The Doctor first encountered Donna Noble when she materialised in the TARDIS on her wedding day. She had been half way down the aisle when transported. The Doctor attempted to get her to the church in time for the ceremony but she was abducted by Roboforms.
The Doctor later discovered that she had been dosed with Huon particles - an ancient energy form which was present in TARDISes though virtually extinct elsewhere in the universe. The TARDIS had drawn her to it like a magnet. Her husband-to-be, Lance, was working with the alien Racnoss Queen to resurrect her sleeping children - dormant at the centre of the Earth. He had been secretly feeding her the particles in her coffee each day at work - locksmiths HC Clements. The particles would reanimate the Racnoss brood.
Donna witnessed the Doctor destroying the Racnoss children before they could reach the surface, and warned him against himself. He needed someone to temper his emotions.
Despite a fiery start to their relationship - she believing he had kidnapped her - they warmed to each other, and the Doctor even invited her to join him in is travels.
A temp secretary, Donna had never dreamed of any life beyond her everyday suburban existence, but the Doctor had opened her eyes to the wider world. Lance had previously mocked her intellect and lack of imagination.
She came to regret not having taken up the Doctor's invite, and so began investigating strange events and phenomena which the Doctor might be interested in - in the hope of meeting him again.
She even had her belongings already packed for just such an eventuality.
Her father Geoff died, and she and her mother Sylvia shared their Chiswick home with Donna's grandfather, Wilf Mott. Her relationship with Sylvia could be strained, with her mother often belittling her over her unmarried and unemployed status.
She and the Doctor were reunited when both investigated a slimming company - Adipose Industries. The Adipose were actually fat-based alien creatures, tended by a humanoid matron who called herself Miss Foster.
The Doctor was surprised that he had met her once again, the odds being astronomical. Looking for someone to share his travels, this time she accepted. The pair got on well - causing various people to assume they were a couple - which they strenuously had to deny.
Donna's first journey was back in time to Pompeii, on the eve of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Unwilling to interfere in historical events, the Doctor at first declined to save the lives of the Roman family whom they had befriended, but she talked him into doing so - once again warning him against himself.
Donna almost brought her travels to an early end after witnessing the enslavement of the Ood on their home planet.
A visit back home followed, where the Doctor met Wilf - and was shocked to discover that he had met him before. Wilf had been selling newspapers at Christmas when the Earth had been threatened by the crashing Titanic spaceship replica.
On this occasion Donna met his previous companion Martha Jones, now a member of UNIT. At one point she was trapped alone in the TARDIS when it was transported to a Sontaran spaceship, and had to defend herself against the aliens with a well-timed strike from a mallet.
Martha accidentally rejoined the Doctor on his travels when the ship flew off to an alien world in the far future. Here the Doctor gained a daughter through a cloning process. As a soldier, he refused to acknowledge her and it was Donna who eventually made him accept her.
After Martha had been returned home, Donna had a meeting with crime writer Agatha Christie, where she used her knowledge of her books to help the Doctor investigate a murder in a country house, which proved to be the work of an extra-terrestrial. At one point she revealed that she thought that nursery character Noddy might actually be real.
In the library, the Doctor had seen Donna's face used to front an information node, and feared that she had died.
Once rescued after the computer core had been saved, Donna suspected that Lee had simply been a product of the artificial environment - unaware that he had also been transferred there by the computer. He left the library before he could be united with her in real life.
Throughout her travels, Donna had been hearing cryptic messages from people she met. These included her having something on her back.
On the planet Shan Shen she agreed to having her fortune told. This was a trap set by the Trickster. His agent had a huge black Time Beetle attach itself invisibly on her back - glimpsed only briefly by certain sensitive individuals.
The creature interfered with Donna's timeline, so that she had never gone to work at HC Clements. This meant she never met the Doctor and failed to save his life when he confronted the Racnoss Queen. She lived a parallel life in which all of the alien interventions stopped by the Doctor came to pass. London was destroyed by the Titanic spaceship, and the family were sent to Yorkshire as refugees. Throughout, Donna kept meeting a mysterious blonde-haired young woman. She did not know it, but it was Rose Tyler, travelling back and forth from a parallel dimension. There she worked with UNIT to correct the Trickster's meddling to save the Doctor so that he could help with a threat to the entire universe.
Donna was sent back to stop the original intervention. However, this could only be done by her sacrificing her life - throwing herself in front of a lorry to cause a traffic jam, which meant that she went to the HC Clements job interview after all.
Donna recalled some of this alternative life and was able to give the Doctor a message from Rose.
Returning to Earth, they witnessed the planet being transported across space to the Medusa Cascade. This was the work of Davros and the Daleks, who were using the planet and others to help power a dreadful weapon.
Donna became trapped on the TARDIS when the Daleks attempted to destroy it, and there she brought about the creation of a half-human Doctor grown from his severed hand (the result of an encounter with the Sycorax several years before). This process was known as a meta-crisis. Whilst the alternate Doctor was half-human, Donna became half Time Lord. An electric blast from Davros completed the process, and she was able to use her new knowledge, combined with her old secretarial skills, to disable the Dalek weapon and send other captured planets back to their proper place and time.
The Doctor realised that he had always been destined to meet Donna, who would save the universe.
However, he knew that the meta-crisis would prove fatal to Donna, and was forced to wipe her mind. Tragically, this would completely delete her entire knowledge of him. She would revert to the ordinary temp from Chiswick. Were she to ever remember anything of recent life, she would die.
The Doctor was alarmed to encounter Wilf a few months later - worried that Donna would remember him. She was due to marry a taxi driver named Sean Temple.
The Master caused everyone on Earth to transform into himself - except Donna. As she started to recall her time on the TARDIS, a defence mechanism which the Doctor had built in was activated, saving her life.
As a wedding present, he borrowed £1 from Geoff Noble and used it to buy a winning lottery ticket.
The Doctor showed Donna the new TARDIS but she accidentally spilled coffee into the console and it set off with her on board. She and the Doctor encountered ruthless copies of themselves on an alien planet on the edge of the known universe. The Doctor almost took the fake Donna away with him, until he spotted a slight anomaly in its physique.
Returning her home, they met Wilf who warned that the planet was engulfed in chaos. Travelling to UNIT HQ, they discovered that this was the work of the Toymaker. Donna accompanied the Doctor to the London of the 1920's where she encountered deadly puppets. Back in the present day, the mortally wounded Doctor began to regenerate once more, but this time experienced a bi-generation - meaning that there were now two simultaneous incarnations of him. With the Toymaker defeated, the original Doctor elected to take a break from saving the universe, leaving his fifteenth incarnation to carry on his adventures.
The Fourteenth Doctor settled down for a while with Donna and her family. Rose Temple-Noble would later join UNIT.
Played by: Catherine Tate. Appearances: The Runaway Bride (2006), Partners in Crime - Journey's End (2008), The End of Time I & II (2009/10), The Star Beast - The Giggle (2023).
- Tate was best known as a comedy performer, appearing with the Big Train team (which included Simon Pegg) amongst others before getting her own show.
- Initially dismissed as stunt-casting, Tate quickly silenced her critics with the strength of her performance, as the initially abrasive Donna showed her more sensitive side.
- Not expecting Tate to return for a full season, RTD had originally devised a journalist character named Penny for Series 4.
- Donna was brought back to feature in David Tennant's swan-song, which was to headline Bernard Cribbins' Wilf as the companion.
- Tate and Tennant would go on to work together on several other projects, including a West End theatrical run in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.
- A lockdown tweet-a-thon led to Tate jokingly suggesting a reunion, which RTD eventually brought into being for a trio of 60th Anniversary episodes.
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