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- Recap: Doctor Who "Turn Left"- It's a Wonderful Donna
- Home
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- Recap: Doctor Who "Turn Left"- It's a Wonderful Donna
Recap: Doctor Who "Turn Left"- It's a Wonderful Donna
- By Linnea Dodson
- Published 07/21/2008
- Doctor Who
-
Rating:




Doctor Who Recap - Turn Left 3
Donna still hasn't given up. She's talking about going to find jobs and the Emergency Government making things better. Sylvia, however, has almost broken. She points out that the refugees have been stripped of their votes. "We're nobody," she says in a dead voice. (Strike Two, logic. Why would being an in-country refugee make someone lose their vote? They're still citizens.)
Singing comes from the next room and Donna storms out, calling Zorba "Mussolini" and threatening him if she hears one more sea chantey. But her temper tantrum cuts off when she finds Wilf in the middle of the crowd. However, in one way she does get her wish. The next song is "Bohemian Rhapsody" and even Sylvia is smiling.
Until the gunfire starts. Wilf, Donna, and Zorba run out to find a soldier attempting to shoot an Atmos device to stop it from flooding its poison gas, but when he sees Donna he flips out, pointing his gun at her and demanding to see her back. Despite Wilf's and Zorba's desperate attempts to protect her, he doesn't stand down until she puts her hands up and turns around. The wild-eyed soldier incoherently apologizes and Wilf, former solider himself, starts verbally ripping strips off him.
Donna just walks into the night. "Hi," she says without surprise to Rose, who is just around the corner.
Rose delivers Atmos exposition until the sky burns above them. Donna marvels, but Rose points out that this was the Torchwood swan song - Gwen and Ianto are now dead and Jack transported to the Sontaran homeworld. "None of this was meant to happen," Rose tells Donna, dodging questions about herself and talking about the loss of the Doctor. "Tall, thin man with great hair. Some really great hair." Rose tells Donna what the world was supposed to be, and how all the universes are in danger. "It's coming, it's coming from across the universe and nothing can stop it."
Donna finally melts down. "I'm nothing special! I'm just a temp! I'm not even that! I'm nothing!"
"Donna Noble, you're the most important woman in the whole of creation.
"
As a pickup line it has great promise, but Donna's not biting. When Rose asks her to come with, the reply is "Blonde hair might work on the men, but you ain't shifting me."
Rose is impressed... but points out Donna will be coming with her in three week's time... but she also has to be certain, because if she goes, she's going to die.
Three weeks later, Zorba and his family are being packed into the back of a truck. Zorba is characteristically trying to put a good face on it, giving huge hugs to everyone and telling Donna how much he'll miss her. Donna, suffering from a sudden severe case of Situational Stupid, asks him where he's going and he replies that it's the new law - "England for the English and the oceans are still closed." He's being shipped off to a labor camp.
Strike Three for logic, which is now completely out of the game (and arguably out of the entire finale.) How in heck do you close complete oceans? Nobody has said anything about a fuel crisis - there's probably a little more to go around with fewer people - so airplanes can still jump the Atlantic. And looking at Europe, even if the south of England and parts of France are gone (Belgium is presumably wiped completely off the map) an easy hop by small plane or boat from northern England to Germany would lead to a clear land route back to Italy well out of the way of the presumed blast borders.
Besides, if there's land and food enough to build and provision a concentration camp, there's land and food enough to build emergency housing.
With logic sitting out the rest of the episode, we go back to gut emotion. Wilf has plenty of horror ("That's what they called them the last time") and Zorba does a fantastic job of selling the fear underneath the forced humor but Donna still has Situational Stupid and doesn't even know what it means. She's going to embarrassingly chase the truck down the road like a left-behind puppy wailing "Where are you going?" when even the youngest of viewers could tell her.
But Donna still hasn't quite given up. Telling her unresponsive mother that she's been trying for jobs with the military, she tries to fish a compliment by saying "You were right. I should have worked harder in school. I suppose I've always been a disappointment."
Singing comes from the next room and Donna storms out, calling Zorba "Mussolini" and threatening him if she hears one more sea chantey. But her temper tantrum cuts off when she finds Wilf in the middle of the crowd. However, in one way she does get her wish. The next song is "Bohemian Rhapsody" and even Sylvia is smiling.
Until the gunfire starts. Wilf, Donna, and Zorba run out to find a soldier attempting to shoot an Atmos device to stop it from flooding its poison gas, but when he sees Donna he flips out, pointing his gun at her and demanding to see her back. Despite Wilf's and Zorba's desperate attempts to protect her, he doesn't stand down until she puts her hands up and turns around. The wild-eyed soldier incoherently apologizes and Wilf, former solider himself, starts verbally ripping strips off him.
Donna just walks into the night. "Hi," she says without surprise to Rose, who is just around the corner.
Rose delivers Atmos exposition until the sky burns above them. Donna marvels, but Rose points out that this was the Torchwood swan song - Gwen and Ianto are now dead and Jack transported to the Sontaran homeworld. "None of this was meant to happen," Rose tells Donna, dodging questions about herself and talking about the loss of the Doctor. "Tall, thin man with great hair. Some really great hair." Rose tells Donna what the world was supposed to be, and how all the universes are in danger. "It's coming, it's coming from across the universe and nothing can stop it."
Donna finally melts down. "I'm nothing special! I'm just a temp! I'm not even that! I'm nothing!"
"Donna Noble, you're the most important woman in the whole of creation.
As a pickup line it has great promise, but Donna's not biting. When Rose asks her to come with, the reply is "Blonde hair might work on the men, but you ain't shifting me."
Rose is impressed... but points out Donna will be coming with her in three week's time... but she also has to be certain, because if she goes, she's going to die.
Three weeks later, Zorba and his family are being packed into the back of a truck. Zorba is characteristically trying to put a good face on it, giving huge hugs to everyone and telling Donna how much he'll miss her. Donna, suffering from a sudden severe case of Situational Stupid, asks him where he's going and he replies that it's the new law - "England for the English and the oceans are still closed." He's being shipped off to a labor camp.
Strike Three for logic, which is now completely out of the game (and arguably out of the entire finale.) How in heck do you close complete oceans? Nobody has said anything about a fuel crisis - there's probably a little more to go around with fewer people - so airplanes can still jump the Atlantic. And looking at Europe, even if the south of England and parts of France are gone (Belgium is presumably wiped completely off the map) an easy hop by small plane or boat from northern England to Germany would lead to a clear land route back to Italy well out of the way of the presumed blast borders.
Besides, if there's land and food enough to build and provision a concentration camp, there's land and food enough to build emergency housing.
With logic sitting out the rest of the episode, we go back to gut emotion. Wilf has plenty of horror ("That's what they called them the last time") and Zorba does a fantastic job of selling the fear underneath the forced humor but Donna still has Situational Stupid and doesn't even know what it means. She's going to embarrassingly chase the truck down the road like a left-behind puppy wailing "Where are you going?" when even the youngest of viewers could tell her.
But Donna still hasn't quite given up. Telling her unresponsive mother that she's been trying for jobs with the military, she tries to fish a compliment by saying "You were right. I should have worked harder in school. I suppose I've always been a disappointment."
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Article Series
This article is part 1 of a 2 part series. Other articles in this series are shown below:
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Recap: Doctor Who "Turn Left"- It's a Wonderful Donna
Comments
Comment #1 (Posted by eric-jon waugh)
Rating:








Very perceptive, but you got the episode title wrong.
Comment #2 (Posted by MP)
Rating:








Definitely agree with your summary- despite the imperfections, this is a brilliant episode.
I'm so tired of the emotionally abusive mothers in this show, but I was actually worried about Sylvia in her near-catatonic state during the exile.
Oh sweetie, don't you know better by now than to try to apply logic to this show? That causes brain implosions, y'know.
Hope to see more recaps, 'twas fun!
Comment #3 (Posted by Ladyfox7oaks)
Rating:








Yes- well done and I, for one - would like to see these done for all the eps, especially with the long wait ahead of us till C-mas.
Comment #4 (Posted by Kaz)
Rating:








I think you're being a little harsh on Davies in parts. Sylvia and Donna can't vote because they're probably not registered, being refugees. Voting is based on where you live. And it's possible to blockade the oceans, given enough gunboats and submarines and enough international will. The Germans made a bloody good job of it in the second world war
Comment #5 (Posted by wmr)
Rating:








Excellent review/recap! I love the mixture of humour, analysis, commentary and episode summary. You're right, of course, that logic occasionally takes a back seat, but that's the nature of television in general, not just sci-fi and certainly not just Doctor Who.
On the right to vote thing, that could just as easily be down to administrative problems. First, all the refugees have been relocated, so they're no longer living in the constituencies where they were registered to vote. Second, the computers holding the electoral roll in those original constituencies were probably destroyed. So the process of re-registering people may be a bit of a nightmare. Everyone would have to complete the electoral registration form, then they have to be verified (that they exist, that they are entitled to be registered - ie British national or EU citizen) and that they live where they say they live and they're not already on the electoral roll somewhere else. So it wouldn't be a case of denying the vote to refugees for political reasons rather than it would be for reasons of giving local authorities in areas now swamped with refugees (who all have far more immediate needs) time to catch up on everything they need to do.
Anyway, great review and I look forward to more!
Comment #6 (Posted by Ashley)
Rating:








Strike Two, logic. Why would being an in-country refugee make someone lose their vote? They're still citizens
But if the place that they've registered to vote has vanished, and they don't have a permanent residence, they can't register elsewhere. So they've effectively lost their votes.
Regarding "even the youngest viewer would know"--oh how I wish this was true, but it isn't. I'd bet that if you did a survey of American citizens under the age of 20, easily three-quarters of them would have no clue what that referred to. And since the "Britain for the British" line was cut (at least from the version I saw on Sci-Fi), it's even more likely They Won't Get It.
I loved the recap, though, and all the little details you picked up that I missed completely. It's going to make re-watching it that much more fun!
