Story 198 - Turn Left

In which the Doctor and Donna explore an exotic market on the planet of Shan Shen. Donna wanders away from the Doctor and encounters a fortune teller, who is strangely insistent that she have a reading. Once inside, the fortune teller begins to ask her about her life - especially as it relates to the Doctor. She asks what Donna thinks her life might have been like had she never met him. Donna is aware of a scuttling movement behind her back. Suddenly a large black beetle-like creature leaps onto her back, and Donna finds herself transported back to a day long before she encountered the Doctor. She had the offer of a job with HC Clements, but her mother insisted that she take another job in a print copy shop, which she feels is more suited to her skills. Instead of turning left, and going to HC Clements - which leads to the Doctor - Donna gives in to pressure and turns right instead...
That following Christmas Eve - 2007 - Donna is at the pub drinking with her friends. One of them seems unsettled, continually staring at her shoulder. Another friend calls everyone outside, and they see a massive star-shaped craft gliding over the city - the Racnoss Webstar. It begins to fire lethal energy bolts at the city below, but is then shot down by the army. Running towards the river, Donna sees some soldiers removing a dead body. A UNIT soldier radios his HQ to announce that the Doctor is dead - drowned before he could regenerate. A blonde-haired young woman runs up to the cordon and asks Donna about what has happened. When she tells her of the man's death, the woman walks away.

Some months later, Donna finds herself out of a job, as the draining of the Thames on Christmas Day has caused economic upheaval in the city. There is a story on the news about a London hospital being transported to the Moon. The sole survivor tells the interviewer that trainee doctor Martha Jones was one of those who perished trying to save others, along with a journalist named Sarah Jane Smith and her young companions.
Going out for a walk, Donna encounters the same young woman she had seen that night - wearing the identical clothes. She too seems perturbed by something on Donna's shoulder. The woman tells her that she and her family should get out of London next Christmas, and seems to know that she has a raffle ticket which has a Christmas hotel break as first prize. Donna's ticket does win, and so she, Sylvia and Wilf all head for the country. On switching on the TV on Christmas morning they see a news bulletin about a Titanic replica spaceship heading for central London. The maid who delivers their breakfast is the next to see something on Donna's back, and this time she catches the briefest glimpse of a black shape. Rushing outside, they see a mushroom cloud rise on the horizon. London has been destroyed.
Homeless, they are sent up to Leeds, where they find that they have been billeted in a house which they have to share with two large families. Their sleeping space is the kitchen. Whilst Wilf attempts to keep everyone's spirits high, Sylvia sinks deeper into depression. Promised aid from the United States is cancelled after that nation sees millions of citizens perish - their fat transformed into swarms of tiny creatures.

One evening they hear gunshots in the street outside. Troops are firing at their vehicles, whose exhausts are pumping out toxic fumes. One of the soldiers aims his rifle at Donna - claiming to have seen something on her back. Donna then sees the young woman again, and goes to speak to her. The night sky is lit up by a wall of flame, which burns away the smog. The woman tells Donna that the Torchwood team achieved this, but at the cost of their own lives, whilst their leader was taken away a prisoner of aliens called Sontarans. The woman tells Donna that none of this was ever supposed to happen - that she was supposed to make sure it didn't happen. She tells Donna that a time will come very soon when she will come with her, as she needs her help.
Donna goes to visit Wilf one night soon afterwards. He is stargazing. As they talk, he announces that the stars seem to be going out. Donna sees whole sections of the night sky turn black. The woman appears - and Donna knows that it is time for her to go with her. They go to a military base where Donna sees lots of equipment linked up to an old Police Call Box. Nearby is a ring of large mirrors. In command is a soldier from UNIT - Captain Magambo. The woman tells her that time has gone wrong, but they can set things right by sending her back in time to the moment when things changed. The mirrors allow Donna to see the black beetle on her back. She agrees to go, thinking that this world will die but she will live. As she departs, the woman tells her that she must also die.

Donna finds herself back in 2007, on the day that she turned left instead of right. She must stop herself doing this - but is horrified to find that she is miles away from where she ought to be. With time running out, she realises what she must do. As the woman said, she must die so that the world she came from can never exist. Unable to get to the location where she and her mother are about to turn, Donna jumps in front of a lorry. Seeing the traffic jam build up, Donna ignores her mother and turns left - towards HC Clements and the Doctor. As the other Donna lies dying, she sees the woman for the final time, and she whispers something in her ear...
Back on Shan Shen, the beetle drops dead from her back, and the fortune teller runs off. The Doctor arrives and Donna tells him of what she has experienced - recalling all of her alternative existence. The Doctor identifies the dead insect as a Time Beetle, which the Trickster has been known to employ to alter timelines. He is intrigued by the description of the blonde-haired young woman. Donna never knew her name, but she informs him of what she whispered in her ear. She said the words "Bad Wolf". Alarmed at what this might signify, he rushes outside and finds that all the text surrounding them has altered to the words "Bad Wolf" - even on the TARDIS. Asking what this means, the Doctor tells her that it might be the end of the universe...

Turn Left was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on Saturday 21st June, 2008. The episode is designed to set up the season finale and the return of Rose Tyler, and features a lot of the story arc elements. Series 2 and 3 had featured episodes in which the Doctor and companion had hardly featured, due to double-banking. For Series 4, Davies went with a story in which Donna featured only a little (Midnight), and another in which the Doctor hardly appeared - this one. David Tennant is only seen briefly in the opening sequence, then again for the conclusion once Donna has broken free of the Time Beetle. He doesn't even feature as his own drowned corpse.
A number of Series 3 and 4 stories are referenced as we get to see alternative outcomes - what might have happened had the Doctor not been there to save us. These are all Earthbound stories - beginning with The Runaway Bride, where Donna first appeared. By not getting the job at HC Clements, someone else has been dosed with Huon Particles. That person has not told the Doctor when to stop, and he has drowned as the Racnoss lair beneath the Thames Barrier has flooded. We then see that the draining of the Thames has had implications for the city, with traffic banned from crossing it. The Thames drained in the real timeline, but does not seem to have had the same impact.
We then learn that the Royal Hope Hospital had Sarah Jane Smith investigating instead of the Doctor when it was transported to the Moon by the Judoon, and she is killed when the air runs out, along with Martha Jones, Luke Smith and his friends.

The Titanic spaceship then does crash into Buckingham Palace, wiping out London. In Voyage of the Damned the collision was supposed to destroy the entire planet. The augur Lucius Petrus Dextrus in The Fires of Pompeii had told Donna that she has something on her back -  and now we know that it is the Time Beetle which certain individuals can see. He also told the Doctor that "she is returning" - a reference to Rose. Once the Noble clan are relocated to Leeds, the Adipose are activated in the USA instead of London, leading to millions of deaths. Sylvia mentions the disappearance of the bees once more. Despite the destruction of southern England, the Sontarans still go ahead with their attempt to turn the planet into a clone-feeding planet using ATMOS devices. Presumably Luke Rattigan had other factories in the north of the country. Instead of the Doctor, it is the Torchwood team who defeat them - costing Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones their lives, with Captain Jack Harkness taken back to Sontar as a prisoner. Lastly, Wilf sees the stars going out - which foreshadows Davros' Reality Bomb in the next story.
Clips from all these stories are used throughout the episode, sometimes inserted into the action and at other times translated to TV news reports.

A special mention must be made of the core cast - Catherine Tate, Jacqueline King and Bernard Cribbins. All give exceptional performances. Joining them are Chipo Chung as the Fortune Teller. She had previously appeared in Utopia as Chantho. Noma Dumezwemi makes her first appearance as UNIT's Captain Magambo, and Joseph Long plays Rocco Colasanto, head of one of the families whom the Nobles have to share digs with. He'll be back, as the Pope, in Extremis.

Overall, a great episode with wonderful performances. It's a what if...? story, which the series has never really tackled before. You could argue that it is also a clips show, but that does it a disservice. US television often resorts to this kind of episode, but it usually involves the characters sitting around reminiscing as an excuse for a cheap episode. Here we have a strong story in its own right.
Things you might like to know:

• The Trickster who is behind this plan to alter time is a character from The Sarah Jane Adventures, in which he appeared three times. He thrives on chaos, and has previously targeted Sarah Jane as she is an ally of the Doctor. He made it clear that he really wanted to remove the Doctor to create maximum chaos.
• Another link to a previous story is the inclusion of UNIT's Private Harris. He's the one who reports the finding of the Doctor's body. He had earlier appeared in the Sontaran two-parter.
• The Christmas Invasion also gets a nod when the BBC news reader states that images of the Titanic are coming from the Guinevere range of satellites.
• Owing to a mistake, the extras who turned up to appear in the Shan Shen market scenes were informed that they were gong to get more money. When they learned that it was not as much as they were led to believe, many of them left again.
• Sarah Jane Smith is said to be working for Metropolitan magazine - a reference going back to Planet of the Spiders. Which also featured large black arthropods which clung to people's backs and became invisible.
• This is the second episode to feature Rose tending to someone who has been run over by a car, in both instances the result of alternative timelines. The other is, of course, Father's Day.
• Most of Billie Piper's scenes were shot early in the series' production. She claimed that she had forgotten how to play Rose, and had to watch some of her old episodes.
• Davies was so far behind schedule writing this episode that he had to miss a scheduled appearance at the National Television Awards. Part of this was down to rewrites necessitated by the death of Howard Attfield (Geoff Noble).
• The latest issue of DWM was released on the Thursday between this episode airing and The Stolen Earth. It was rebranded Bad Wolf magazine on this occasion - in keeping with all the text transforming to this phrase at the conclusion of the episode.