Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (45 page)

Donna realises the truth. Rose is coming back – and that has to be good. It is the Doctor’s happiness that concerns Donna the most, and even when the Earth is taken from beneath them, Donna continues to focus on the good. However, she is concerned about her family. The Doctor does not have the answers, but decides it is time to visit the Shadow Proclamation. While there, Donna hears a heartbeat echoing around her. She is told by one of the women at the Shadow Proclamation that she is ‘something new’, that she is sorry for Donna’s losses yet to come. She helps the Doctor when she mentions that the bees keep on disappearing, and learns that some of them are aliens from the planet Melissa Majoria. They track the Earth to the Medusa Cascade, but none of the lost twenty-seven planets are there. For the first time ever the Doctor seems to give up, and Donna gets almost hysterical, unable to accept it. ‘Don’t do this to me. Not now. Tell me, what are we going to do? You never give up. Please!’

She calls the subspace network an ‘Outer Space Facebook’, and is happy to see Martha again, particularly liking the look of Jack. When they arrive on Earth, Donna is the first to notice Rose, and encourages the Doctor towards her. She stands, beaming with fondness as the Doctor and Rose run towards each other, then watches in horror as a Dalek appears and shoots the Doctor. She freaks out when she thinks the Doctor is going to die, and is almost hysterical when no-one will explain what is happening. Once again Rose explains that the timelines all converge on Donna, but Donna doesn’t get it. She is just a temp from Chiswick, nothing special. Once the TARDIS has been transported to the Dalek Crucible, the TARDIS locks Donna inside, knowing what is to come. As the time ship appears to burn up at the centre of the Crucible, Donna feels compelled to reach out to the Doctor’s spare hand, and a Doctor clone is grown as a result. He explains that he is the result of an emergency meta-crisis, a half-human Doctor, grown from both Donna and the Doctor’s hand. Donna is out of her depth, and somewhat insulted when the Meta-Doctor throws her own mannerisms back at her. Again Donna points out that she is nothing special, but the Meta-Doctor tells her, ‘No, but you are. Oh… You really don’t believe that, do you? I can see, Donna, what you’re thinking. All that attitude, all that lip. Cause all this time you think you’re not worth it.’

He explains that something had been binding them together for a long time. The truth is revealed when they meet the insane Dalek Caan. It is revealed that Dalek Caan broke the timelock and delved into the heart of the Time War, manipulating events so the Doctor and Donna would be in the right place, at the right time. After receiving a shot of energy from Davros, the meta-crisis becomes complete and Donna’s mind opens up. Donna receives a copy of the Doctor’s mind, becoming the DoctorDonna, as the Ood foresaw. Along with the other two Doctors she manages to disable the Daleks, and return all the planets to the correct spatial locations. She then helps pilot the TARDIS and Earth back home. While she encourages the collected companions, she pays particular attention to Jack who she calls ‘the best’ and later pulls Sarah away so she can hug him herself. Even now she is still Donna, regardless of the Doctor side of her.

In a tragic turn of events, she realises that her head is crammed full of too much information – the reason there has never been a Time Lord-human meta-crisis before is because there cannot be one. Donna will die if she goes on, and the only way to save her is for the Doctor to put a block in her mind. She knows this means she will forget everything about him, every single thing she has experienced since Christmas 2007.

‘I can’t go back. Don’t make me go back. Doctor, please! Please don’t make me go back.’ Wiping her memory, the Doctor takes the unconscious Donna home, to the heartbroken Wilf.

‘She was better with you,’ he tells the Doctor. Sylvia wants to refute this, but even she knows it is true. The Doctor tells them that she saved the universe, and that ‘for one moment, one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe.’ In a rare moment of pride Sylvia tells the Doctor that Donna is still the most important woman, ‘She’s my daughter.’ At this point Donna awakens, and she is back to shouty-Donna, the personality she had before she met the Doctor, who she no longer remembers at all. While leaving, Wilf tells the Doctor; ‘Every night, Doctor, when it gets dark, and the stars come out, I’ll look up on her behalf. I’ll look up to the sky and think of you.’

During the Christmas of 2009, Wilf tracks down the Doctor and brings him into close proximity of Donna in
The End of Time
, who is now engaged to Shawn Temple. Wilf tells the Doctor that, ‘Sometimes I see this look on her face... she’s so sad... and she can’t remember why.’ He urges the Doctor to go over to Donna, to make her better. ‘You need her, Doctor. I mean, look, wouldn’t she make you laugh again?’ The Doctor wants to, but he knows it would mean Donna’s death. If she remembers, her brain will burn and she will die.

When the Master transplants himself across the planet and turns humanity into the Master-race, only Donna is unaffected, and the surrounding chaos makes her start to remember. But the Doctor leaves a defence mechanism, which saves her. She wakes up once the Master is defeated, none the wiser. She gets married in the spring of 2010, and once again she is oblivious to the Doctor’s presence, who has arrived to give her a wedding present; a winning-lottery ticket. He gives the ticket to Wilf and Sylvia, and tells them he borrowed the pound off Jeffrey Noble, Donna’s late-father, to pay for the ticket. Donna thinks it is a bit cheap, as presents go, but then remembers there’s a triple roll-over prize draw coming up. Wilf and Sylvia look away smiling at the departing TARDIS.

A tragic, but nonetheless bitter-sweet happy ending for Donna…

The El
ev
enth D
octor

Matt Smith

‘One day your life may depend on it. I am definitely a mad man in a box.’

The Doctor
– The Eleventh Hour

After travelling for months, possibly longer, on his own, the Doctor regenerated after saving Wilfred Mott’s life – but he managed to hold off his regeneration long enough to see not only those who had travelled with him throughout his tenth incarnation, but every companion he ever had. Such was the extent of his self control that the regeneration energies finally unleashed were enough to explode the TARDIS console and set the TARDIS crashing towards Earth and the life of young orphan, Amelia Pond...

Amelia ‘Amy’ Pond & Rory Williams
–
Karen Gillan & Arthur Darvill
(
The Eleventh Hour
to
The Angels Take Manhattan
)

It is Easter 1996 when seven-year-old Amelia Pond – who has spent her whole life in Leadworth but never lost her Scottish accent – is praying to Santa, worrying about a crack in her bedroom wall. She asks Santa to send a policeman and is interrupted by the sound of the TARDIS materialising in her garden – breaking the shed in the process. Her home is mysteriously void of anyone else. This is quite strange. Why would anyone leave a seven-year-old home alone at night?

Despite this, Amy is amused by the strange Doctor and proves to be reasonably self-sufficient at such a young age. She cooks him a variety of food stuffs before they settle on fish fingers and custard. The crack in the wall scares her more than the Doctor. She tells him her parents are dead and she wants to go with him. The Doctor agrees, sort of – but would he really have taken a seven-year-old with him had the TARDIS been working properly?

Amy rushes off to pack a suitcase and sits to wait for him, but doesn’t see him for another twelve years, by which time she has become a kiss-o-gram. She pretends not to know him at first; certain he is nothing more than her imaginary friend. She is angry at the Doctor for not returning. The Doctor wonders why she calls herself ‘Amy’ now – he liked ‘Amelia’, but she considers that name too ‘fairytale’. She introduces her fiancé, Rory, as a friend; a fact he is clearly not happy about. Rory is surprised to see the Doctor, and reveals that Amy used to make him dress up as the Doctor. Amy reveals that she always dreamed the Doctor would return to save her. Rory’s only real love is Amy; he doesn’t care about anything more than her.

Once the mystery of Prisoner Zero is solved, and the Doctor warns the Atraxi off Earth, he rushes off into the newly restored TARDIS, and returns two years later, 2010. Amy is not impressed, but he soon wins her over again: ‘Amy Pond, the girl who waited. You’ve waited long enough.’ Just as they are about to head off, Amy tells him that she has to return by the next day, but she will not tell him why. However, she doesn’t tell him is that it is the night before her wedding to Rory.

During her early moments in the TARDIS (
Meanwhile in the TARDIS
), she cannot stop babbling, and constantly asks the Doctor questions. She doesn’t know what a Police Box is, or how the control room can fit inside a wooden box. She wonders if the Doctor is a ‘little slug in a human suit’. To keep her quiet, and show her the splendour, the Doctor casts her outside the TARDIS, to float in an atmospheric pocket. By the time they arrive on Starship UK (
The Beast Below
) she has calmed down. Amy explores the starship and comes across an ugly truth, but she votes to forget this truth; it is too much for her, much like it is for everyone else on the starship. When the Doctor discovers the starship is propelled by a huge space whale, held captive and tortured by the humans, he is ready to put an end to it, but Amy prevents him from killing the whale.

Amy is worried about returning to Leadworth and her wedding, and she obliquely asks for the Doctor’s advice: ‘Have you ever run away from something because you were scared? Or not ready? Or just… just because you could?’ The Doctor tells her that yes, he did, a long time ago (referring to his leaving Gallifrey).

Amy is surprised when Winston Churchill calls the TARDIS to speak to the Doctor, and is very impressed to meet him when they visit London, 1941, in
Victory of the Daleks
. She doesn’t recognise the Daleks, something that worries the Doctor greatly. She has somehow forgotten all the planets in the sky, too (
Journey’s End
). It is the second concern about Amy’s life – which, to the Doctor, doesn’t make sense. Amy is worried about the Doctor’s reaction to the Daleks, convinced that they are what they claim to be – Ironsides, created by Doctor Bracewell, whom Amy takes to, being a ‘Paisley boy’. When Bracewell is revealed to be a Dalek-created human replicant, which houses a bomb, Amy helps him hold onto his humanity by talking about the idea of ‘fancying someone you know you shouldn’t’.

Saving Earth means letting the new Daleks get away to rebuild their empire, something that leaves a bad taste in the Doctor’s mouth, but as Amy points out; ‘You saved the Earth. Not too shabby, is it?’

The most important moment of Amy’s life happens when they visit the Delirium Archive in
The Time of Angels
, although she will have no idea of this for at least another year. It is the final resting place of the Headless Monks, and the biggest museum ever. Amy is less than impressed with visiting a museum, after all the Doctor has a time machine. Why would he need to visit a museum? Then she works it out; he visits to keep score. She is not sure of the significance of the ‘black box’ they find, or the words carved in it, not even when the Doctor points out that ‘there were many days – these words could burn stars’, but still Amy fails to learn that the words are Old High Gallifreyan, the ancient language of the Time Lords. But she does learn that they say ‘hello sweetie’. Amy is carried along by the Doctor’s excitement, and when Doctor River Song arrives, Amy finds herself highly intrigued by this woman, who seems to know the Doctor so well. River shows an amazing knack for piloting the TARDIS, more so than the Doctor in fact. Amy wants to know how River can do it, and she explains that she had lessons from the very best, a compliment the Doctor takes but River goes on to hint that it wasn’t him who taught her (it is later revealed she learned from the TARDIS itself). Amy watches River and the Doctor compare notes via River’s blue book, and the Doctor warns Amy away from it. It is River’s diary, ‘
our
diary’ River corrects him, and the Doctor explains that he and River keep meeting out of order and that she is from his future. Watching them more, Amy is certain that River is the Doctor’s wife from the future, but he actively avoids confirming or denying this point. Even River will not confirm who she is. ‘You’re so his wife,’ Amy says, but River simply responds with, ‘Oh Amy… This is the Doctor we’re talking about. Do you really think it could be anything that simple?’

River shows a great affection for Amy. This makes perfect sense following later revelations. Amy becomes infected by a Weeping Angel; an image of one becomes stuck in her eye. She tries to keep her spirits up, but finds it difficult. The Doctor reminds her to remember what he told her when she was seven, but she doesn’t understand (as is later revealed in
The Big Bang
, this is a Doctor from some months in their future). Once River is returned to the Stormcage Containment Facility and the Angels are defeated, Amy decides that it is time to return home. Arriving in Leadworth, Amy attempts to seduce the Doctor. He rejects her advances, not keen on repeating the mistakes he made with Rose and Martha. She forces him into unlocking visual records of all his past companions, and she is amused by how many women there have been (
Meanwhile in the TARDIS, part 2
).