When Catherine Tate returned as Donna Noble in 2008, this time in the role of a companion, there was a lot of negative reaction from the media and fans who didn’t have the confidence that she would have what it takes. She very much proved them wrong with her dramatic acting ability, however it’s partly down to the emotional content she was given by Russell T Davies. This is best demonstrated with Turn Left, in my opinion the best Doctor Lite story. It’s the best performance from Catherine Tate as Donna Noble as she is leading the whole thing, and it’s Russell T Davies’s best script for Doctor Who. It shows the writer’s best strengths and assets and with Russell T Davies returning as showrunner and Catherine Tate returning as Donna for the 60th Anniversary Specials, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at the story.
Turn Left focuses upon Donna, as whilst on a planet with the Doctor she is approached by a Fortune Teller who does a reading on her. Donna’s entire personal history and timeline is changed through this woman with the help of a Time Beetle so that she never met the Doctor. This creates great peril and devastation as without the influence of Donna, the Doctor dies underneath the River Thames to the Racnoss. Without the Doctor being there to stop alien interference and invasion humanity is in great peril, with London being destroyed by the crash of the Titanic and history must be put back in place.
I think what works about Turn Left as a story is its place within the Doctor Who universe and within the Russell T Davies era. The era has been populated with a lot of earth invasions in the current day and a lot of times where humanity has been under threat, and it’s been up to the Doctor to step up and stop the threat. Therefore, the audience has a powerful level of understanding of what a world without the Doctor would mean.
The grounded nature of this era works very well for the structure and the key themes of what this story is about. Eras that are less grounded might struggle to tell this story in such an effective way because the Doctor travels all across time and space. The simple fact that the Russell T Davies era keeps returning to modern-day London gives us a lot of good familiarity and a strong track record of alien events to play with where the Doctor always saves the day. In Turn Left you appropriately and tragically get to see and feel the true horror and despair that would come if the Doctor hadn’t been there. It’s a brilliant concept and idea but the potential is achieved through the harrowing cruelty the characters are put through.
The story comes at the perfect time in the show because it utilises the well-built universe which Russell T Davies has constructed. Our own knowledge of the cost of the villain’s plans in the different stories is key to the main stakes and success. We also see friends of the Doctor left to defend in his absence, losing their lives which only works to further the main drive of the story. With each alien event, more hurt is inflicted upon humanity and the knife is twisted further into the wound creating more damage and darkness very effectively. The whole story is mainly focused on Donna and her family and how it affects them, and through this everything feels perfectly focused on relatable elements and clicks together through the emotion.
The Fortune Teller is the villain that sets off the main events of the story and Chipo Chung who plays the part brings a sinister and suspicious sense of evil to the part, inhabiting the role rather well. However, the character herself does fall into some unfortunate mildly racist stereotypes with the villainisation of Asian culture which is certainly a trope that you would avoid now.
However, the Time Beetle has a far more prominent threat in the story and in my opinion is a very effective story device. It’s revealed by the Doctor to be part of the Trickster’s Brigade which is a nice little connection to the broader Doctor Who universe. What’s most important though is that the Time Beetle provides the strong scares that you expect from a Doctor Who story. There’s a powerful unnerving tension and suspense to the episode; something identifiable about something on your back that you can’t see and it’s deeply disconcerting. The moments across the story as people stare at Donna’s back looking straight past her, and when she catches the sight of the creature in the corner of her eye creates a tangible concept and is subtle enough to have a degree of fitting uncertainty mixed with a good sense of worry. The creature being fixed to Donna’s back and becoming a part of her is a terrifying image and prospect that I love.
Catherine Tate is at her absolute height in this story in her role as Donna Noble, and this story properly solidifies her as one of my favourite companions. I think Turn Left surpasses Blink partly due to Catherine Tate and her brilliant and emotional performance across the story. You revisit a different version of Donna who hasn’t had the same change of perspective and hasn’t had her eyes opened to the universe by the Doctor and everything that is ahead of her, and it’s positively enlightening. With Donna, you get a good relatable character who defines their life by very superficial means and has struggled to find any kind of long-lasting happiness and fulfilment. She has struggling career prospects with trying to navigate adult life all the while dealing with her mother’s disappointment with her which helps give her relatable struggles and problems. This is all during the despair of the world around her getting worse which continues to see the decline of her mental state which taps well into a relatable issue.
Catherine Tate’s performance is very true to Donna and her character, and you get great emotion from her in this story. Donna reacts to the horrid nature of the world around her with great hurt and anger very realistically. You can see Donna lashing out at the people around her as she struggles to see things positively and struggles to have a strong sense of self-worth and you feel for her position. With Donna and her family having been stripped of their home and having no purpose or reason to see things could get better, it’s understandable why Donna would react and feel this way. It’s a very truthful and real performance from Catherine Tate and it’s only really the influence of Rose that sees Donna see the good in herself and her value which is a good arc for this version of Donna. You see Donna really successfully put through the wringer in this story and how it shapes her as a result, and Catherine Tate works with it to fantastic results.
Billie Piper made her proper return to Rose Tyler during this story. Yes she had been teased and made little appearances across Series 4 trying to reach out to the Doctor, however it was in Turn Left where she got her first prominent appearance since her departure at the very end of Series 2 and it might well be Billie Piper’s best performance as the character. You can see a progression in Rose since we last saw her and a shift in the character that makes sense considering where we last left her in a parallel universe. Over her time Rose became more and more like the Doctor and more immune to the likes of danger, and it makes sense in a Doctor Lite story for Rose to play the role that is most similar to the Doctor. Billie Piper pitches a charismatic performance with a degree of authority, swagger, and intelligence that I like a lot. There’s a great amount of mystery to her that she really pulls off. I like the way Billie Piper and Catherine Tate work together in the story and there is more of a maturity to Rose in this story that gives her a powerful authority. Her knowledge of the weight of what is to come is sold with good severity and it does a good job of setting up the finale.
Family life and drama were in my opinion one of the key strengths of the first Russell T Davies era and I think that is shown very well in Turn Left. It’s not just Donna who is shaped and tormented by the terror of what is around her but also her family. Sylvia Noble played by Jacqueline King might not be the most likeable character in the world, but I think she is very well written and acted and feels like a developed and real person. You can see perfectly why Donna has ended up the way she has with Sylvia as a mother who is frequently unsupportive and disappointed with her which weighs upon Donna and her mental well-being as a person, and I like that struggle and dynamic. Yet Sylvia and her despair is strongly consistent and developed if you track her character through all the terror the family goes through. Sylvia has a naturally negative mindset and can only see the problems, when in true despair she can’t lift herself out of that. Her mindset is realistic for her character, the way she is and how she has been shaped as a person.
Bernard Cribbins as Donna’s grandad Wilfred Mott is just delightful in the role. He brings a great sense of joy and childish delight that works well amongst all the characters. Yet the emotional drama is still something Bernard Cribbins can play incredibly well, like when Rocco and his family are being taken away. Wilf still has a sense of care for people and as someone who fought in the war sees the patterns of history repeating itself; his life and experience during the war is very well worked into Wilf as a character and strongly integrated.
I think Rocco played by Joseph Long and his family also play a good role in the episode. They represent the struggling and difficult times and the strain the UK has been put under with having to rehome the whole of London. It’s shown through the main perspective of the Noble family having to share a place with two other different quite large families in a truthful, and down to earth way that’s transparently cruel and brilliantly honest. It perfectly demonstrates how during desperate times people are forced to make the best out of an unfair situation that has been inflicted on them. I think Rocco provides a likeable and fun presence, but it’s clear his energetic self is just trying to provide an optimistic presence to distract himself and his family from the poor circumstances, which is true to how a lot of people would react in that situation. It’s a good contrast to the reaction of Sylvia and Donna and how they feel about it. Their tragic fate to the concentration camps is crushing and incredibly emotional, and exposes and challenges the government’s dehumanising attitude and cruelty towards foreigners with a great honesty and darkness to it.
A problem I do have with the Russell T Davies era is the characterisation of UNIT as an organisation. I felt like they were presented with more scale to the expense of what made UNIT work in the first place. There weren’t the same likeable and fun characters and homely feel as there was in the Pertwee run, and the characters felt more like military stereotypes. This is very much the case with Captain Magambo played by Noma Dumezweni. She has a presence and authority but is more like an unlikeable military stereotype than an actual character, although she isn’t in the story an awful lot.
On top of everything Turn Left is directed by possibly the best Doctor Who director with Graeme Harper, and his stamp is felt very effectively across the story. The scene of Donna and the Fortune Teller sees the frame slowly converge on Donna in a very effective manner. The way the frame surrounds the characters and how they feel gives an appropriate focus on people like with Rose and her reaction to the Doctor being dead. Across the story with the Noble family’s reaction to the news, the shots are focused entirely on them as people focusing fittingly on what’s important. The scene with Sylvia in despair consuming the frame whilst Donna is out of focus, in the background to the right perfectly presents the mindsets of both characters visually and rightly pushes the story forward. The direction of the story feels intimate and incredibly focused on the performances, and it simply presents the actors at their best.
So overall what do I think about Turn Left? I think it’s a simply terrific story and the best script Russell T Davies wrote for Doctor Who during his original run. It’s both rewarding and terrifying to see an alternative version of a universe that we are all familiar with, and the devastation that comes without the Doctor there to help. Catherine Tate is excellent in her performance as Donna Noble as she very much leads this story and has to face great personal struggles in an incredibly relatable way. Billie Piper as Rose takes on the Doctor's role very well and it's probably her best performance as the character. You see the story focus on Donna and her family, with both Wilf and Sylvia complimenting the story greatly showing how the events hurt them. Unfortunately, I do think the use of the Fortune Teller has some unfortunate racist implications and I’m not a fan of the characterisation of UNIT, but you see the darkest instincts of Russell T Davies as a writer. He creates a bleak reality whilst focusing on the people involved which makes the story a great success, and is brilliantly emotionally harrowing.
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