Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #11 – Turn Left
The hit BBC series Doctor Who is now in its fourth season on the Sci-Fi Channel, and since we’re all big fans here at ComicMix, we’ve decided to kick off an episode-by-episode analysis of the reinvigorated science-fiction classic.
Every week, I’ll do my best to go through the most recent episode with a fine-tooth comb (or whatever the "sonic screwdriver" equivalent might be) and call out the highlights, low points, continuity checks and storyline hints I can find to keep in mind for future episodes. I’ll post the review each Monday, so you have ample time to check out the episode once it airs each Friday at 9 PM EST on Sci-Fi Channel before I spoil anything.
Missed a week? Check out the "Doctor Who in Review" archive or check out any of the past editions of this column via the links at the end of this article.
Keep in mind, I’m going to assume readers have already watched the episode when I put fingers to keyboard and come up with the roundup of important plot points. In other words, SPOILER ALERT!
Let’s begin now, shall we?
Season Four, Episode #11: "Turn Left"
IN BRIEF: While seeing the sights with The Doctor on a distant planet, Donna Noble is lured into the shop of a fortune teller who takes Donna back to a crucial point in her timeline: the moment when she decided to "turn left" and take a position at the company where she would eventually meet The Doctor. Something unseen skitters into the room and climbs on Donna’s back, and the fortune teller convinces her to change her mind, go back to that point and turn right instead of left. The story then shifts to a retelling of some of the major events of the last few seasons as theywould have occurred without Donna meeting The Doctor, kicking off with the death of The Doctor (and the mysterious return of Rose Tyler) during "The Runaway Bride," and then through several other key episodes — all seen from Donna’s perspective were she to have never met The Doctor.
Rose returns to offer up some cryptic assessments of the future of the universe, and Donna and her family endure one disaster after another, with people occasionally telling her there’s something — some "thing" — on her back. When the stars begin to disappear, Donna finally agrees to work with Rose, and together they reveal the "Time Beetle" on her back that has changed the course of her history and in doing so, the fate of the whole planet. Donna goes back in time and manages to right the course of history by sacrificing her alternate-universe life. Suddenly returned to the fortune teller’s shop and her life with The Doctor, Donna then manages to pass along a message from Rose that sends The Doctor into a panic: "Bad Wolf."
A PLOT POINT 63 YEARS IN THE MAKING: Leave it to the forward-thinking creators behind Doctor Who to begin seeding important plot points as far back as 1945. That was the first time Bugs Bunny mused that he "should have made a left turn at Albuquerque" — in a War-era cartoon titled "Herr Meets Hare" — and now we finally understand what he was hinting at all these years. Bravo, Who team, bravo.
THE CREATURE REPORT: Did anyone else feel a bit let-down by the Time Beetle when it was finally revealed? In retrospect, the methods used for hinting at the creature’s existence (with all the hisses and clicks and buggy sounds, and the occasional insectoid leg creeping over Donna’s shoulder) ended up being far more terrifying than the bug itself. Apparently, rumors (which I believed would prove true) claiming the thing on Donna’s back would be one of the spiders harkening back to the 1974 "Planet of the Spiders" storyline were completely off-base. Chalk that one up as a miss for the home team, folks.
LOST IN TIME: I’m not even going to start trying to figure out how all of the events from the last few seasons, not to mention the events from prior seasons of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, all fit into the timeline of the new universe created by Donna’s "turn right" decision. That one just makes my head hurt. If you’re feeling brave, however, there’s an exhaustingly comprehensive rundown of exactly those sorts of continuity-driven issues over at The Doctor Who Wiki.
ABSENCE MAKES THE VOICE GROW… DIFFERENT? While she’s been popping up here and there throughout the current season, Rose Tyler’s been away for quite a while — and it looks like there’s a reason she’s remained silent in each of her cameos prior to this episode. Did anyone else notice some significant changes in her voice and/or speaking patterns? She didn’t sound like the character I remembered, so after looking back at an episode of two several season ago, it seems that her voice has indeed changed since she last parted ways with The Doctor. Theories, anyone?
NAME-DROPPING: There was no shortage of references in this episode to both major and minor characters from previous seasons of Doctor Who and all of its various spin-offs. Basically, if a character was important enough to have a name, it was name-checked in "Turn Left." My favorite? The return of the Private Harris of UNIT, the soldier who stumbled upon the Sontaran cloning vat in "The Sontaran Stratagem," was hypnotised into kidnapping Martha Jones and eventually died off-screen when the Sontarans got tired of using him to do their dirty work. I salute you, Harris.
QUESTIONS ANSWERED/UNANSWERED: Well, I guess we know what all that stuff about Donna having something on her back was all about, eh? (See my review of Episode #2, "The Fires of Pompeii.") Now if we can just find out what’s up with the Medusa Cascade, why The Doctor’s name is such a big deal, where the planets have gone and, well… what the heck happened to the bees, we’ll be all set. There are only two episodes left in the season, so it’s probably wise to prepare for a flood of revelations in the two-part finale.
READER REPORT: In the comments regarding last week’s review, ComicMix reader (and occasional contributor) Vinnie Bartilucci once again provided some interesting info about Episode #10, "Midnight," and the way the Who team manipulated actors’ voices to achieve the chilling effects:
With not too many CGI or prosthetic effect in the story, the real stars of the episode turn out to be the sound editors. The BBC companion series "Doctor Who confidential" dedicated the whole show to the sound team this episode. They revealed that to film all the overlapping sounds, they filmed the scenes several time, each with only one actor yelling, and the others miming. That way they were able to play with the levels all they liked. Quite a complicated episode.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE NEXT EPISODE, "The Stolen Earth": Well, it looks like the gang’s all here! So now there’s no good reason the mystery of the disappearing bees (the most important mystery of the season, as far as I’m concerned) will go unsolved… right?
Thanks to the good people at The Doctor Who Wiki for information related to several of this week’s story notes.
Screencaps courtesy of SciFi.com. For more on Doctor Who and other great programs, check out Scifi.com and the BBC.
Want to know what you’ve been missing? Check out all of the past "Doctor Who in Review" features via the following links:
Season Four, Episode #1 – "Partners in Crime"
Season Four, Episode #2 – "The Fires of Pompeii"
Season Four, Episode #3 – "Planet of the Ood"
Season Four, Episode #4 – "The Sontaran Stratagem"
Season Four, Episode #5 – "The Poison Sky"
Season Four, Episode #6 – "The Doctor’s Daughter"
Season Four, Episode #7 – "The Unicorn and the Wasp"
Season Four, Episode #8 – "Silence in the Library"
An interesting point re-reading P.C.Hodgell's wonderful high fantasies featuring a very unuausal – make that Very Unusual – heroine named Jameth, i hit Bones, a 1984 short story sandwiched in the middle of an omnibus edition of the first two books (Godstalk and Dark of the Moon, collected under the title Dark of the Gods by Atlanta's own, lamented Meisha Merlin Press). It contains the following Very Interesting passage (Jame, who is an apprentice thief at this point, and he Master are cornered by the animated skeleton of a master architect, who wants his head back. uezal is the architect's pet gargoyle, serving his skeleton as a head, and "vhors" are ratlike creatures; the ones in this story are also skeletal):"Another fit of coughing seized Jame. When her eyes cleared again, the vhors and theirmaster were withn five feet of her. So that was it: Like Quezal, they could only move when unobserved. If she so much as blinked now, she was finished."
Hmm… *very* interesting parallel there…
Very interesting, the parallel between the Quezal character and the angels from last year's spectacular "Blink". Surely a case of parallel evolution.Parallel timeline stories are easy to do, and can always deliver if done right. The old "for the want of a nail" ploy can have a lot of drama to it. And not just in Sci-Fi either; It's a Wonderful Life's climax is naught but a parallel timeline story. This episode is Catherine Tate/Donna Noble's week to shine in the other half of the "money-saving" episodes, and shine she does. Donna's life without the Doctor is initially quite good – she gets a good job, makes friends, and is generally quite please with her lot. However, The Doctor's life without Donna is far more dour. Without her to help The Doctor, he's never able to survive the events of The Runaway Bride, which means among other things, he's not there to stop the crash of the spacefaring Titanic, which turns much of London into a radioactive death zone, and turns England in a nation of refugees. The dark turn that England takes after that; becoming increasing xenophobic (the "national" kind, not the "planetary" kind), culminating in "work camps" being created for foreigners is another example of the ideas touhced on in Midnight – crisis bringing out the worst in some, even as it brings out the best in others. All the actors get some nice moments here, particularly Bernard Cribbins, who while he tries to keep his family calm, sees with horror the truth behind the actions being taken by the country to make "Britain for the British".THE MATRIX HAS YOU, DONNA NOBLE – As mentioned in the episode, this is the second time an entirely distinct parallel world was created around Donna Noble, the last being the virtual world in Forest of the Dead. My initial take on that was like that of Zaphod Beeblebrox' adventures in the second season of Hithchhiker's, as novelized in Restaurant at the end of the Universe. When he enters the Total Perspective Vortex (a machine that uses a piece of fairy cake to extrapolate the sum of the universe, and shows you your place and importance in it, that of almost insignificance) he is told that he is in fact the single most important being in the universe, since technically, the entire universe was created FOR him. As we discover in the last couple episodes, Donna's importance in the real universe may well be on that level…FREE FOR REDHEADS…RIIIIIGHT – In a classic example of looking too deep for importance, the folks at the Tardis Wiki noted that red hair is alledgedly good luck to the Chinese, hence the fortune teller's offer of a free reading to those with red hair. I more rationally noted that it's also a common carny trick to draw people into their attraction; half off for lovely ladies, free for men wearing hats, anything that matches some characteristic of the person being appealed to. Since it was the fortune teller's job to get Donna into the tent, she's have tried all sorts of ploys had that not worked.CROSSOVER REPORT – Most likely realizing the thematic similarity to the Sarah Jane Adventures episode "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?", RTS tossed in a passing reference to the "Trickster's Brigade", acknowledging the alien from the SJA episode.Rose's change of voice is likely far more a pedestrian solution that the plot-point searchers are willing to accept. In an interview or two, Billie Piper noted that it had been so long since she played Rose, she'd literally forgotten how to play her, how to talk like her. It may be that simple. However, I looked at Billie and thought her whole face looked different, particularly her teeth. I thought she'd gotten some dental work done, and the lisp was a side effect of that.WHO'S AFRAID OF THE…Oh hell, you know – One point that I'm surprised hasn't been contested more is how did all the Bad Wolf tags appear on everything this time? Rose was able to leave the trail of breadcrumbs last time by having access to the pure energy of the Time Vortex and manipulating time itself; neither she nor anyone else had access to such power this time. I just wrote it off as auto-suggestion, myself – once the Doctor had the phrase mentioned to him, he may well have only thought he'd seen it everywhere. That or the TARDIS translation circuitry did it to/for him, again now that it was in the forefront of his mind. Not a major thing, the effect was so overwhelmingly impressive I'm happy to come up with a no-prize winning explanation to cover up for it.GUEST STAR REPORT – not quite a big name, but the Asian (well, Asian-like alien) fortune teller was played by Chipo Chung, who has was in last season's episode 13 as Professor Yana's assistant Chan-Tho. Ever wanting to recycle actors they like, Chipo came back this year so viewers could see her face. Ironically, I recognized her by her teeth, the only part of her face not covered by prosthetics (and a brief look at her un-made up in last year's Confidential episode)
Great additions to the review, Vinnie! I'm of your thinking when it comes to the change in Rose's voice… and a very cool H2G2 reference, of course.
It was a great episode. There was a decent chunk of the episode that was not available to those of us watching on SciFi, though. The commentary on this episode was 49:42 in length. [The Stolen Earth commentary is 46 minutes so there might not be anything left out there and SciFi is going to have a 90 minute slot for Journey's End whose commentary is 1:03:25.] I saw one segment on YouTube which mentioned specific Torchwood members dying or being taken away after stopping the Sontaran attack. Those lines were edited out on SciFi. As it aired on SciFi, there are no names given and those of us who have been watching Torchwood can just assume that it was them. (Torchwood is on BBC America here, so while looking for minutes to eliminate that might have been a convenient choice.) It was weird that the fortune teller had Donna's consciousness (?) go back in time to turn right while Rose had to send Donna back so there would be two of them there. Then the surviving Donna actually remembered things of the alternate timeline Donna. Or maybe, her consciousness just snapped back when the timeline was fixed? The Doctor said that fortune teller or Beetle was part of the Trickster clan or something like that. The BBC Fact page mentions that this may be related to the being who appeared in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane and altered the timeline there. Thanks for pointing out about the "something on your back" quote. I guess since he could see into the future he saw that aspect of Donna. In the commentary [director Graeme Harper, production manager Tracie Simpson and standby art director Nick Murray] they say that the fortune teller was played by Chipo Chung who played Chantho in Utopia (also part 1 of 3 to end the season). I believe they say that the set for the fortune teller is the same location as the Torchwood vaults. They were quite surprised over the transformation to China planet. They didn't think they could pull it off, but they did. Graeme Harper says he was nervous about doing another story without the Doctor, though his presence is felt throughout. They wanted to give a feeling of the World War II evacuation and pulled that off very well. At the end, apparently Julie Gardner didn't think they had enough Bad Wolf signs the first time through so they had to redress them. It looks like it will be a wild two weeks to finish the season off.
It's interesting that Rose and UNIT use mirrors to create the time machine, saying it's to help with chronon energy. This was first mentioned in the Eighth Doctor audio play TIME OF THE DALEKS, where the Daleks and some humans were using mirrors to create time portals by bouncing chronons off of them and such.I also found it fitting that Donna died with Rose next to her, on the street, just as Rose was there for her father after he was hit by a car in FATHER'S DAY.
Actually, I thought that it was first mentioned in the 2nd Doctor's Evil of the Daleks.
You know, yuo may be right. I'll double check tonight.
It's always nice to see UNIT back in action — a wonderfully British storytelling device, the fact that they go after alien enemies with military-like precision as though they were taking on the Huns is always a hoot. I'm even more pleased to see that the Brigadier will be reappearing in the Whoverse, on a two-part Sarah Jane Adventures this coming season. I spent a couple days with actor Nick Courtney; he's one of the nicest and most professional actors I've ever worked with. He's reprised the Brigadier role on numerous Big Finish audio adventures as well.
The Brig is back? This is news to me – where was that reported? I look forward to hearing if my theory/hope that he's moved to an ambassadorial position is true.At a panel about Dan Dare (the spectacular new Virgin series in particular but the character in general) at WWPhilly, writer Garth Ennis remarked that the very "stiff upper lip" patter of the British military is still around today. He saw some footage of British air fighters in the Falklands War, and the communications between Command and the fighters was very droll: "Boys, there's a few blighters off to the left, take care of it, would you?" Not quite "Cabbage crates coming up over the briney" but there you go…I love the fact that with Who, SJA and Torchwood, we have closer to a year-round access to Doctor Who adventures. should the K-9 series ever get off the ground, that'll add to the fun.
I saw the news at Outpost Gallifrey recently in a SJA article. It was hidden by a spoiler button.
bad wolf form to reply to my own reply, but I just found the piece on Outpost Gallifrey, along with news we'll see the Sontarans again, and news of Catherine Tate appearing in the buff in a serious play in the West End.Pictures. SOMEONE must have pictures…