The most popular companion in Doctor Who‘s entire history is Donna Noble played by Catherine Tate. Donna is a strong and sassy woman and people wouldn’t mess with her. Donna thought she was an ordinary temp from Chiswick, London, but she was actually the most important person in the universe! Donna first met the Tenth Doctor on her wedding day, where the two embarked on the adventure of a lifetime! The Doctor and Donna battled Racnoss, Adipose, Pyroviles, Ood, Sontarans, Hath, Vespiforms, Vashta Nerada, the Midnight Entity, the Trickster’s Brigade, Davros and the Daleks. However, during a meta-crisis the DoctorDonna was born, but the Doctor was forced to take the power out of Donna to prevent it from killing her. Wiping her memories was a painful experience for the Doctor. However, many years later, the Doctor met Donna and her family again and he restored Donna’s memories. The pair encountered Beep the Meep, Wrarth Warriors, Not-Things and the Toymaker. The Fourteenth Doctor ultimately received a happy ending by settling on Earth with Donna and her family. Donna was the Doctor’s best friend and there was no romantic connection between them. Donna was the Doctor’s friend without benefits. My best friend is fellow Doctor Who fan James Wallace. James and I meet everyone in Doctor Who even if they were only in it for 20 seconds and no one knows who they are! It doesn’t matter if they were in Doctor Who 60 years ago or yesterday, we still meet them! The Doctor and Donna were one of the best TARDIS teams ever, they were lit! 🔥

The Runaway Bride

★★★★☆

TX: 25/12/2006

Written by Russell T Davies  Directed by Euros Lyn

In Catherine Tate’s humorous debut as Donna Noble, the Doctor and his soon-to-be-wed companion follow a web of intrigue to discover an incubation of giant alien arachnids beneath the Thames in London. The omnivorous Racnoss are about to awaken from their millennia-long slumber! Having recalled his previous encounter with the Racnoss aeons earlier in the Big Finish audio drama Empire of the Racnoss, the Doctor recognises the destructive power that a fully-fledged new Racnoss empire could wield. He reluctantly decides to flood the abandoned Torchwood base, thereby drowning the Empress of the Racnoss and her children buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth. The Doctor invites his new friend Donna onboard the TARDIS. However, after being shocked by the Doctor’s rash actions against the Racnoss Empress and her children, Donna politely declines… for now.

Partners in Crime

★★★★☆

TX: 05/04/2008

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by James Strong

Donna Noble has been searching for the Tenth Doctor because she misses him. Her investigations into the weight loss business Adipose Industries finally reunite her with her best friend. The Doctor and Donna discover that Miss Foster is breeding child Adipose through the weight loss pill she is giving to overweight customers. Miss Foster is acting on the instructions of the Adiposian First Family after their breeding planet was lost and taken to the Medusa Cascade during the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. The Adiposian Mothership arrives (which the stargazing Wilf is oblivious to) in order to retrieve the Adipose children. The Adiposian First Family realise that seeding a level 5 planet like Earth is against galactic law, so they get rid of their accomplice Miss Foster by dropping her from a great height. After leaving Adipose Industries, the Doctor offers Donna the opportunity to travel with him once again, but strictly just as best friends. Donna accepts and the TARDIS flies above Wilf’s head so that Donna can wave goodbye to her jubilant grandfather.

The Fires of Pompeii

★★★★☆

TX: 12/04/2008

Written by James Moran    Directed by Colin Teague

The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble arrive in Pompeii on 23rd August, 79AD, the day before Mount Vesuvius is due to erupt and engulf the Roman city. The local Sibylline Sisterhood have the ability to predict the future as does the city augur Lucius Petrus Dextrus. However, the foreknowledge of the volcano has been hidden from them. Donna wants to begin evacuating the city but the Doctor warns her that the destruction of Pompeii is a fixed point in history and must not be altered. The Doctor and Donna befriend a marble merchant called Lobus Caecilius after the TARDIS is sold to him. Caecilius’s daughter Evelina also has the gift of prophesy and recognises that the Doctor is a Lord of Time. The Doctor and Caecilius’s son sneak into Lucius’s house where they discover stone tablets that appear to be part of a circuit. Lucius reveals that his arm has turned to stone. Donna tells Evelina that Mount Vesuvius is going to erupt tomorrow and bury Pompeii. The Sibylline Sisterhood (which are similar to the Sisterhood of Karn from The Brain of Morbius) commune with Evelina and discover this horrifying revelation. The High Priestess of the Sibylline orders the sisters to sacrifice Donna as a false prophet. However, the Doctor rescues her and discovers that the High Priestess of the Sibylline has turned into stone – the people of Pompeii are turning into Pyroviles, a stone race from a lost distant volcanic planet called Pyrovilia. A race of Pyroviles is concealed beneath Mount Vesuvius and they are stealing power from the volcano in order to convert the human race into Pyroviles and take over the world. The Doctor is faced with a terrible choice: should he explode Vesuvius and let it bury Pompeii or wait and let the Pyroviles conquer Earth. The Doctor and Donna choose to sacrifice Pompeii and let history take its course. The pair escape the Volcano in a Pyrovile escape pod. However, Pompeii is engulfed in ash and flames. Donna urges the Doctor to save Caecilius and his family from destruction, which the Doctor eventually agrees to. Centuries later, the Doctor will adopt Caecilius’s face as a reminder that saving people is part of who he is. Caecilius and his family live a normal, happy life in Ancient Rome, but they keep a shrine to the Doctor and Donna who they worship as household gods for saving them.

Planet of the Ood

★★★★☆

TX: 19/04/2008

Written by Keith Temple    Directed by Graeme Harper

The Doctor and Donna visit the OodSphere, which is in the same system as the Sense Sphere from The Sensorites. To their horror, the Doctor and Donna discover that the Ood have been enslaved by Ood Operations, with natural Ood having their secondary hind brain lobotomised and replaced with a translator ball. The Ood are telepathic and communicate with one another through song. The Ood are all connected to the gigantic Ood Brain, which is imprisoned by Mr Halpen and the other staff of Ood Operations. However, Ood Operations has been infiltrated by a Friends Of The Ood activist, but Mr Halpen kills him. The Ood begin to go rabid as the effects of the Ood Brain take hold and a revolution begins. The Doctor and Donna escape the carnage and make their way to the Ood Brain in the basement. Ood Sigma reveals that he has secretly drugged Mr Halpen so that he becomes an Ood. The Doctor turns off the pylons and releases the Ood Brain, so the Ood are free and they can sing again! The Doctor and Donna bid farewell to the Ood, but Ood Sigma warns the Doctor that his song will end soon…

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky

★★★★☆

TX: 26/04/2008 – 03/05/2008

Written by Helen Raynor    Directed by Douglas Mackinnon

The Tenth Doctor and Donna are summoned back to present day Earth by the Doctor’s former companion Martha Jones. Martha now works for U.N.I.T and they have been investigating mysterious deaths across the world in connection with the car sat nav company ATMOS. ATMOS is revolutionary because it reduces all carbon emissions to zero. U.N.I.T storm the London ATMOS factory. But in the basement, two U.N.I.T soldiers are captured and turned into operatives by the Sontarans. The Sontarans create a clone of Martha in order to infiltrate U.N.I.T. The Doctor and Private Ross meet Luke Rattigan, the arrogant young genius inventor of ATMOS. The Doctor discovers that Luke Rattigan is in league with the Sontarans and there is a teleport pod to their spaceship in his living room. General Staal of the Tenth Sontaran Fleet confronts the Doctor, but he and Ross escape. The Doctor reunites with Donna, who has gone back to see her mother Sylvia and her grandfather Wilf in Chiswick. However, the Sontarans decide to accelerate their plan. The Sontarans activate all of the 400 million ATMOS devices on Earth, which release poisonous gas which starts to choke humanity. However, the Doctor discovers that the gas is really clone feed that the Sontarans are using to turn the Earth into a clone world to create billions of new soldiers to engage in their fifty thousand-year war with the Rutans. The clone of Martha is used by the Sontarans to prevent the United Nations from destroying the Sontaran ship with nuclear weapons. However, the clone of Martha is discovered by the Doctor and he rescues the real Martha in the basement of the ATMOS factory. U.N.I.T storm the factory and reclaim it from the Sontarans using steel bullets that counteract the Sontarans’ ability to jam most conventional firearms by expanding the copper-lined bullets with their cordolaine signal. The Doctor, Martha and Donna teleport to the Rattigan Academy where Luke Rattigan has been betrayed by the Sontarans. The Doctor creates a device which he uses to ignite all of the Sontaran gas on Earth, causing it to disperse. The Doctor then re-calibrates the device for Sontaran air, so that he can use it to destroy the Sontaran ship from within. After teleporting aboard, the Doctor offers General Staal the Undefeated and his troops the chance to leave, but they refuse because they do not fear death and instead prepare to destroy the Earth. Luke Rattigan beams aboard the ship, replacing the Doctor and he uses the device to sacrifice himself to destroy the Sontarans. Later, the Doctor and Donna are about to say goodbye to Martha (who is engaged to Tom Milligan from Last of the Time Lords), but an unknown force causes the TARDIS to take-off with Martha still onboard. This adventure leads directly into the events of The Doctor’s Daughter.

The Doctor’s Daughter

★★★★☆

TX: 10/05/2008

Written by Stephen Greenhorn    Directed by Alice Troughton

The Tenth Doctor, Donna and Martha accidentally arrive on the planet Messaline in the middle of a war between the humans (led by General Cobb) and the Hath. The Doctor’s hand is placed inside a progenation machine and a DNA sample is taken and used to create a new soldier. A woman later named Jenny, the Doctor’s genetically engineered daughter! The soldiers are created over and over again in the progenation machines as the war goes on and more soldiers are killed. This means that the human army has mythologised their own history and the length of the war. Donna deduces from the codes on the walls of the human encampments that they are completion dates and that the war has only lasted for 7 days! Martha braves the surface of Messaline with the brave Hath Peck who sacrifices himself to protect Martha. The time travellers are reunited at the source, a terraforming device that both sides of the war want. The Doctor smashes the orb containing the terraforming gases, this releases them breathing new life into the barren planet. But, the angered General Cobb (who was hoping for a less peaceful resolution to the war) shoots Jenny, who apparently dies in the Doctor’s arms. After the TARDIS departs however, Jenny is seemingly revived by the source. She steals a spaceship and flies off to have adventures of her own, just like her dad.

The Unicorn and the Wasp

★★★★★

TX: 17/05/2008

Written by Gareth Roberts  Directed by Graeme Harper

The Tenth Doctor and Donna arrive at a posh garden party in 1926. Lady Eddison is delighted to introduce her star guest: the murder mystery novelist Agatha Christie! The Doctor and Donna fangirl over Agatha Christie throughout this adventure, referencing many of her greatest books featuring Hercule Poirot and Ms Marple! However, something is afoot at the manor house… A murderer is at large and suddenly the situation becomes a whodunnit! The murderer claims the lives of a Reverend, the housemistress and even Lady Eddison’s son! Even more confusingly, a giant wasp (a Vespiform) is flying around the house and Donna narrowly dodges being stung by it! Agatha Christie teams up with the Doctor to solve the mystery. However, the Doctor himself is poisoned by the murderer. But Donna kisses him to give him a shock required to detox and this saves his life. Agatha Christie gathers all of the guests in the drawing room to reveal who the murderer is. Lady Eddison reveals that many years ago she went to India and met an alien man called Christopher who was actually a Vespiform in disguise. The Vespiform impregnated her and gave her a Firestone jewel necklace. This was a Vespiform telepathic recorder. Lady Eddison gave away her baby to avoid public shame. However, the child grew up to be a vicar. Lady Eddison was reading the works of Agatha Christie one night whilst wearing the Firestone. This beamed the works of Agatha Christie directly into the Vespiform vicar’s mind, so that the mechanics of the novels formed the template in its brain. This is why the Vespiform began to kill people in the manner of a whodunnit at Lady Eddison’s manor. Having been found out, the Vicar shape shifts into a giant wasp and chases after Agatha Christie, who has the Firestone. The Doctor and Donna pursue them in a car to a nearby lake. Agatha Christie is about to drown herself with the Firestone. But Donna grabs the Firestone and throws it into the lake. The Vespiform follows it into the lake and drowns. Agatha Christie’s mind is wiped by the Firestone, so the Doctor and Donna drop her off at a hotel in Harrogate, in accordance with the famous short disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926 (which others believed to be a publicity stunt). Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor reveals to Donna that some elements of their adventure with the wasp must have stayed with Agatha Christie. He also reveals that her detective novels are printed forever and that she is the bestselling novelist of all time.

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

★★★★★

TX: 31/05/2008 – 07/06/2008

Written by Steven Moffat    Directed by Euros Lyn

The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble visit the biggest Library in the universe in the 51st Century after the Doctor receives a message on his psychic paper. The message is from Professor River Song, who has gained entry to the deserted Library along with an expedition of other archaeologists. The Library is full of shadows which are really carnivorous life forms called the Vashta Nerada. The Vashta Nerada strip their victims’ flesh from the bone in seconds. The Vashta Nerada claim several victims of the expedition, including Strackman Lux’s secretary Miss Evangelista. The Vashta Nerada arrived in the books as microspores, as they originated in forests. A hundred years ago, the Library sealed itself and saved all of the visitors to the hard drive of the Library’s computer system. They live in a digital world that seems real to them but is actually Cyber Space. Donna is accidentally saved to the Library hard drive too and she lives an idyllic life until she is forced (by the data ghost of Miss Evangelista) to realise that the real world is a lie and that a little girl called CAL’s nightmares are real. CAL (Charlotte Abigail Lux) is the name of the computer and she is serviced by the Doctor Moon that orbits the Library planet. Professor River Song is a mysterious figure who says that she is from the Doctor’s personal future, but refuses to add much further detail. The Vashta Nerada now claim the Library as their own. In the core of the Library, the Vashta Nerada allow the Doctor one day to free the people trapped in the computer core, including Donna, after which the Library will belong to them. The Doctor prepares to hook himself to the computer terminal to provide the extra memory required to download everyone, aware this will likely kill him. River knocks him out and takes his place, insisting that the Doctor’s death now would prevent her meeting him in her own past. River sacrifices herself to save everyone in the Library. The patrons stored inside the computer rematerialise on the Library surface, where they teleport away to safety. Donna’s fake husband Lee is unable to call out to Donna as he leaves due to his stammer. As the Doctor and Donna leave behind River’s diary and sonic screwdriver (which the Twelfth Doctor gave to her in the future in The Husbands of River Song), the Doctor wonders why his future self would give River his screwdriver. He finds a data recorder inside the mechanism which has preserved River’s thought pattern. The Doctor saves her pattern to the Library core. River wakes up in the Earth simulation and is greeted by Charlotte and River’s team members who had fallen victim to the Vashta Nerada. Charlotte assures her that the simulation is now a “good place” where she will be safe as the Doctor fixed the data core.

Midnight

★★★★★

TX: 14/06/2008

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Alice Troughton

The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble are relaxing in the Leisure Palace on the diamond planet of Midnight. Midnight has no oxygen and the sunlight reflecting off of the diamonds is x-tonic, meaning that it would destroy any living being in a split second. The Doctor decides to embark on a bus trip to the Winter Witch Canyon in a Crusader 50 vehicle. However, during the 4-hour journey, the vehicle stops and a knocking sound is heard on the walls of the vehicle from outside – which is impossible! The Doctor investigates but then the knocking intensifies and moves towards a passenger called Sky Sylvestry. The cabin is thrown around and lights go out. When the passengers regain consciousness, they discover that Sky has been possessed by an unknown entity from outside that makes her copy what the others are saying, which is really creepy! The Doctor deduces that this is the way that the creature learns more and gathers knowledge. Eventually, the possessed Sky begins to copy what the other passengers say at the exact same time as them and without delay. The Doctor realises that Sky wants to possess him and this theory becomes true when Sky starts to only copy the Doctor, which raises some of the other passengers’ suspicions about the Doctor. The Doctor then starts to copy what Sky says, as Sky starts to speak first. At the first, the passengers believe that the creature has left Sky and has now possessed the Doctor. But Professor Hobbes’ student Dee Dee Blasco has realised that the creature has stolen the Doctor’s voice and it is still inside Sky. The other passengers don’t believe her and so they decide to throw the frozen Doctor outside. However, the hostess of the Cruader 50 vehicle realises that Dee Dee is right and so she throws herself and Sky out of airlock, which releases the Doctor. The Doctor and the other passengers are rescued but the journey back is tense because they all turned on each other when the situation became desperate. Back at the Leisure Palace, the Doctor tells Donna what happened and explains that he has no idea what that thing was.

Turn Left

★★★★★

TX: 21/06/2008

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Graeme Harper

Whilst visiting the Oriental planet of Shan Shen with the Tenth Doctor, Donna Noble meets a fortune teller. The fortune teller tricks her into allowing a Time Beetle (a member of the Trickster’s Brigade) to climb onto her back. The Time Beetle creates a parallel universe around Donna, a world in which she never met the Doctor. In this terrifying alternate reality, the Doctor died during the events of The Runaway Bride, meaning that he was not around to repel all subsequent alien invasions. This leaves the Earth devastated following the spaceship Titanic crashing into London and millions of Americans dissolving into Adipose. Donna, her mother Sylvia and her grandfather Wilf are evacuated along with thousands of other Londoners to Leeds. Donna meets Rose Tyler, a former companion to the Doctor from our universe. Rose tells Donna that she has to go back in time and turn left when she makes the decision to join the job that will ultimately lead her to meeting the Doctor. With help from U.N.I.T and a recovered TARDIS, Rose manages to send Donna back in time. Donna runs out of time and she therefore sacrifices herself to prevent her earlier self from turning right. By turning left, the earlier Donna puts history back on track, bringing an end to the parallel universe around Donna. Donna tells the Doctor that she met Rose Tyler in the parallel world and gives him the vital warning that Rose gave her: Bad Wolf.

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End

★★★★★

TX: 28/06/2008 – 05/07/2008

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Graeme Harper

The Daleks capture the Earth and 26 other planets in a pocket of time in the Medusa Cascade in order to create a wavelength to project Davros’ nightmarish latest invention: the reality bomb. This device cancels out the electrical field surrounding atoms causing the atomic structure of a particular being to fall apart. The net result of sending out this wavelength across the entire the cosmos will be the destruction of all reality itself. The Tenth Doctor and his many companions must stop the insane Davros from completing his diabolical plan.

After being taken prisoner onboard the Dalek crucible one-by-one, the Doctor and his ‘Children of Time’ stand witness to Davros’ horrifying experiments. However, the Doctor’s companion Donna Noble has accidentally caused a meta-crisis by touching his hand in the jar inside the TARDIS, which was bursting with regeneration energy from the Doctor. The meta-crisis makes Donna into a genius and she and the Duplicate Doctor (created by the meta-crisis) use the Dalek ship controls to thwart Davros’ plan, send 26 of the 27 stolen planets back home and to destroy the Daleks. The Doctor and his many companions tow the Earth back home through the use of the TARDIS. After saying goodbye to his other companions, the Doctor has to take the power out of Donna Noble by sadly wiping her memory of all of their adventures together.

The End of Time

★★★★★

TX: 25/12/2009 – 1/1/2010

Written by Russell T Davies      Directed by Euros Lyn

The Tenth Doctor travels to the Ood Sphere after being summoned by Ood Sigma, whom the Doctor previously met in Planet of the Ood. The Ood tell the Doctor that the Master has been resurrected and that Donna’s grandfather Wilf is connected. The Doctor returns to Earth where he confronts the Master, who reveals that the drumming in his mind has a greater meaning. The Doctor and Wilf reunite and they travel to the Naismith Mansion, where the Master uses an Immortality Gate to turn everyone on Earth into himself (except Donna, who has been protected by the Doctor). The Doctor and Wilf are rescued by the Vinvocci, the green cousins of the Zocci. Aboard the Vinvocci spaceship in orbit around Earth, the Doctor explains to Wilf that his death is inevitable in his final confrontation with the Master. Meanwhile, the Time Lords decide that they wish to escape destruction at the end of the Time War, which has been time-locked. So Rassilon and the other members of the Time Lord High Council retroactively place a drumbeat in the Master’s mind as a child, which sends him mad in the first place. Rassilon sends a Gallifreyan White-Point Star to the Master on Earth, which acts as a homing beacon. The Doctor pilots the Vinvocci spaceship back down to the Naismith Mansion, dodging the Masters’ missiles along the way. The Doctor jumps from the spaceship into the Naismith Mansion, where he confronts the Master and Rassilon with a gun given to him by Wilf. Rassilon reveals that the Time Lord High Council plans to ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone, whilst creation itself collapses around them. The Doctor explains to the Master that that is the reason why he had to end the Time War by committing double genocide and destroying both the Daleks and his own people. The Doctor cannot bring himself to shoot either the Master or Rassilon, especially when he notices a Time Lord woman who is possibly his mother. Instead, the Doctor shoots a machine containing the White-Point Star behind the Master, which breaks the link to Gallifrey and the Time Lords return to oblivion. The Master disappears with the Time Lords and returns to Gallifrey, the Doctor does not encounter his incarnation again until World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls. Wilf is stuck in one of the machines that operates the Immortality Gate, so the Doctor releases him and sacrifices himself by absorbing all of the excess radiation (a similar death to the Third Doctor’s in Planet of the Spiders). This triggers the Tenth Doctor’s regeneration, but beforehand the Doctor is able to go back and revisit all of his previous companions to say goodbye. Alone inside the TARDIS, the Tenth Doctor regenerates and causes the TARDIS to explode. The newly regenerated Eleventh Doctor has barely enough time to examine his new features before the TARDIS begins crashing down to Earth! This episode leads directly into the events of The Eleventh Hour.

The Star Beast

★★★★★

TX: 25/11/2023

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Rachel Talalay

Fifteen years after she travelled with the Doctor, Donna Temple-Noble now lives a normal life with her daughter Rose, her husband Shaun and her mother Sylvia in London. Normal that is, until a spaceship crash lands and Donna and Rose bump into the newly regenerated Fourteenth Doctor. Later, Rose discovers an alien called Beep the Meep has escaped the crashed capsule (which U.N.I.T have found) and is now seeking refuge in their shed. Donna discovers the Meep and the situation descends into chaos as the Doctor shows up. The Doctor tells the Meep that he can help save it from the Wrarth Warriors. However, a load of controlled U.N.I.T soldiers show up to capture the Meep and the street becomes a battleground between U.N.I.T and the Wrarth Warriors. The Doctor and his companions escape with the Meep and they make their way to a car lot, where the Doctor puts the Meep on trial (The Stones of Blood). But, the Meep is revealed to be a villain, which kills two pacifist Wrarth Warriors (armed with stun guns). The Meep summons its controlled U.N.I.T soldiers which capture the Doctor and his companions. The Meep intends to use a double-bladed dagger drive to launch its spaceship, which will destroy the Earth as a side-effect. The Doctor and Donna sneak aboard the Meep’s ship, but the two are separated. This forces the Doctor to restore Donna’s memories of him, which brings back the DoctorDonna who stops the Meep from launching. The Doctor realises that the restoration of the DoctorDonna (without killing her) was thanks to Rose, who is transgender. The fact that Donna had a daughter who is neither male nor female meant that part of her memories were passed down genetically to Rose. (I am a straight white man and I support LGBT equality). The Meep is captured by U.N.I.T, but the Meep warns the Doctor that it will escape and “tell the boss” about him. Shaun, Sylvia and Rose accompany the Doctor and Donna back to the TARDIS, planning to go and visit Wilf who is in a care home. But Donna accidentally spills some coffee on the TARDIS console, which causes it to take off with the Doctor and Donna still aboard…

Wild Blue Yonder

★★★★★

TX: 02/12/2023

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Tom Kingsley

The Doctor and Donna briefly bump into Isaac Newton when the TARDIS crash-lands in an apple tree above him in 1666. Donna and the Doctor make a terrible joke about “the gravity of the situation” which Newton mishears, causing him to change history and rename it ‘Mavity’. The TARDIS lands in the far future on a spaceship at the edge of the universe. The TARDIS’s Hostile Action Displacement Systems are activated and the ship flies away. The pair hear strange knocking from outside, in a manner similar to Midnight. The Doctor and Donna explore the ship, however they soon discover that they are not alone. Two copies of the Doctor and Donna, that can bend and twist into any shape (in a manner similar to the Gangers in The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People), are stalking them. The Doctor and Donna do their best to hide from the Not-Things that claim to originate from the nothingness beyond the edge of the universe. The Doctor and Donna discover the body of the ship’s captain floating around outside the ship. Three years ago, the captain sacrificed herself to prevent the Not-Things from copying her and she set the ship to self-destruct slowly. The Doctor realises that the announcements they are hearing are the numbers in a countdown to the ship exploding. The Not-Things realise that they need to stop the robot slowly walking down the ship corridor to press the self-destruct button. The Doctor and Donna pursue them, but the Not-Things are too fast. The hostile action therefore ends and the TARDIS returns, but the Doctor clambers aboard with the wrong Donna. After a brief scan reveals that he has taken the Not-Thing Donna, the Doctor returns to the ship and rescues the real Donna seconds before the ship explodes, destroying the Not-Things. The Doctor and Donna return to the present day where they meet Wilf. However, Wilf tells them that the world is coming to an end as everyone is going mad!

The Giggle

★★★★★

TX: 09/12/2023

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Chanya Button 

In the third and final 60th Anniversary Special of Doctor Who, the terrifying Toymaker returns (played by Hollywood actor Neil Patrick Harris). The Toymaker is using the giggle of a sinister puppet to send the human race insane. The puppet was implanted indirectly by the Toymaker into the very first television footage made by television inventor John Logie Baird in 1925. After 98 years of manipulation, the puppet’s giggle sends the human race mad in 2023 by convincing everyone that they are right. The Fourteenth Doctor and Donna travel back to 1925 to confront the Toymaker, who sets many traps and puppets for them. During a card game between the Toymaker and the Doctor, the Toymaker warns the Doctor about “the one who waits”…

The Toymaker returns to the present to play one final game with the Doctor. The Toymaker attacks U.N.I.T. and during the resultant destruction, the Toymaker uses a U.N.I.T. HQ laser beam to shoot the Doctor. The Fourteenth Doctor bi-generates into the Fifteenth Doctor, creating two separate incarnations of the Doctor. The two Doctors fight the Toymaker in one final ball game. The Toymaker loses and as punishment, is ordered by the Doctor to remove himself from existence. But how long will it be until the Fifteenth Doctor encounters the Toymaker’s promised legions?