Doctor Who
Partners in Crime
When the topic of brilliant entries in the Who canon are discussed, I’m rather confident this one won’t quite make the cut on first blush: the story was weak unto utter uselessness. Mrs. Foster reminded me too much of an old friend of mine (who, I would like to point out, was not an alien nanny), not to mention Mrs. Wormwood (she of the Bane from The Sarah Jane Adventures). And the Adipose, while undeniably adorable in an eight-year-old-girl’s-stuffed-animal-collection way, were as useless as the story itself. They were far too cute and harmless and in fact, they made my teeth hurt in the end.
But if there’s no brilliance to be found on the surface, where is it and why can’t I get this episode out of my head? I’ve never been a huge Donna Noble fan, I’m the first to admit, but the more I see her, the more I like her…no, the more I love her and think she may be one of the best foils to the Doctor ever.
There. I’ve admitted it. I love Donna and I can’t help it.
Please send all hate here, if you would. Thanks loads – xoxoxo
(Donna is) what Sarah! Jane! Smith! only dreampt of being, even at her very, very, very best. Until she grew up a bit, at any rate.
Well, I’ve made this declaration with two caveats: 1) I have not seen every companion in action and base my opinion on the handful I have seen; 2) I’m still working my way through last season’s episodes.
She’s brash. She’s obnoxious. She’s opinionated. She’s loud. She’s able to stand up to the Doctor in ways I’ve never seen any companion stand up to him in the past.
And she’s very clearly not enchanted with him, the way so many others were. He wanted a mate and that’s what he got. And it works. It works perfectly. There’s no sappy, pathetic undercurrent of unrequited love. There’s no adoration. There’s no daydreaming about jumping that man when the cloister bell rings…
Oh, wait. That’s *my* daydream. Sorry ’bout that.
But you get my point, right? Now would be the time to re-read the aforementioned caveats.
Donna Noble is what Barbara Wright would have been if Barbara had not been a product of her times; she’s what Liz Shaw could have been, if she and her early sass had stuck around long enough; she’s what Jo Grant had no earthly or unearthly concept of; she’s what Sarah! Jane! Smith! only dreampt of being, even at her very, very, very best. Until she grew up a bit, at any rate. She’s Leela without the barbarian nature. She’s as obnoxious as Tegan Jovanka ever was, but her obnoxious is lovable. Tegan’s was needles under the fingernails.
There’s something inherently and achingly human about Donna;. she’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but that is what’s so appealing to me. The reintroduction of the character to her Doctor was nothing short of wonderful. Their antics before the reintroduction proper seemed straight out of an old Keystone Kops reel, or perhaps a Laurel and Hardy short. The tension building as Donna and the Doctor kept missing each other…by that much…was reminiscent of similar tension seen in The Romans, when the group was separated and kept missing each other…by that much.
Once they’d found each other and signed back and forth across the room, the Doctor trying to figure out how she’d gotten there and Donna trying to explain everything that led her there was good; when Mrs. Foster looked at one and then the other like a prim school teacher busting the two class cut-ups was better. But when Donna and the Doctor were reunited in person…that was the best. They both seemed so genuinely…ecstatic to have found each other again. I loved it. I absolutely loved it.
There’s something inherently and achingly human about Donna;. she’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but that is what’s so appealing to me.
I’ve tweeted recently how the newer episodes more often than not leave me in tears and I’m not ashamed to admit it. What got me with this episode was when Donna and the Doctor flew by Donna’s granddad as he watched the sky. Then he saw the blue box! And the man his beloved granddaughter had been looking for! This scene hit me right in the gut. It hit me so hard I couldn’t breathe for a moment. Then I did and continued crying and started laughing all at the same time.
There’s no use trying to talk me out of this one. I love Donna.
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Tags: who-vision
Okay, won’t try to talk you out of it, but… ugh. I agree with the bit about her being as obnoxious as Tegan, but I don’t find her to be lovable at all. And I balk at the comparison to Leela. Leela was useful! Jo was useful! Liz was useful! And Sarah Jane was… well… cute. Donna is not.
Plus, in defense of Liz and Jo (and Sarah at the beginning), Pertwee’s Doctor was almost always right. Disagreement with Tennant’s Doctor is possible, but if you disagreed with the 3rd Doc you were probably wrong. ;)
Still, you’re probably right about Donna being achingly human. After all, most humans give me headaches…
@wes Your comment is just what I expected! =) And Sarah! Jane! was useful in her own Sarah! Jane! way, but we’ve had that discussion so many times already. As for Donna being Leela without the barbarian nature, I was definitely thinking more along the lines of the loyalty each had towards their Doctors than anything else. I’ve never been too concerned with how useful or not any of them are in the bigger scheme of things. How annoying and obnoxious any one of them may be, yes, but that’ll lead us to another discussion about Donna and our very different opinions…