"Doctor Who" Finale Part 1 Recap: “Turn Left”

Rose says roachie feeds off time. Or more specifically, by changing time and making someone’s life take a different turn. She reminds Donna of a seemingly ordinary day when she turned right instead of left, thereby never meeting the Doctor. As a result, the whole world changed around her.

What’s more, there’s something especially weird with this particular bug and how it’s affecting Donna. Rose says it seems “in a state of flux.” When Donna asks what that means, Rose laughs and says, “I don’t know. It’s the sort of thing the Doctor would say.” Which is good, since he’s not here to say these things himself this week.

Donna starts getting upset, crying that they’re more interested in the bug than her. But Rose reveals that they’re getting interesting readings about Donna herself that have been with her since the day she was born. Hmmmm. Interesting, no? Rose cryptically says that she now realizes that it’s going to take both Donna as well as the Doctor to stop the stars from going out.

They shut off the machines and lead Donna out of the circle. Donna asks how she can get rid of the bug. Rose replies that it’s as simple as traveling through time. She says that the TARDIS tracked down the exact moment when Donna turned right instead of left. Donna now needs to go back to that moment and somehow make sure her past self turns left. By doing so, she’ll go on to meet the Doctor as she was always meant to.

They lead Donna back to the center of the circle, which is actually the TARDIS-powered time machine that will send her back. They give her an overcoat to protect her from “temporal feedback,” a wristwatch to track local time, and a glass of water to “combat dehydration.” Heh. If it were me, I’d have figured as long as they were dispensing drinks, you might as well ask for a few martinis and put it on UNIT’s tab.

As the machines power up again, Donna says she isn’t afraid. Because she now understands that when Rose said she was going to die, she just meant that this entire alternate world is going to disappear once the other reality is set right. “But that’s not dying,” she says. “Because a better world takes its place. The Doctor’s world. And I’m still alive! That’s right, isn’t it?”

Unfortunately for her, Rose is barely able to look her in the eye and simply says, “I’m sorry.” Just as Donna gets zapped into the past.

Donna pops up on a busy street corner and quickly realizes that she’s a half a mile away from the intersection where she needs to be. Looking at the wristwatch, she sees she’s only got four minutes to get there before the fateful turn is made.

So she Run Lola Runs for it. We keep cutting back and forth between past reality Donna in the car with her mum arguing about which job to take, and the other bug-carrying Donna running through the streets to get to her in time.

She stops running and, looking at her watch, realizes she’s not going to get to the car in time. But just as car-Donna is preparing to turn right, bug-carrying-Donna remembers what Rose said about her dying and has an epiphany. Then she throws herself in front of an oncoming truck.

While she lies there dying, Rose appears above her. She leans down and says, “Tell him this: two words …” Then she whispers something into Donna’s ear but we can’t hear what the two words actually are. How awesome would it be if they were, “I’m pregnant.” But somehow I doubt it.

Inside the car, the other Donna and her mum hear the sounds of the truck accident in the distance. Donna sees the traffic building up and announces that this basically makes her decision for her. No way is she going to go right and get stuck in that traffic jam behind the accident, so she’s turning left. I don’t know if I’m buying this. The Donna Noble I’ve come to know and like would have turned right anyway just to rubberneck and check out all the damage and gore.

After she switches the car signal back to left, we get this trippy sequence where all the events of Right-Turn Reality speedily rewind.