Turn Left

Writer: Russell T Davies O.B.E
Director: Graeme Harper

 

“Doctor what is it?  What’s Bad Wolf?”
“It’s the end of the Universe”

The Doctor and Donna are exploring a street market when Donna is offered the chance to have her fortune told. The fortune teller tells Donna that she can see a remarkable man in her life and asks her how she met him. Donna tells her it was through her work. The fortune teller presses Donna to tell her of the choices she made that led to her taking the job.

Donna reveals that she did have another choice, her Mum knew a man who ran a business and needed a secretary. But Donna told her that she was determined to go to H C Clements and at the road junction she turned left, took the job and eventually met The Doctor. The fortune teller asks Donna what her life would have been like if she had turned right instead of left.

Suddenly for Donna she is back on Earth in the car with her Mum arguing about which job to take. This time she heeds her Mums advice, turns right and gets a job as a secretary in a photocopier business.
Donna and her friends are celebrating her new job with a Christmas Eve in the pub, when their night is interrupted by the arrival of the Christmas Star (The Runaway Bride) and they watch in horror as it opens fire on London before eventually being destroyed. Donna is drawn to where the star crashed and arrives in time to see a body being taken away and hear a UNIT soldier telling his superiors that The Doctor is dead.  As she walks away Rose comes running towards her, stops and asks Donna what happened. Donna tells her that some Doctor is dead. Rose seems fascinated by Donna’s back. Donna turns away to try and see what is on her back and when she turns back again Rose has vanished.

Several months later Donna looses her job in the photocopier business. Whilst she is packing her stuff there is a report on the news about the Royal Hope Hospital which appears to have vanished (Smith & Jones).  When the hospital is returned there is only one survivor, Oliver Morgenstern, who tells how Martha Jones gave him the last air and how Sarah Jane Smith died disarming the MRI scanner.

Sylvia finds a raffle ticket amongst the stuff that Donna brought back from her job. That night as Donna is out getting dinner she sees a flash of bright light and Rose rushes out of an alleyway into her path. They recognise each other and Rose asks Donna what she is planning to do next Christmas and when she says that she doesn’t know Rose says that she should hang onto the raffle ticket and take the prize holiday over Christmas, away from London.

On Christmas morning in the hotel when the maid comes in with breakfast, she becomes quite agitated by what she thinks she can see on Donna’s back and this time Donna herself manages to get a glimpse of the creature before it vanishes. The news shows footage of the Titanic crashing into London and even where they are they can feel the force of the nuclear explosion. (Voyage of the Damned).

The whole of southern England is flooded with radiation from the explosion and 7 million people need to be re-housed. Donna and her family are sent to Leeds to live in the cramped kitchen of a small terraced house that is already home to several families. Wilf believes that they will not be there long because America has promised vast amounts of financial aid, but before the money is sent America is plunged into its own crisis with 60 million people dead, dissolved into fat which then walked away and was collected by spaceships. (Partners in Crime)

One night they hear gunshots in the street and find a young soldier shooting at his vehicle. The ATMOS device fitted to the vehicle has started emitting a poisonous gas. (The Sontaran Stratagem). The soldier thinks he can see something on Donna’s back and orders her at gunpoint to turn around and when she does there is nothing to be seen.  Donna sees a flash of light and knowing it will be the mysterious girl again goes off to meet her. Together they watch as the Torchwood team destroy the poisonous gas by setting fire to the atmosphere (The Poison Sky) loosing their lives as they do so.

Rose tells Donna that none of the things she has seen were meant to happen because in another world, another reality she travelled with the Doctor, she stopped him from dying under the Thames and he stopped everything else from happening. Rose tells her that the darkness is coming from across the stars and that now more than ever they need The Doctor and they need Donna. Rose tells Donna that in three weeks Donna will go with her but that when she does she is going eventually to die.

Three weeks later Donna and her Grandfather are watching the stars. They look up to see the horror of the stars going out in the sky above them. Donna knows that now it is time for her to go and turns around to find Rose waiting for her.
Rose takes her to a UNIT base where they have The Tardis and invites Donna to discover for herself that it is bigger on the inside.  Rose asks Donna if she wants to see what is on her back using some of the technology they salvaged from The Tardis. What Donna sees is a huge beetle on her back, Rose tells her that as far as they can tell the creature feeds off time and changes a person’s life by changing the decisions they make. Rose tells her the creature was responsible for her turning right instead of left and never meeting The Doctor.

Rose tells Donna that they are going to send her back in time to just before she made the decision to turn right. She has to stop herself from making that decision before 10.01 in the morning or it will be too late. 
The time machine sends Donna back to earth but lands her ½ a mile from where she needs to be with only 4 minutes to spare. Donna sets off at a run to try and get there in time but soon realises that there is no way she can reach the car before 10.01. She has to do something and seeing an oncoming truck and bearing in mind what Rose had told her she steps out in front of the truck which knocks her down fatally injuring her. The result of the crash causes the traffic to stop moving and the Donna in the car refusing to sit in the traffic turns left.

The injured and dying Donna looks up to see Rose standing over her. She bends down and whispers two words in her ear, telling her to tell The Doctor when she meets him.

Suddenly Donna is back with the fortune teller and the beetle has fallen from her back. The Doctor appears and Donna tells him what she can remember of what happened to her although her memories are fading all the time. The Doctor tells Donna he thinks there is something special about her that drew the two of them together again and that he thinks she is brilliant. That word reminds Donna of the two words Rose whispered to her.

BAD WOLF

Written by Deryn Corner