Episode Eleven: Turn Left by RTD OBE
Last week – or whenever the piss I actually wrote the review of Midnight, it seems like forever ago – I bemoaned the lack of Donna in the episode. Yet here we have an episode with a complete lack of Doctor. Doctor Who without the Doctor. And I loved it!
Maybe this means I secretly want Catherine Tate to be Doctor Number Eleven?!
In terms of previous Doctor-lite episodes, it doesn’t even begin to compare to Blink. But then Blink is in a league of its own. It does, however, shit all over The Long Game (with Bruno Langley brought in purely so the Doctor wouldn’t be on screen as much) and Love & Monsters. For a start, neither of those two starred the wonderous Bernard Cribbins. And neither of them had a particularly throught-provoking plot. Unlike this one.
After all the hints and teasers, this was the episode where we finally discovered what was on Donna’s back. A shoddily made beetle, it turns out. (Probably my only criticism of the episode – surely they could have made something slightly more non-crap!)
Shit Beetle seemed to feast off changing the past; causing people to turn one way instead of the other. So we found Donna living the life she would have led if she had never met the Doctor. The life she would have led if she’d never joined HC Clements and been attacked by the cunt-like Sarah Parish masquerading as a giant red spider with speech and saliva problems.
If Donna had not met the Doctor, he would have died – along with Sarah Jane, Torchwood, Martha and countless millions of other people. Although death and destruction stalks the Doctor wherever he goes (he caused the eruption of Pompeii, lest we forget) this episode reminds you that he brings life as well; this episode shows just how many people would have perished without him there to save them.
“If the Doctor had never come here, on a whim, tell me, would anyone here have died?”
You often wonder, much like that bird from Spaced did in the quote above, whether the Doctor is cause or cure. If he had just sat in the TARDIS reading Slutty Asian Whore-Bags and twisting his balls instead of interfering, would there have been less death; less pain; less devastation? This episode is an answer to that. We need the Doctor, and don’t forget it.
It makes a major point about the Doctor, without him actually appearing. That’s why it works as a Doctor-lite episode in a way that Love & Monsters didn’t; because the Doctor, despite not appearing on screen, still feels ever-present. It still feels like he is the most important character in the episode, rather than – with L&M – being sidelined by the increasingly smug and annoying Peter Kay.
Everyone has their own ‘Turn Left’ moment, which adds a nice dimension to it. What if...?
Always the sort of question a great episode will have you asking. What if I had turned left? What if I had got a different job, met different people, not met the most important man in my life...? What if? Already a little emotional after dwelling (briefly, maybe, during a slow bit) about my own ‘Turn Left’ moment, the episode twatted me round the face with several more emotional punches. Mussolini, as Donna calls him, being carted off to the concentration camps, and Wilf’s reaction to this, was terribly moving.
“It’s happening again.”
And Donna’s utter fear as she stands in The Circle Of Mirrors was equally upsetting. RTD OBE says this is one of his favourite performances from anyone, ever. And I find it hard to disagree. Catherine Tate is just brilliant. But even more heartbreaking is her second time in The Circle, when she is so full of hope, thinking she has worked out what is going on, only to be told that she is still destined to die. I was obviously more than a little teary by this point.
And when she steps out into the path of a moving lorry, I actually stopped breathing for a while. If anyone still thinks Catherine Tate was the wrong choice of companion for this series, they can fuck off and die. She has MADE this series, and this episode is one of my favourites. Ever.
Total Score: TEN out of TEN
Last week – or whenever the piss I actually wrote the review of Midnight, it seems like forever ago – I bemoaned the lack of Donna in the episode. Yet here we have an episode with a complete lack of Doctor. Doctor Who without the Doctor. And I loved it!
Maybe this means I secretly want Catherine Tate to be Doctor Number Eleven?!
In terms of previous Doctor-lite episodes, it doesn’t even begin to compare to Blink. But then Blink is in a league of its own. It does, however, shit all over The Long Game (with Bruno Langley brought in purely so the Doctor wouldn’t be on screen as much) and Love & Monsters. For a start, neither of those two starred the wonderous Bernard Cribbins. And neither of them had a particularly throught-provoking plot. Unlike this one.
After all the hints and teasers, this was the episode where we finally discovered what was on Donna’s back. A shoddily made beetle, it turns out. (Probably my only criticism of the episode – surely they could have made something slightly more non-crap!)
Shit Beetle seemed to feast off changing the past; causing people to turn one way instead of the other. So we found Donna living the life she would have led if she had never met the Doctor. The life she would have led if she’d never joined HC Clements and been attacked by the cunt-like Sarah Parish masquerading as a giant red spider with speech and saliva problems.
If Donna had not met the Doctor, he would have died – along with Sarah Jane, Torchwood, Martha and countless millions of other people. Although death and destruction stalks the Doctor wherever he goes (he caused the eruption of Pompeii, lest we forget) this episode reminds you that he brings life as well; this episode shows just how many people would have perished without him there to save them.
“If the Doctor had never come here, on a whim, tell me, would anyone here have died?”
You often wonder, much like that bird from Spaced did in the quote above, whether the Doctor is cause or cure. If he had just sat in the TARDIS reading Slutty Asian Whore-Bags and twisting his balls instead of interfering, would there have been less death; less pain; less devastation? This episode is an answer to that. We need the Doctor, and don’t forget it.
It makes a major point about the Doctor, without him actually appearing. That’s why it works as a Doctor-lite episode in a way that Love & Monsters didn’t; because the Doctor, despite not appearing on screen, still feels ever-present. It still feels like he is the most important character in the episode, rather than – with L&M – being sidelined by the increasingly smug and annoying Peter Kay.
Everyone has their own ‘Turn Left’ moment, which adds a nice dimension to it. What if...?
Always the sort of question a great episode will have you asking. What if I had turned left? What if I had got a different job, met different people, not met the most important man in my life...? What if? Already a little emotional after dwelling (briefly, maybe, during a slow bit) about my own ‘Turn Left’ moment, the episode twatted me round the face with several more emotional punches. Mussolini, as Donna calls him, being carted off to the concentration camps, and Wilf’s reaction to this, was terribly moving.
“It’s happening again.”
And Donna’s utter fear as she stands in The Circle Of Mirrors was equally upsetting. RTD OBE says this is one of his favourite performances from anyone, ever. And I find it hard to disagree. Catherine Tate is just brilliant. But even more heartbreaking is her second time in The Circle, when she is so full of hope, thinking she has worked out what is going on, only to be told that she is still destined to die. I was obviously more than a little teary by this point.
And when she steps out into the path of a moving lorry, I actually stopped breathing for a while. If anyone still thinks Catherine Tate was the wrong choice of companion for this series, they can fuck off and die. She has MADE this series, and this episode is one of my favourites. Ever.
Total Score: TEN out of TEN
