It Could Be Said #34 Doctor Who Did Donna Wrong
I finally write down why I hate what Russel T Davies did to Donna Noble
I’ve been enjoying reading along to Jonn Elledge’s reviews of Doctor Who episodes, and he finally got to nu-Doctor Who’s Season Four finale; Journey’s End. This is an episode I’ve had serious issues with since it first broadcast and I was pleased to see that Elledge agreed that it clearly contradicts the claim made in Turn Left that Donna Noble was special above and beyond her interaction with alien creatures.
So this article would be even longer if it wasn’t for the fact that I pretty much agree entirely with Elledge’s review. But I would go further than him in my condemnation of how she’s handled. Her treatment of Donna Noble in Journey’s End doesn’t just contradict the frequent references to her importance throughout the series, in my view its also a fundamental betrayal of the humanist ethos that had ran throughout Russell T Davies’s run on Doctor Who and a highlights a recurring problem in the revival series.
Putting the Human in Who
Davies is of course famous (or infamous depending on your tastes) for centring the ordinary lives of companions far more than the original series. You not only got a greater sense of their life before they joined the Doctor but a companion’s family was a recurring presence throughout their run on the show. The Doctor responded to these family situations by repeatedly hinting that for all his adventures in time and space, the Doctor was secretly jealous that he couldn’t settle down and enjoy an ordinary life; in Season Three’s two-part adaptation of Human Nature his human persona calls it ‘the adventure he could never have’. But the series had also been exploring more subtle ways at centring humanity.
From the start of the reboot the series had been flirting with the idea that something innate to humanity had made it survive and prosper whereas self-consciously superior races such as Daleks and Time Lords had destroyed themselves in the Time War. Both opening stories for Davies’s Doctors involve them confronting races that are trying to use Earth as a way of recovering ground lost in the Time War. Likewise, both Rose and Donna left the series after saving the world from an enemy that was openly prejudiced towards humanity; a Dalek Emperor driven mad by having to use humans to create his new Daleks, and The Master gleefully debasing an Earth he ruled with the help of their degenerate descendants.
When you consider that Season 2 was built around the threat of the Cyberman, the original series villain most rooted in the rejection of humanity, then Season 4’s finale becomes more striking in that it eschews what had been the central theme of RTD’s run. Not only is this the first finale where the immediate threat is to all of reality rather than just Earth but Davros clearly doesn’t have any specific malice towards humanity. In Davros’s manichean view of the world there is no room for specifics between different types of Non-Daleks, as all inferior lifeforms must die. Nor does his plan involve converting large numbers of humans as the previous three seasons’s antagonists had.
What Does It Mean To Walk With The Doctor?
Fundamentally, the Doctor has companions because the TV show needs someone to prompt its hero into explaining things in a way that the audience understands. That could make them rather passive characters in the original series, relegated to asking questions or following orders as our hero saves the day. Davies clearly wanted to push back at that with companions making a key contribution to resolving the key crisis at the end of each season. It’s Rose that pulls the key lever to send the warring invaders into the void and its Martha who spreads the story of The Doctor across Earth so humanity can collectively hack his captor’s subwave network to free him.
On the surface Donna plays a similarly pivotal role in using Davros’s command console to thwart his plans, but she’s only able to do this after she becomes the ‘DoctorDonna’. The Doctor even exclaims that she can’t even change a plug to underline how far beyond her trueself’s capabilities her actions are. In this, Donna’s role resembles Rose at the end of Season One, where she consumed the time vortex and destroys the Daleks.
There are however some key differences.
Firstly, breaking into the TARDIS highlighted what made Rose special. She was the woman who loved The Doctor and never wanted to leave him. Her successfully pushing back at his efforts to exile her underlined her agency throughout the season. Meanwhile it required three flukes for Donna to stumble upon her superior form; to be trapped in the TARDIS, to hesitantly touch the regenerating hand of The Doctor, and to be hit by a Davros lightening bolt. Whereas Rose not only had to identify the part of the TARDIS she needed to access to get it working again but also persuade her mum to help her, Donna literally stumbled into a meta-crisis.
Secondly, whereas the emphasis with Rose’s transformation is that her humanity is what stops her using these newfound powers to become a ‘vengeful God’, the story explictly celebrates the fact that Donna has successfully leveled up. Donna herself marvels at how she now understands the things that The Doctor used to say or how to fly the Tardis. It’s an incredibly meanspirited transformation that dismisses any contribution or growth she made thoroughout the series. Contrast that with an alternative finale where as a former secretary only Donna had the ability to type quickly enough to be the one to type the necessary commands into the command module. That would be a finish which made use of her unique strengths and demonstrated how she had grown in confidence since meeting The Doctor.
Thirdly, whilst both companions additional powers were removed by the Doctor, Rose clearly consents to the mindwipe in a way that Donna didn’t. Rose is finding the use of her powers painful and wants to be freed of them, voluntarily going to The Doctor to have them removed. Whereas Donna clearly loves being the DoctorDonna and fights against being mindwiped, screaming and crying as he does it. The Doctor’s physical act during the manoeuvre underscores the difference, with Rose he beckons for her to come to him by opening up his arms, and tenderly kisses her. With Donna he sullenly moves towards her before penetrating her mind with his fingers as she protests. The Ninth Doctor also bears the burden of the exchange with Rose by being forced to regenerate, whereas its Donna who must forget having ever known The Tenth Doctor.
Given how perfectly contrasted the departures of his first and final companions are, the temptation is to believe that some shrewd meta-textual point is being made. But the series clearly doesn’t recognise that The Doctor has violated his friend.
Lifelong Doctor Who Fans Can’t Imagine Life Without The Doctor
I would highly recommend that anybody who has got to this point read The Writer’s Tale which is a bracingly honest look at Davies’s writing process, as captured through his email conversation with Benjamin Cook. What you see there is that one of the issues that he frequently battled with was concluding his episodes in a satisfying way as he repeatedly wrote himself into corners that he had to think his way out of.
This intersected with another issue that plagued not just Davies but also Steven Moffat; as lifelong fans both men just could not understand how any companion would ever want to stop travelling with The Doctor. Indeed, for all the criticism Chris Chibnall has received for his depictions of former companions in The Power of the Doctor being somewhat broken individuals still pining for The Doctor decades later, it was Davies who invented that trope with School Reunion.
So both men tended to fall back on contrived macguffins to explain why a companion has to leave. Again for Rose this made sense due to her obsessive love for The Doctor, but it shouldn’t apply for every companion. As the DoctorDonna, Donna says that she would have travelled with The Doctor for the rest of her life, but that really wasn’t her characterisation during the show. She was not only was far keener to keep in touch with her family than Rose or Martha but the show touched upon her dream of having her own family on more than one occassion. She was also the only companion under Davies who was explictly written to not be in love with The Doctor.
It would have been very easy to write her out after Journey’s End as having decided that now was the time to do good on Earth away from The Doctor. It would have been in keeping with the episode where she was separated from her family, shouted down The Shadow Proclamation when they dismissed her, and saw the damage the Daleks caused to earth. It would also have been a fitting thematic end to the trilogy of companions under Davies, as someone leaving on good terms with The Doctor being the ultimate illustration of how Donna had a healthier relationship with him than a woman who’s love meant only a dimensional rift would stop her travelling with him, or Martha who left because he didn’t return her love.
But fundamentally Davies can’t imagine anyone making such a decision, so something weird has to happen to write Catherine Tate off the show. And that weird thing may as well feed into the wider plot even if it contradicts the frequent promises that Donna is special or the underlying humanist ethos of the revival. He even double downs upon it, using Rose’s return to finally giving her a simulacrum she can have a relationship with, rather than having The Doctor finally tell her to move on.
I think its clear that in the cold light of day nobody was all that happy with the ending. Davies returned to the Noble family for his swansong which just further highlighted how ridiculous a situation he had left Donna in. Moffat explored featuring Noble in his first season if David Tennant continued in the role for one more season, promising Tate that he had a way to unpick the end of Journey’s End. And of course Davies is returning to the issue for the episode’s fifteenth anniversary and the beginning of his second stint as showrunner.
I just hope he reembraces the humanism that made his original run so lifeaffirming and moves past the idea that nobody can ever happily leave The Doctor in their past.
I always thought Moffat and RTD are a bit too in love with the Doctor for their own good, and it reflects in how they treat the companions. Doing a DW rewatch and am yet to watch last year's specials but I always thought Silence in the Library perfectly foreshadowed what Donna's ending should have been, she should have married the stammering man from her dreamworld and lived happily ever after with Wilf and her own family on Earth. I also feel Martha gets short-shrifted in this finale too, being detached from the main 'team' for most of the episode and not really getting her dues from the Doctor, but what's new with Martha in that sense! Anyway, thanks for this lucid explanation that expressed exactly my thoughts.