Doctor Who, Turn Left, Review (Spioler)
This Doctor Who episode is centred around Donna, with the Doctor not having many lines. A complete contrast to the episode last week that was primarily the Doctor.
A question: What if you had turned right instead of left, what if you had missed that train, what if…
It is a theory that for every choice we make, we create a series of infinite possibilities, a series of infinite parallel dimensions.
So the big ‘what if’ is what if the Doctor died! What if he was unable to stop the Titanic from crashing into London? What if the Adepos where not stopped?
This is the brilliant thing about sci-fi, you don’t have to talk about it, it can happen. And happen with a giant beetle, in true classic Doctor Who style!
This all starts as we see Donna and the Doctor arrive as what appears to be a Chinese style market, obviously in the future, they both look to be having a great time. Donna is beckoned into a fortune tellers tent. The fortune teller asks her to tell her about her past so that she can see her future.
Donna explains how she met this man, and when she recalls she has a vivid flashback. The fortune teller makes her describe a point in time when she would not have gotten the job that led her to meeting the Doctor. As this happens a scurrying is heard and we see a large beetle like creature on Donna’s back!
The next thing is Donna sitting in her car, her mother saying to her to turn right to go and get a job at a shop and she wants to turn left to go to the job that eventually leads her to meet the Doctor. Instead of turning left she turns right.
She never meets the doctor, which means he dies as she does not pull him out of the building two Christmases ago before it is destroyed.
With no Doctor, all the events the Doctor has prevented happen. The Sontaran’s attack, the Titanic crashes into London and the adipose consume most of the United States.
Donna is left in this altered reality. Although there are two distinct bizarre things that keep on happening…
People keep on looking at her back, some people do, looking like there is something strange on it.
She keeps on seeing a blonde lady, who helps her and her family escape the tragedy of the Titanic crashing into London. The blonde lady is Rose Tyler, she is there to save The Doctor and every Universe in existence. Donna doesn’t believe her at first, but it is only when all of the stars start to extinguish does Donna go with Rose.
Donna is taken to a Unit base, where Rose is in control. The Tardis is there, looking like they are trying to reverse engineer the technology. Donna is shown the creature on her back. In true classic Doctor Who style it appears to be an oversized Beetle! It is explained that she needs to turn left not right on that fateful day, and she must travel back in time to do this, Rose tells her that she is going to die. Donna is determined that by going back she will prevent her death. She returns, she but she has landed half a mile away and has 10 minutes to get there. She is running, and realises that the only to make her past self turn left is to cause a traffic jam - she steps out and it hit by a van. As she drifts away, Rose comes up and tells her to tell The Doctor two words.
She regains control, she is in the fortune teller’s tent, and the creature has fallen from her back. The fortune teller is cowering.
Telling The Doctor about it later, he points out how strange it is how they bumped into each other again and also how she seems to be in several parallel realities recently..
Donna, then remembers more. She says there was a blonde girl, The Doctor says, what was her name, looking shocked! She never said, said Donna, but she did give me a message. ‘Bad wolf’..
The Doctor runs out of the tent, every sign post, says ‘bad wolf’, even above the Tardis! Donna asks what that is, The Doctor says; “The end of the universe!”
Next weeks – well it looks brilliant! As we have all of the (new) old assistants, Sarah Jane Smith and the Torchwood team including Captian Jack….
Tags: doctor who, Review, Turn Left
July 4th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I very much doubt that The Doctor has regenerated, after all he has yet to “properly” meet both River Song and Queen Elizabeth I. River Song clearly met/will meet David Tennants incarnation of The Doctor - albeit in a different suit with a new haircut - or did/will she?…
There have been lots of parallel worlds and alternate realities in the last few seasons; are we about to meet - or have we already met - The Doctor from a parallel universe?
Consider - the world on which Rose was stranded had a Torchwood, and we all know that our Torchwood was originally created against The Doctor and the threat of Alien invasion by Queen Victoria after her encounter with the werewolf in “Tooth And Claw”‘, so it is perfectly logical to assume that the parallel Torchwood was born out of of a similar event that occurred on that Earth too?
Remember that The Doctors hand in a jar is a “Timelord Detector”? It bubbled and reacted when the TARDIS dragged Martha, Donna and The Doctor to Jennys birth in “The Doctors Daughter” and when it told Captain Jack that The Doctor was close at the end of Series One of Torchwood and during the journey through the vortex towards Professor Yana/The Master at the beginning of “Utopia” - so why was it bubbling ominously when Donna and The Doctor entered the TARDIS just before their encounter with Rose in “The Stolen Earth”?
What did Dalek Caan mean when he called The Doctor the “threefold man”?
On the actor front; David Tennant has already finished filming this years Christmas Special and has confirmed he’ll be in next years specials too… Unless we’ve all been hoodwinked yet again!
So - will Rose and River each end up with our Doctor or his alternate reality counterpart?
Or will Rose or one of our other beloved “Children Of Time” simply just end? (As per Dalek Caans ominous prophecy?)
All of this is - of course - purely conjecture on my part and, though I don’t want the series to end, I can’t wait to find out!
Saturday nights will not be the same again until Series 5 in 2010!