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I'm Donna; I'm a human being. Maybe not the "stuff of legend", but every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you.Donna, asserting the importance of ordinary people.
Why me? What's so special about me? I'm not important. I'm a TEMP from CHISWICK. Donna, about herself.
Donna Noble, later The Doctor-Donna and Donna Temple-Noble, is the tritagonist of the Tenth Doctor's era and the deuteragonist of the Fourteenth Doctor's era in the Doctor Who franchise.
She serves as the deuteragonist of the 2006 Christmas special The Runaway Bride, Series 4 and the 60th Anniversary Specials, as well as a supporting character in End of Time.
She was portrayed by Catherine Tate.
Biography
Despite her ordinary origins, she was described by both Rose Tyler and the Tenth Doctor as being the most important woman in all of creation, due to the fact that she saved the whole of reality from the Daleks and Davros.
Donna and the Doctor initially met when he unwittingly saved her from a poorly decided wedding, as her betrothed had been feeding her Huon particles as part of a deal he made with the Racnoss Queen. When the Doctor was unleashing a flood to drown the Racnoss horde, Donna told him it was enough, thus they fled to the surface (as shown in the alternate timeline in Turn Left, had Donna not been there, the Doctor would have remained and he would have drowned in his own deluge). While he invited her to travel with him, she politely declined due to wanting to fix her own life first.
Due to complications from a companion who held unreciprocated feelings for him, the Doctor agreed to travel with Donna on the promise it was as friends, which she scoffingly confirmed, also noting that he wasn't her type anyway. Unknown to both, something was influencing events, as the Doctor and Donna conveniently reunited at the same time while investigating the suspicious Adipose weight loss program; also, the Doctor had befriended her grandfather, Wilfred Mott, with none realising that fact yet.
The Doctor and Donna travel to various alien worlds and points in human history. Notably, Donna pleaded for the Doctor to save one family from Mt. Vesuvius in Pompeii, which he was reluctant to do because it being a fixed point in time; however, he was able to save the family the two had befriended, and ensuring they didn't mention it, thereby preserving the timeline.
The Doctor, Donna, and an unwilling Martha Jones are dragged by the TARDIS to a facility on a planet in the process of terraforming. There was a war between two rival factions. The Doctor's blood was extracted by the human side, which resulted in the creation of his artificially born and matured daughter, Jenny. The reason of the war was revealed to be a petty misunderstanding, and its duration was "generations," which due to the rapid artificial procreation of both sides, meant the war hadn't lasted for decades, but mere weeks. Jenny died, but her death brings peace to both sides. The death of Jenny and Martha noting that a friend of the Doctor meant either leaving yourself or be abandoned back in your normal life, led Donna to realise that the Doctor never discussed his deeper feelings, as well as fearing that she may be one that gets left behind.
The duo travel to the Ood Sphere, homeworld of the Ood. Due to feeling guilt about being unable to save any of the Ood during the struggle against the Beast, the Doctor wished to save them this time. Doctor and Donna learn about how Ood are docile, but had been groomed into livestock and slaves for the Human Empire; yet recently Ood started falling into violent frenzies. Eventually, it was discovered that all Ood are connected by a hivemind, which had been plotting its escape for centuries; the Doctor managed to broker peace between the Ood and humans, although allowed Ood Sigma to mutate the factory owner into another Ood. The Ood thank "the Doctor-Donna" before they part ways.
Donna explored an alien bazaar, finding a supposed fortune teller, and was convinced to engage with her, but it was a trap. The Trickster's Brigade use a Time Beetle to force Donna back in time to alter a decision that led her to meeting the Doctor, as the entities feed off potential energy that manifested from a changed timeline. Donna's memories had been erased, thus she didn't notice the difference; she came across Rose Tyler, although wasn't aware of her significance.
The Doctor died destroying the Racnoss, thus he wasn't around to prevent other disasters. Donna won a contest that let her and her family leave London to a country cottage, which prevented them from dying in the crash of the Titanic spaceship that had been prevented by the Doctor. Due to the collapse of the British government, a fascist regime filled the power vacuum and began rounding up minorities and foreigners to take to concentration camps. Donna is met by Rose, who realised her identity and importance; Rose explained how she had been trying to cross dimensions to reunite with the Doctor, but none of the Pete's World Torchwood reality jumping tech worked until recently due to an unknown event. Donna and Rose witness the end of the Sontaran Stratagem, which was averted by required deaths of the Torchwood team made by Jack Harkness, with the immortal man himself taken into custody by the Sontarans to face trial.
In the night sky, stars began blacking out, which Rose noted was a phenomena she had witnessed in other parallel realities before this one, and she told Donna that she needed to warn the Doctor about it. Using assets from the few survivors of UNIT, Rose explained that Donna has one chance to go back in time to prevent herself from turning left; Donna was relieved as she proclaimed that she was glad to be able to live in a decent world, but Rose sadly noted that she doesn't have that guarantee. To force herself to turn left, Donna realsied only one option, thus stepped in front of a truck, which blocked traffic, thereby her past self would have to turn right, back to the events leading to her meeting the Doctor. As the time traveling Donna lay dying on the road, Rose knelt by her side to comfort her, and applaud her bravery.
Donna is startled alert back in the fortune teller's, with the Time Beetle dying due to overfeeding from unprecedented temporal energy; the Trickster's Brigade agent was terrified by Donna and fled. While Donna's memories of the alternate timeline were patchy, she recalled enough to rush to the Doctor, who was impressed at her survival against a Time Beetle, though was both alarmed and excited when Donna mentioned she met Rose who passed on the warning about the stars going out. They return to the TARDIS, whose apocalyptic alert cloister bells were blaring, along with the words "BAD WOLF" - the god-like entity born from the union of Rose and the TARDIS time vortex - covering everything.
Donna and the Doctor return to her modern day Earth, upon which everything appeared fine, like a normal Saturday. However, after they return to the TARDIS, there is violent rumbling, and the Doctor opened the door to see that the Earth had mysteriously vanished. The Doctor and Donna travel to the Shadow Proclamation, i.e. galactic police, to report the missing planet and possibilities to solve it. There, they are informed that 24 worlds had gone missing, with no motive or culprit known; the Doctor realised that planets had been stolen not just through space, but time, therefore added historical vanished worlds, making the total 27. After the last world is entered, the simulation rearranged to establish a balanced formation.
Donna is asked about any signs on Earth that could hint at why it vanished, and she mentioned the bees disappearing; due to some bees being aliens that communicate on a Sub-Wave network, the Doctor is able to trace the signals of lost world to the Medusa Cascade, inter-universal rift. Donna and the Doctor travel to the rift, however, found the trail ended. Due to the Doctor's former companions on Earth, they create a Sub-Wave signal that allowed the Doctor to use the TARDIS to bring the 27 planets into the universe, as they had been hidden a split second out of sync from the rest of the universe.
The Doctor has a shocking radio communication with someone he had thought died in the first year of the Last Great Time War, Davros, the creator of the Daleks, thus revealing him and the Daleks to be the ones that stole the planets for a still unknown cause. It was revealed that the lone survivor of the Cult of Scaro, Dalek Caan, had breached the time-locked Time War to rescue Davros, however, it resulted in him becoming crippled and completely insane; Davros also explained that Dalek Caan had gained precognitive abilities, thus why he was especiallly certain of triumph, as the mad Dalek had foreseen it. However, the Doctor abruptly dismissed Davros, to rush to Earth to save his friends. After landing, Donna and the Doctor see Rose Tyler; before the Doctor and Rose could reunite, a lone Dalek fired at the Doctor, delivering an indirect but fatal wound; Jack Harkness arrived by teleport and killed the Dalek with his laser rifle. Jack and Rose escort the Doctor into the TARDIS, but due to her ignorance about Time Lord regeneration, Donna panics and demands to know what is happening.
While the regeneration began, the Doctor forced the energy into his dismembered hand in a jar by the console; he had not changed, which he explained as only using the regeneration energy to heal himself, but channeling the rest into his spare hand, to avoid transforming into a new version of him. Before Donna, Rose, and Jack could process this, they are caught in a tractor beam from the Dalek command station, a massive artificial moon called the Crucible. The Doctor admitted they had to surrender and wait for an opportunity, since the TARDIS is vulnerable to a Dalek Empire at the height of its power.
The Doctor, Rose, and Jack exit the TARDIS before the Supreme Dalek, however, Donna remained behind due to falling into a trance from hearing an incorporeal heart beat. The TARDIS doors slam shut, with the Doctor trying to open them, but the Supreme Dalek has a trap door open to deposit the TARDIS in the core of the Crucible, which was made of Z-neutrino energy that began destroying the TARDIS. Donna collapsed from the shaking and internal components of the TARDIS exploding; the heart beat returned, which drew her attention to the Doctor's spare hand. She touched the hand, which shot energy into her, but also burst the jar, allowing the hand to create a duplicate of the Doctor, who dematerialised the TARDIS before it was destroyed, although its disappearance made it appear it was obliterated by the Daleks and Doctor.
The duplicate Doctor described the concept of a Meta-Crisis (hence Meta-Crisis Doctor), and that the excess regeneration energy took genetic material from her to spawn an exact copy of the Doctor, with all of his memories and abilities, although - to his disdain - the Meta-Crisis Doctor realised he was also biologically human know; the heart beat Donna heard was his single human heart echoing back in time.
Concurrent to Davros boasting about his creation, the Meta-Crisis Doctor realised that the 27 planets acted as a generator of infinite energy, which combined with the Crucible's Z-neutrino core would cause a multiversal detonation; Davros's Reality Bomb would erase the universe, and breach the Medusa Cascade into every parallel universe, thus exterminating every lifeform, leaving the Daleks the only race in existence.
The Doctor's companions had each prepared contingencies to foil the Reality Bomb, however, all underestimated the Daleks, which had counters to every plan. Meta-Crisis Doctor had created a weapon that would force the Reality Bomb's energy into Davros, and as the current Daleks were all grown from his cells, it would flow into them and destroy them with him. When the TARDIS materialised in the Vault, in which Davros was, the Meta-Crisis Doctor charged out of the TARDIS, but Davros shot an electric bolt at him, knocking him backwards and dropping the weapon. Donna picked up the weapon, but didn't know how to use it, nevertheless, Davros also shot an electric arch that blasted her backwards.
As Davros taunted the Doctor and his companions, the Reality Bomb began charging for universal detonation; but before it could fire, the power inexplicably stopped. Donna had used a Dalek console to hack into the Crucible to dissipate the energy of the Reality Bomb; the Doctor was confused, but Donna explained that the Meta-Crisis had fed back into her and Davros's electrical shot activated the Time Lord experience and intelligence, thus the Doctor understood what the Ood meant by the "Doctor-Donna." The Doctor-Donna hacked into every Dalek's tank casing, forcing them to spin helplessly.
Davros was confused at why Dalek Caan didn't foresee this outcome, but the Doctor realised that he did know and had been manipulating events to reach this outcome (such as Doctor and Donna meeting twice, and the TARDIS door shutting before it fell into the Crucible core); Davros was enraged at Dalek Caan's betrayal, but the latter argued this defeat was inevitable, and he only helped it due to seeing the destruction and pain unleashed by the Daleks, judging that it must end.
The Doctors and Doctor-Donna used the Crucible computers to transport each of the stolen planets back to their original locations; due to stronger security, the Supreme Dalek hadn't been affected by the immobilisation, and had descended to the Vault to kill everyone. The Supreme Dalek fired a few times, but was destroyed by Jack's laser canon before anyone was hurt. Although, the Supreme Dalek had damaged the main computer system, thus an alternate method for restoring the one remaining world of Earth had to be discovered.
While the Doctor went into the TARDIS to commence an alternate method of transporting the Earth back, Dalek Caan encouraged the Meta-Crisis Doctor to complete his vision of the extinction of the Daleks; despite Davros's plea, the Meta-Crisis Doctor sent a charge throughout every remaining Dalek, which caused them to explode, also damaging every ship and the Crucible itself. The Doctor shepherded his duplicate and his companions into the TARDIS, and offered to save Davros, who instead condemned him as the 'Destroyer of Worlds." Before he left, Dalek Caan warned that one companion would still die.
After returning the Earth, the Doctor explained that the boundaries between realities were still weak enough to travel between them, but the walls were gradually being restored. The Doctor and Doctor-Donna escorted Rose and her family members back to Pete's World; Rose felt conflicted as she loved the Doctor, yet being trapped in Pete's World meant never seeing him again. However, the Doctor and Doctor-Donna explain that the Meta-Crisis Doctor *is* the Doctor, but as a human, therefore could have a human life with Rose. When Rose asked either Doctor what he said to her when they last at the chosen beach, the Doctor answered with only her name, but the Meta-Crisis Doctor whispered a love confession to her, which made her kiss him. The Doctor explained that another reason the Meta-Crisis Doctor would remaining Pete's World was as banishment, since he had committed genocide, even if it was against the Daleks.
After parting ways with his other companions on primary Earth, the Doctor and Doctor-Donna were left alone; when she started to express enthusiastic plans for new travels and adventure, she started showing mental faults, such as intense stammering. The Doctor then asked her why there can't be a human-Time Lord, she answered because it was impossible, as the limitations of a human body can't contain the vast wisdom and skills of a Time Lord mind (with even the Meta-Crisis being a less powerful version as to survive).
To survive the side effects of her transformation into the Doctor-Donna, her memories of her time with the Doctor were forcibly erased, as the memories of her travels with the Doctor and the Time Lord brilliance were entangled, thereby all had to removed to save her from burning; she was returned to Earth, with her grandfather and mother upset at this turn of events. In an attempt to ease their grief, the Doctor noted that Donna was - for a moment - the most important person in the universe, although her family counter that she always was.
While she lost her memories, the Doctor left protections in her mind; in The End of Time, she was unaffected by the Vinvocci medical machine that the Master altered to convert humanity into duplicates of him; similarly, the Doctor left enough regeneration energy in her to unleash a powerful concussive blast that knocked out the pursuing Masters, and left her unconscious but safe until the end of the ordeal.
In first episode of the 60th Anniversary Specials, The Star Beast, she regained the memories that had been suppressed by the Doctor, with the Time Lord Doctor-Donna energy shared between her and her daughter, Rose Noble. This sharing delayed the fatal effects of Time Lord knowledge in an ordinary human brain; the lethality was entirely prevented when Donna and Rose voluntarily surrender the power, losing the intellect, memories, and scientific genius belonging to the Doctor, but keeping all their own memories.
Donna would accompany the Doctor to the edge of the universe, where they would face the monstrous Not-Things. While they were destroyed, at one point the Doctor had to delay them by invoking a superstition, which he feared doing at the edge of existence would invite something far worse back into the universe.
As the Doctor feared, his action allowed the Celestial Toymaker to escape the confines of his pocket dimension and unleashed chaos upon humanity. Prior to learning this, the Doctor and Donna went to UNIT; Donna's experience as a parent with a child playing a recorder gave her insight on how to decipher a mysterious sound - giggle - that was driving humanity insane. The Toymaker would also reveal the fates of three companions that the Doctor had since Donna, all of which had unfortunate ends, which the Doctor attempted to rationalised with a positive twist, but he was still clearly distraught by it. Donna and another former companion Mel help the Doctor begin his regeneration that was triggered by the Toymaker shooting him with a UNIT railgun; this resulted in an unprecedented bi-regeneration, which split the Doctor into the already existing Fourteenth and the new Fifteenth, who both manage to defeat the Toymaker at catch - with the god's own rules damning him to imprisonment within his toy chest.
Using residual energy from the Toymaker, as well as it counting as the "prize," the Fifteenth Doctor was able to double the TARDIS, thus both Doctors would each have one. While the Fifteenth traveled away, the Fourteenth moved into a place near Donna's family, as he became an honorary Noble family member; he opted to remain still for once as to process his centuries of grief that he had continued to ignore, but also to feel contentment with his best friend and a close family once again.
Trivia
- Dalek Caan cryptically called the Doctor the "threefold man," which was revealed to be the Doctor, the Meta-Crisis Doctor, and Donna herself.
- The 2023 specials reveal Donna didn't need her memories wiped by the Doctor to save her life. She just could have given up the regeneration energy that gave her mind the burning out boost.
- Additionally, the Meta-Crisis passed down to her child, giving Rose designs of her plush dolls that were unknowingly loose replicas of aliens faced by the Doctor and her mother.
- She began as a temp agent, being an incredibly swift typist. While she seemed lacking in intelligence, she was actually quite smart, just a lack of direction and ambition holding her back until she met the Doctor.
- Donna got hired to UNIT when dealing with the Toymaker. This gives him permanent employment as she is valued for her skills and past involvement with the Doctor.
- Donna negotiated with Kate for five weeks vacation and 1/3 more the average pay.
- The Ood referred to the Doctor and Donna as "the Doctor-Donna," which initially seemed due to the species having a different concept on individuality, however, it was actually a prophecy as their psychic powers also allow visions from the future.
External Links
- Donna Noble on the Near Pure Good Wiki
- Donna Noble on the Doctor Who Wiki
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