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Donna Noble (later Donna Temple-Noble) was a companion of the Tenth Doctor. Despite her humble origins, Donna Noble was noted by Rose Tyler and then by the Tenth Doctor as unknowingly being the most important woman in all of creation. Donna went on to save the whole of reality from the Daleks and Davros. She later married Shaun Temple.
Biography
Early life
Donna Noble was born the only daughter of Geoff and Sylvia Noble and the granddaughter of Wilfred and Eileen Mott around the late 1970s. On her first day at school, she was sent home for biting (DW: The Runaway Bride).
When she was six years old, her mother refused to take her on a holiday that year; Donna, undaunted, got on a bus and went on her own to Strathclyde. Her grandfather would later recount this story to her as a way to remind her of her determination (DW: Partners in Crime). She was a supporter of West Ham United from a young age (DW: Planet of the Ood).
Donna missed out on the Christmas Day Sycorax invasion of Earth due to a hangover, and missed the Cybermen invasion because she was on holiday in Spain going scuba diving (DW: The Runaway Bride). Consequently, she was unprepared for the possibility of the existence of alien life when she first encountered it herself. While Donna may have been involved or even killed in the Toclafane invasion, a global event, she retained no memory of the existence of aliens due to the reversal of that invasion by the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones.
Her career seems to have consisted mainly of temp jobs. She had worked in a library for a while, and at some point before June 2007 she had worked for two years at a double-glazing firm (DW: The Runaway Bride, The Doctor's Daughter). In June 2007, Donna had the choice of working as a full-time secretary for Jival Chowdry or as a temporary secretary at H.C. Clements, a security firm. Although she considered the former at her mother's insistence, a traffic accident blocked the roadway to the right. As a result she turned left instead, choosing to work for Clements (DW: Turn Left).
- Unknown to Donna, the accident was caused by a future version of herself from an alternate timeline.
On her first day at Clements, she fell in love with Lance Bennett, whom she pressured into marriage. While she planned the wedding, she was unaware that Lance was dosing her coffee with huon particles by order of the Empress of the Racnoss, whom he secretly served (DW: The Runaway Bride).
Meeting the Doctor
On the day of her wedding (Christmas Eve 2007), while walking down the aisle with her father, huon particles interacted with her elevated emotional state and caused Donna to be teleported into the Doctor's TARDIS, to the surprise of them both. The Doctor eventually returned her to her wedding reception, after the intervention of Robot Santas prevented his returning her in time for her actual wedding. When a Robotic Christmas Tree began firing explosives at the wedding guests, the Doctor decided to investigate H.C. Clements. The trail led them to a secret base under the Thames, where Lance and the Empress of the Racnoss revealed their plans. Donna assisted the Doctor in defeating the Empress and pulled him away from the Empress' death – an act that saved his life – but she ultimately turned down his offer to travel with him. (DW: The Runaway Bride, Turn Left)
Joining the Doctor
But Donna could not resume her old complacent life. Her eyes had been opened to the universe by this event. At some point after the encounter with the Racnoss, Donna's father died. Meanwhile, Donna tried to live without the Doctor, going to Egypt for two weeks in an attempt to bring back some excitement in her life. When this failed, she set to work in trying to investigate unexplained happenings in hope of meeting him again, knowing the Doctor always ran into trouble. She managed to catch up with him while looking into mysteries connected with Adipose Industries. Donna witnessed the March of the Adipose and then went on to travel with the Doctor in the TARDIS after showing her granddad her departure. Just before she departed in the TARDIS, whilst attempting to find a suitable place to leave her car keys, she approached a blond woman standing at a police line. This woman was Rose Tyler. (DW: Partners in Crime) Unlike most companions of the Doctor, Donna came well prepared for the trip—most, if not all, of her predecessors joined the Doctor with little more than the clothes on their backs—packing large amounts of clothing, if nothing else; the Doctor was mildly surprised when he noted that she had included a hat box.
Travels with the Doctor
After leaving Earth, Donna and the Tenth Doctor traveled back to ancient Pompeii on the day that Mt Vesuvius erupted. She tried to convince the Doctor to stop the eruption from ever happening but he said this was impossible. There she fought the Pyrovile and convinced the Doctor to save one family from the devastation. (DW: The Fires of Pompeii) They next traveled to the Ood Sphere and discovered the dark secret behind the Oods subservience. There they stopped the slavery and mutilation and liberated the Ood once and for all. (DW: Planet of the Ood) After traveling in the TARDIS with the Doctor, she returned with him to Earth after a call from Martha Jones to deal with a planned Sontaran invasion, Donna met the Doctor's former companion Martha Jones, who now worked with UNIT. She went home to see her family for a short while and was terrified when her grandfather almost died at the hand of the Sontarans. She knocked a Sontaran unconscious by hitting it on the probic vent with a hammer. (DW: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky) She was shocked to learn the Doctor had previously been a father. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter)
She met Agatha Christie in 1926 and killed a Vespiform by throwing the Firestone into a lake in order to save Agatha Christie's life. During this adventure, she inadvertently influenced the creation of Miss Marple and Murder on the Orient Express by mentioning them to Christie years before they were created (although Christie's memories of the incident were wiped, some unconscious memories were said to have remained). (DW: The Unicorn and the Wasp)
During a visit to a planet known as The Library, Donna befriended Miss Evangelista and was greatly disturbed by the fact she was able to briefly communicate with her consciousness after the girl had been killed by the Vashta Nerada. Soon after, Donna's consciousness was "saved" to the planet-core-sized hard drive by CAL in order to save her from the Vashta Nerada. A replication of her face subsequently appeared as one of the Library's information Nodes, leading the Doctor to briefly believe that she had been killed. Unaware of what happened, Donna's consciousness experienced (in a disjointed fashion) several years of an idyllic existence wherein she married a man, took his name, as Donna McAvoy and had two children; she retained these memories after being restored to her real self. (DW: Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead)
During a visit to the planet Shan Shen, Donna talked to a fortune teller, who occupied her while a Time Beetle jumped on her back and changed her history so that she had never taken the action which caused her to meet The Doctor (see Donna's World). In the alternate world Donna met Rose Tyler, whose identity she did not learn until later. Rose gave her a message for the Doctor: "Bad Wolf". In the alternate timeline, Donna died restoring things to normal, but her "normal timeline" version remembered the message from Rose, and Donna gave the Doctor her message. (DW: Turn Left)
Against the Daleks
Donna was taken by the Doctor to Earth, only to discover it was gone, and then to the Shadow Proclamation for help (DW: The Stolen Earth) Subsequently, Donna was separated from the Doctor when, for reasons unknown, the TARDIS refused to let her leave when the others surrendered to the Daleks.
Soon after, she used the regeneration energy stored in the Doctor's hand to create a being with the appearance of the Doctor, but who was also half human and had aspects of Donna's personality. As it turned out the Biological Meta-Crisis was a two way process and Donna herself had also been given "The best part of the Doctor, his mind," rendering her the "DoctorDonna" of the Ood's prophecy.
The knowledge laid dormant within her synapses until she received an electrical charge while being stunned by Davros. She used her newfound intellect to deactivate the reality bomb and defeat Davros and the Daleks Empire. Using Torchwood's rift power and making a lasso out of it around the TARDIS with the help of Sarah Jane Smith's computer Mr Smith, the Doctor, with a few guests on board, including Rose, Donna, the new Doctor, Mickey, Jackie, Sarah Jane, Martha Jones and Captain Jack Harkness, confessed that the TARDIS could now fly as intended, with six pilots. After telling Jackie, Rose's mother, "No... not you Jackie... you just, uh, stand there..", the Doctor used the TARDIS to successfully restore Earth to its proper place in the solar system. After assisting the Doctor in exiling the Meta-Crisis Doctor to Pete's World and saying farewell to Rose, Donna's mind began to overload, a consequence of the impossible Time Lord-human meta-crisis. In order to save her life, the Doctor was forced to wipe her memories of all her adventures with him. (DW: Journey's End)
Back to Earth
The Doctor returned her home, with strict instructions to her mother and grandfather never to tell her about the Doctor or the TARDIS, indicating that the Donna who had matured into a responsible woman as a result of meeting the Doctor was "dead" - thereby fulfilling Dalek Caan's prophecy. After one final meeting (in which he introduced himself as John Smith), the Doctor left Donna to her "normal" life once more. Wilfred, her grandfather, promised to keep thinking of the Doctor on her behalf, and never to mention the Doctor to her as that might trigger her memory of events to return and cause her mind to "burn up", endangering her life. (DW: Journey's End)
By Christmas 2009, Donna had gotten her life back on track, becoming engaged to a man named Shaun Temple. She nearly bumped into the Doctor twice, but narrowly missed him. For Christmas, she gave Wilf a book by Joshua Naismith, but did not know exactly why she got it for him, stating that she simply "felt" like he should have it. The Doctor believed that it was her Time Lord side subconciously directing Wilf since he was so important.
On Christmas Day, the Master took control over Earth and turned every human into versions of himself. Donna's half-Time Lord mind meant she was unaffected by it, but her mother and Shaun were not. The shock of seeing them transformed into duplicates of the Master reawakened some of the memories of her travels with the Doctor, with visions of several aliens she had met appearing in her mind. When parts her memories began returning, she held her head in pain. She later called Wilf again, but the Master answered his phone. She was told by Wilf to run for her life, as the Master had already located her to kill her. Donna fled into an alley but was quickly surrounded. After experiencing more flashes of repressed memories from her travels, a blast of energy discharge came out of her body (which was the result of her returning to her "DoctorDonna" state), knocking out the surrounding Master clones before collapsing to the ground.
When the planet of Gallifrey appeared in the sky hurtling towards Earth, her unconscious body was found by Shaun and brought back to her home. It was revealed that the Doctor had also implanted a self-defence device that sent her to sleep and was presumably what saved her from the Master clones, but otherwise did not harm her. She came to when the TARDIS appeared in the street and complained that she has, once again, missed something important. Her memories of the Doctor apparently never fully returned and she remained fine. By Spring 2010, Donna and Shaun were pronounced married and left the church with family and friends cheering them on. Donna asked specifically for a photograph for her and her friends, allowing her mother and grandfather Wilfred to speak with the Doctor for one last time. They returned and gave Donna a brown envelope, a gift from her now-deceased father and the Doctor, which contained a lottery ticket. She remembered that the lottery had a triple roll-over prize before stuffing the ticket in her dress. (DW: The End of Time)
Alternate timeline
- See Donna's World for more information.
In an alternate timeline, Donna chose not to take the job at H.C. Clements, and instead chose to work for Jival Chowdry. This decision resulted in her eventually getting promoted to personal assistant to Chowdry, but her life and career collapsed due to a number of circumstances, beginning with Chowdry laying her off, and ultimately a number of national and worldwide cataclysms that followed the death of a man called The Doctor. During the next couple of years, Donna and her family go from living the life of luxury thanks to a raffle ticket, to living as homeless refugees as British society collapses. During this time, she has several encounters with a mysterious blonde woman who claims that Donna's life was never meant to turn out this way, that she was supposed to make the decision to work for Clements which in turn would result in The Doctor's survival after the Webstar incident and, later, her travelling as his companion. Her choice also resulted into other events. For example, when the Judoon transported the Royal Hope Hospital to the Moon, the Doctor wasn't there for the Plasmavore to take his blood and get caught by the Judoon, making everybody that was in the hospital die, including Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Maria, Luke and Clyde. The next Christmas the Titanic crashed into Buckingham Palace, leaving London abandoned. Luckily, the mysterious blonde woman convinced Donna that she and her family should take a vacation outside of London with the prize of the raffle ticket Donna acquired. Later, because the Doctor couldn't stop the inducer, Adipose Industries had been sold out to America, making the population turn into Adipose babies. Then the A.T.M.O.S device was set off, but that was stopped by Torchwood, with Ianto and Gwen killed, and Captain Jack on Sontar.
Eventually convinced by the blonde woman, Donna agreed to be sent back to June 2007 in a juy-rigged time machine; her task was to prevent her younger self from "turning right" and taking the fateful job with Chowdry. Unable to get there in time, the alternate timeline Donna Noble threw herself in front of a lorry in order to cause a traffic jam that would physically prevent her younger self from making that decision. Just before her death, the blonde woman appeared to Donna and passed a message for her to give to the Doctor. When the timeline was restored, Donna Noble retained some memories of the alternate timeline, including the blonde woman and her message to the Doctor: "Bad Wolf". (DW: Turn Left)
Family
Known family/offspring of Donna Noble:
- Wilfred Mott - grandfather
- Eileen Mott - grandmother, deceased
- Geoff Noble - father, deceased
- Sylvia Noble - mother
- Shaun Temple - husband
- Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor - partial offspring (DW: Journey's End)
CAL's world
- Lee McAvoy - husband
- Ella McAvoy - daughter
- Joshua McAvoy - son
Career
Donna had been working as a temping secretary on several places, including H.C. Clements and a double glazing firm. (DW: The Runaway Bride, The Sontaran Stratagem) She then went into working for health and safety for a week but kept the ID card. (DW: Partners in Crime) At some point she also had been working at Hounslow Library for six months, where she learned Dewey Decimal System in two days flat (DW: The Doctor's Daughter)
In an alternate timeline, she worked as a secretary for Jival Chowdry's local photocopying business instead of H.C. Clements, but she was soon replaced and made redundant. (DW: Turn Left)
Personality
Donna's first encounter with the Doctor was bewildering for both sides: the Doctor was shocked into speechlessness by her sudden appearance in his TARDIS; Donna, meanwhile, was furious with the Doctor for "kidnapping" her. Though Donna's sharp tongue and hair-trigger temper kept the Doctor at arm's length for most of their first adventure, a few quieter moments showed a more level-headed and perceptive woman. Although she sometimes appeared unintelligent (which sometimes served as comic relief), and persistently referred to the fact that she was 'only a temp', she was actually quite smart: she mastered the Dewey Decimal System in two days while working at a library. When she later joined with the Doctor in his journeys, her quick, and sometimes dry, wit often came out, coinciding with his own, though it was more of a playful banter than anything else.
Though most companions are, to some degree, the Doctor's conscience, Donna adopted this role more openly and forcefully than her predecessors. It was she who pleaded with the Doctor to save the inhabitants of Pompeii - and, if not all of Pompeii, then a single family. Most importantly, Donna insisted that the Doctor acknowledge Jenny as his daughter, no matter how she was created or what job she was bred to do.
Donna's fiery temper hid a deep well of compassion, as she showed when she reached out to Agatha Christie, intending to share her own story of failed marriage.
When the Doctor's companion Martha Jones recalled the Doctor to Earth, she and Donna became fast friends; neither was jealous and both were willing to share experiences, a situation that the Doctor found disconcerting. (DW: The Sontaran Stratagem) Her relationship with Rose Tyler was initially abrasive in the alternate timeline (DW: Turn Left) but friendly in the real universe. (DW: Journey's End) She also enjoyed a brief attraction for Captain Jack Harkness, which at one point involved her pushing Sarah Jane Smith out of the way in order to get a hug from him. (DW: Journey's End)
Unlike Rose and Martha, Donna seemed intent on maintaining a platonic relationship with the Doctor, reacting with disgust when she misinterprets his comment "I just want a mate" (friend) as "I want to mate" (breed) (DW: Partners in Crime). She kisses him at one point, but only in order to shock him. (DW: The Unicorn and the Wasp) In fact, she was very supportive of the Doctor in his desire to reunite with Rose, forcing him to admit that, despite the potential collapse of universes, Rose coming back was a good thing (DW: The Stolen Earth). She also supported the Doctor when the time came to leave the Meta-Crisis Doctor and Rose behind on Pete's World. Just before her memories were wiped, however, she tearfully echoed Rose's earlier desire to travel with the Doctor "forever". (DW: Journey's End) The Doctor reciprocated Donna's feelings, at one point referring to her as his best friend. (DW: The End of Time)
The Meta-Crisis Doctor, working from his original template's memories, said he believed Donna's brash attitude is because she truly believes that she is unimportant and that she is "Shouting at the universe, because she thinks no one is listening." The original Doctor attributed this to her mother never telling Donna directly of her importance to her. (DW: Journey's End)
Behind the scenes
- The name Donna Noble was not revealed to the public until promotional material began to circulate for The Runaway Bride. In the closing credits of Doomsday, the character is only identified as "The Bride".
- A deleted scene from Journey's End included in the Series 4 DVD boxset showed Donna, after her mind-wipe, reacting with recognition to the sound of the departing TARDIS, but dismissing it.
- Doctor Noble was an alias of the Third Doctor.
- If her appearance in Doomsday is counted as the end of Series 2, and her appearance in The Runaway Bride is counted as the beginning of Series 3, she has in fact appeared in three series. Four, if one includes the 2009 specials separately from Series 4. This makes her the only companion to appear in all series of the Tenth Doctor.
- Donna is the focus of both of the main trailers released prior to the debut of Series 4. The first trailer also shown in cinemas incorporated dialogue scenes from Partners in Crime featured Donna talking to her grandfather about the Doctor. The second trailer, however, used a specially shot scene of Donna sitting by a bonfire talking to either an unseen individual or the audience about the Doctor "coming back to save us" and "I'll be ready" interspersed with images of Sontarans, Ood and Daleks. There is no scene like this in any of the episodes; the meaning of "he'll come back to save us" is unknown as there is no circumstance within Series 4 in which Donna would be in such a position to make such a remark. Some fans pointed out how the trailer was similar in format to one for a 1990s movie called The Usual Suspects in which a main character is not what he seems; much of the speculation over the true nature of Donna's character, including speculation that she might have been Davros or The Master in disguise, stemmed from this trailer.
- Due to timing and her short tenure on the series, Donna appears in only two comic strip stories published in Doctor Who Magazine, and (Autopia and Cold-Blooded War) Doctor Who comics by IDW Publishing.
- Russell T. Davies has stated that he sees Donna as how the First Doctor companion Barbara Wright would be presented today. (The Writer's Tale)
- In the commentary for The End of Time, Russel T. Davies stated that Donna's wedding to Shaun Temple takes place in Spring 2010.
- To date (excluding Amy Pond) Donna is the only noteworthy companion of the revival not to end up working for some kind of Earth-based anti-alien intelligence force after parting company with the Doctor. (Jack = Torchwood Three, Rose = Parallel Torchwood One, Mickey = Parallel Torchwood One, then later freelance, Martha = UNIT, Torchwood, and later freelance.) Donna commented with disdain on meeting Martha, asking the Doctor if he turned all his companions into soldiers like her.
- In a very crude translation, the name "Donna Temple-Noble" means "Lady Time-Lord" (Donna is Italian for Lady, one meaning of the word Temple finds origin in the Latin Tempus, and Noble means "of noble birth, such as a Lord or a royal.")
- Donna is the only female companion in the revived series whose parents were still together during her first trip with the Doctor.