Lee McAvoy

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference

Lee McAvoy was at the Library during the attack of the Vashta Nerada in the 51st century. He was saved, like all the others, by being uploaded to the hard drive of the computer.

At some point he was introduced to the newly downloaded Donna Noble, by Doctor Moon. They fell in love and got married, having a simulated son Josh and simulated daughter Ella.

Lee and Donna lost each other while being rescued from the computer, Donna's last words to him being a promise that she would one day find him.He had also tried to shout out to Donna, but due to his stutter he was unable to say a word back to her.Donna was led to believe that Lee wasn't a real human. It turned out that he was a human after all, but since he had a stuttering problem, he couldn't call out to her when she left with the Tenth Doctor.

"Lee" was apparently not his real name, as Donna determined that no one with that name was in the Library when the Vashta Nerada attacked. (TV: Forest of the Dead)

Behind the scenes

In the DVD writer commentary on Forest of the Dead, Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat revealed that the original draft of the script would have revealed in his final scene that Lee was assigned female at birth in the real world. However, it was cut because they didn’t feel that it had been made clear enough that individuals were able to choose their appearance inside of the virtual reality of the Library, and that it would therefore be too confusing in the split-second framing of the reveal that the episode's structure necessitated. This would have made Lee one of the few portrayals of an explicitly transgender character on the show.

Unrelatedly, on the commentary of The End of Time, Russell T Davies noted that the writers toyed with the idea of bringing Lee back as Donna's fiancé, but gave up because it "wouldn't really have made sense" in terms of the timeline.