Geoff Noble
Geoffrey Noble, or "Geoff" for short, was Donna Noble's father.
Biography
Early life
In the late 1960s, Geoff was a greaser going by the nickname "Elvis". (GAME: The Silent Streets of Barry Island [+]Loading...["The Silent Streets of Barry Island (video game)"])
Family life
Geoff married Sylvia Mott circa 1970 (PROSE: Beautiful Chaos) and had a daughter named Donna. (TV: The Runaway Bride [+]Loading...["The Runaway Bride (TV story)"])
When he came home from a football match, Geoff once said, "veni, vidi, vici", to Donna. (TV: The Fires of Pompeii [+]Loading...["The Fires of Pompeii (TV story)"]) He would also reassure Donna that "every game start[ed] from scratch" as the "dice [didn't] know what the dice did last time" because "games [didn't] have a memory." (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])
Geoff lent £1 to the Tenth Doctor for a Celebration Lottery ticket. The Doctor gave the ticket to Donna as a wedding present in 2010, securing her and Shaun Temple's financial future as it had the winning numbers in a triple roll-over draw. (TV: The End of Time (part two) [+]Loading...{"part":"Two","1":"The End of Time (TV story)"})
On 24 December 2007, Geoff walked Donna down the aisle during her wedding to Lance Bennett when she disappeared in a burst of golden light due to huon particles. As baffled as anyone else, he took charge of seeing to the injured in the wake of the Robot Santas' attack on the wedding reception. Later that day, he and Sylvia returned home, and embraced near their Christmas tree as Donna and the Tenth Doctor talked. (TV: The Runaway Bride [+]Loading...["The Runaway Bride (TV story)"]) Geoff ultimately had to pay for the damage done to the wedding reception venue. (PROSE: Judge, Jury and Executioner)
Death
Geoff died on 15 May, in a filling station, having been ill for several months. The following year, Sylvia told her daughter that she had had a tough year "with [her] Dad". Geoff and Sylvia had been married for thirty-eight years. (PROSE: Beautiful Chaos)
Legacy
A photo of Geoff with Donna on her wedding day was placed on the mantlepiece of Donna's house by 2023. (TV: The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"])
Other realities
Donna's World
In a parallel world in which the Tenth Doctor died aboard the Webstar, Sylvia told Donna that Geoff would have loved the place they were staying in. Geoff died at roughly the same time in Donna's World as in the Doctor's universe. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
Behind the scenes
- Howard Attfield was due to reprise his role as Geoff Noble in Series 4, but he died in October 2007. His scenes were refilmed with Bernard Cribbins playing the character of Wilfred Mott, who had already been filmed for the Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned [+]Loading...["Voyage of the Damned (TV story)"], and was subsequently changed to be Donna's grandfather. Attfield's scenes were later included on the DVD release of Series 4.
- The setting of the present day of Donna Noble's family in series 4 of Doctor Who, around a year after Geoff's death according to the novel Beautiful Chaos, is inconsistent, and their later appearance in the Christmas Special and New Year Special The End of Time [+]Loading...["The End of Time (TV story)"] is not dated at all. In the television story The Fires of Pompeii [+]Loading...["The Fires of Pompeii (TV story)"], Donna mentions the Doctor saving her in 2008. In Beautiful Chaos, set between the television stories The Poison Sky [+]Loading...["The Poison Sky (TV story)"] and The Stolen Earth [+]Loading...["The Stolen Earth (TV story)"], a newspaper at a newsagent gives the date as Friday 15 May 2009. During an in-universe episode of The Blue Box Files in the audio story SOS, Abby McPhail describes the events of the television story Partners in Crime [+]Loading...["Partners in Crime (TV story)"] as taking place in 2008. During the 2023 specials, Sylvia mentions Donna's memory loss happened "a long time ago, darling. fifteen years" in The Star Beast [+]Loading...["The Star Beast (TV story)"], while The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"] places the present day in 2023, heavily implying a 2008 setting for series 4.
