threat on the horizon, all things would eventually be destroyed. Much of [[Series 3 (Doctor Who)|series 3]] and [[Series 4 (Doctor Who)|4]]'s events set on present-day Earth would still occur but would have cost more lives without the Doctor's intervention.

On an [[Shan Shen|alien planet]], [[Donna Noble|Donna]] meets a [[Fortune teller (Turn Left)|fortune teller]], who launches her into [[Donna's World|a world]] based on one question: "What would happen if Donna never met the [[Tenth Doctor]]?" Without [[Tenth Doctor (Donna's World)|the Doctor]], the whole world is in ruin, and [[Rose Tyler|a mysterious blonde]] tries to warn Donna of the oncoming darkness... Now a simple refugee, Donna is the only one who can undo the damage. But how?

At that time, Donna and her mother were in Donna's car at a T-junction, arguing about her future. [[Sylvia Noble|Sylvia]] tried to persuade Donna to turn right and ask [[businessman]] [[Jival Chowdry]] for a job, but Donna turned left to go to her planned temp job at H.C. Clements. After experiencing another flashback, Donna is now panicking, but the fortune teller asks her what would have happened if she turned right as something crawls onto Donna's back. Scared, she falls under the fortune teller's influence and, in the past, Donna gives in to [[Sylvia Noble (Donna's World)|her mother]]'s nagging and turns right, and because of that one fateful decision everything changes....

On Christmas Eve, Donna is at a [[Christmas]] party with her friends. She has just been promoted to [[Jival Chowdry (Donna's World)|Jival Chowdry]]'s personal assistant. Suddenly the [[Empress of the Racnoss (Donna's World)|Racnoss]] [[Webstar (Donna's World)|Webstar]] attacks [[London (Donna's World)|London]], and is destroyed by the army at a terrible cost. During the chaos, [[Alice Coltrane (Donna's World)|Alice]] stares at Donna's back, looking terrified. When Donna acts astonished that Alice's attention is focused on her despite the ongoing chaos, Alice, terrified, says that there is something on Donna's back. After this, Donna runs to the Webstar's general location. There she finds an [[ambulance]]. Near the ambulance and a group of [[UNIT (Donna's World)|UNIT]] vehicles, Donna overhears [[Harris (Donna's World)|a UNIT officer]] talking into a [[radio]] about "the Doctor" who drowned beneath the Thames. As the Doctor's body is loaded into an ambulance, a hand falls out of the stretcher, dropping [[Tenth Doctor's sonic screwdriver|a sonic screwdriver]]. As Donna walks away, [[Rose Tyler]] comes running down the street and asks for information about the body that has just been loaded into the ambulance. She is stunned to hear that it was the Doctor, despite Donna's assurances that it could have been any doctor. Rose vanishes moments later.

Donna has been fired from her job at [[Capital Copies Ltd]]. Chowdry tries to tell her that he has to lay people off because half of his contracts are on the other side of the river. Even though it has been several months since the Racnoss attack, the Thames is still closed off. Meanwhile, the [[Royal Hope Hospital (Donna's World)|Royal Hope Hospital]] is [[Smith and Jones (TV story)|mysteriously transported]] to [[The Moon (Donna's World)|the Moon]]. When it returns, there is only one survivor: medical student [[Oliver Morgenstern (Donna's World)|Oliver Morgenstern]], who relates the terrible events involving "[[Judoon|talking rhinos]]". [[Wilfred Mott (Donna's World)|Wilfred]], Donna's grandfather, believes that the rhinos are aliens. Morgenstern tells reporters he only survived when fellow medical student [[Martha Jones (Donna's World)|Martha Jones]] gave him the last of her oxygen before she died, and that [[Sarah Jane Smith (Donna's World)|Sarah Jane Smith]] had taken control of the situation and said she could stop the [[MRI]]. Sarah Jane's body was reported as being recovered from the hospital, while it is feared that Sarah Jane's son [[Luke Smith (Donna's World)|Luke]] and Luke's teenage friends [[Maria Jackson (Donna's World)|Maria Jackson]] and [[Clyde Langer (Donna's World)|Clyde Langer]] had also perished inside.

[[File:London destroyed.jpg|thumb|left|London destroyed by ''[[Titanic (Donna's World)|Titanic's]]'' impact.]]

Donna takes the woman's advice and treats her mum and grandfather to a Christmas holiday in the English countryside. On Christmas morning, the housemaid comes in to bring the Nobles their breakfast but then recoils from Donna and repeatedly shouts "You've got something on your back!" in Spanish. This is quickly forgotten when a newsflash shows that [[Titanic (Donna's World)|a replica of the ''Titanic'']] is about to fall on [[Buckingham Palace (Donna's World)|Buckingham Palace]]. Suddenly the TV signal cuts off just before a tremor from the impact hits the hotel. The three run outside and watch, horrified, as a mushroom cloud rises above London. Sylvia is aghast with shock as she realises that everyone they know is now dead, while Wilf notes that if Donna hadn't won the raffle they'd have been killed too. As Donna realises that the advice Rose gave her has saved her, she notices the Spanish maid still angrily pointing at her back.

Sometime later, Donna finds soldiers firing at cars when the [[Sontaran]]s activate the [[ATMOS]] devices, covering the Earth with a poisonous fog. A soldier notices something on Donna's back and holds her at gunpoint, but she is released when it is revealed that nothing is there. That night, Donna meets Rose for the third time. Rose explains that the [[Torchwood 3|Torchwood]] team, aboard the Sontaran ship, are trying to stop the catastrophe. Suddenly, the sky is cleared by an [[atmospheric converter]]. [[Gwen Cooper]] and [[Ianto Jones]] have given their lives to achieve this, and Captain [[Jack Harkness (Donna's World)|Jack Harkness]] has been transported to the [[Sontar|Sontaran homeworld]].

Rose refuses to tell Donna her name and tries to explain that Donna had saved the Doctor's life in an alternate timeline, though Donna insists that she had never met him. Rose warns Donna that the coming "darkness" threatens every single universe, assuring her she is the most important woman who has ever existed. Donna tries to walk away, but Rose tells her that she will decide to go with her in about three weeks and makes a cryptic remark about Wilf's telescope. She warns Donna that when she comes with her, Donna will die.

As the original timeline reasserts itself, Donna screams as she regains consciousness in the fortune teller's stall on Shan Shen, as the Time Beetle on her back releases itself and dies. As Donna sees the dead beetle and asks what it is, the baffled and terrified fortune teller flees. The Doctor, who has been blissfully unaware of all that's happened, enters much to Donna’s delight.

Upon examining the dead beetle, the Doctor tells Donna that it is part of the [[Trickster's Brigade]] and that normally it affects one person and the universe compensates, but in Donna's case, it created a [[parallel universe]]. The Doctor muses on all of the coincidences surrounding Donna.

* [[Wilfred Mott (Donna's World)|Wilfred Mott]] - [[Bernard Cribbins]]

* [[Sylvia Noble (Donna's World)|Sylvia Noble]] - [[Jacqueline King]]

* [[Erisa Magambo (Donna's World)|Capt. Magambo]] - [[Noma Dumezweni]]

* [[Mooky Kahari (Donna's World)|Mooky Kahari]] - [[Marcia Lecky]]

* [[Veena Brady (Donna's World)|Veena Brady]] - [[Suzann McLean]]

* [[Alice Coltrane (Donna's World)|Alice Coltrane]] - [[Natalie Walter]]

* [[Harris (Donna's World)|UNIT Soldier]] - [[Clive Standen]]

* [[Jival Chowdry (Donna's World)|Jival Chowdry]] - [[Bhasker Patel]]

* [[Oliver Morgenstern (Donna's World)|Morgenstern]] - [[Ben Righton]]

* [[Rose Tyler]] works with [[UNIT(Donna's World)|UNIT]] in Donna's World.

* On the television news it's mentioned that [[Sarah Jane Smith (Donna's World)|Sarah Jane Smith]] used to work for ''[[Metropolitan]]''.

* Donna turned left on [[Little Sutton Street]] heading for [[Chiswick High Road]]. In her [[Donna's World|parallel world]], she turned right towards [[Griffin's Parade]].

* Because Donna wasn't there to convince the Doctor to flee after defeating the [[Empress of the Racnoss (Donna's World)|Empress of the Racnoss]], he drowns in the flooding of the [[Thames Flood Barrier (Donna's World)|Thames Flood Barrier]]. He does not [[Regeneration|regenerate]] afterward; a UNIT soldier speculates that the Doctor died too fast to do so.

* [[Harris (Donna's World)|Private Harris]] is at the scene when the Doctor's body is loaded into the ambulance after the Racnoss attack.

* [[Martha Jones (Donna's World)|Martha Jones]], [[Sarah Jane Smith (Donna's World)|Sarah Jane Smith]], [[Maria Jackson (Donna's World)|Maria Jackson]], [[Luke Smith (Donna's World)|Luke Smith]] and [[Clyde Langer (Donna's World)|Clyde Langer]] all die in [[Royal Hope Hospital (Donna's World)|Royal Hope Hospital]] after it is transported by the [[Judoon]] to [[The Moon (Donna's World)|the Moon]], though Sarah Jane succeeds in stopping the [[MRI]] weapon. Although the Judoon do return to hospital to [[London (Donna's World)|London]], there is only [[Oliver Morgenstern (Donna's World)|one survivor]].

* The starship ''[[Titanic (Donna's World)|Titanic]]'' crashes into [[Buckingham Palace (Donna's World)|Buckingham Palace]], killing everyone in the greater [[London (Donna's World)|London]] area and contaminating southern England. This causes the need for [[7000000 (number)|7000000]] people to relocate.

* The destruction of London triggers a societal collapse in [[Great Britain (Donna's World)|Great Britain]], which becomes a police state that closes its borders, and leads to the introduction of concepts such as forced labour camps.

* The [[March of the Adipose]] occurs in [[America (Donna's World)|America]] instead of the UK; without the Doctor to stop it, sixty million people are killed (vs [[Stacy Campbell|one]] in the original timeline), preventing the US from donating the intended [[50000000000 (number)|50000000000]] pound relief to Great Britain, and accelerating the UK's decline.

* [[Gwen Cooper (Donna's World)|Gwen Cooper]] and [[Ianto Jones (Donna's World)|Ianto Jones]] die whilst assaulting the [[Sontaran]] warship. Captain [[Jack Harkness (Donna's World)|Jack Harkness]] is transported to the Sontaran homeworld.

* There is no one to prevent the [[ATMOS (Donna's World)|ATMOS]] devices from decimating the population of the Earth until [[Torchwood Three|Torchwood]] manages to set the gas on fire, although the UK is spared this as, due to the destruction of London, not to mention the lack of petrol, ATMOS never came into widespread use there.

=== Influences ===

 

 

== Story notes ==

* This is the "Doctor-lite" episode of the series, similar to ''[[Love & Monsters (TV story)|Love & Monsters]]'' and ''[[Blink (TV story)|Blink]]'', albeit with a much darker storyline. Unlike previous Doctor-lite stories, however, the focus is given to the companion, rather than her also taking a minor role. They used the same scheduling trick in the previous episode, ''[[Midnight (TV story)|Midnight]]'', which featured virtually none of Donna. These episodes allow the production team to complete fourteen episodes, including [[The Next Doctor (TV story)|the Christmas episode]] in a schedule originally designed to complete thirteen. A second team can be filming the "extra" episode, with the main cast filming only a day or so. Their footage is judiciously spread through the episode to give the impression of a larger interaction, although in the case of ''Turn Left'', [[David Tennant]]'s participation was restricted to the opening scene and epilogue, with a body double used for the scene where Donna witnesses the Doctor's dead body being loaded into the ambulance.

* "The bees are disappearing" is quoted again in this episode, this time by Donna's mother, Sylvia Noble. This is a real-world phenomenon, called Colony Collapse Disorder, the incidence of which increased sharply in late 2006, and the cause of which has not been identified. In ''[[The Stolen Earth (TV story)|The Stolen Earth]]'' and ''[[Journey's End (TV story)|Journey's End]]'', the cause of the disappearance is revealed.

* A recurring theme in previous episodes hinted that Donna would die in the future which occurs in this episode. However, this was an alternate reality Donna who sacrificed herself in order to prevent her past self from taking the wrong turn thus forcing her to meet the Doctor as was planned.

* Part of this episode is filmed in China Town, though not the one in London, but recreated in Cardiff. Chinese people living in South Wales were invited to be background extras via ''[[Facebook]]'' at the end of 2007. They had to reply to the casting crew with their name and sizes for costumes to be made for them and they were paid approximately £70 for the day. Unfortunately, a miscommunication had led them to believe that their fee would be ten times higher than was actually being offered, and many left as the morning wore on. [[David Tennant]] was seen in "China Town" when he took time out of filming though staying on location to appear on ''[[Blue Peter]]'' to appeal to viewers to donate shoes to their Shoebiz appeal.

* Donna is told she can have her fortune told for free because she has red hair. This is a reference to Chinese culture since red is considered very lucky in China. It's also a common carny trick to draw people into the attraction; half off for lovely ladies, men wearing hats, anything that matches some characteristic of the person being appealed to.

* According to [[Russell T Davies]] on ''[[Doctor Who Confidential]]'', this episode is the "cheap episode", as he wanted the TARDIS to be on fire, but the budget didn't allow for the effect.

* Two pieces of background pop music return from other episodes. In the scene in which Donna goes out with her friends to celebrate her new job as [[Jival Chowdry|Chowdry's]] personal assistant, the song "[[Merry Xmas Everybody]]" by the glam rock band Slade can be heard (first heard on [[Mickey Smith|Mickey's]] radio in ''[[The Christmas Invasion (TV story)|The Christmas Invasion]]''). This was also playing during Donna's wedding reception in ''[[The Runaway Bride (TV story)|The Runaway Bride]]''.

* [[Billie Piper|Billie Pipe]]<nowiki/>[[Billie Piper|r]] states in the accompanying ''[[Doctor Who Confidential]]'' episode that she had forgotten how to play Rose and needed to watch past episodes to remind herself. She noticeably lost her accent and speaks with a lisp, which she claims was because it was cold as they were shooting in winter, and she was wearing a "tiny jacket".

* This isn't the first time a ''Doctor Who'' story has examined a "What if..." scenario involving the Doctor's influence on a person's life. A similar storyline involved [[Eighth Doctor]] companion [[Sam Jones]], depicted in two wildly diverging timelines. ([[PROSE]]: ''[[Unnatural History (novel)|Unnatural History]]'')

* The building used as the hotel where Donna and her family spend Christmas is the same building used as [[Lavender Lawns]] in ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' serial ''[[Eye of the Gorgon (TV story)|Eye of the Gorgon]]''.

* [[Russell T Davies]] dropped a subplot involving Donna getting married and having children. This was originally intended to add even more drama to Donna's decision to sacrifice herself and unravel the parallel timeline: not only would she be giving up her own life, but her offspring would be erased from history. However, Davies had now become aware that [[Steven Moffat]] had similar plans for Donna in ''[[Forest of the Dead (TV story)|Forest of the Dead]]'' and Davies agreed that it was more pertinent to Moffat's tale than his own.

* [[Russell T Davies]] considered exploring how stories set in the past or on other planets would be affected - such as having UNIT send "time commandos" to the year [[1599]] to foil the plot of [[Carrionite|the Carrionites]] in ''[[The Shakespeare Code (TV story)|The Shakespeare Code]]''. Ultimately, however, he decided that this would cause an already very self-referential episode to become unnecessarily obsessed with minutiae, and Davies was very concerned about the ability of casual viewers to immerse themselves in the storyline.

* [[David Tennant]] was only required for a day.

* Donna's conversation with Rose on the bench was supposed to be performed at Thompson Park. However, [[Catherine Tate]] had come down with influenza, and so it was decided that she would be more comfortable if recording instead proceeded at Sophia Gardens, which was being used as the production unit base.  

* Some fans have chosen to consider this part one of a three-part story, which continues into the following two-parter. However, this is an increasingly minority view and is not reflected by most sources. [[Russell T Davies]] declined to clarify, preferring to stay out of fan debates.

* [[Russell T Davies]] came up with the idea for the episode while on a train journey to London.

* [[Russell T Davies]] originally planned to have season four's original companion [[Penny Carter]] be the focal point of the episode. The plan was to revist the events of [[Partners in Crime (TV story)|''Partners in Crime'']], where she and her mother would be driving to visit her grandfather when they became trapped under a giant dome of alien origin. Faced with the innocuous choice of turning left or right at a T-junction, she turned left, resulting in her being trapped under the dome, meeting the Doctor, and ultimately saving his life. An alien creature would alter history so that she turned right instead, meaning that she wound up on the outside of the dome, and the Doctor perished. When [[Catherine Tate]] expressed interest in returning to the series, Davies used the opportunity to explore Donna how she was introduced.

* This episode formed Block Seven of season four.

* [[Julie Gardner]] wanted the closing seconds to feature more glimpses of the phrase “Bad Wolf”, including on the TARDIS itself.

* During post-production, it became clear that the scale of the season's final three episodes was such that the regular forty-five-minute timeslot would be insufficient. The BBC instead agreed to allot the episode fifty minutes, allowing [[Graeme Harper]] to complete the episode without having to leave large chunks of Davies' script on the cutting room floor.

* [[Russell T Davies]] hoped to pose a question to the viewer: "Does the Doctor cause or prevent death?" The episode focuses on the scale of deaths without the Doctor; the implicit death toll surprised Davies when he wrote the script. [[David Tennant]] cited the deaths that surrounded his character as a major part of the Doctor's guilt.

* The fortune teller's room was actually [[The Hub]] set redressed.

* [[Russell T Davies]] emphasised developing the characters of Rose and Donna; [[Susie Liggat]] thought Rose describing Donna as "the most important woman in the whole of creation" was therapeutic for the former character and Donna's realisation that she must die was intended as the epitome of the character's maturation.

* In writing the script, [[Russell T Davies]] was several weeks behind schedule and had to decline an appearance at the [[National Television Awards]] in order to hand the script in on time. He described writing the script as "a lot harder to rip through because it needs so much construction"; he admitted that the opening scene could have been three times longer than his written version, itself longer than any opening scene he ever wrote. He was delayed due to the death of [[Howard Attfield]] and the difficulty of writing Rose's expository dialogue; he had to rush the script's ending to ensure it was ready to film.  

* [[Russell T Davies]] explained the effects of Rose's warning in ''[[Doctor Who Confidential]] -'' the words caused no inherent harm; "Bad Wolf" acts as a warning sign for the Doctor, and Rose's invocation of the phrase signals that the parallel universes Rose and the Doctor inhabit are collapsing into each other.

* The beetle's normal Earth-like appearance was deliberate; prosthetic designer [[Neill Gorton|Niell Gorton]] thought that familiarity would ease the narrative and cited the [[Catkind]] and the [[Judoon]] as examples.

* The prosthetic beetle was made using fibreglass and fitted on a harness in order not to burden [[Catherine Tate]]'s performance.

* While filming the Shan Shen scenes, rain delayed re-dressing the alley from the ''hanzi'' banners and posters to the Bad Wolf versions.

* The cast listened to "[[The Wild Rover]]" and "[[Bohemian Rhapsody]]" before singing the songs themselves.

* [[Graeme Harper]] decided to focus on [[Jacqueline King]] in the scene when Sylvia stares vacantly in a despondent manner as Donna talks to her; Harper considered the scene to be "Jacqueline's moment" and thought the scene would be more powerful if the focus was kept on one character.

* Because the episode had a low budget, it relied heavily on stock footage and pre-existing graphics: the Titanic's descent into Buckingham Palace and the American television report of the populace being transformed into Adipose utilised footage from ''[[Voyage of the Damned (TV story)|Voyage of the Damned]]'' and ''[[Partners in Crime (TV story)|Partners in Crime]]'', respectively, and images of the Racnoss Webstar and the ignited sky had already been created by [[The Mill]].

* The episode's tone phrase was "life during wartime"; [[Russell T Davies]] reflected his description by comparing the labour camps to [[Concentration camp|concentration camps]].  

* [[David Tennant]] didn't actually play the Doctor when he was lying on the stretcher after being pulled from the Thames.  

* Official [[Broadcasters' Audience Research Board]] (BARB) - 8.09 million viewers. ''Turn Left'' was the 4th most watched across all channels on British television for the week.<ref>[http://guide.doctorwhonews.net/info.php?detail=ratings&type=date Doctor Who Ratings - UK final]</ref>

* Bay Chambers, West Bute Street, Cardiff, Wales (Chowdry’s Office)

* Despite the Adipose invasion happening in America within the alternative timeline, the news report shows the same footage taken from ''[[Partners in Crime (TV story)|Partners in Crime]]''.

* This is the second time [[Rose Tyler|Rose]] was present at the death of someone she knew, who also ultimately died to correct the timeline. Rose was present at [[Peter Tyler|her father]]'s death, which she prevented when she had come back in time with the [[Ninth Doctor]]. The resulting fracture created an alternate timeline and caused chaos until Pete Tyler sacrificed his life to restore the original timeline. ([[TV]]: ''[[Father's Day (TV story)|Father's Day]]'') By coincidence, both parallel versions of Pete and [[Donna Noble|Donna]] are hit by a car, and both die with Rose by their side.

* This story was released in the [[Series 4 (Doctor Who)|Series 4]] DVD box set in [[November (releases)|November]] [[2008 (releases)|2008]] along with the rest of the series.

* [http://www.thewriterstale.com/scr.html Original script], posted online by [[Russell T Davies]] in conjunction with the release of his book [[REF]]: ''[[Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale]]''.