I am – Hercules!!

Lots of positive vibes for “Doctor Who” 30.11, which just aired on the BBC in Blighty, where Harry & Jay Knowles are relaxing at the moment. It’s 107 degrees here in Studio City at the moment; I trust it’s cooler there!

“Doctor Dan” returns:

DOCTOR WHO 4.11 – "Turn Left"

Writer: Russell T. Davies
Director: Graeme Harper

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Billie Piper (Rose Tyler), Bernard Chibbins (Gramps), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Chippo Chung (Fortune Teller), Joseph Long (Rocco Colasanto), Noma Dumzwemi (Captain Magambo), Suzann McLean (Veena Brady), Marcia Lecky (Mooky Kahari), Natalie Walter (Alice Coltrane), Bhaskar Patel (Jival Chowdry), Loraine Velez (Spanish Maid), Clive Standen (Private Harris), Sanchia McCormack (Housing Officer), Terri-Ann Burmby (Woman In Doorway), Paul Richard Biggin (Soldier #2), Neil Clench (Man In Pub), Lawrence Stevenson (Soldier #1), Catherine York (Female Reporter), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells)

Russell T. Davies writes himself a big love letter with "Turn Left", cramming the episode with winks, nods and sideways looks at his lynchpin episodes that have informed Doctor Who these past 3 years. We begin on the alien planet of Shan Shen (an intergalactic Chinatown , based on the décor), where The Doctor (David Tennant) has fun bartering with locals and Donna (Catherine Tate) is persuaded to visit a Fortune Teller (Chippo Chung). The Fortune Teller's true intentions are revealed when a giant beetle-like insects attaches itself to Donna's back and somehow manipulates her personal history – making Donna turn right at a road junction (heading to a £20,000 new job) instead of left.

This simple decision alters established history, butterfly effect-style, meaning Donna never meets The Doctor (see: "The Runaway Bride") and consequently Davies' script spends half its runtime showing just how disastrous the loss of a Doctor/Donna team-up would be for planet Earth. The Doctor is killed under the Thames ("The Runaway Bride"), Martha Jones is asphyxiated when her hospital is transported to the moon ("Smith And Jones"), and the Titanic crashes into Buckingham Pa lace, obliterating London ("Voyage Of The Damned"), forcing the UK into a not-very-plausible post-apocalypse – where southern refugees cohabit with ethnic people in the north, before the government solves the crisis by shipping all "foreigners" to labour camps.

Donna wanders through this horrific parallel existence with numb, teary-eyed confusion – perturbed by the occasional appearances of a blonde woman, recognisable to audiences as Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). She's inexplicably found a way back to our universe (after the events of "Doomsday") and apparently has a plan to put events back into their original order – using The Doctor's unused, dying TARDIS...

"Turn Left" is enjoyable stuff, despite being incredibly dour and depressing for a good half-hour. RTD clearly likes looking at past events from a different vantage point (a trick he employed, briefly, in "Love & Monsters") -- but while it's generally fun and amusing, it's excessive here. Americans wiped out by the Adipose from "Partners In Crime", the world's ATMOS-powered cars going into meltdown (see: "The Sontaran Strategem"), there's barely a moment that isn't referencing past new Who, Torchwood (Ianto, Gwen and Captain Jack name-checked), and even Sarah-Jane Smith and her little gang bite the dust off-screen.

Away from the onanism of RTD's script, the basic idea behind Donna's bizarre situation eventually gets on-track and leads to a fairly exciting climax (via a makeshift time-machine, courtesy of UNIT) and a last-minute sting of recognition from The Doctor when a "two word" message from Rose is delivered – in an agreeable echo of season 1. However, the mechanics of the story turn to mush under the tiniest scrutiny, the return of Rose wasn't even explained, and it made no sense that Rose would know what's going on with Donna anyway – let alone how to rectify the situation!

So, suspension of disbelief is required and nitpickers will have a field day with the flaws in both narrative and time-travel logic. But, even so, "Turn Left" is punchy and entertaining on a basic level and Catherine Tate shoulders an entire Doctor-lite episode incredibly well. Despite the deficiencies in logic, Tate's driving force and reactions to the parallel universe created around her compensated brilliantly. Indeed, Tate's performance overshadowed the much-trumpeted return of Billie Piper – who gives a comparatively two-dimensional and bland performance. In her first scene finds Piper even seemed to have problems deciding on her right accent!

Overall, there's a lot to pick apart and take issue with, but "Turn Left" at least has a sense of pace and builds to a decent conclusion. The return of Rose was a damp squib, but I liked the creepy idea of an invisible parasite with the ability to change its host's personal history, and some of the many call-backs to old episodes (95% in the RTD back-catalogue) got the desired reaction. But, like "Utopia" last year, this seemed little more than a stretch and flex before the two-part finale starts next week...

The Good

1. Catherine Tate managed to make the sillier, weaker areas of the script work, through pure force of will and a reliable ability to bring any nonsense down to earth.

2. The weird creepiness of that time-altering bug was a strong sci-fi idea, if poorly thought out.

3. Some of the references and in-jokes worked very well, particularly the mention that Torchwood defeated the Sontarans in Donna's alternate existence.

The Bad

1. There was definitely an overload of references and in-jokes, and they became a little distracting. What made it worse was that referencing seemed to be the main purpose of half the episode – before the story really kicked in.

2. The apocalypse wasn't plausible, or especially well written. The sudden attempt to throw concentration camps into the story sat uneasily with the zany madness of everything else before – a crashlanding Titanic "replica" and aliens born from human fat, etc.

3. The return of Rose wasn't exciting, thrilling, and didn't get properly explained. She just appears from off-screen light shows. Her arrival also served to remind me how much Doctor Who has moved on since the days of Jackie, Mickey and Rose in their council flat. But I can understand RTD wanting to bring his tenure full circle in these last episodes.

4. The plot doesn't stand up to any scrutiny, if you have half a brain. In particular, that prophecy about Donna having "something on her back" in "The Fires Of Pompeii" doesn't make any sense now – as the version of Donna with the insect on her back wasn't the one who had adventures with The Doctor to Pompeii , and wherever else. That was the whole point!

The Geeky

1. The Doctor refers to "The Trickster", a character in The Sarah-Jane Adventures.

2. The Doctor can't regenerate if his death is too quick, implying he has to actively decide to regenerate (an idea backed up in season 3's "Last Of The Time Lords" when The Master refused to regenerate.)

3. In 1974 serial "Planet Of The Spiders", Sarah Jane Smith also had a giant, invisible attach itself to her back: a spider from Metebelis III.

4. Actress Chippo Chung (Fortune Teller) played Chantho in season 3's "Utopia".

Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

NEXT WEEK: "The Stolen Earth", part 1 of the big season finale! Rose! Red Daleks! Martha! Gwen! Ianto! Sarah-Jane! Captain Jack! Davros!

“Joedini” says:

Hey Herc

Just thought i'd send you a quick sum up of my thoughts of tonights Doctor Who 'Turn Left'.

Let me start by saying I am majorly excited by the episode I have just seen, loved it, want to watch again and it's just finished, sure sign of a good episode. BUT I am not convinced that the episode was as good as I think it was, there is a good chance the ending made it seem all the better, and the trailer for next weeks was SO good it made my head spin. More on that later.

The episode itself used a good old tried and tested sci fi story, the "what if" story and it uses it well. Basically Donna is sent back in time by a "trickster type monster" that lives on her back and causes the world to change around her, answering the "somethings on your back" mystery that was set up in 'The Fires of Pompei'. Donna makes a split second decision that prevents her meeting the Doctor. Seeing what happens to Earth just by turning right instead of left is an interesting watch. Turns out we should really think these little decisions through, because of this, our beloved Doctor dies by drowning under the Thames at Christmas (Donna told him to leave in 'The Runaway Bride').

And so, all the attacks on Earth that the Doctor thwarted go horribly wrong for mankind. A giant hospital is taken to the moon and returns with all but one dead, Martha is'nt the all but one. Sarah Jane also ended up in said hospital and lost her life. The Titanic crashes into London, killing thousands, America is overrun by blobs of fat that kill people. Part of the fun here is that two of the silliest stories New Who has done are given a sense of severity that they lacked before. (for reference the scene with The Titanic just missing Buckingham Palace in 'Voyage Of The Damned' is one of my least favourite Who moments, I wanted to strangle RTD for including this) but now it seems a little more bearable, whether this was his intention or not remains to be seen. After all this, life isn't the same for anyone, Britain seems war torn and there is little hope left.

Throughout all this Rose Tyler pops up, offering ominous warnings to Donna before persuading her to join her. Having Billie Piper back is fantastic, she is a much more self assured Rose, a leader, almost like the Doctor himself and Piper plays this brilliantly. Once her and Donna join forces they go to an army base where Rose has somehow intiated herself into. She shows Donna the bug on her back and offers a way to do the good old fashioned reset, but Donna will die. While I said Pipers performance was brilliant, Tate's is far beyond brilliant. Through much of the episode we get the annoying shouty Donna that caused me dread her return when the news broke, but then towards the end we see the character that has caused me to eat my words and embrace her as one of the best companions the show has seen. The look on her face and tone of her voice when she see's the bug is heartbreaking to watch, as is the look of horror on her face when Rose tells her that she WILL die.

And so using the newly built time machine Rose and her companions have constructed, they send Donna back in time to make sure she turns left. Here's my problem with the episode, the time machine seems so shoe'd in to finish the episode. I wasn't convinced for one second that they could have built this, even with a near dead Tardis sitting next to them, but I suppose the Doctor couldn't stay dead so off goes Donna. And here's what I really liked about the epsiode, in order to save the world and make 'Normal Donna' turn left, 'future Donna' throws herself in front of a lorry to cause a traffic jam that will prevent 'Normal Donna' turning right. A truly shocking moment especially for tea time tv, and Donna does indeed die, not before Rose can whisper two words in her ear.

Luckily though dead Donna is very much alive Donna when she awakes back in an alien world with a dead bug laying on the floor. all back to normal then, in comes the Doctor and all is happy. Until she describes Rose to him and utters the words Bad Wolf causing The Doctor to panic, run outside and see the words ' Bad Wolf' EVREYWHERE! Even somehow on key parts of his Tardis, running inside we hear the Tardis' alarm bells are going, and according to the Doctor, it's the end of the universe!

Tennant was sorely missed in this episode, I know that was the point but I don't feel as if I have had my Doctor Who fix as he was barely involved in tonights happenings. This next Doctor better be good!
Shout out also to Bernard Cribbins as Donna's Grandfather, wonderful character, wonderful actor! Its about time we had an elderly companion right.....?

So yeah great episode, solid 8/10 but it seems a lot more 9/10 after that promo for next week. i said i'd talk about that didn't i? Ok! Just amazing, we saw everyone! The Doctor, Donna, Rose (with a big ass gun), Martha, Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, Gwen (you know the welsh one from Torchwood) (want to watch it again to see if I missed anyone, didn't catch Mickey) we heard a Dalek, we got a tiny sense of how incredible the next two epsiodes are going to be.

I swear, I thought only Lost could get me this excited at finale time.

If you use this, call me Joedini, hope my review was even mildly interesting :-) Keep up the good work over at aicn

“Wilftonville” says:

After last week gave us a Doctor-filled adventure, this week we’re presented with a ‘what-if’ type story featuring Donna Noble. After the Doctor and Donna touch down in a quaint market-place, Donna is taken in by a dodgy fortune-teller woman with an odd accent, who promptly attaches a weird bug to our heroine which transports her back to a time before she hadn’t met the Doctor, and inspires her to take a different path through life that bypasses him entirely. What follows is a dystopian vision of Britain – with no Donna to save him, the Doctor dies during that Christmas special two years ago and things go from bad to worse very quickly.

And much of the episode is very effective. Catherine Tate is on good form here, as we see her character go through subtle changes as she turns from shrewish good-for-nothing to a more worthy, intelligent person. Tate is very adept at conveying this slow growth of her character - although unusually enough, the majority of her comedic scenes are botched. No worries, though, because Tate is a much more effective dramatic actor than a comedic one when it comes to Who, so it’s nice to see her stretch her ability. With no David Tennant around, the show does seem wobbly, but Russell T Davies’ script compensates by incorporating this into the proceedings. As time goes on we see all the different events from season 3-onward come to fruition without the Doctor, none of which end particularly well for us. The absence of Tennant is fantastically put together, and shows how needed the Doctor is for earth, and for the show.

It’s much better to witness his absence than to suffer through all the messiah parallels that Davies’ seems to have put into the script. Yes, it's true, we get a fair few scenes here proclaiming the Doctor as the best thing ever, and they get quite annoying. But at the same time it’s nice to see names we’re familiar with spring up from time to time – Torchwood get a mention, and it’s nice to see they’ve finally started doing proper missions instead of constructing elaborate love-triangles with one another. One character who comes into the breach to help Tate is none other than... I won’t name her, the show doesn’t, but she’s back and she’s oddly poor in the role. Was it just me, or has she got some kind of bizarre lisp during this episode? I certainly don’t remember noticing that before, and perhaps she’s had it all belong. In any case, she sounds strange and she doesn’t seem able to convey the emotions that her character should have. This could be done intentionally, to cover what’s been happening to her and will all be explained later, but… I’m a little worried. I hope it gets better.

Russell T has got a nice story here, and while in most cases a ‘what if’ merely provides a chance to kill off the supporting cast, here he uses it as a way to expand on them instead. Donna’s family are prominent for most of the story, and Bernard Cribbins again steals as much of the show as he can with his unflashy yet gripping acting style. We also see a little more of Donna’s mother, who slowly becomes more and more depressed as things go on. Both of them are fantastic, and it feels realistic – it provides a solid base for the story (and Tate) to work against. There are a few quibbles, however – Russell T Davies seems to think that Yorkshire hasn’t changed for the past fifty years. As a Yorkshireman myself, it was odd to see the Yorkshire from Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning Of Life’ film being portrayed as reality. That bugged me. Also, everything remains completely cryptic, with no explanation offered for several parts of the story (including who the fortune teller is).

That aside, this is a good episode, well-written and entertaining, and it sets up the remaining two fairly well.

Rating: B+.

Next week: The Universe calls upon Gwen, Ianto, Jack, Martha, Rose, Sarah-Jane and Donna to save it. Oh, and the Doctor might appear too.

“Jastersdad” says:

Here is another spoiler-free, detail-free, synopsis-free but not opinion-free review of tonight's Doctor Who.

Well.. deep breath... it's a corker in many ways. Very difficult to review, I think. It's a time-travel/alternate-future story which is effectively a gigantic set-up for the season two-parter finale. The much-heralded return of Rose and the complete absence of The Doctor until the last five minutes make this a companion's story. Donna is the focus and Catherine Tate does her best work here, for sure. I've never been a supporter of Donna and she still gets her mouthy moments here, unfortunately. What I wasn't prepared for though, was her dramatic head-to-heads with Billie Piper making it obvious what a better actress she is.

I don't know what's happened to Rose since she's been gone. Or was she always like that and we were so bowled over by new Who that we didn't notice? Or....to complicate matters even further (and I need to sidetrack).....is it not Piper's fault at all but RTD's vision of the character? I say this because a period drama starring Piper aired directly after this. An adaptation of Philip Pullman's 'The Ruby in the Smoke' and she looks and acts totally different. She's really rather good. But Rose vs. Donna does not come off well for our old heroine, as they're essentially playing the same type of character but different generations.

The direction is good, as you'd expect from Graeme Harper, and Gold's music is the best it's ever been, in my view. There is good stuff with Unit and other supporting characters (Cribbins returns). We sorely miss The Doctor, though, in a way we didn't as much in the superior 'Blink'. So when the Tardis appears at last, there's a real kick. This is Who after all! And when Tennant arrives he saves the show as well as the Universe. Well.....he will. We know.

There's all sorts of events from previous stories in the four series. Enough to send fans away palpitating and remind us of the old X-Files term 'mytharc'. It's all here bar the regenerations or other Doctors. Sarah Jane, Martha, Daleks (in the teaser), Sontaarans, Xmas references galore. Next week looks set to trump even this! Oh....and there's everyone from Torchwood coming, too.

Oh, and Davies pulls a really bad tease on the audience, suggesting 70s Doctor Who villains but in the end it's only an homage. That man's got some nerve! Fair play.

So it's really impossible to judge as a single episode. I liked it a lot and would give it 8 out of 10, losing two points only because of the absence of the Doc and the reliance on Eastender companions. Hurry up Sarah-Jane....the series needs you!

“The Handsome 12th Doctor” says:

Crikey. That was a headfuck of an episode. Especially that ending. What the hell happened there? I can't work it out at all but I know I liked it.

It feels good to be liking the show again. The funny thing is, even though I didn't really enjoy last weeks I would pair it together as a cool companion piece with tonight's ep. Because where last week's story showed that the Doctor doesn't always manage to save the day, tonight they showed the opposite side. That being if we didn't have him then the world, the universe even, would all go to shit.

It took the simple idea of fate, the idea that if we were to turn right instead of left at a given moment, then that can have repercussions somewhere down the line. In this case massive consequences. End of the universe type stuff.

This fate of the universe hinged completely on Donna. And so Catherine Tate had to virtually carry the episode on her own. I thought she was absolutely wondrous. There can't be many Taters left out there now can there?

Now ok, Tate wasn't completely on her own. Tonight saw the return of......... can I say it? Well, she WAS on the front cover of every tv mag this week, so yeah I think I can. Rose Rose Rose Rose. Rosey Rose. Rose Rose. Rose.

I like Rose.
Yeah she was back and it was groovy. Although her voice seemed kinda weird. And Bernard Cribbins was back which I loved too. The bit about the labour camps was perhaps a tad over-forced piece of social commentary, but damn if Cribbins didn't make that very emotional. God bless you sir!

The thing I had the most fun with was trying to figure out what should come next. Remembering the order of events in past stories, so that I could work out "Oh, that's going to happen now isn't it"

It was all really well thought out and plotted by RTD. And director Graeme Harper did an excellent job of blending the newly shot material with the few recycled clips.

This definitely wasn't an episode for attracting new fans. You'd need to have watched Who since it returned in 2005 to fully appreciate what was going on.

I'm keen to see how RTD explains himself out of that ending though. And with you-know-who back (plus literally everyone else and their mothers, judging by the trailer) then it could shape up to be an insanely grand finale.

“Kelvington” says:

We all knew this was coming, it's all happened before and it will all happen again... wait a moment, I think that's BSG. Every year for the last few, we have been presented with a Doctor-less or Doctor-lite episode. Some better than others, just like Star Wars movies. So this evening we were presented with the latest one, "Turn Left" written by Russel T. Davis. It's a very simple concept, what if you turned right instead of left. What if, you didn't meet the Doctor but instead had a normal life, and what if, the Doctor had died.

The episode opens in Chinatown (on some planet), and Donna is getting her future told, and she actually flashes back to her temp job. This is not unlike using a penny to go back in time. So after a little insect interaction Donna turn's right and, right away from her future with the Doctor.

Alternate reality shows are tough to do, but they do present an amazing opportunity to see life in a new way. In this reality Donna never met up with the Doctor, and he ends up very dead after dealing with the Racnos. Of course, without Donna one has to wonder how he was drawn to the Racnos to try and stop them, but that's a quibble best left for the forums. Personally, I think the TARDIS is the main guiding force of the show, taking the Doctor where he needs to be.

Once the Doctor is dead, we are presented with a new time line of events. Now a ton of money was spent on this show and for a show aimed at kids, the writing is definitely not, it was in fact top notch, you have to pay attention to know all of references, in order to get everything that's going on, from people we've met who have died, to different shots from plots we have memorized. This is a lot like the "Deep Space Nine" episode where they go back and deal with tribbles from a different perspective.

Rose comes and goes, and there is definitely SOMETHING wrong with her mouth, something about her upper teeth, I can't say what, but there is something wrong with them, and Martha and Sara Jane are both mentioned. So are the kids from The Sara Jane Adventures. One of the best things about this show is the ability to reuse old "Doctor Who" news footage created for the series in new ways, and adding to it, although the Titanic bit was definitely a cheat.

Life is not good without the Doctor, in a very WWII sort of way, in very short order Davis shows us just how bad, bad can get. This episode has a lot of scope for a fifty minute show. Yet it's incredibly intimate. Personally the only weak bit in the episode is the creature on Donna's back.

In the end, I loved this episode, while it won't ever be as good as Blink, simply because of Sally Sparrow, yes I love Sally Sparrow, so sue me. This will remembered for a long time, and analyzed a lot more than "Blink", there are so many twists and turns here, nods and homages, that I think we will be watching this long after the season comes to an end, and it will certainly give us something to do next year, while we are missing our favorite time traveler.

Just my 2¢

“dj bollocks” says:

We start in Asia - and we flashback to The Runaway Bride and the fate of Donna Noble...

"What if you turned right, what then.... What if you could still turn right ? Turn right and change the world !"

We move to Christmas Eve - something's on Donna's shoulder and we see the Racnaros ship...

"There's something on your back...."

And then we see the dead Doctor...

"Must have happened too fast for him to regenerate"

Then we meet Rose

"This is wrong... This is so wrong...."

Alternate universe already ?

We see Donna getting sacked the day that the Doctor was supposed to meet Martha - but there was only one survivor and it wasn't Ms Jones.... and then later we hear the same survivor tell a story about Sarah Jane Smith - how she was involved in the hospital and was a survivor after all...

Donna and Rose meet again...

"I just catch them sometimes staring at my back..."

So we move to Christmas when the Doctor should have been helping Kylie on the HMS Titanic and instead it crashes into Buckingham Palace - boom mushroom cloud of London.... London and the South of England ravaged by radiation - and the Noble family are relocated to Leeds... to share a house with about 25 other people..

Then we arrive in Season 4 - the fat loving aliens from episode 1 have ravaged America who were going to help rebuild the UK after the Titanic disaster...

"We're just no one Donna - we don't exist..."

After a rousing chorus of Bohemian Rhapsody we encounter shooting and the UNIT vehicles being taken over by their Amos devices......

Donna and Rose meet again - and Rose explains the change of fate...

"I've been pulled across.... it's coming.... The Darkness"

I believe in a a thing called love ?

"Sorry, I'm so sorry... but when you come with me you're gonna die..."

We now have some sort of Nazi comparison where the immigrants are taken away to 'camps' and the moment of truth arrives when Wilf and Donna notice that the stars start disappearing...

"Oh my God Donna, The Stars are going out...."

"I'm ready"

A quick trip to wherever Rose was coming from and we're at a version of UNIT where the Tardis has been recovered from under the Thames Barrier....

A scarab backpack then ?

"It feeds off time..."

So Donna is hurtled back into the flux point

"If I change things I don't die...."

"I'm sorry"

Time for a four minute, half mile... where Donna has to sacrifice herself to fix the timeline...

"Tell him this... two words...."

And we're back in the fortune teller's where the beetle has detached and Donna is alive.... Everything appears to be normal and Donna tries to recollect her experience...

"Sometimes I think there's way too much coincidence around you Donna"

And then she remembers the two words that the unnamed Rose Tyler had said to her just before she died...

Two words....

"Bad Wolf"

"It's the end of the universe"

Well - let's see if we can outrage the heterosexuals this week... *jokes*

It's difficult not to discuss this week's episode without serious spoilage so move on - but one presumes you've seen it already.... So let's continue...

RTD - much maligned has certainly created an extraordinary set up here - and this is the primary frustration is just how hit and miss he can be. Graeme Harper's direction helps but he really is working with gold on this episode anyway. It's a fanboy's wankfest - any chance of that being the co-ax headline Herc ? God by the looks of who's turning up in next week's episode he might even be able to explain why Gwen from Torchwood was in World War Two and why Martha Jones was working for Torchwood at Canary Wharf - yes I know it wasn't them....

Yes - shame about the time beetle - which looks like it wouldn't have been out of place in 1976 - and a nice little reference to the Trickster a Sara Jane Adventures character... If the reported 'reset' is fast approaching then so long as we don't have the Doctor turning into a budgie then count me in... Fantastic - dare I say it but so far - Moff this is what you've got to live up to ?