Holistic Review: Pour some curry sauce on my hat, because Russell T Davies has crafted a complex story that fits together (almost) perfectly, with an emotional and highly engaging plot that stays (almost) entirely away from schmaltz and over-egging.

Well, after Midnight, and given how last year's season finale turned out, I was kind of afraid of what we might get in these last three episodes. While it's still possible that it could all fall flat as a pancake again next week, for now RTD has really redeemed himself. If Turn Left is to be one of the last episodes he writes, he's given himself a great send-off. Like our previous Doctor-lite story, Turn Left fiddles with time in interesting ways. It could have turned into a complete shambles, except that in almost every case, RTD seems to have thought through the ramifications very logically, and as such, this episode has better internal consistency than probably anything else he's ever written for Doctor Who. And maybe the stress of being sure everything slotted into place affected him, or maybe he was just really determined to craft a masterpiece, but however it happened, we have practically no moments that make me think he was trying to show off, no juvenile jokes, and no ladles of syrup over anything. (Even Murray Gold reins it in, for the most part!) So, wow. My hat is off to you, Mr. Davies, or at least it would be if I hadn't just had to eat it.

He's a sneaky one, too. All the advance publicity leading up to this episode — and, even though the plotline demanded secrecy, there actually was a lot of it flying around Billie Piper — led me to believe that this episode involved the Doctor being mortally injured, and Donna having to frantically track down Rose in order to save him. That last part, I think, is at least partly due to DWM's "Can Donna find Rose in time?" headline on the cover of issue 396. So I was expecting something horrible to happen to the Doctor at the end of Midnight, or, when that failed to happen, in the market at Shan Shen. Imagine my surprise when this episode turned out to actually be about an alternative timeline for Donna.

And that's when Turn Left really sucked me in. I mean, yay Billie Piper, but a "road not taken" storyline gets me really excited, at least when it's handled well (and with precedents like It's a Wonderful Life and "The Wish" from Buffy, not to mention practically every single episode of Sliders, I have a lot of faith in this particular plot device). And here, it really is well-handled. I adore the simple decision of a left turn versus a right turn (and what a great title it makes!), where Donna literally chooses the path her life will take, even though she has no idea of the ramifications of her action. What's great is that everything that happens to Donna after she turns right feels totally true to her character and how she would have developed. Even better, most of the changed events also ring true, and seeing "the road not taken" is always intrinsically fascinating. In this case, RTD has clearly thought through the impact of the Doctor's absence, and so we get an increasingly grim future of the sort that's typically required of these stories, and it's a very nice progression, particularly when we find out that in its desperation, Britain is committing the sorts of horrible atrocities that occurred during the second World War. There are lots of great little details, especially the very nice touch when we learn that the Atmos problem isn't as big of an issue in Britain because they haven't got very much petrol any more.

Ever since Lucius Petrus Dextus predicted to Donna that "There is something on your back", fandom has been wondering what that might turn out to mean. What first popped into my head, and I clearly wasn't the only one, was that the giant spiders of Metebelis 3 might be coming back. While we don't get any giant spiders, we do get a giant beetle, and its method of clinging onto the back of its victims was apparently inspired by the spiders. Er, I mean, eight-legs. Even though this is yet one more example of Doctor Who aliens looking clearly like Earth animals, and even though this looks more like a regular old three-foot-long Earth dung beetle with added pincers than an alien parallel-timeline-eating beetle, I really love it. It's a creepy monster, its habit of sitting on your back is just yucky, and its affiliation to the Trickster is a nice touch. It's like a giant spider crossed with a Weeping Angel! Last week, I complained about the alien in Midnight being so totally unexplained. This week, we hardly learn anything more about the time beetle than we did about the creature living on Midnight. But, we know what it wants (it needs to feed off the alternative timeline that Donna creates) and we know how it dies (killed when Donna manages to undo the timeline and sever its food supply) and we know that it's really freaky when it's clinging to your back. Well, folks, this is how you do an unexplained monster, and still have it be appealing.

At this point I should probably turn to Billie Piper and her cool purple leather jacket. What can I say? She's lovely, and it's oh so good to have her back. With all that RTD went on about how it would spoil her departure scene if they brought her back for a spin-off, I never suspected that they were already concocting plans to bring her back two years down the line. I certainly have missed getting to enjoy her talent week after week. Along with a number of great line deliveries that I'll mention below, I love the look on her face as she watches Donna's reaction to the TARDIS. I love that Rose is very clearly older and wiser, in much the same way that Sarah was when we finally saw her again in School Reunion. She's independent and capable, and very knowledgeable about things 'alien', and at this point I wonder if she would even want to rejoin the Doctor? (If she does, then it's going to take yet another earth-shattering twist in order to keep them apart, and I dread to think what it might be.) One interesting thing is that Rose's status as "mysterious omniscient observer" means that we still have a lot of unanswered questions about her, which one assumes will get addressed in the season finale. Why can she suddenly travel between dimensions again? (I think we know the answer to that one!) Where is her "home base" and how does she get back and forth from it? (It's not UNIT, although she's clearly been working with them for a while; it must be parallel-Torchwood, but we never see it, and she seems to regard UNIT as a local base of operations.) How does she end up warping into Donna's reality unexpectedly, on their second meeting? How has she been so thoroughly filled in on the Doctor's travels after she left him, not to mention Torchwood's activities? It's good that we have some questions for which the answers will have to wait. I must say, as cool as multi-Doctor stories are, I really really love multi-companion stories, because it's just so much fun to watch how they interact. What's superb is that even though Billie is secretly returning in this episode, RTD wisely avoids turning it into The Rose Show. Instead, just as it should be, Rose is there as a very wonderful support system to back up our fantastic reigning companion, Donna Noble.

And oh, the spotlight sure shines on Catherine Tate this week. With David Tennant barely around, she's in every single scene, and really gets to carry the episode as its emotional center. Unlike the protagonists of It's a Wonderful Life or "The Wish", Donna is just as fooled by the alternate reality as anybody; she has no idea that the entire universe has just changed around her, and what's super-cool about that is that we don't get New!Donna in Turn Left, we get the old self-centered shallow Donna back. Without having those experiences with the Doctor, Donna never became better than herself; she remained just the same ordinary woman that she was before she got involved with the Racnoss. Catherine Tate summed it up nicely in Doctor Who Confidential: without the Doctor's influence, the only way Donna knows to channel her anger is to shout at the world. She never has the chance to change someone's life, much less be a hero and change the world. And at first, as I was watching this, I was a little disappointed that Donna seemed so ineffectual, taking a back seat to events without ever trying to get involved or improve things. But now it makes total sense, especially because once that opportunity does arise — and Donna has to be willing to sacrifice her own life to improve the world — she shows as much bravery as you could ever expect from anyone, letting herself be killed so that the universe can get back on track. By the end, it's nice that Donna has had her internal strength and her "specialness" reaffirmed. I love Tate's deliveries of "I mean... they didn't say his name. Could be any Doctor.", "Well, sack one of this lot! Sack Cliff! He just sits there! Don't know what he does all day. Sorry, Cliff. Actually, I'm not sorry! What do you do all day?", "Beatrice!", "You're supposed to say 'no, you're not'.", "Turn it off! Please!", her lovely smile with "Brilliant.", the moment when she abruptly clamps her gaping jaw shut as she stares at the TARDIS interior, Donna's very convincing terror as she comes to grips with the Time Beetle on her back, and the very relieved hug that she gives the Doctor.

Along with Donna, much of the story is carried by Sylvia and most especially Wilf. Jacqueline King plays a particularly nasty version of Sylvia in this episode (and yet, one imagines, a version not far removed from the "real" Sylvia), who never misses an opportunity to criticize Donna or let her know what a disappointment she has been as a daughter. I can't imagine a mother like her, who looks at you with distaste and never expresses her love — not even when the world is going to hell in a handbasket and everyone else you've ever cared about is gone. Francine Jones may have been a sourpuss and a spitfire, but Sylvia Noble is really kind of loathsome. The way King spits out "Well, let me tell you, sweetheart, city executives don't need temps. Except for practice.", which is a pretty cruel line in and of itself, and "To be honest, I've given up on you", is really kind of shocking! And here, watching the two of them interact, I suddenly realized that if I had grown up with a mother like her, I probably would have ended up with an argumentative disposition and a tendency to shout at the world, too. So, as much as I actually do enjoy those traits in Donna — because she manages to keep them hidden until she gets annoyed — I realize now that they don't come from a good place of self-empowerment, but rather a bad place of defensiveness, a constant need for justifying her behavior, an unfulfilled need for approval, and a severely beaten-down self-esteem. (Besides, just look at how often in this episode Donna calls herself "nothing special".) It's no wonder, either, that when the Doctor takes her under his wing, and shows her how good she can be and how much he values her, that she blossoms. I think it's making me love her even a little bit more. Let's hope Sylvia gets the chance real soon to find out just what an awesome daughter she's got, hmm? (And let's not let that happen right before Donna is killed or anything, mmkay?) There are lots of good character moments in here for everyone, but I particularly like the scene in which Sylvia mentions that every day, she thinks of another friend of hers in London who probably died in the explosion.

As the much more supportive member of the family, Bernard Cribbins continues to be one of the best things about season 4. A very telling moment for the whole family is when they find out that, not only do they not have a house to themselves, they don't even have a proper room to sleep in. Sylvia just looks shattered, Donna looks confused and slightly panicky, and Wilf bucks up and determines to make the best of it, and in the process tries to lighten his family's spirits. He seems to always be thinking of other people over himself. He suggests selling his beloved telescope, his most prized possession, to earn some money for the family. He sleeps on the couch rather than the bed, despite probably being the one among them with the most need for it. He immediately realizes what's happening to the Colasanto family, and his eyes brim with tears as he plays along with Mr Colasanto's pretense to let him have his dignity. What a wonderful man, and a thoroughly enjoyable character, who proves that at some point, we really need an over-50s companion. (Hmm... Wilfred Mott and Sally Sparrow? How's that for a crazy-cool TARDIS team! I bet they'd get along splendidly. You'll notice that I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for Catherine Tate's inevitable departure... I've been trying to do that since roundabout The Fires of Pompeii, at the very latest.) And we get a lovely mention of Donna's dad, since Howard Attfield can't be with us in person.

As with Donna last week, we don't get a whole lot of David Tennant here, but he certainly makes the most of the scenes he's in. I really like the way his radar perks up when Donna mentions every world in the multiverse being in danger, and his increasing intensity as Donna continues to confirm his suspicions.

The number of supporting roles in this story is simply huge. Three of them really stood out, for me. The first, of course, is our beloved Chipo Chung, free from Malmooth prosthetics as the fortune-teller. Throughout the episode, I kept thinking in the back of my mind that she looked and sounded familiar, but it wasn't until I saw her name in the credits that I mentally slapped my forehead; I'd totally forgotten that she was supposed to be in this story. She does a superb job as a villain, totally not friendly-Chantho, and much more evil-sorceress. I'd love to know what she was doing in league with the Time Beetle. (ooh, that looks funny all capitalized and stuff!) Great to have her back in yet another memorable role. She gives a great delivery to "Oh, you're fascinating!" and "Turn right, and never meet that man! Turn right, and change the world!" Can we have her in every episode 11, please? Equally memorable was the effusively warm Rocco Colasanto, charmingly played by Joseph Long. Of course, Colasanto is probably such a friendly and lovable soul in order to point out just how very wrong the labour camps are (had they carried off the woman in the doorway, or the wicked fortune-teller, I doubt anyone would have made as much of a fuss), but regardless of his status as a heartstring-tugger, he's a super character. The third on my list is Noma Dumzwemi as UNIT Captain Magambo, who gets a very small role but has a lot of presence, and imbues her few lines with a surprising amount of personality. I'd definitely like to see her back.

Of the ones with slightly more reduced roles, I really liked Natalie Walter as Donna's blonde friend Alice Coltrane. Her terrified expression as she kept glancing at Donna's back was great, and I was over the moon with her horrified-whisper delivery of "There's something on your back!" Great way to ratchet up the tension! Performing the same role was Loraine Velez as the Spanish maid, whose delivery of "Tienes algo en tu espalda!" was near-hysterical and almost accusing (if perhaps a bit over-familiar to Donna, whom she had only just met and was also serving!). I was a little perplexed, though, by the rather funny fact that one moment she's staring in horror at the explosion, and the next (between cuts) she has swiveled around to point at Donna and give her the evil eye (or is she muttering some kind of exorcism incantation, perhaps?). Finally, I thought Catherine York did a superb job as the female reporter, delivering the news of the Royal Hope's disappearance and return. Something about her line delivery just seemed very genuine. And, of course, it was lovely to see Clive Standen back as Private Harris, the very unexpected return of Ben Righton as Morgenstern, and our favorite American news reporter played by Lachele Carl. Apparently now she's not called Mal Loup any more; we're calling her Trinity Wells. Which is really a far nicer name. I bet she hated "Mal" and had it legally switched.

Turn Left is a bit of a showier episode for Graeme Harper than The Unicorn and the Wasp was. There's a very creepy shot of the beetle crawling onto Donna's back (it's indisputably scarier when Harper only shows us glimpses of it), I love the shot of Donna illuminated by the lights as she prepares to travel back in time, and the shot of the beetle wriggling as it dies is pretty cool (if, as Andrew pointed out, a bit mechanical-looking).

The first time, watching through this story, I had the sense that Murray Gold was occasionally being repetitive and drawing on old musical scores, but by the time I got to my review-viewing, all I really noticed was a few nice musical moments when Donna goes in search of fish and chips, the funereal music as Sylvia sits inside the flat looking lifeless, when Donna approaches the dead TARDIS, and as Donna marches off to the time machine. So, pleasant incidental music this time around! We're on a good run, apparently.

It's not an effects-heavy episode, unless you count the ones that are revived from previous episodes (the Webstar, the Royal Hope being stolen, the Titanic, the Adipose and the atmospheric converter burning the sky), but there's a really cool and unsettling effect of all the stars in the sky winking out. I love the effect of UNIT's time-travel machine... yay, swirling lights!

And a little more praise to RTD for how very well he paced this story. The beginning is fun and exciting, then we get the intriguing "what if?" scenario, which degenerates into a rather apocalyptic story. Throughout, Rose pops in and out to liven things up. Then, once UNIT is introduced, we get hope for a resolution, and when they send Donna back in time, we get one last time crunch to add some tension. And then, just when we think everything is peacefully resolved, he adds one last twist. It's never boring and he never falls into that trap of including things just because they sound cool, whether or not they really make sense. I would point out the scene in which the Doctor's comment about Donna's brilliance jogs her memory: it's perfectly natural dialogue and an ideal way to help her remember Rose, without it seeming far-fetched. So, I have to say that out of every story he's written for the revival, I think this is far and away his best work.

Minor points:

• Shan Shen is a cool planet! I'm so glad that, for once, we get to see an Earth-colony planet where English isn't the dominant language (although I suppose that, for all we know, the holiday planet that the Macra attacked and the vampires' planet in E-Space could have been Norwegian-speaking, and the TARDIS filters just translated for us). It reminds me a bit of Firefly, actually, which is definitely a good thing. What's funny is that the cityscape with spaceships at the very beginning didn't register with me, so I assumed they were actually in China (either the past or the present-day) and it startled me a little when Donna casually mentioned turning up in the Doctor's spaceship! It wasn't until she said "this planet called Earth, miles away" that I went, ohhhhh... they're on another planet! (And this puts us up to 5 alien planets in season 4! Woohoo!)

• It's cool to see Donna so thoroughly enjoying herself on her travels with the Doctor... this makes two holidays in a row (sort of), so at least they're attempting to get a lot of downtime from all the monster-hunting. I'd love to know just what it is that they're drinking, with all the foam. I find it funny that the Doctor got Donna a smaller glass than his, in case she didn't like it!

• Yay, this is nice to hear:

  Fortune Teller: "Don't you want to know if you're going to be happy?"
  Donna: "I'm happy right now, thanks."

• Nice response, when Donna calls the fortune teller out on asking about her personal history:

  Fortune Teller: "I see the future. Tell me the past."

• Given that the flashback framing makes it look as though Donna's going to be sick all over the fortune-teller's table, how is it that she's still calmly able to narrate the scene of her walking to the car with her mother?

• I love that Donna's response to her mother's extreme negativity about meeting a well-to-do man at work is "Yeah. Well, they haven't met me." What's sad is that apparently, in the revised timeline, Donna never comes to this assertive conclusion, although maybe agreeing with her mother on the point helped keep a little more peace in the household.

• When Alice stares with horror at Donna's back, Donna mentions that Alice once claimed to have seen a ghost. Is it possible that only people who are time-sensitive (or whatever one must be in order to tap into the supernatural) can detect the presence of the time beetle on Donna's back, even if they can't quite see it? Which might explain why Rose can tell that it's there, too. It's not really a question that we need an answer to, but it's nice that he hints at a possible explanation for it, without coming right out and telling us.

• How is it that the underground chamber was flooded too fast for the Doctor to regenerate? In the episode itself, it looked like the Doctor and Donna had plenty of time to escape, so whether or not she snapped him out of his fugue, surely he still would have noticed the water lapping at his ankles? (I must admit, I think it's a bit of a stretch to claim that Donna saying "Doctor, you can stop now!" was that crucial of a moment... I think they're having to stretch a bit to find a key moment in that scene!) Besides, drowning is a slow death, surely! (As Andrew pointed out, surely falling off a radio telescope is a faster death, but the Doctor had time to regenerate after that one.) However, I am mollified on this point by RTD's theory — which I had never really considered before — that there are occasions when the Doctor can't regenerate, like a crushed skull or being fed to a compost grinding machine, and perhaps the flood barrier collapsed on him before he got out. (I was also wondering, how did he destroy the flood barrier if not with the baubles that he got from Donna's wedding? I suppose he had to crash the wedding of a different huon-dosed temp who also had a booby-trapped Christmas tree in the reception hall. Or perhaps he had to find another way to destroy the flood barrier, like blowing it up, and that's what killed him? Or maybe the beetle is able to manipulate the new timestream a bit? Which would neatly explain another point that I'll bring up below...)

• Awesome delivery by Billie Piper:

  Donna: "Why d'you keep looking at my back?"
  Rose: (glancing quickly away) "I'm not."

• The scene in which Donna angrily leaves Jival Chowdry's office ("Toy cactus. You can have that, Beatrice. Catch.") really had me cracking up, mostly because I missed the word "toy"! Now that would have been revenge. (And I wondered why Beatrice actually did catch it, and then did not howl in pain!)

• I love all the references to previous companions' fates in this episode — Oliver Morgenstern's very cool and unexpected reappearance caught me by surprise, and it's a nice touch that Martha gave up her life to save his; and how cool that Sarah (along with Maria and Luke, for some reason) managed to stop the Plasmavore's plans and save the Earth, but died in the process. (Presumably either Sarah convinces the Judoon to return the hospital to Earth, just before she dies, or the Judoon decide to do it out of benevolence.)

• I love the way you can see in Rose's eyes the exact moment that she notices the time beetle, and they do a great job of synching up the beetle noises to Rose's glance:

  Rose: "How're you doing, you're looking good." (she glances behind Donna and her smile freezes) "How's things, what've you been up to?"

• I really like the fact that with no Doctor around, he and Martha never go to Malcassairo, so the Master is never awoken and the Toclafane are never created. I'm sure that helped a lot, meaning that RTD didn't have to try to figure out a way around the Master's occupation of Earth!

• It's a good thing for Donna and her family that that "luxury weekend break" isn't blacked out over the Christmas holidays!

• Nice line! So Sylvia has a little bit of Hyacinth Bucket in her, does she?

  Sylvia: "For God's sake, don't tell them that we won it in a raffle. Be classy."

• I love the idea of everyone going for a walk on Christmas morning! What a charming idea. I may have to try it myself. (Except that my family is more the "lounge-around-in-pajamas-all-day" type and probably wouldn't really want to get dressed to go out...)

• I'm realizing that, while I was kind of dissatisfied with Rose's "anything and everything" style of clothing after season 1 (during which at least we knew that she liked pinks and reds), the costume designers did a better job with Martha (who wore burgundy and purple and dainty little jewellery) and have done leagues better with Donna (who favors purple, magenta and grey... although, like Mel, still no green for the redhead!). This makes me very happy. And we even know that Donna likes comfortable flowing dresses, jackets and pantsuits.

• Okay, now this is very subtly hilarious. Donna thinks that a shot of the Titanic falling out of the sky is a sequel to the first movie??? I can just see it now. "You loved Titanic... now see Titanic 2: Earth-berg."

• But, oooookay, now we get to my first, and only, really big issue with the plot. The Titanic crashes straight into Buckingham Palace, and the ensuing explosion wipes out southeastern England. But, um... that's a bit mild compared to what we were told would happen in this situation! Way back in Voyage of the Damned, the Doctor's exact words were "If we hit the planet, the nuclear storm explodes and wipes out life on Earth." So, y'know, Russell, if you're gonna give us huge stakes in one episode, you can't suddenly backpedal like this in the next. Kinda makes the Doctor look a little silly and overdramatic. However, if the time beetle is capable of tweaking events in its new timeline, and caused the Doctor to die, maybe it's done something here, too, to keep Donna alive so that it can continue to feast on her altered timeline. (At least, I assume that she has to be alive in the altered timeline for it to get nourishment.) It's the mark of a great episode that I'm willing to swallow a massive inconsistency like this, and try to rationalize it away!

• Why did a family get booted out of their home for missing a mortgage payment? I don't get the impression that Donna's family have the money to pay for housing right now, themselves. So why weren't the old family just required to open up their home to host refugees, as a form of payment?

• RTD's scripting and Harper's direction do a great job of conveying that horrible sinking feeling that Donna and her family get as they realize that, not only is this not their house, all they have to live in is the kitchen.

• Such a cute accent!

  Mr Colasanto: "You got the cooker, you keep warm, you got the fridge, you keep cool. It's good!"

• Wow, one of two lines that went totally past me (the other was Donna's "yelling at the world" line... something about feeding whippets... but it didn't seem important enough to bring up). Did I hear this conversation right? And if so, what on earth does it mean??? Oh, how I wish WikiSubtitles hadn't been taken offline since The Fires of Pompeii... (Ahh! Andrew tells me that this is supposed to be "is there a rota?", aka a schedule. I never would've figured that out. Thanks!)

  Sylvia: (inquiring about the bathroom) "No, I mean, is there a rotor?"
  Mr Colasanto: "Is potluck! Is fun!"

• Great cut to the US having problems of our own, just as Wilf exclaims that America is going to rescue England! Cue sinking feeling again. However, I must say that I am delighted that, with the UK apparently an unsuitable home base after seven million members of the population have been killed by radiation, the Adipose have picked the USA as the next-most-obese country on Earth, and successfully converted sixty million American citizens. I knew we ought to make an appealing target! That's one other nice thing about this episode, it's taken the opportunity to answer some of my burning questions about previous stories. (We also now know that, had their plan been completed, the Adipose would have sent numerous spaceships to cities around the country to pick up their babies.)

• I think Donna might be a bit deluded when she claims that "There's gotta be work. Everyone needs secretaries." Yeeeees, in the midst of a severe economic depression, everybody wants to hire someone else to write their letters and file their papers!

• Love the candle sitting in the colander to provide light. That's a nice background detail!

• So, as refugees — even in their own country — they're not allowed to vote? That seems a little harsh!

• Another nice character moment: I think it's cute that Donna, and even Sylvia, end up getting into the living-room singalong.

• The soldier who points the gun at Donna's back — I think it must be Paul Richard Biggin — is extremely intense! That was a great moment.

• Then we get one last mention of the Doctor's associates, when we find out that Torchwood — apparently the Doctor's last remaining allies on Earth, although one assumes UNIT is still around somewhere — infiltrates the Sontaran ship and gives their lives to destroy it. Which means that the next time something attacks the Earth, UNIT is the only line of defense. I wonder how Jack ended up getting transported to Sontar?

• Awesome delivery by both Tate and Piper in this scene:

  Donna: "I'm nothing special! I mean, I'm — I'm not, I'm nothing special! I'm just a temp! I'm not even that, I'm nothing!"
  Rose: "Donna Noble, you're the most important woman in the whole of creation!"
  Donna: "Oh, don't. Just... don't. I'm tired. I'm so tired."
  Rose: "I need you to come with me."
  Donna: "Yeah. Well. Blonde hair might work on the men, but you ain't shifting me, lady."
  Rose: (appreciatively) "That's more like it!"
  Donna: "I've got plenty more."
  Rose: "But you'll come with me. Only when you want to."
  Donna: (turning to leave) "You'll have a long wait, then."
  Rose: "Not really, just three weeks. Tell me, does your grandfather still own that telescope?"

• The labour-camp scene is really awesome. I love that it starts out with an extremely joyous moment, and ends with horror and dread. And Mr Colasanto gets a superb line: "Now, stop it before I kiss you too much!"

• Ouch...!

  Donna: "You were right, you said I should've worked harder at school. I suppose I've always been a disappointment."
  Sylvia: (lifelessly) "Yeah."

• Hrmmmm, the backyard where Donna and Wilf sit with the telescope looks exactly like the backyard in Partners in Crime where they did the same thing, but with extra rubbish around them. They didn't re-use the location, surely?

• Ahh! The Hanging Plastic Strips make a reappearance, as Rose takes Donna into the UNIT hangar!

• It's cool that the TARDIS is still responding to Rose... I like the way it comes to life slightly when she touches it.

• Very nice line, and a very cool concept.

  Rose: "He thought you were brilliant."
  Donna: "Don't be stupid."
  Rose: "Well, you are! Just took the Doctor to show you that, simply by being with him. He did the same to me. To everyone he touches."

• Eep, Rose surely is shifty on the topic of whether or not she and the Doctor were "together"!

• Why does she say the beetle is "part of" Donna? It's not like a heart or a lung! It's a parasite! Is a tapeworm "part of" you???

• Hee! As Rose hypothesizes that the time beetle is in a state of flux:

  Donna: (understandably upset and impatient) "What does that mean?"
  Rose: "I don't know. It's the sort of thing the Doctor would say!"

• I love the fact that, when Donna gets mad about having been used by Rose, Rose tells her that she's not just a host for the time beetle; Donna is bending reality around her, too. That is neat and means that Gray was probably right, I'm going to like whatever fate RTD has in store for Donna.

• Awesome line:

  Rose: "The Doctor and Donna Noble, together, to stop the stars from going out."

• Hee! again:

  Donna: "How d'you know it's gonna work?"
  Rose: "Hmmm?"

• I love Donna's idea of a distraction:

  Donna: "Well... I just have to... run up to myself, and... have a good argument!"
  Rose: "I'd like to see that!"

• Great line for Donna, and a super delivery by Tate:

  Donna: "I'm ready. ... 'Cause I understand now. You said I was gonna die, but... you mean this whole world is gonna blink out of existence. But that's not dying, 'cause a better world takes its place. The Doctor's world. And I'm still alive. That's right, isn't it? I don't die. If I change things, I don't die. That's... that's right, isn't it?"

• The weird thing is, Donna is exactly right. Yes, she has to die in this world in order to cancel out this reality, but she is also still alive in the Doctor's world. So why doesn't Rose agree that, yes, that's right? I can think of two explanations, only one of which I like. One: Donna had to believe that she was going to die, so that she would come up with the idea of stepping in front of the truck, and have the courage to go through with it. Two: Something is still going to happen in the Doctor's world to cause Donna's death. Oh, RTD loves to tease me. Although Rose implies that Donna won't be alive at all in the revised timeline, after she sacrifices herself, and clearly that wasn't true, so maybe the first option is the right one after all. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

• Love the shot of Donna screaming at the clouds that they dropped her off in the wrong place! What must the passersby have thought?

• Another thing I love: Donna is racing so hard to get to the intersection in time that she's wheezing for breath. Now that's a natural response to racing up and down corridors! (And Catherine portrays it very convincingly.) For a moment, I thought maybe Rose had meant "You're gonna die. ...of a heart attack."

• Almost a plot niggle here. That truck drives a pretty significant distance from the intersection before Donna throws herself in front of it, and when that happens, we can see a fairly long stretch of the road behind it, and there are no other cars coming. At the time, past-Donna is just about to make the turn; fortunately, the scream distracts her, and that few seconds is apparently enough time for a massive number of cars (that we never see) to drive past and clog up the whole road. Then, suddenly, the entire lane is backed up all the way past the intersection, so Donna turns left instead. It seems a bit contrived, mostly in terms of the time-scale, but like I've said... this is a really good episode, so I'm willing to swallow my uncertainty and go with the flow!

• Presumably, now that Donna has killed the beetle by destroying the alternate universe, it was never even created in the first place... or was it? Now we don't know if Donna turned left because she had faith in herself, or because of the traffic. I wonder if we'll ever get an answer to that?

• I'm glad that Donna doesn't completely forget her memories of the parallel universe, at least not right away. It's very cool waiting to see if she's going to remember anything crucial! Oh, the anticipation!

• Love this line of the Doctor's, too:

  Doctor: "Changes a life in tiny little ways. Most times the universe just compensates around it, but with you, great big parallel world!"

• And now Mr. Wipes-Out-Life-On-Earth seems to think that two instances of finding oneself in a parallel universe is "a lot". Maybe by my standards, Doctor, but surely not yours. Besides, Charlotte's virtual world was not a parallel universe by any stretch of the imagination, so aren't we overstating the case more than a little here? And one of the other "coincidences" of which he speaks is Donna actively seeking him out. It's as if I went to the grocery store for celery, found some celery, and said "Gosh! What a crazy coincidence!" (Andrew pointed out that his encountering Donna again was far less of a coincidence than his encountering Tegan again. In Amsterdam. Where Omega happened to be hiding.) I will concede the point that it was a remarkable coincidence that he happened to meet her grandfather, but aside from that? Let's not get carried away here just to make it sound like Donna is this force of improbability!

• This is cute. Notice how different her reaction is to the last time he told her this, in The Poison Sky. I love her grateful smile!

  Donna: "Don't be so daft. I'm nothing special."
  Doctor: "Yes you are, you're brilliant!"

• One of those edge-of-your-seat scenes!

  Doctor: "What did she look like?"
  Donna: "She was... blonde."
  Doctor: (trying not to sound too excited) "What was her name?"
  Donna: "I don't know."
  Doctor: "Donna, what was her name?"

• I love how long Catherine pauses before Donna finally says "Bad Wolf"! Talk about being on the edge of your seat! It might have slipped out of her mind before she was able to tell him... so that was really exciting. And also, coooooool.

• However, the one moment in this story where RTD comes perilously close to cheesy is in the final shot of all the text in the market having turned to "Bad Wolf". It's a cool moment, but really, we got it after the first few shots... you don't need to keep showing us! In particular, the shot of the individual letters on the banner is just a ridiculously unnecessary step that makes me want to roll my eyes. It annoyed me with YANA and it annoys me here. And it's not just him - Harper was directing the silly thing, and Murray Gold pours some super-dramatic music on top, so I blame the whole lot of them! However, I do love that even the TARDIS has changed, and the shot on the inside where you can see the "Bad Wolf" on the sign over the door is pretty neat! (I'm glad I watched this episode when I did, because about two days later, DWM issue number 397 came in the mail, and they too changed all the text — even the title logo — to "Bad Wolf", which would have been a bit of a spoiler if it had arrived any earlier! Besides, they'd already put enough spoilers in the magazine for the season finale...)

• Also, yay, the cloister bell is ringing! However, I must say, had they left Shan Shen and found the console room red and the cloister bell ringing, I think the Doctor would have realized that there was a problem even without Donna having remembered "Bad Wolf"! (Unless her uttering the words is what changed all the text in the market and started the cloister bell ringing? But that would be kind of strange.)

• Very exciting promo for next week... thanks to the quick shots of many of the guest characters, this may be the first promo of the revival that I've had to watch in slow-motion! (And speaking of shots of guest characters, and spoilers in DWM... what was Doctor Who Confidential thinking, slapping a whopping great spoilery clip at the end of this week's installment?! Andrew somehow missed it, thank goodness, but if I hadn't been spoiled on this particular plot point months ago, there's no way I would have been surprised by next week's episode. It's not quite as in-your-face as the reveal of the mutated Dalek Sec on the cover of Radio Times last year, but this — and Billie Piper's return — must surely be up there as the worst-kept secret of the season. They're not even trying at this point!)

A really cool "what if?" parallel-universe storyline, with a starring role for Catherine Tate and the return of Billie Piper in a particularly well-utilized role. Combine that with some of RTD's best scripting and plotting ever in Doctor Who, and that makes this one of my top three stories of the season so far.