Parallel world (Turn Left)
- You may be looking for Sanctum of the Heretic, an Oxbow World implied to be this parallel world.
A parallel world centred around the life of Donna Noble was created, despite parallel worlds being typically sealed off, by the Time Beetle, one of the Trickster's Brigade. This was unusual, as most times when the Brigade changed time, the universe just compensated around it. In this world, Donna turned right instead of left while deciding which of two different job interviews to attend. As a result, the Tenth Doctor never met Donna and died underneath the Thames on Christmas Eve 2007. These events resulted in devastating effects for Earth. Using the surface technology of the Doctor's TARDIS, Donna travelled back in time to make her younger self turn left again. According to both the Doctor and Donna, this world subsequently ceased to exist. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
Nature[[edit] | [edit source]]
The exact nature of this parallel world was unclear.
When the Tenth Doctor explained the nature of it to Donna Noble after its negation, he specifically used the term "parallel world", noting that the creation of such worlds was normally impossible due to the universe compensating for the actions of the Trickster's Brigade and that parallel worlds were sealed off from one another. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"]) A connected account also referenced Donna's parallel world in relation to Rose Tyler's parallel world. (TV: The Stolen Earth [+]Loading...["The Stolen Earth (TV story)"])
One described it as an "alternative timeline", created following the Time Beetle's alterations to Donna's timeline, (PROSE: The Visual Dictionary: Updated and Expanded [+]Loading...{"page":"41","1":"The Visual Dictionary: Updated and Expanded (reference book)"}) in an attempt to feed off the time energy caused by the disruption. (PROSE: The Time Traveller's Almanac [+]Loading...{"chaptname":"Everything Changes","page":"132","chaptnum":"3","1":"The Time Traveller's Almanac (reference book)"})
One account referred to it as both a "parallel world" and "alternative time line" interchangeably. It also detailed how Rose Tyler travelled between universes. (PROSE: Know Your Companions [+]Loading...{"page":"8-10","1":"Know Your Companions (feature)"})
Another account described it as an "alternative reality", seemingly as a synonym for "universe"; (PROSE: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia [+]Loading...{"page":"248","ed":"2011 reprint","1":"Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"}) another account also used the terms "reality" and "universe" in association with this parallel world. (PROSE: "What will you be?" [+]Part of Companions and Allies, Loading...{"page":"90","namedpart":"What will you be?","1":"Companions and Allies (reference book)"}) A further account referred to it as a "whole new reality", also linking it to how history had been changed. (PROSE: What If? [+]Loading...{"page":"91","1":"What If? (short story)"}) Another account identified it as a "parallel universe". (PROSE: "Monsters of Time" [+]Part of Whotopia: The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse, Loading...{"namedpart":"Monsters of Time","1":"Whotopia: The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse (reference book)"})
A different account referred to it as a "parallel Earth". (PROSE: The Doctor and... Donna [+]Loading...{"page":"49","1":"The Doctor and... Donna (feature)"})
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
While on the planet Shan Shen, Donna was unknowingly fitted with the Time Beetle, one of the Trickster's Brigade. A fortune teller selected a point in her life where making a seemingly random choice had enormous ramifications.
On Monday 25 June 2007, Donna had to make a choice between two jobs. The moment she chose between the jobs was at a junction on Little Sutton Street. Her agency had offered her a contract with H.C. Clements, which while temporary, was posh and in the centre of London, which Donna enjoyed. Her mother, Sylvia Noble, had got her a job opportunity to become the personal secretary of Jival Chowdry, owner of a photocopying business. Although this would be a permanent job, Donna found it less interesting.
While driving and in discussing the dilemma, Sylvia pressured her into turning right towards Griffin's Parade to stop by Jival Chowdry for a chat. While in the regular world Donna ignored her mother and turned left towards the Chiswick High Road, here she turned right, resulting in her taking the PA job. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
On Christmas Eve, the Tenth Doctor tracked down the Empress of the Racnoss to her lair beneath Thames Flood Barrier and blew it up, causing the Thames to be drained. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"], The Runaway Bride [+]Loading...["The Runaway Bride (TV story)"]) Although he succeeded in defeating the Racnoss, the Doctor drowned in the process. For some reason, he didn't regenerate. It was speculated by Private Harris that he drowned too fast to regenerate. His body was retrieved by UNIT soldiers and his TARDIS was salvaged from under the Thames, later being sent to a UNIT base in Leeds. Donna stumbled across Rose Tyler, who arrived on the scene too late to do anything. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
The Royal Hope Hospital was transported to the Moon by the Judoon. Sarah Jane Smith, Luke Smith, Maria Jackson, and Clyde Langer, who had been in the hospital when it was transported, disarmed the MRI, but they died, along with the rest of the hospital, when their oxygen ran out. The only survivor was Oliver Morgenstern, who was passed the last oxygen tank by medical student Martha Jones, who gave up her life to save him.
Rose visited Donna and advised her to persuade her family to spend Christmas some place other than London. On Christmas morning, a replica of the Titanic crash-landed onto Buckingham Palace. It destroyed the Greater London Area and flooded the whole of Southern England with radiation. Donna's family, who did decide not to stay in London for Christmas, having won a luxury getaway in a raffle, watched the events on television and were able to see the mushroom cloud of the explosion from a distance.
Britain went under martial law in order to deal with the crisis caused by the nuclear explosion. Many citizens fled to France, until France closed its borders. The United States promised fifty billion pounds in financial help for Great Britain but this plan was abandoned when sixty million Americans were killed and fully converted into Adipose children. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
The Sontarans activated ATMOS devices, the Torchwood Three team, Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones, worked to stop the scheme. The team destroyed the Sontaran flagship and successfully reverted the atmosphere to its previous state, but Gwen and Ianto died in the attempt; Jack, being immortal, survived and was captured by the Sontarans and transported to their homeworld as a prisoner. Britain was largely unaffected due to its poverty and hence its lack of petrol. Rose once more appeared to Donna, telling her that Donna knew the Doctor and travelled with him "in a different world", and Donna was "meant to be there" under the Thames — the Doctor needed someone to stop him and save his life, and that was Donna. Rose asked Donna to come with her. Donna refused, but Rose told Donna that she will agree to come along in three weeks' time and that she was going to die. Rose subsequently disappeared.
Roughly three weeks after the Sontaran invasion, the British government made a new law ("England for the English") forcing all non-British citizens in Britain to go to "labour camps". Donna's grandfather Wilfred lamented that labour camps was "what they called them last time", and "it's happening again." (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
In the Doctor's world, as a result of Davros's reality bomb, (TV: Journey's End [+]Loading...["Journey's End (TV story)"]) also referred to as "the darkness", (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"]) using the rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade to blast the bomb's Z-Neutrino wavelength into "every dimension", (TV: Journey's End [+]Loading...["Journey's End (TV story)"]) "every single universe" was in danger of being destroyed. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"]) Dimensions started to collapse, destroying everything; not just in the Doctor's world or the world Rose was in, but "the whole of reality". Even the Void was dead. (TV: Journey's End [+]Loading...["Journey's End (TV story)"]) Rose was "pulled across from a different universe" because of this. (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
With UNIT's help, Rose scraped off the surface technology of the TARDIS and planned to use a Lodestone to bounce chronon energy into the centre of a circle of mirrors, controlling the destination to send Donna back to Monday 25 June 2007.
UNIT and Rose sent Donna back to the point where Donna made her decision. According to Rose, Donna had to make her past self turn left instead of right at the point where she decided whether to follow her mother's advice or her own instincts on Little Sutton Street. Donna arrived in 2007, but too far away from her past self to directly influence her; instead, she orchestrated an accident by stepping out in front of a lorry, which blocked traffic and forced the earlier Donna to turn left. Just before Donna's death, Rose appeared and whispered a message for her to give the Doctor. Donna woke up on Shan Shen, and the Time Beetle was forced off her back. The fortune teller ran away, questioning what Donna would become. Both the Doctor and Donna believed that the world created by the Time Beetle ceased to exist. Donna struggled to remember much of her parallel world, "like when you try and think of a dream, and it just sort of goes". She managed to remember Rose telling her that the Doctor thought she was brilliant. Not knowing Rose's name, Donna told the Doctor about the blonde woman at the lorry who said to warn the Doctor about the end of the universe with two words: "Bad Wolf". (TV: Turn Left [+]Loading...["Turn Left (TV story)"])
Aftermath[[edit] | [edit source]]
On the Crucible in the Doctor's world, Donna prevented the reality bomb from ever being detonated by closing all Z-Neutrino energy loops using an internalised synchronous back-feed reversal loop. The collapse of dimensions closed up again because of dimensional retroclosure. (TV: Journey's End [+]Loading...["Journey's End (TV story)"])
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
This parallel world and several characters from Turn Left were reused in Aristide Twain's Doctor Who: Lockdown! short story A Better World, where the events of Turn Left were recontextualised as part of a masterplan by Auteur. The short story, while not covered by this Wiki as of this time, concluded with Auteur's entrapment within the parallel world; the story received a sequel, Resurrection of the Author, where it was shown that the world Auteur was trapped in (now never explicitly connected to Turn Left and the associated concepts from that story) decayed, and soon became known as the Sanctum of the Heretic.
