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Turn Left (TV story)

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It's coming, Donna. It's coming from across the stars and nothing can stop it...Rose Tyler


Synopsis

Donna’s entire world collapses, but there’s no sign of the Doctor. Instead, she finds help from a mysterious blonde woman – a traveller from a parallel universe. But, as Donna and Rose Tyler combine forces, are they too late to save the whole of creation from the approaching darkness?

Plot

The Doctor and Donna are on the Chino-planet of Shan Shen, and are mixing with the locals. Donna wanders away from the Doctor to explore. A mysterious fortune teller tempts Donna with a reading that is "free for people with red hair". The fortune teller searches Donna's past for a single event, finally choosing a moment in June 2007, where Donna and her mother are in a car at a T-junction arguing about her future. Sylvia is trying to persuade Donna to turn right and ask businessman Jival Chowdry for a job; but Donna turns left to go to her planned temp job at H.C. Clements. As the fortune teller attempts to persuade Donna to turn right, something crawls onto Donna's back. Finally, under the fortune teller's persuasion, Donna turns right and alters the course of her life as well as the future of all existence.

It is Christmas Eve 2007 (DW: The Runaway Bride)--but in an alternate world where Donna, who now never worked for H.C. Clements, has never met the Doctor. The Racnoss Webstar attacks London, and is destroyed by the army, at a terrible cost: near an ambulance and a group of UNIT trucks, Donna overhears a UNIT officer telling someone that they found a body. The Doctor's body. As Donna walks away, a blond figure suddenly appears: the Doctor's former companion Rose Tyler comes running down the street and asks for information about the body that has just been bundled into the ambulance. Rose is stunned to hear that it was the Doctor.

 
No, your other left!

In April 2008, Donna is fired from her job in the photocopying firm. Meanwhile, the Royal Hope Hospital (DW: Smith and Jones) is mysteriously transported to the Moon. When it returns, there is only one survivor: a medical student named Oliver Morgenstern, who relates the terrible events. As in the original timeline, the hospital had been moved by the Judoon and infiltrated by a Plasmavore. Sarah Jane Smith (at the hospital with her son Luke and his friends Maria and Clyde) tried to fill the Doctor's role, and did manage to stop the MRI machine from irradiating the Earth--but, without the Doctor, the humans couldn't find a way back to Earth, and all suffocated. Medical student Martha Jones gave Morgenstern the last oxygen tank so that someone would survive to tell the story.

As Donna digests the terrible news, Rose reappears, and warns her to leave London for Christmas 2008.

Donna takes Rose's advice, and treats her mum and grandfather to a Christmas holiday in the English countryside. On Christmas morning 2008 (DW: Voyage of the Damned), they watch in disbelief as a replica of the Titanic is reported to be heading straight for Buckingham Palace. The three run outside and watch, horrified, as a mushroom cloud rises above London.

Like many other refugees from London (and southern England, which was irradiated), the Nobles are forced to move to Leeds. They are allocated a house that is shared with two other families. The United States pledges to help Britain with monetary relief but must abandon the plan when their own crisis strikes: 60 million of their population are turned into Adipose (DW:Partners in Crime). Since London no longer exists, Adipose Industries had targeted the USA.

Some time later, Donna wakes up to find soldiers gunning at cars when the Sontarans activate the ATMOS devices (DW: The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky), covering the earth with a poison fog. A soldier again notices something on Donna's back and holds her at gunpoint, but is released when nothing is apparently there. That night, Donna meets Rose for a third time. Rose explains that the Torchwood team, aboard the Sontaran ship, are trying to stop the catastrophe. Suddenly, the sky is cleared by an atmospheric converter. However Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones have given their lives to achieve this, while Captain Jack Harkness has been stranded on the Sontaran homeworld.

Rose, who refuses to tell Donna her name and will say only that she has "crossed reality", 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 about the coming "darkness" that threatens every single universe. Donna tries to walk away, but Rose then tells Donna that she will have to go with her when she is ready and that she has three weeks to decide. Rose warns Donna that when she comes with her, Donna will die. Then she vanishes.

Three weeks later, the genial Italian family in Donna's house is evicted as England is now "only for the English". Since the oceans are closed off, they must be taken to a "labour camp". Wilfred says "That's what they called them last time.", alluding to the concentration camps of World War II. Later at night, Donna and Wilf talk about recent events. He notices that the constellation of Orion has gone, though there are no clouds. As the stars disappear throughout the sky, Donna realizes that Rose must be correct. She finds the younger woman, and tells her that she is ready.

Rose takes Donna to a UNIT base and shows her the TARDIS--salvaged from beneath the Thames--which is dying after the Doctor's death. Using technology taken from the TARDIS, Rose switches on a light which reveals what is on Donna's back: a 'Time Beetle'. Rose explains that it "feeds off time by changing time" and that it is in a state of temporal flux and cannot be removed. Rose goes on further to state that Donna herself is also in a state of flux and has been since her birth. Donna is horrified and the light is turned off. In order to set things right, they prepare to send Donna back in time to stop her past self from turning right. Donna agrees to go, and is elated by the belief that rather than dying, "this whole world [will] blink out of existence [but] a better world takes its place." To this Rose remains silent.

Donna successfully lands back in June 2007, but realizes that she is a half a mile away from her past self with just four minutes to spare. She tries to run to herself, but realizes that she will not make it in time. Donna realizes what Rose meant about her death and throws herself in front of a van; the fatal accident quickly causes a traffic jam that prevents Donna's past self from turning right. Right before she dies, Rose appears and whispers something into Donna's ear to tell the Doctor.

As the original timeline reasserts itself, Donna regains consciousness in the fortune teller's stall on Shan Shen. The frightened and baffled fortune teller flees, saying that Donna's will was "too strong." The Doctor enters and an emotionally spent Donna collapses into his arms.

Upon examining the 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 (as what happened to Sarah Jane Smith), but in Donna's case, it created a parallel universe. The Doctor then muses on all of the unique coincidences surrounding Donna: the fact that she had two parallel worlds that formed around her (this one and the one in the CAL computer) and the fact that he's met her and her grandfather twice. The Doctor concludes that they seem to be somehow linked. Donna tells the Doctor she is nothing special, but he counters saying that she's "brilliant". Hearing that trigger's Donna's memories of Rose on the parallel world and she starts to relate Rose's warnings to the Doctor. When asked if she remembered the blonde woman's name, Donna said she was never told it, but Donna does tell the Doctor the two words the blonde woman whispered into her ear: "Bad Wolf". Horrified, The Doctor runs out into the market square to see the words Bad Wolf everywhere; on posters pasted onto the walls, on the ceremonial flags hanging over the market, even on the TARDIS itself. Inside the TARDIS itself, the control room is glowing red and the Cloister Bell is ringing ominously. When Donna asks what's going on, the Doctor replies, "It's the end of the universe."

Cast

Production crew

to be added

References

  • In the Circle of Mirrors, Captain Magumbo says that Rose doesn't mention her name - a little nod or reference to The Doctor (also going along with the fact that his name is hidden in The Medusa Cascade).

Events in the alternate timeline

Story notes

  • This is the first story to feature Rose in a starring role since DW: Doomsday.
  • This is the 'Doctor-lite' episode of the series, similar to Love and Monsters and 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.
  • A reference to something on Donna's back was last heard in The Fires of Pompeii when Lucius Petrus Dextrus saw into the future.
  • In Doctor Who Magazine it said that Donna will receive a free tarot card reading and find out something bad is going to happen. When she is receiving it there will also be something behind her lurking in the curtains. The Tarot person will also look for a specific event in Donna's past. The episode, as broadcast, takes place on a Chinese-influenced alien world with no reference to Tarot.
  • "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.
  • 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 Doctor Who casting crew with their name and sizes for costumes to be made for them and they were paid approx £70 for the day. 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.
 
Graeme Harper captures another distorted image of a main character.
  • Graeme Harper's penchant for including a distorted image of a main character is present in this story. Though not included in every single episode he's directed for BBC Wales, it's seen often enough in the majority of his stories to be considered something of a directorial "signature". More typically achieved through the use of refraction (The Unicorn and the Wasp, Army of Ghosts and Utopia), here the motif is continued through the use of reflection. The theme of Donna's multiple worlds is caught through the simple use of mirrors, much as the notion of investigation was conveyed by the use of magnifying glasses in earlier stories.
  • 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.
  • A variation of 'The Wall Theme', (The Wall Theme is a variation of Rose's Theme, played in Doomsday.) with added guitar parts, is played before Donna is sent back in time.
  • 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 at Chowdry's personal assistant, one of the songs from her reception in Runaway Bride can be heard. Later, the song underscoring the Noble family's arrival at Firbourne House for their raffle-won holiday is the same rock version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" first heard on Mickey's radio in the The Christmas Invasion's teaser.
  • Billie Piper 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.

Ratings

Myths and rumours

  • Many fan reviews and discussions of this episode have noted that, for reasons unknown, Billie Piper speaks with a noticeable lisp in many of her scenes - a lisp not present when she was last on the show. Among the speculated reasons as to why is Piper's statement on Doctor Who Confidential (see above) that she had forgotten how to play Rose -- a character who speaks with a more working-class accent than Piper's natural voice. Rose is starting to speak more like the Doctor himself as she has become more like him in the sense of using technobabble and not wishing to accept salutes, nor does she reveal her name.

Filming Locations

to be added

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

  • When we see the woman in doorway the Nobles are coming up the hill to their house but at the ATMOS incident Donna is going down the hill on their road in the background you can see her further up the hill.
  • In DW: Voyage of the Damned, the Doctor claimed that if the Titanic hit the Earth it would destroy the entire planet. Also it was he who suggested that by entering the atmosphere, he could use the heat to re-ignite the engine. Who else could have done that? However, in this story, it is shown that it only destroys London and causes radiation to the whole of southern England. (It was suggested by Rose that Torchwood, UNIT, and Sarah Jane Smith all attempted to fill in for the Doctor after his death. Therefore it can be assumed that someone (e.g. Astrid or Alonso) attempted to stop the Titanic, but only managed to reduce the effect of the crash. The Doctor may have also over estimated the size of the blast radius of the ship.)
  • It was stated in the episode by the relocation officer that 7 million people must be moved - as London is destroyed it can be assumed that everyone in London at the time dies, therefore the only people needing to be moved are Londoners who were outside of the city at the time and all those living in the area affected by the radiation. (The blast may have destroyed London, but the radiation could have spread out further, thus forcing citizens in other cities to relocate. Dialogue in the episode clearly states that the whole of southern England was contaminated. Also, most residents of London would not have been present; London was all but deserted in Voyage of the Damned, due the previous years' events. We can assume that this was still the case, and that the number of casualties was actually relatively low, making mass relocation imperative.)
  • What happened before the 21st century to stop the Pyroviles invading, the Carrionites from starting a "Millennium of Blood", or the Cult of Skaro from creating a New Dalek Empire? (The Pyrovilians were never stopped by the Doctor, their power was naturally extracted as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.) (The most likely possibility can be found in The Sarah Jane Adventures, where the Trickster explains that he kept the other events that she took part in from happening due to the fact that they were motivated by greed, not the pure chaos he desired. It could be implied that, similarly, these lesser effects were suppressed in order to allow a far more chaotic resolution to come about.) I like the explanation that, since it was a parallel universe pocketed around the choices available to Donna, only the things she would have known about in the first place were affected. The Titanic and the hospital disappearing both would have been on the news and she was present for the Adipose and Sontaran stories.
  • How is it possible for the Doctor to die too quickly to regenerate, as it has been shown with the Master that a Time Lord will only not regenerate if he or she wishes. (At no point in the series has it ever been established that refusing to regenerate is the only way it can be avoided. Though it is entirely possible that the Doctor may have chosen not to regenerate following his encounter with the Racnoss, being at a low ebb at having lost Rose. The circumstances surrounding regeneration have never been well defined and the possibility of the Doctor dying has been an ongoing source of dramatic tension throughout the history of the series (for a recent example, witness the Ninth Doctor panicking about dying in Cardiff in The Unquiet Dead), strongly indicating that regeneration is not guaranteed. Also, Doctor Who: The TV Movie established that anesthesia can destroy the regenerative process; if the Doctor actually drowned a similar effect might have prevented regeneration.)
  • Would there not have been an issue created by there being two Donna Nobles in the same timeframe, one living and one dead? Would this have not caused problems for the "real" Donna if she was identified by police as having died? That universe and consequentially that version of Donna ceased to exist the moment her other self turned left.
  • At the beginning of the episode, we hear conversations in foreign languages - but the TARDIS should translate these languages to English. (This may simply be artistic license as even though the audience cannot understand the language, there's no sign that Donna or the Doctor cannot understand what is being said. Similarly we do not know if all the Chinese banners, etc. weren't saying "Bad Wolf" all along and the Doctor and Donna simply didn't notice or the TARDIS, for some reason, chose not to translate them, also: the translation of written texts has sometimes been erratic.)
  • If the Doctor never met Donna, how could he have known about the Racnoss, as Donna's appearance in the TARDIS was what started that adventure? (Someone else would have been infected with the Huon Particles and warned the Doctor, only they didn't stop the Doctor underneath the Thames, as they were possibly fed to the Racnoss as per the Empress's plans.)RTD notes in the episode's Confidential that 'another secratary' was infected with Huon particles.
  • If a new parallel world simply comes into existence when a different choice is made, why would the Reapers need to exist and why wouldn't they have shown up in this episode, especially considering how dire the consequences were of Donna not turning left? (It was stated by the Doctor that the Time Beetle allowed for changes in history and time simply compensates for them, however in Donna's case an entire world was created around. This was a parallel timeline, not a parallel world. Donna's actions created a kind of time loop that caused her to become imbued with the Huon Particles in the first place. The Reapers were a random effect of Blinovitch Limitation Effect, which only occurs if a person meets their future self.)
  • If Donna had never met the Doctor then she wouldn't have seen the fortune teller for that to happen, thus creating a paradox. (The Time Beetle's function is to change events in the past. The actual event of Donna turning right has nothing to do with the time beetle or Shan Shen. Not to mention, making Donna turn right did not ultimately change anything about the timeline thanks to Rose's intervention.)
  • When Donna was having flashbacks of Rose from her parallel timeline, would she not have remembered speaking to her in 'Partners in Crime'?
  • In one of the re-housing scenes a female soldier is seen wearing a flaming grenade cap badge of a fusilier regiment. Fusiliers are infantry and females are not permitted to serve in the infantry. (However, in the Doctor Who universe there are many differences to the real world. In Terror of the Zygons, said to take place in the mid-1970s, the Prime Minister of the UK is a woman -- several years before it happened in real life. Who is to say that in the Whoniverse where Earth has Homeworld Security divisions tasked with protecting the earth from aliens that women aren't now allowed to serve in this way. For a real-world example, see how female combat troops are now being used for the first time by some countries in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, the scenes involving this individual take place during "present day" time, which has been established as being about a year ahead of "real world" time; the rules might have changed.)
  • The Doctor noticed that odd things were happening to the hospital and therefore went to investigate, and was lucky to be inside the hospital when it transported to the Moon. However, Sarah Jane was clearly not in the hospital when it transported to the moon in the normal timeline, so why was she there in the parallel universe? Especially as there was little chance that she would know whether the Doctor was going to be there in the normal universe, so why did she decide to go in the parallel one? As the original episode never establishes why the Doctor is in the hospital in the first place, it's possible some organization (i.e. UNIT) had requested he look into the place. With him dead, it's possible Sarah-Jane might have become a fall back contact for such matters.
  • When Donna is talking to Rose, she says "I'm just a temp! I'm not even that, I'm nothing!", but in that world, she never became a temp (ie. Turning Left), so therefore why did she suggest that she was? Donna had been working as a temp before she was offered the contract at HC Clements and the Copying shop, so we can only presume that she went back to being a temp after the permanent job ended.
  • Why would an emergency government, greatly limited in funds already, install the (probably) expensive ATMOS in all its vehicles? It is possible that the system was installed before the Titanic crashed into London.
  • Donna was on the hill with her grandfather and they saw the stars going out. If the stars were going out then it would take millions, possibly billions, of years until it was visible from Earth. unless of course the stars were literally erased from time and space, which means the stars didn't exist in the first place to produce the light
  • The fact that Sarah Jane and her team die in the alternate Smith and Jones scene adds further confusion to the already confused time line. Smith and Jones now has to be after Invasion of the Bane - which was at least a year and a half after School Reunion - making Smith and Jones September at the earliest. However a Calender in TW:To the Last Man hinted that it was June 2008 and that has to be after Smith and Jones (It is possible that the alternate Smith and Jones happened on a different date)
  • The hill Donna and Wilfred are on is the same one as in Partners in Crime. That hill was in London wheras the Noble's are supposedly in Leeds.

Continuity

  • This is the second time Rose was present at the death of someone she knew, whom also ultimately died to correct the timeline. In series 1's "Father's Day", Rose was present at her father's death, which she prevented when she had come back in time with the Doctor. The resulting fracture of creating a parallel world caused chaos until that parallel Peter Tyler sacrificed his life to restore the original timeline. In this episode Rose is present at parallel Donna's death, which caused the younger Donna to turn left instead of right, restoring the timeline. Ironically, both parallel versions of Peter and Donna are hit by a car, and both die with Rose by their side.
  • Among other uses of the phrase "Turn Left" in the series: In DW: The Sontaran Strategem the ATMOS kept saying Turn Left; Captain Jack mentioned telling someone they should have turned left during a joke in Boom Town.
  • Bad Wolf returns as a warning for the end of the universe. Bad Wolf was last heard in DW: Doomsday.
  • The Cloister Bell is heard, again as a warning, it was last heard in DW: Time Crash.
  • Two phrases said by Lucius Petrus Dextrus in DW: The Fires of Pompeii come to fruition in this episode: "There's something on your back" and "She is returning".
  • The characters from The Sarah Jane Adventures are named in the news report to be dead in the parallel timeline.
  • A UNIT soldier refers to regeneration. UNIT has extensive knowledge of regeneration, having directly been involved with the aftermaths of the regenerations of the Third and Fourth Doctors, plus The Brigadier himself is known to have met most of the Doctor's incarnations (both on screen and in the spinoffs).
  • In DW: The Sontaran Stratagem, Colonel Mace and Captain Price saluted the Doctor but he said 'Don't salute, please'. When Captain Magambo saluted Rose, she told her not to salute as well. The difference is that this time Donna doesn't ask for a salute like she did in The Sontaran Stratagem.
  • The Doctor has previously 'died' in DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie (though he did subsequently regenerate).
  • There is some similarity (in that they both hang invisibly on the back) between the time beetle and the spiders in (DW: Planet of the Spiders).
  • Mirrors have been used for time travel in DW: The Evil of the Daleks and BFA: The Time of the Daleks.
  • Mirrors were also used to expose and reveal the Mara (as is used to reveal the beetle) in DW: Kinda, and a mirror was essential to the storyline of NDA: Martha in the Mirror.
  • "The Bees are disappearing" is spoken again in this episode, this time by Sylvia Noble. The quote has been used several times throughout the series, usually spoken by Donna. It is interesting to note that at the end of Turn Left, the "fortune teller" says to Donna, "What will you be?". This is used in the wrong context. In correct grammar she should have said "What will you become?". Therefore by saying 'be'she may again be referring to bees, and that Donna may have some future connection with them or their dissapearance. More likely, the sentence "what will you be" refers to the metaphorical sense of becoming a new type of being, as opposed to the act of the change. In this context, the grammar is correct, or that simply, The Fortune Teller was simply talking in modern vernacular. Actually it was literal, Donna becomes half time lord.
  • There have been a few other instances of the Doctor 'dying' and events taking different courses (NA: Blood Heat, DWM: Final Genesis).
  • In Army of Ghosts Adeola lures her colleague to his death by telling him to 'go to the left'.
  • When Donna, Wilf and Sylvia are watching the news report the picture is said to be coming from the Guinevere range of satellites which is the same range as the Guinevere space project first seen in (DW:The Christmas Invasion)
  • Discounting minor modifications over the years, the replacement of the wording on the TARDIS exterior with "Bad Wolf" -- and this appears to be a physical change given that the words are visible from the inside, too -- marks the first time the TARDIS has been shown undertaking a physical change since Attack of the Cybermen. Although not indicated in dialogue, the fact the TARDIS is now adorned with the words "Bad Wolf" - but the words are gone by the time the vessel returns to earth in the next episode - suggests the chameleon circuit came into play.
  • Rose says to Donna "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," a phrase often uttered by the Tenth Doctor.

DVD and Other releases

See also

Parallel worlds

External links

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