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Wilfred Mott was the father of Sylvia Noble, the grandfather of Donna Noble, and a one-time traveling companion of the Doctor. Though a victim of several significant alien invasions of Earth in 2008 and 2009, he was instrumental in stopping the Time Lords' return from behind the time-lock which sealed them inside the Time War. Unfortunately, during that effort, he became himself trapped, and his rescue was the proximate cause of the Doctor's regeneration into his eleventh incarnation.
Biography
Military Service
In 1948, as a Private in the British Army, Wilfred Mott was stationed in the British Mandate of Palestine and witnessed the end of the mandate. (DW: The End of Time, Part Two) Donna Noble said he had enlisted to fight in World War II while underage (BBCR: The Nemonite Invasion). Years later, when it is pointed out by a mysterious woman that he served in the military without once taking a life, Mott refused to feel any shame about this fact. (DW: The End of Time, Part One )
21st century
In the 2006 elections, after the death of the British Prime Minister by the Slitheen, Wilfred voted against Harriet Jones to be the new Prime Minister. (DW: The Stolen Earth)
December 2007, Wilfred was laid up with Spanish flu and therefore unable to attend his granddaughter's wedding. (DW: The Runaway Bride, DW: The Sontaran Stratagem) Wilfred was manning his newspaper stand in London, on Christmas Eve 2008, when he met the Doctor for the first time. At this point, Earth was aware of alien life and the threat they posed, and, given events surrounding the Sycorax (DW: The Christmas Invasion) and the Racnoss (DW: The Runaway Bride), believed that aliens might attack on Christmas. He claimed to the Doctor and Astrid to be the only person who has remained in London apart from Queen Elizabeth II (and her retinue in Buckingham Palace) as everyone else had fled into the countryside. He was angered when the Titanic hurtled over London. (DW: Voyage of the Damned)
Being an amateur astronomer, he pitched a tent in the backyard of his daughter's house in Chiswick and spent most of his nights on top of a hill with a telescope watching out for aliens among the stars. Donna waved to him from the Doctor's TARDIS while flying away with the Doctor. He was happy that Donna had found what she wanted. (DW: Partners in Crime)
Donna went to visit him and her mother after she had arrived on earth again. She told him about the Doctor but not her mother because she knew she would react badly. She told him about ATMOS and what they were doing. When the Doctor turned up with a UNIT soldier Wilfred realised that the Doctor was the same man who he met at Christmas, much to Donna's surprise. He then opened the family car to investigate an ATMOS device in more detail and was trapped in the car when it was triggered and began to suffocate (DW: The Sontaran Stratagem), later freed by his daughter Sylvia Noble. The next day he told Donna that he would keep her secret safe and not tell her mother. (DW: The Poison Sky)
There is an as-yet unconfirmed account that Wilfred at one point discovered a new star, which was named after him. (NSA: Beautiful Chaos)
When the Earth was moved into the Medusa Cascade he and Sylvia tried to fight against the Daleks. Wilf was armed with a paintball gun and fired it at a Dalek, but it dissolved the paint.
As it was about to exterminate him Rose Tyler teleported to the scene and killed the Dalek. He and Sylvia then took her to their home. A communication came from a subwave network, but they couldn't respond as Sylvia thought webcams were 'naughty' and didn't let her father get one. He watched as Martha Jones and her mother, Torchwood 3 and Mr. Smith got in touch with Harriet Jones. Rose then located the Doctor as she teleported out, leaving Wilfred and Sylvia with expressions of shock. (DW: The Stolen Earth) After the Earth was put back in its proper place, they are shown celebrating with each other. When the Doctor brought Donna back to them without any memory of her adventures with him, Wilf was obviously distraught at the thought of her going back to her previous life. He promises to look up at the sky every night and remember him on Donna's behalf. (DW: Journey's End) As Christmas 2009 approached, Wilf, along with everyone else on Earth, began having nightmares involving the laughing face of the Master. Seeking refuge in a church, Wilf was approached by a mysterious woman, who told him that the Church was a convent in the 1300s, that it had been attacked by a demon from the sky, and saved by a "saintly physician", before she vanished. The next day, Wilf organised a 'Silver Cloak' of OAPs and quickly found the Doctor, and proceeded to learn of his prophesised death in a cafe. On Christmas morning, Wilf prepared to watch the Queen's speech, which was interrupted by the image of the mysterious woman, an image only he could see. The woman told Wilf that he would have to take up arms, and that the Doctor could still be saved, and that Wilf could not tell the Doctor anything of what she said. Taking his old service revolver, Wilf met the Doctor outside the Noble house, and joined him in tracking down the Master. The two arrived too late to stop the Master from turning every Human on Earth into a duplicate of himself, but Wilf was protected from the effect by hiding behind a radiation shield.
He later escaped to a spaceship with the Doctor and after another encounter with The Woman, he gives the Doctor his gun and encourages him to kill the Master. The Doctor initially refuses due to his abhorrence of using weapons, but once he learns that the Time Lords are behind everything, he takes Wilf's gun. During the battle that followed when Earth shot missiles at the ship, Wilf manned one of the guns and later had the aliens land so he could join the Doctor. He freed someone trapped in the radiation booth, but as a result, got trapped himself. He witnessed the Doctor and the Master defeat Rassilon and the Time Lords and then knocked on the booth door four times with a four-beat knock, fulfilling the prophecy of "he will knock four times." Due to the nuclear bolt still being active, the radiation would flood the booth and kill him, but not harm anyone else and in order to save him, the Doctor would have to sacrifice himself. Wilf was willing to die instead, but the Doctor saved him and absorbed a fatal dose of radiation, which caused him to start to regenerate. He returned Wilf home and promised to see him one more time. Later, at Donna's wedding, Wilf encounters the Doctor one last time and gives them a winning lottery ticket he bought with money borrowed from Geoff Noble and leaves. Wilf and Sylvia give Donna the ticket and Wilf salutes the Doctor as he takes off. (DW: The End of Time).
Donna's World
If his granddaughter Donna had turned right instead of left and never met the Doctor, Wilfred would never have met the Doctor, either: on Christmas Eve 2008 of the alternate timeline, he was in the English countryside, on holiday with his daughter and granddaughter, courtesy of Donna's winning raffle ticket. He and his family were thus spared the destruction of London, but the lingering radiation meant their forced evacuation to Leeds, where they had to share a house with several other families. Wilfred adjusted to this life fairly well, joining in the shanty singing in the kitchen, for example, much to Donna's dismay and was upset when all non-English residents of England were forcibly deported to "labour camps", possibly recalling the Second World War and the Nazi massacre of Jews in 'labour camps' .
Wilfred set up his telescope in the house at Leeds; it was there that he and Donna first noticed the darkness spreading over the night sky, eating up the stars. It is this sight that finally prompts Donna to find Rose Tyler and repair her timeline. (DW: Turn Left)
Personality
At most times, Wilfred has a positive attitude, even in a crisis, he turns to good war-time spirit. Wilfred has shown to be a strong patriot, loyal to Queen Elizabeth and his beloved England. He also has a good relationship with his granddaughter Donna Noble and encourages her companionship with the Doctor.
After the Doctor had to erase Donna's memory, in the aftermath of foiling Davros's latest plan, Wilfred's strong spirit seemed to have gone. But that was probably because of the fact that he believed that she was better with the Doctor. As the TARDIS dematerialised, Wilfred saluted in respect. (DW: Journey's End)
Wilfred also proved a loyal companion to the Doctor, from searching him out when prompted to by The Woman, to giving the Doctor his gun (which proves to be vital) and prompting him to kill the Master, as well as acting as a gunner when the ship they were on was under attack, and even convincing the Vinvocci to bring him back to help the Doctor. He also showed a willingness for self-sacrifice: saving someone trapped in a radiation booth and being willing to die there so the Doctor could live, citing the fact that he's an old man. (DW: The End of Time)
He also has developed a paternal sort of relationship with the Doctor, trying to comfort the Doctor when he begins to cry during their conversation, and wants him to be happy and have someone to make him laugh. He's also willing to give up his life to let the Doctor live. This relationship is picked up by others, with the Master sarcastically referring to Wilfred as the Doctor's father, and Wilfred admits he would be proud to have the Doctor for a son with the Doctor saying he'd be honoured if Wilfred was his father. (DW: The End of Time)
Behind the scenes
- He is played by actor Bernard Cribbins who first appeared in the Dr. Who movie Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD.
- Wilf is the Doctor's oldest televised human companion, as of 2010.
- The character was not originally conceived to be Donna's grandfather. The character was retroactively made Sylvia Noble's father, following the death of Howard Attfield, who was originally to have reprised his Runaway Bride role. Several scenes with Geoffrey Noble had already been filmed by the time of Attfield's death, and were rewritten and reshot to incorporate Wilfred as Donna's grandfather.
- The name Wilfred Mott is also an anagram of "Time Lord TFW (The Father Who)", "Time Lord WTF" or "Time Lord FTW (an internet slang phrase meaning 'For the Win')".
- Wilfred spoke of a conversation with the Doctor where regeneration was discussed. This does not occur during the filmed series and may allude to an off-screen encounter with the Doctor (unless the topic was brought up when the Doctor returned the memory-wiped Donna to her family, in order to explain how she came to have Time Lord consciousness).
- Wilf's newspaper stand appears only in Voyage of the Damned. It is not known if he continued to operate the business during the Series 4/Specials time frame. Most of his appearances in Series 4 are, however, at night or in the late afternoon, well past the day part when most newsstand agents conduct the bulk of their business.
- As with other characters identified as companions for a single story, including Adelaide Brooke, Grace Holloway and Sara Kingdom, Wilf's status as a "full" companion is open for debate.
- When Voyage of the Damned was being filmed, Wilfred was not planned on having a second appearance, he was just going to be a news stand worker named Carl. However, after Howard Attfield's death, it was decided that Wilfred would come back as Donna's grandfather. In the credits, his name was changed from Carl to Wilfred Mott.