Turn Left (TV story)

"It's coming, Donna. It's coming from across the stars and nothing can stop it..."

- Rose Tyler

Synopsis
Donna's entire world collapses, but there’s no sign of the Doctor. Instead, she finds help from a mysterious blonde woman– a traveller from a parallel universe. But, as Donna and Rose Tyler combine forces, are they too late to save the whole of creation from the approaching darkness?

Plot
The Doctor and Donna are on the planet Shan Shen, mixing with the locals. Donna wanders away from the Doctor to explore. A mysterious fortune teller tempts Donna with a reading. The fortune teller searches Donna's past for a single event, finally choosing a moment in June 2007, where Donna and her mother are in a car at a T-junction arguing about her future. Sylvia is trying to persuade Donna to turn right and ask businessman Jival Chowdry for a job; but Donna turns left to go to her planned temp job at H.C. Clements. As the fortune teller attempts to persuade Donna to turn right, something crawls onto Donna's back. Finally, under the fortune teller's persuasion, Donna turns right and alters the course of her life as well as the future of all existence.

It is Christmas Eve 2007, but in an alternate world where Donna, who now never worked for H.C. Clements, has never met the Doctor. The Racnoss Webstar attacks London, and is destroyed by the army, at a terrible cost: near an ambulance and a group of UNIT trucks, Donna overhears a UNIT officer telling someone that they found a body. The Doctor's body. As Donna walks away, a blond figure suddenly appears: the Doctor's former companion Rose Tyler comes running down the street and asks for information about the body that has just been bundled into the ambulance. Rose is stunned to hear that it was the Doctor.

In April 2008, Donna is fired from her job in the photocopying firm. Meanwhile, the Royal Hope Hospital is mysteriously transported to the Moon. When it returns, there is only one survivor: a medical student named Oliver Morgenstern, who relates the terrible events. As in the original timeline, the hospital had been moved by the Judoon and infiltrated by a Plasmavore. Sarah Jane Smith (at the hospital with her son Luke and his friends Maria and Clyde) attempted to fill the Doctor's role, and did manage to stop the MRI machine from irradiating the Earth--but, without the Doctor, the humans couldn't find a way back to Earth, and all suffocated. Medical student Martha Jones gave Morgenstern the last oxygen tank so that someone would survive to tell the story.

As Donna digests the terrible news, Rose reappears, and warns her to leave London for Christmas 2008.

Donna takes Rose's advice, and treats her mum and grandfather to a Christmas holiday in the English countryside. On Christmas morning 2008, they watch in disbelief as a replica of the Titanic is reported to be heading straight for Buckingham Palace. The three run outside and watch, horrified, as a mushroom cloud rises above London.

Like many other refugees from London (and southern England, which was irradiated), the Nobles are forced to move to Leeds. They are allocated a house that is shared with two other families. The United States pledges to help Britain with monetary relief but must abandon the plan when their own crisis strikes: 60 million of their population are turned into Adipose. Since London no longer exists, Adipose Industries had targeted the USA.

Some time later, Donna finds soldiers gunning at cars when the Sontarans activate the ATMOS devices, covering the Earth with a poisonous fog. A soldier again notices something on Donna's back and holds her at gunpoint, but is released when nothing is apparently there. That night, Donna meets Rose for a third time. Rose explains that the Torchwood team, aboard the Sontaran ship, are trying to stop the catastrophe. Suddenly, the sky is cleared by an atmospheric converter. However Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones had given their lives to achieve this, while Captain Jack Harkness has been stranded on the Sontaran homeworld.

Rose, who refuses to tell Donna her name and will say only that she has "crossed reality", tries to explain that Donna had saved the Doctor's life in an alternate timeline, though Donna insists that she had never met him. Rose warns Donna about the coming "darkness" that threatens every single universe. Donna tries to walk away, but Rose then tells Donna that she will have to go with her when she is ready and that she has three weeks to decide. Rose warns Donna that when she comes with her, Donna will die. Then she disappears.

Three weeks later, the genial Italian family in Donna's house is evicted as England is now "only for the English". Since the oceans are closed off, they must be taken to a "labour camp". Wilfred says "That's what they called them last time.", alluding to the concentration camps of World War II. Later at night, Donna and Wilf talk about recent events. He notices that the constellation of Orion has gone, though there are no clouds. As the stars disappear throughout the sky, Donna realizes that Rose must be correct. She finds the younger woman, and tells her that she is ready.

Rose takes Donna to a UNIT base and shows her the TARDIS--salvaged from beneath the River Thames--which is dying following the Doctor's death. Using technology researched from the TARDIS, Rose switches on a light which reveals what is on Donna's back: a 'Time Beetle'. Rose explains that it "feeds off time by changing time" and that it is in a state of temporal flux and cannot be removed. Rose goes on further to state that Donna herself is also in a state of flux and has been since her birth. Donna is horrified and the light is turned off. In order to set things right, they prepare to send Donna back in time to stop her past self from turning right. Donna agrees to go, and is elated by the belief that rather than dying, "this whole world [will] blink out of existence [but] a better world takes its place." To this Rose remains silent.

Donna successfully lands back in June 2007, but realizes that she is a half a mile away from her past self with just four minutes to spare. She tries to run to herself, but realizes that she will not make it in time. Donna realizes what Rose meant about her death and throws herself in front of a van; the fatal accident quickly causes a traffic jam that prevents Donna's past self from turning right. Right before she dies, Rose appears and whispers something into Donna's ear to tell the Doctor.

As the original timeline reasserts itself, Donna regains consciousness in the fortune teller's stall on Shan Shen. The frightened and baffled fortune teller flees, saying that Donna's will was "too strong." The Doctor enters and an emotionally spent Donna collapses into his arms.

Upon examining the beetle, The Doctor tells Donna that it is part of the Trickster's Brigade and that normally it affects one person and the universe compensates (as what happened to Sarah Jane Smith), but in Donna's case, it created a parallel universe. The Doctor then muses on all of the unique coincidences surrounding Donna: the fact that she had two parallel worlds that formed around her (this one and the one in the CAL computer) and the fact that he's met her and  her grandfather twice. The Doctor concludes that they seem to be somehow linked. Donna tells the Doctor she is nothing special, but he counters saying that she's "brilliant". Hearing that trigger's Donna's memories of Rose on the parallel world and she starts to relate Rose's warnings to the Doctor. When asked if she remembered the blonde woman's name, Donna said she was never told it, but Donna does tell the Doctor the two words the blonde woman whispered into her ear: "Bad Wolf". Horrified, The Doctor runs out into the market square to see the words Bad Wolf everywhere; on posters pasted onto the walls, on the ceremonial flags hanging over the market, even on the TARDIS itself. Inside the TARDIS itself, the control room is glowing red and the Cloister Bell is ringing ominously. When Donna asks what's going on, the Doctor replies, "It's the end of the universe."

Cast

 * The Doctor - David Tennant
 * Donna Noble - Catherine Tate
 * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
 * Wilfred Mott - Bernard Cribbins
 * Sylvia Noble - Jacqueline King
 * Mr Colastanto - Joseph Long
 * Captain Arisa Magambo - Norma Dumezweni
 * Fortune Teller - Chipo Chung
 * Mooky Kahari - Marcia Lecky
 * Veena Brady - Suzann McLean
 * Alice Coltrane - Natalie Walter
 * Private Harris - Clive Standen
 * Jival Chowdry - Bhasker Patel
 * Oliver Morgenstern - Ben Righton
 * Spanish Maid - Loraine Velez
 * Trinity Wells - Lachele Carl
 * Studio News Reader - Jason Mohammad
 * Housing Officer - Sanchia McCormack
 * Soldier Number 1 - Lawrence Stevenson
 * Soldier Number 2 - Paul Richard Biggin
 * Man in Pub - Neil Clench
 * Female Reporter - Catherine York
 * Woman in Doorway - Terri-Ann Brumby
 * Tish Jones - Gugu Mbatha-Raw - Uncredited

Production crew
to be added

Events in the alternate timeline

 * The Doctor drowns and does not regenerate whilst defeating the Empress of the Racnoss under the Thames.
 * Private Harris was at the scene when the Doctor's body is recovered from the Thames Torchwood complex.
 * Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Maria Jackson, Luke Smith, Clyde Langer all die in Royal Hope Hospital when it is transported by the Judoon to the Moon.
 * The Titanic crashes into Buckingham Palace killing everyone in the greater London area and contaminating southern England - bar Devon & Cornwall - with radiation.
 * The destruction of London triggers a societal collapese in Great Britain, which becomes a police state that closes its borders and reintroduces concepts such as concentration camps.
 * The March of the Adipose occurs in America, killing millions.
 * Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones die whilst assaulting the Sontaran warship. Captain Jack Harkness is transported to Sontar.
 * Although the Sontaran invasion is thwarted, there is no one to prevent the ATMOS devices from decimating the population of the earth, although the UK is spared this as due to the destruction of London ATMOS never came into widespread use.
 * Rose Tyler appears to be working with UNIT.

Story notes

 * This is the first story to feature Rose in a starring role since DW: Doomsday.


 * Billie Piper was seen at the end of Partners in Crime, as well as a short cameo in The Poison Sky and another in Midnight.
 * Chipo Chung last appeared in DW: Utopia as the Malmooth, Chantho. She plays the fortune teller in this story.


 * This is the 'Doctor-lite' episode of the series, similar to Love and Monsters and Blink, albeit with a much darker storyline. Unlike previous Doctor-lite stories, however, the focus is given to the companion, rather than her also taking a minor role. They used the same scheduling trick in the previous episode, Midnight, which featured virtually no Donna Noble.  These episodes allow the production team to complete fourteen episodes (including the Christmas episode)  in a schedule originally designed to complete thirteen.  A second team can be filming the "extra" episode, with the main cast filming only a day or so.  Their footage is judiciously spread through the episode to give the impression of a larger interaction.
 * A reference to something on Donna's back was last heard in The Fires of Pompeii when Lucius Petrus Dextrus saw into the future.
 * In Doctor Who Magazine it said that Donna will receive a free tarot card reading and find out something bad is going to happen. When she is receiving it there will also be something behind her lurking in the curtains. The Tarot person will also look for a specific event in Donna's past. The episode, as broadcast, takes place on a Chinese-influenced alien world with no reference to Tarot.
 * "The bees are disappearing" is quoted again in this episode, this time by Donna's mother, Sylvia Noble. This is a real-world phenomenon, called Colony Collapse Disorder, the incidence of which increased sharply in late 2006, and the cause of which has not been identified.
 * A recurring theme in previous episodes hinted that Donna would die in the future which occurs in this episode. However, this was an alternate reality Donna who sacrificed herself in order to prevent her past self from taking the wrong turn thus forcing her to meet the Doctor as was planned.
 * Part of this episode is filmed in China Town, though not the one in London, but recreated in Cardiff. Chinese people living in South Wales were invited to be background extras via Facebook at the end of 2007. They had to reply to the Doctor Who casting crew with their name and sizes for costumes to be made for them and they were paid approx £70 for the day. David Tennant was seen in 'China Town' when he took time out of filming though staying on location to appear on Blue Peter to appeal to viewers to donate shoes to their Shoebiz appeal.
 * Donna is told she can have her fortune told for free because she has red hair. This is a reference to Chinese culture, since red is considered very lucky in China.  It's also a common carny trick to draw people into the attraction; half off for lovely ladies, men wearing hats, anything that matches some characteristic of the person being appealed to.
 * Graeme Harper's penchant for including a distorted image of a main character is present in this story.  Though not included in  every single episode he's directed for BBC Wales, it's seen often enough in the majority of his stories to be considered something of a directorial "signature".  More typically achieved through the use of refraction (The Unicorn and the Wasp, Army of Ghosts, Journey's End and Utopia), here the motif is continued through the use of reflection.  The theme of Donna's multiple worlds is caught through the simple use of mirrors, much as the notion of investigation was conveyed by the use of magnifying glasses in earlier stories.
 * According to Russell T Davies on Doctor Who Confidential this episode is the "cheap episode", as he wanted the TARDIS to be on fire, but the budget didn't allow for the effect.
 * A variation of 'The Wall Theme', (The Wall Theme is a variation of Rose's Theme, played in Doomsday.) with added guitar parts, is played before Donna is sent back in time.
 * Two pieces of background pop music return from other episodes. In the scene in which Donna goes out with her friends to celebrate her new job at Chowdry's personal assistant, the song "Merry Xmas Everybody" by the glam rock band Slade can be heard. This was also playing during Donna's wedding reception in The Runaway Bride.  Later, the song underscoring the Noble family's arrival at Firbourne House for their raffle-won holiday is the same rock version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" first heard on Mickey's radio in the The Christmas Invasion ' s teaser.
 * Billie Piper states in the accompanying Doctor Who Confidential episode that she had forgotten how to play Rose, and needed to watch past episodes to remind herself.
 * This isn't the first time a Doctor Who story has examined a "What if..." scenario involving the Doctor's influence on a person's life. A similar storyline involved Eighth Doctor companion Samantha Jones, depicted in two wildly diverging timelines (EDA: Unnatural History).

Ratings

 * Official Broadcast Audience Research Board (BARB) - 8.09 million viewers

Myths and rumours

 * Many fan reviews and discussions of this episode have noted that, for reasons unknown, Billie Piper speaks with a noticeable lisp in many of her scenes - a lisp not present when she was last on the show; a frequently cited example being when Rose tells Donna she's the most important woman in all of creation. Among the speculated reasons as to why is Piper's statement on Doctor Who Confidential (see above) that she had forgotten how to play Rose -- a character who speaks with a more working-class accent than Piper's natural voice. Rose is starting to speak more like the Doctor himself as she has become more like him in the sense of using technobabble and not wishing to accept salutes, nor does she reveal her name. The lisp is present, but less noticeable in the next two episodes.

Filming Locations
to be added

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * The sound and shaking of the Royal Hope disappearing is heard before it actually vanished, whereas in Smith and Jones the sound was heard during the incident.(We don't see it vanishing in this story - we simply hear it from a different point of view)


 * How is it possible for the Doctor to die too quickly to regenerate The Doctor can be very vulnerable in the process of dying. In The Caves of Androzani the 5th Doctor, suffering from Spectrox poisoning, is unsure whether he will regenerate; and at the end of Planet of the Spiders, it took "a little push" from another Timelord (K'anpo Rimpoche) to trigger the process after the 3rd Doctor's body was devastated by radiation while he was inside the Metebelis Crystal cavern -- so, it may be that some kinds of injuries are more difficult, or perhaps impossible, to Regenerate from than others.


 * The Doctor revealed that the Nuclear Storm drive would wipe out all life on Earth. This is incorrect as it only destroys London. This may have been because of Alonzo trying anything to stop the Titanic, possibly even trying the Doctor's idea so that the storm drive slowly depletes rather than cutting out. Also, the Doctor may only have been estimating, or even exaggerating.


 * Why would an emergency government, greatly limited in funds already, install the (probably) expensive ATMOS in all its vehicles? The ATMOS was probably already installed in the cars before the Titanic incident and they were probably not expensive. Donna says something to the effect of ATMOS being quite cheap in The Sontaran Stratagem, explaining why so many people had it.''


 * Why is Captain Jack transported to Sontar? Maybe because the Sontarans found that he couldn't die he'd be the perfect soldier for their war.


 * Why isn't the planet ruled by carrionites if the doctor wasn't alive to stop them? Since the Time Beetle was part of the Trickster's Brigade, the Trickster could have prevented the Carrionites, Daleks and Pyroviles from trying to invade Earth and stopped the Vespiform from landing on Earth in the first place. - see Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?


 * We see Donna looking at the sky and the stars were disappearing. We also find out later that the same happened in Rose's universe. If the stars got destroyed, it would take many years at the speed of light for the people of Earth to begin seeing the stars disappearing, and the stars would disappear very very slowly over many many years. By that time Earth would be destroyed before anyone can see it coming. This also leads to a big plot hole in later episodes as to why Rose began to search for the Doctor. We don't know the full power of the reality bomb, perhaps it can change and bend physical laws, for example the speed of light.


 * The Stars go out. The Earth does not move. There is no difference in this instance between this world and the world where the Doctor is alive. Why would the Daleks change their mind about moving the Earth? The Earth is only moved in the Doctor's Universe. The Reality bomb is stated to affect other universes as well.

Continuity

 * This is the second time Rose was present at the death of someone she knew, whom also ultimately died to correct the timeline. In series 1's "Father's Day", Rose was present at her father's death, which she prevented when she had come back in time with the Doctor. The resulting fracture of creating a parallel world caused chaos until that parallel Peter Tyler sacrificed his life to restore the original timeline. In this episode Rose is present at parallel Donna's death, which caused the younger Donna to turn left instead of right, restoring the timeline. Ironically, both parallel versions of Peter and Donna are hit by a car, and both die with Rose by their side.
 * Among other uses of the phrase "Turn Left" in the series: In DW: The Sontaran Strategem the ATMOS kept saying Turn Left; Captain Jack mentioned telling someone they should have turned left during a joke in Boom Town; Events leading to an alternate future, were due to people 'turning right' instead of 'turning left' in TWN: The Twilight Streets.
 * Like the TARDIS, Donna's car is blue. She often is seen wearing blue, and when leaving her job, she decides to keep a blue hole-punch, notable since for most of the series, the Doctor has been inadvertently punching holes in the fabric of the universe.
 * Bad Wolf returns as a warning for the end of the universe. Bad Wolf was last heard in DW: ''Doomsday' (Although the TARDIS had turned Red at the end of 'Turn Left' to warn the Doctor of 'The End Of The Universe' so the TARDIS could have used 'Bad Wolf' as another warning after Rose used it in 'The Parting Of The Ways'.)
 * The Cloister Bell is heard, again as a warning, it was last heard in DW: Time Crash.
 * Two phrases said by Lucius Petrus Dextrus in DW: The Fires of Pompeii come to fruition in this episode: "There's something on your back" and "She is returning".
 * The characters from The Sarah Jane Adventures are named in the news report to be dead in the parallel timeline.
 * A UNIT soldier refers to regeneration. UNIT has extensive knowledge of regeneration, having directly been involved with the aftermaths of the regenerations of the Second Doctor and Third Doctors, plus The Brigadier himself is known to have met most of the Doctor's incarnations (both on screen and in the spinoffs).
 * In DW: The Sontaran Stratagem, Colonel Mace and Captain Price saluted the Doctor but he said 'Don't salute, please'. When Captain Magambo saluted Rose, she told her not to salute as well. The difference is that this time Donna doesn't ask for a salute like she did in The Sontaran Stratagem.
 * The Doctor has previously 'died' in DW: Doctor Who: The TV Movie (though he did subsequently regenerate).
 * There is some similarity (in that they both hang invisibly on the back) between the time beetle and the spiders in (DW: Planet of the Spiders).
 * Mirrors have been used for time travel in DW: The Evil of the Daleks and BFA: The Time of the Daleks.
 * Mirrors were also used to expose and reveal the Mara (as is used to reveal the beetle) in DW: Kinda, and a mirror was essential to the storyline of NDA: Martha in the Mirror, and, in a sense, of DW: Timelash.
 * "The Bees are disappearing" is spoken again in this episode, this time by Sylvia Noble. The quote has been used several times throughout the series, usually spoken by Donna. It is interesting to note that at the end of Turn Left, the "fortune teller" says to Donna, "What will you be?". This is used in the wrong context. In correct grammar she should have said "What will you become?". Therefore by saying 'be'she may again be referring to bees, and that Donna may have some future connection with them or their dissapearance. More likely, the sentence "what will you be" refers to the metaphorical sense of becoming a new type of being, as opposed to the act of the change. In this context, the grammar is correct, or that simply, The Fortune Teller was simply talking in modern vernacular. Actually it was literal, Donna becomes half time lord.
 * There have been a few other instances of the Doctor 'dying' and events taking different courses (NA: Blood Heat, DWM: Final Genesis'').
 * In Army of Ghosts Adeola lures her colleague to his death by telling him to 'go to the left'.
 * When Donna, Wilf and Sylvia are watching the news report the picture is said to be coming from the Guinevere range of satellites which is the same range as the Guinevere space project first seen in (DW:The Christmas Invasion)
 * Discounting minor modifications over the years, the replacement of the wording on the TARDIS exterior with "Bad Wolf" -- and this appears to be a physical change given that the words are visible from the inside, too -- marks the first time the TARDIS has been shown undertaking a physical change since Attack of the Cybermen. Although not indicated in dialogue, the fact the TARDIS is now adorned with the words "Bad Wolf" - but the words are gone by the time the vessel returns to earth in the next episode - suggests the chameleon circuit came into play.
 * Rose says to Donna "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," a phrase often uttered by the Tenth Doctor.
 * In the opening titles for Doctor Who, when the TARDIS reaches a junction in the time vortex, it turns left instead of right.
 * The improbability of the Doctor meeting anyone twice by accident is remarked on. A previous example of such a coincidence is the reunion of the Fifth Doctor and Tegan Jovanka in Arc of Infinity after he left her behind in Time-Flight.

DVD and Other releases

 * This is due to be released in the Series 4 boxed set in November 2008 along with the rest of the Series.
 * It was released as Series 4 Volume 4 alongside The Stolen Earth and Journey's End on 1st September 2008.