Inspirations: Turn Left

Turn Left is this season's Doctor-lite story. The Doctor features briefly at the beginning of the episode, as he and Donna explore an oriental-style market on an alien planet, and then again at the very end as they are reunited after her traumatic experiences of an alternative reality - one in which she never met him, and he died as a result of this.

The episode is therefore able to revisit all the main contemporary Earth stories since The Runaway Bride, and look at what the world might have looked like had the Doctor not intervened. (Naturally the Harold Saxon episodes do not feature - as the Doctor never went to Malcassairo in the altered time-line).

An earlier Doctor-lite story had shown us alternative views of events - Elton Pope's personal experiences of Rose, Aliens in London and The Christmas Invasion in Love & Monsters. Like that story, Turn Left was able to reuse clips from old episodes, as it was supposed to be one of the cheaper episodes.

One of the story arc elements is also cleared up prior to the finale, which is unusual. They are normally saved for the conclusion. Donna was told by Pompeiian auger Petrus Dextrus that she had something on her back, and this proves to be the Time Beetle - the creature which provides us with the alternative time-line view.

It is said to be part of the "Trickster's brigade". This is the being which had featured in The Sarah Jane Adventures - a creature which thrived on chaos and who saw the Doctor and his companions as pivotal characters in maintaining cosmic stability. Remove them from Time, and chaos would ensue.

The changes wrought by the Time Beetle begin even before The Runaway Bride. Donna is on her way to a job interview at H C Clements - where she will meet Lance, who will set her up to be used by the Racnoss, which will ultimately be destroyed by the Doctor after Donna has been transported into his TARDIS - triggering his involvement in events. Donna is talked into going for another job, in the opposite direction to H C Clements - hence the story title.

Instead of being in the Torchwood base under the Thames Barrier, Donna spends that Christmas with friends in a pub nearby - and sees UNIT soldiers removing the Doctor's body. He failed to leave the flooding chamber in time and drowned - because she hadn't been there to urge him to stop his attack on the Racnoss Queen. One of her friends sees something on her back.

Rose Tyler makes her first appearance here. She was stranded in the parallel universe known as "Pete's World" which had its own version of Torchwood, as we know from Doomsday. She is using Torchwood tech to travel across the dimensions to find the Doctor. We have seen her already in "our" universe, in person in Partners in Crime, and on monitors in The Poison Sky and Midnight.

With the Doctor dead, we now start to see alternative versions of some events. 

With the Thames totally drained, London businesses have been badly affected and Donna is made redundant. As she leaves, she sees a TV report about the events of Smith and Jones. The Judoon still take a London hospital to the Moon, but this time it is Sarah Jane Smith and her young companions who are inside. Not only that, but the Judoon return the hospital to Earth too late, and many people die - including the Bannerman Road gang. Martha Jones also dies in this incident.

Donna is then recommended (by Rose) to be outside London next Christmas. They then win a short festive break to the countryside (engineered by Rose). This coincides with the crashing of the spaceship Titanic into the heart of the city (avoided by the Doctor in Voyage of the Damned). Another character - a maid at their hotel - also sees something on her back.

Donna and her family are relocated to Leeds, where they have to share a house with two other families.

Donna refers to a neighbour as "Vera Duckworth" due to her strong Northern accent - a popular plain-speaking character from soap opera Coronation Street.

Hoping for economic help from America, this is halted as that country suffers more than others from the birthing of the Adipose creatures (a comment on the scale of obesity in the US), as seen in Partners in Crime.

Donna later witnesses car engines running rampant due to ATMOS (The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky). A soldier is the latest person to see something on her back. 

Rose appears and tells her that it is the Torchwood team who were on the Sontaran spaceship when it blew up, with Captain Jack now a prisoner transported to Sontar.

The forcible removal of the other families from their house to a "work camp" reflects the stresses on communities during wartime conditions, when it often turns on its minorities. Wilf recalls events of the Second World War, when the concentration camps were set up in Eastern Europe, as well as the Siberian gulags.

Ironically, Donna calls Mr Colosanto "Mussolini" - the fascist dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 - 1943.

Her next meeting with Rose bears more towards the next couple of episodes, as it is reported that stars are going out.

Rose takes Donna to a UNIT facility where the TARDIS is held. She finally learns the truth about the thing on her back, and of how she can change recent history by stopping herself attending the wrong job interview.

Doctor Who has delivered very few alternative timelines / parallel universes. Of the former, we have only really had Day of the Daleks, and the desolate Earth seen in Pyramids of Mars, whilst the latter have been represented only by the fascist Inferno Earth and "Pete's World".

Whilst the Doctor does not exist in either of the alternative universes, he can exist in alternate time-lines (otherwise he couldn't have died in this version of The Runaway Bride).

Once the Time Beetle has been destroyed, the Doctor hears about the blonde-haired girl whom Donna encountered, and her identity is revealed through the phrase "Bad Wolf" - the story arc from the 2005 series, including an episode of that title. He has previously been informed (by Petrus Dextrus) that "she is returning...".

Things go full circle as, deciding which interview to attend, Donna's mind is made up by a traffic jam - created by her other self being run over.

Production wise, a placeholder title for this episode was "Companion Alone". This was when the companion was to be journalist Penny.

Russell T Davies had often stated that Rose would never be coming back. It would ruin the ending to Doomsday, Billie Piper was far too busy, etc. However, her return at a future point had been planned since before Doomsday was even made.

One major inspiration was the 1998 rom-com Sliding Doors, which showed two alternative versions of a young woman's life - determined by the opening / closing of a tube train door.

The SJA story which first introduced the Trickster was Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane Smith?, written by Gareth Roberts. This showed what happened when Sarah was not around to help save the world, so RTD substituted the Doctor for her in a similarly structured new story.

It was always intended that Penny / Donna would ultimately sacrifice herself in order to correct the time-line, but the BBC had strict guidelines about how they represented suicide in popular dramas.

RTD also had to compare notes with Steven Moffat - who was intending to give Donna an alternative life in his Library story - to avoid repetition.

Next time: a sequel of sorts, not just to another story, but to the last four series - as well as a number of highly regarded classic serials...