Doctor Who: Turn Left (Series 4)

Last week it was David Tennant's turn, this week it is Catherine Tate's turn to hold an episode herself, although she does have some help in the return of Billie Piper. This is not such a bad idea as it shows us (and indeed in many ways so does the whole episode) that there is no Doctor Who without the Doctor and when he is missing it needs not one but two companions to keep everything together. Credit where credit is due, however, as Catherine Tate is truly marvellous as Donna in an episode where she
has to play two versions of the character. Why?

Well, Turn Left is essentially a "What if..." episode of Doctor Who; what if Donna never met the Doctor. In Love & Monsters, Russell T Davies other "Doctor-lite" episode, we got to see a number of Doctor Who episodes from the point of view of an outsider, and in this episode pretty much the same thing happens, though the outsider is Donna who never travelled with the Doctor. I have some friends who hate Donna because she is mouthy and acerbic, which is funny because that is a pretty accurate description of my friends. They are being blinkered, however, because yes, in The Runaway Bride, Donna is mouthy and acerbic but she has softened and changed, though her fire hasn't been put out. Turn Left gives us the chance to see Donna as she was in The Runaway Bride - a character who believes she can try to change the world by shouting at it. I'm not quite sure why people dislike Donna because of this attitude; it's certainly not my belief but you have to give credit to people who are prepared to stand up and be counted. In
The Runaway Bride Donna is supposed to be the anti-companion, the reverse of Rose and as such a way of highlighting how great Rose was. But for me that never quite sat true as we saw someone who, although not driven enough to act, was still prepared to make her views known.

It's ironic, therefore, that when Donna has to take an episode solo she is given assistance in the form of the very person she is supposed to be a contradiction of - Rose Tyler. Rose has clearly become a changed character, a sort of...well, vague is the best adjective...vague version of the Doctor. Actually, distracted is better. She appears to have developed some of the Doctor's eccentricities as well as his inner sadness, both of which we can assume have come around because she has been separated from the man she loves (although, despite the fact everyone knows they are in love, when Donna questions Rose about their relationship, she remains tight lipped). I read somewhere that the inclusion of the character River Song two weeks ago diluted the impact of the return of Rose, and there is a certain truth in that, knowing that for the Doctor, his soulmate was the woman we met in the Library. However, we can assume there is more than one soulmate for each of us, and for us, we have seen the relationship between
Rose and the Doctor blossom.

Whereas Catherine Tate effectively showed us the two halves of Donna - the acerbic version slowly becoming the version we have come to know better as the episode progresses - Billie Piper's performance is positively bizarre. Whilst I can accept Rose has developed and changed since we have left her, the Rose we meet in Turn Left is so vastly different that it's hard to reconcile. Piper herself seems to have lost a tremendous amount of weight, looking almost gaunt and sickly as she appears on screen, but it is her speech that is the most off putting. Although Billie's always had a large smile, her teeth seem to be more buck-toothed in this episode than they were, and as a cosequence of this, she sounds as though she's speaking with a pronounced lisp, or with a dental appendage in her mouth. When she first speaks it is so out-of-whack that I was seriously thrown for quite some time. I have loved Rose from the moment we saw her and cried buckets when she was separated from the Doctor, but the character I was watching last night seemed so different to the Doctor's love that I was forcibly taken out of my viewing experience. I have no idea what was going on, but I really hope it is only temporary.

So while Catherine is urinating all over Billie's performance, our other two semi-regulars get the chance this week to also shine a little as Jacqueline King and Bernard Cribbins return as Sylvia Noble and Wilfred Mott. Sylvia's always been a difficult character to love; unlike Jackie Tyler and Francine Jones who are both strong women but clearly have a lot of love for thier daughters (indeed their strength comes from their love of their daughters), Sylvia is domineering but doesn't have a lot of time for Donna. In fact in this episode she goes so far as to admit she considers Donna a disappointment. However, King injects Sylvia with such sadness that it's difficult not to feel sorry for the character. Bearing in mind of course that this whole episode shows us an England devastated by a variety of alien menaces, it's perhaps not so hard to follow why Sylvia has lost all hope.

And of course the decision to exterminate foreigners to keep Britain for the British is the other result of this action and although Bernard Cribbins spends the majority of the episodes stealing the scenes he appears in, it is the announcement of his housemates going to the "labour camps" that gives Cribbins the chance to shine even brighter. If you aren't feeling just a little something when Wilf, teary-eyed, salutes his new friend goodbye you must have a shard of flint for a heart. Cribbins recurring appearance in Doctor Who - though not planned - has turned out to be a diamond. And in a rather nice moment reference is finally made to the fact that Donna's dad did indeed pass away after the Racnoss incident. RIP Howard Attwell.

Turn Left is a very different type of episode, showing us a world without the Doctor as well as recalling the classic series "Planet Of Spiders" with the bug on Donna's back, but the ending clearly is leading us to something much bigger. With references to stars disappearing, the bees disappearing, Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures, and finally bringing back the Bad Wolf, one can't even begin to wonder what is lying around the corner.

Except it's gonna be big.

"A"