We're trying a new feature for the finale of this season of Doctor Who - full recaps of the episodes with commentary.  Please add commentary of your own to this post so we know what you'd like to read or see; if this is a popular feature, this series will be extended to cover the rest of this season, and possibly previous seasons and the spinoff shows as well to cover the time between the Doctor Who specials and the Torchwood miniseries.

And now, fasten your seatbelts and put your tray tables in the upright position, because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

TURN LEFT:

Generically oriental music plays as air transports zip over an alleyway hung with orange banners; although there isn't a subtitle, the implication is that it's New New New New New Singapore or something of the ilk.  The Doctor and Donna wend their way through a crowd of vendors, giggling and downing frothy drinks, and generally poking around.  However, as this is Catherine Tate's set piece (while David Tennant was off doing "Midnight"), the Doctor soon lags in the background animatedly but silently emoting with a merchant over what looks like a mutant sea urchin while Donna moves ahead, passing up someone trying to sell her bell peppers and passes a doorway, where a woman springs up and offers "Chan tell you your fortune, lady tho?"

Okay, not.  But for those thinking "that is a terribly familiar gap in those teeth," it is indeed Chipo Chung, no longer playing a blue bug at the end of the universe but instead a stereotypical inscrutable Asian fortuneteller who is bound and determined to get Donna inside her incensed lair.  (As I have heard complaints of the stereotypes in both roles, I'm going to leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide which is worse.)  Donna resists for a little while, but anyone who has seen Kinda (of which the first four scenes are a fairly faithful remake) knows that she's going eventually get curious, go inside, and get her head messed over.  

And because this is new Who, the moment Donna says "I'm happy now, thanks," you know to stock up on the tissues.

Chipo - her character never gets a name - purrs that she can see "a most remarkable man" in Donna's hands, a line which earlier in the season would have spawned 1000 smutty fics by the next episode.  She then starts demanding to know how Donna met him ("I see the future.  Tell me the past.")  Donna rambles a bit before she realizes that it was her job that led her to eventually cross paths with the Doctor.  Suddenly she looks like she's about to hurl as the clip show portion of the proceedings begins, lurching forward with a confused expression just as we jump back to a flash of Runaway Bride.

"It's the incense," Chipo assures her, brushing off Donna's apology.  Frankly, incense tends to do that to me as well.  Onscreen, Chipo is still psychoanalyzing Donna, asking what choices led her to that job as something at about chihuahua height, judging from the camera angle, sneaks through the beaded curtain.

This time the flashback is a new scene, where Donna is getting in the car with her mother.  Donna's had a temp offer in the city which she intends to take, while Sylvia is going on about someone she knows at a photocopy shop who needs a full-time secretary.  "When did you choose?" Chipo asks, as past!Donna brushes off her mother's advice to turn right and check out the copy shop and the chittering chihauhua of doom sneaks up behind present!Donna.  

In the past, Sylvia tells Donna that she's only trying to get a fancy job to meet a rich man and that anyone she did meet would use her for "practice."  (Strike One, Sylvia.  This is even more cutting than Jackie bitching about Rose's "airs and graces" in "Rose.") Donna tells her to blow it out her ear and turns left. In the present, Chipo has a death grip on Donna's hands, insisting that she could "still go right," and Donna flips her freak out, screaming "What's on my back?" as an insectoid leg moves up her shoulder.

"Turn right and never meet that man!  Turn right and change the world!" Chipo hisses as past!Donna twists her steering wheel the other way and the credit music begins. It's an unsubtle metaphor as one small decision turns a life in a whole new direction, but an excellent plot choice.  So much of Doctor Who is about the invasions and the big events; timelines can be part of the little decisions too; the science fiction version of "and the battle was lost all for the want of a horseshoe nail."

It's Christmas Eve two years ago and Donna, in a gold paper crown, is bragging about how she's been promoted to personal assistant to the boss of the copy shop as she buys the latest round of drinks.  (Am I the only person who's creeped out by the paper crown tradition?  Horrible things used to happen to the person who found the crown in their Christmas dinner...)  

Everyone is happy and blotto - except for Donna's blonde bimbo friend, who is staring, boggle-eyed, at Donna's back.  When challenged, she says that she's terrified of something she can't see.

Well, that's useful and informative.

Before Donna can get anything coherent out of her, a man stumbles in and says that a Christmas Star is hovering in the sky.  Only Donna realizes that the Racnoss ship isn't a decoration before it starts blasting Cardi- I mean London to the ground.  Donna's drunken friend stares more at Donna than the ship, finally gasping "You have something on your back!" before she runs, leaving Donna standing alone in the street.

Donna runs forward, towards the shooting star, ignoring the shouts of her friends and the tanks that roll past her to shoot the Racnoss out of the sky.  She dodges a crowd and finds a man in a red beret talking into a walkie-talkie.  "Is it him?" the voice on the other end demands.  

"I think so.  He just didn't get out in time."  As a skinny body rolls by on a stretcher, an arm flops out and drops the sonic screwdriver.  For those for whom that wasn't unsubtle enough, it's followed with "The Doctor is dead."

This means nothing to Donna but everything to Rose, who appears running down the road.  Donna tries to clumsily comfort her ("They didn't use a name.  It could be any Doctor.") while the sonic screwdriver lies forlornly on the road.  It's a heartbreaking image, but you'd think that if UNIT was foolish enough to not have noticed it, Rose would pick it up.

Billie's having trouble with her lines - she'd just had jaw surgery due to an accident on set of another of her shows - as she slurs through the explanation that she was "passing by" to Donna's shoulder.  Donna yells at her about it, turning to check behind her, but when she turns back, Rose is gone.