Live-Blogging Doctor Who: Turn Left

So, there are only two episodes left after this one. And I’m really not in the mood for this episode; I found it intensely difficult to watch the first time around. So depressing. And after a weekend of marking and being horribly ill, I’m in the mood for a more light-hearted episode.

I know!

I could live-blog the Agatha Christie episode. How about that?

No?

Okay. I’ll stick to “Turn Left.”

I mentioned this episode to my mother last week, when we talking about “Midnight” and what a good episode it was. Mam is not at all sure about an episode that is largely devoted to Donna and with very little Doctor. But I liked this one: I’ve come to increasingly like Donna over the course of the season, and she develops in a fascinating fashion here.

But it’s one of the episodes I really . . . well, “enjoyed” isn’t quite the right word, but it will do for now.

(I’ve just had a quick phone conversation with my brother that included the lines (on my part) “How do you walk into a soccer-boot emporium and come out with a new car?” and “How on earth can you not be sure whether you still have that cockatoo skeleton under the seat in your car?” He also reminded me of the time the power cables fell on top of his car while he was innocently driving along, and then told me that the same car was repeatedly kicked by a man who was apparently bleeding very heavily. It’s not every day you have a conversation like that.)

Wow, even the Doctor Who promos sound depressed at the thought of this episode.

Yet another reason to love the ABC (apart from the fact that that was the only station I was allowed to watch, growing up): is anyone else covering the Paraolympics?

Hey, we’ve wandered into Firefly!

NICK: Hey, it’s crude ethnic stereotype planet.

Apparently, this irritated a lot of people. I know the accent on this fortune teller—who played the insect woman in the Master episodes—irritated a lot of people in my living room.

Oh, Donna! You idiot! Why do you keep wandering away from the Doctor. That is never, ever, ever a good idea. And this fortune teller is creepy—and can’t keep her eyes on Donna’s face, even though she’s clearly not supposed to be looking at that chittering sound behind Donna.

Donna, you’re feeling woozy. Shouldn’t this be a hint that you should leg it out of this tent? Even before you start hearing the chittering sound?

Oh, dear: it’s Donna’s horrible mother. And why is this fortune teller so keen on pushing Donna to the point where she turns left instead of right?

Damn, that’s cold: when Donna’s mother tells her that all city men need temps for is practise. Oh, she’s an awful woman. Truly awful.

Okay, this object on Donna’s back doesn’t look that convincing, but I hate insects so much that it frightens me anyway.

Don’t turn right, Donna!

Oh, she turned right. That’s not going to end well.

That’s got to be the longest trailer we’ve ever had on this programme. And Billie Piper’s in the credits! I feel I should be more excited about that.

Christmas! I love Christmas! But which Christmas is this? Is it the Runaway Bride Christmas? I suppose we’re about to find out.

And Donna’s friend can see something on her back—that’s creepy.

A Christmas star? Then it is the Runaway Bride Christmas. Ken Livingstone spends money on Christmas decorations? Red Ken? Surely not! And now the Rachnos ship is starting to shoot everyone. But Donna’s friend can now see what’s on her back, and it’s freaking her out. It’s freaking Donna out a little, as well.

The army brings the star down, but what’s this? UNIT is there. And an ambulance—and a body? A body with a sonic screwdriver? Oh, damn! The Doctor’s dead! (I think that’s Sergeant Dead Meat! Or was that Private Cannon Fodder?)

Rose! Hang on, what’s happened to Billie Piper’s diction? She sounds as though her mouth is too full of teeth—and she seems to have lost the accent, as well. Rose can see what’s on Donna’s back—but she vanished before Donna can challenge her.

And the Doctor’s dead! Damn!

Now Donna’s been sacked—because the Thames has been closed off after the Doctor’s behaviour in the Rachnos episode.

Oops, it’s “Smith and Jones,” now—the hospital disappears while Donna is stripping her desk and insulting the staff: “Cliff, I’d leave you the mouse mat, but I’m afraid you’d cut yourself.”

The hospital is back, but with one survivor—and it’s not Martha. Damn, Martha’s dead, too? No! Yep: she sacrificed herself to save Oliver. Oh, dammit: the Doctor and Martha.

Bernard Cribbens’s right, though, Donna: it is getting worse. (And I see they’ve written Donna’s father’s death into the script.)

Sarah Jane Smith’s body was recovered from the hospital? Oh, dammit! Sarah Jane can’t be dead!

This is the point where I jumped off the sofa and sat half a metre in front of the television for the last part of the episode, hoping everyone would come back to life.

Here’s Rose again—stepping out of an alleyway in a mysterious blue light. I’m not sure why, but I have a sense there’s a mystery here. (Dramatic understatement.) Now why is Rose suggesting that Donna might want to leave the city for next Christmas? And how does she know about that raffle ticket? I don’t blame Donna for not trusting her. I wouldn’t trust her, either.

But Donna does use the ticket, and here she is with her mother and grandfather—and Bernard Cribbens has reindeer antlers on his head. I love you, Bernard Cribbens! (Donna’s father has died at some point before this episode.)

(Is Donna’s mother sharing that bed with her daughter? In that red satin nightie? I’d go for flannel under those circumstances.)

The chambermaid at the hotel can see something on Donna’s back—and she enables Donna to see it. And now the Titanic is falling out of the sky onto central London. Into Buckingham Palace. And the television goes dead just before they feel the impact of the shock.

Damn—a mushroom cloud is rising over London, from the effect of the Titanic’s engines. It’s a beautiful shot, but I’m old enough to get the shivers from the sight of a mushroom cloud.

Refugees flooding out of the south of London, to escape the radiation: Donna and her family are billeted into a house in Leeds.

And this is my favourite bit of the episode: the neighbour woman complaining that a perfectly nice family, who missed one mortgage payment, have been kicked out in favour of southern billets, and Donna descending into northern stereotypes about whippets. Not only does it bring the southern/northern dichotomy sharply to the forefront, but it’s such a complicated exchange: there’s so much going on behind that, about the impact on the south of London and the fact that this will have a devastating effect on the rest of the country.

And the Adiposians take their product into the U.S. since England is no longer available? Dear lord, the bodycount in this episode is high!

Donna’s mother almost breaks my heart in this scene, lying on her campbed, in her coat, in the kitchen of an overcrowded billet, thinking of more people that she knows who are now dead.

The fact that she insists “we’re refugees; we don’t count”—that ties in with the slap last episode from Mrs Cane about the Doctor being an “immigrant.” And perhaps also the tensions about Polish workers that Nick suggested were present in the ATMOS episodes. Man, there’s some complicated stuff coming to the surface in this episode.

And now, speaking of ATMOS, the cars are starting to go mad now, but Britain’s lack of petrol is helping. A soldier has seen the object on Donna’s back, and is threatening to shoot her.

So when Rose turns up in the middle of this, it’s to point out that Gwen and Ianto from Torchwood are dead, and Captain Jack has transported to the Sontaran homeworld. Is he dead, too?

As Nick pointed out earlier, they’ve killed off every spin-off, in this one episode.

The Doctor’s hair isn’t that great, Rose.

So Donna saved the Doctor’s life? I think that’s true—and in more ways than one. That scene with the Rachnos devastated me when I first saw it; that Doctor was implacable. Horribly so. We’ve seen that subsequently—notably in the Family of Blood two-parter—but that was the first time I saw it, and it broke my heart.

The darkness is coming? Damn.

Oh, Donna. Why do you always think that people are mocking you when they tell you how awesome you are?

Nick’s just reminded me that I’m so busy trying to cover everything in this episode that I haven’t been hitting the update button.

England for the English? Labour camps? Oh, shit! I saw what was coming here long before Donna did. And it’s giving me goosebumps, watching it again. Donna’s grandfather knows, too—but he remembers the camps the first time around, too. As he’s just said.

And now he’s weeping, and Donna finally realises what’s happening. Oh, shit—this is awful.

And it gets harder to watch, with Donna’s mother. She’s completely shut down, now. I don’t really blame her: she’s had a hell of a year, when you factor in the death of her husband. But when Donna says she supposes she’s always been a disappointment, and Donna’s mother just says, “Yeah.” Totally flat. Oh, damn—no wonder Donna has no confidence in herself.

That’s an interesting shot, that one, too: as Nick points out, they’d normally do it in deep focus, so that both actresses are in focus. But having Donna blurry behind her mother pulls up all those ideas about Donna losing her sense of self and her world, and the way in which her mother strips her of everything, even confidence, so she’s left with only a brassy aggression that covers a lack of confidence.

And now the stars are going out—so Donna is ready to go with Rose, to UNIT. And Rose has some standing here, though it’s unclear what, since they don’t even know her name.

And there’s the TARDIS! Salvaged from under the Thames—and a shade of the old Donna, laughing delightedly at the idea that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside.

The music’s dropped away here, which gives the scene a kind of dead feeling—though the music comes back when the TARDIS comes briefly to life. It’s dying, in the absence of the Doctor—and I mean “dead feeling” in a good way. It feels static, much as Donna is in this new world.

Rose strikes me as a little unsympathetic in this scene: it’s not the ruthlessness with which she pursues her plans with respect to Donna. I can understand that. But she’s from the same time and the same world as Donna: shouldn’t she be able to see how shell-shocked Donna is by the events of the past year or so? But she’s not really interacting with Donna, not soothing her or even answering her questions. She doesn’t even really seem to see how close Donna is to a breakdown, here.

So the thing on Donna’s back feeds off time? It’s like the blind angels in “Blink,” I suppose. And it’s found a good host in Donna. It makes sense to me that these kind of creatures are attracted to time travellers.

The Doctor and Donna are needed together to stop the stars going out.

GENERAL: This is to combat dehydration.

I love that line. And I love the music in this scene. I don’t know what it is about it that I love, but I love it.

So Donna’s going back in time with equipment cannibalised from the TARDIS. And she thinks this will save her, that travelling back in time will help her avoid Rose’s promise that she will die if she does this. But Rose can’t promise that. And, to give her credit, she doesn’t even try.

So Donna will travel in time, even if she never meets the Doctor.

And here she is in London in the past, before the bomb blast. But she’s half a mile away from where she needs to be in four minutes time. I couldn’t run half a mile in four minutes.

And we’re back to original Donna, arguing in the car with her mother, coming to the junction where she needs to turn left and her mother is bullying her to turn right. And past Donna is running and running, but she’s not going to make it in time.

So she stops. And she thinks. And while original Donna’s mother is haranguing her into turning right, past Donna steps out into the road in front of a garbage truck, causing the traffic to back up, blocking the right-hand turn.

And Rose turns up, and whispers two words in Donna’s ear as she dies.

And original Donna turns left—and time turns back into its original position.

Back on the planet of ethnic stereotypes, the creature falls off Donna’s back and the fortune teller is terrified by Donna’s ability to resist the creature’s abilities.

And, of course, the Doctor turns up then, not being certain that anything has happened, and looking like a puppy seeking out a new friend.

The Doctor does point out at this point that there’s a lot of coincidence around Donna—including more than one parallel world created around her, which is a good point.

Now Donna remembers the messages that Rose has told her to pass on to the Doctor. And the Doctor suspects: he suspects it’s Rose.

The two words? Bad wolf.

Now that’s not good. And now “Bad wolf” is plastered everywhere, presumably a residual effect of the time that Rose spread them through the universe.

The Cloister Bell! Damn! I’ve been waiting twenty years to hear that noise again. That’s a bad noise.

And next week, the first of the two-part finale—with everyone. And a mysteriously familiar-sounding evil chuckle.

And that’s “Turn Left.” Wow, that was tiring. I’m for a cigarette.