I don't agree with you on the episode (solid four-star job for me), but I agree with you on (as I've been saying in various places across the web) Bernard Cribbins. I bloody love him, and in my book he's the second-best guest star the show has had behind Sir Derek of Jacobishire.

It's a shame, but I think I completely agree with Andrew on this one. Two Stars looks harsh at first, but I agree with just about everything you say. I'd add that devaluing The Doctor like that is a SHIT thing to do (much worse than, say, having him be conflicted about saving people in Pompeii) and that most of the referenced episode were complete JOBBIES, and not worth the time or effort to be re visited in such a big episode.

>and that most of the referenced episode were complete JOBBIES

Actually, someone said it elsewhere, but I'm inclined to agree - did you not think that some extra weight was given to VOTD by what happened in the Doctor's absence? Rather than seeming frivolous and silly, it actually went "Hey, this is the event that would have SERIOUSLY fucked up the country if the Doctor hadn't been around..."

I dunno. I was thinking more of the opposite. I was more insulted that such a lightweight episode was given so much credibility that it really, really didn't earn.

I liked the episode - a nice prelude to the close of 4 years of RTD (aside from the specials). The preview did look guest heavy though

But what was going on with Rose's voice/mouth??

Good review, everywhere else on the net seems to be giving this one all the praise that Midnight should have got. And whereas Midnight was a masterclass in creating suspense by leaving so much unsaid, this was just ham-fisted nonsensical bollocks. Why is Rose in this episode at all? How did she learn any of what she knows, how is travelling through time, space and the void without a TARDIS and most importantly what's wrong with her mouth?

I hate how flat I found this whole episode, because a) I LOVE Davies, and would write entire volumes about how great his work is, both in general and on Who; and b) because it was the 'Tate episode', and I've been happily surprised by how much I've loved her in this series. I nearly gave it three stars just because of what I wanted the episode to be, and what it wanted to do.

But dammit, I was bored, frustrated, and, in the end, left thinking about Donna's overall unimportance. Which so wasn't the point they were making.

> I was more insulted that such a lightweight episode was given so much credibility that it really, really didn't earn.

I'll go with this, too. I liked VotD, but it was holiday fluff. The Racnos was fair enough, but the Adipose and this just didn't have the heft to be part of what they were trying to do. (I'll let the Sontaran's slip through - just.)

I thought it was a brilliant episode. Very dark, very intriguing and a very worthwhile exercise. Don't agree with the review at all.

No.1 - I don't agree that this episode was hard to understand and I don't believe the reviewer is in a position to tell me what a 'SF newbie' would not understand about this.

And all the talk about other shows doing this type of story - RTD creates an extraordinary alternate timeline in this episode. I thought it was an extremely powerful episode that tied in very well with previous episodes in the series. Sure, it's a shame that the S4 episodes being referenced were not as good as we might have hoped but even so, it worked very well in the episode.

Donna's world is being destroyed, her mother's in deep depression and her beloved grandad's best friend being carted off to a concentration camp. Motivation enough for me. I didn't miss the angle that she missed the travelling with the Doctor - her life has gone so badly to fuck that I'm sure domestic tedium and office work would be more than a sufficient change in fortune. And I like the idea that the Doctor's anger unleashed on the spiders in Runaway Bride was so much that only a companion could snap him out of it. He's a fucked up man he is and I thought it worked well within the Post-Time War Doctor mystique. Obviously if Davies knew he would be writing this episode back in 2006 he may have done something that was on the face of it more substantial, but I thought it worked well, no complaints.

Bernard Cribbins brilliant. Catherine Tate pretty good apart from overdoing the beetle-reveal and not closing her gob fast enough when she examined the Tardis. Continuing the great second half of this series very nicely then. 5/5.

It's frustrating to me, because I am *totally* on board with the idea that RTD deserves this episode, as self referencing and congratulatory as it is, he damn well deserves something like this to round off his final full series. I can't help it doing not nearly as much for me as it should.

I actually had a big problem with the relentless darkness in this episode. It was like he decided to get SO grim, because he knows he can just reverse it at the end. Despite Cribbins playing it beautifully, I thought all that stuff about work camps to be hugely manipulative and out of line. Something so horrible just being chucked in so he can pile on the 'human tragedy' just so he can cheapen it at the end. So, that's it, then? Without the Doctor and Donna the British government turn to tyranny on its own citizens? Oh. Great.

1) Couldn't you essentially take this criticism for pretty-much anything Who has done past or present? It's always riffed on other ideas and rarely produced the definitive take on them. There have been better "alternate universe" stories but this show doesn't have some sort of duty to match the best of them; it'd be nice if they did of course but I can't really accept this as an overbearing critique.

2) I don't understand your argument here. Of course Donna doesn't know who Rose is, she's never met her. That the audience knows who she is is irrelevant; Donna hasn't a clue, it's just some weird blonde girl to her and there's no reason why she should be anyone else. I agree about the "on your back" stuff, though; it was overplayed.

3) I got the impression that we were supposed to wonder whether all this was all now the "true" course of events or whether the trickster had trapped Donna in some parallel universe.

4) But isn't it the case that a) the Doctor usually keeps time "in line" which is why it remains so hardy (it's something Timelords do, as he pointed-out in "Father's Day" ) and b) the beastie is actually perverting the true course of time completely; this isn't how it's supposed to work out.

5) Wasn't the point, though, that the "stars going out" was a threat that was inevitably coming just like the Sontarans were? What the episode was saying was "this is a future threat the audience hasn't seen yet and the Doctor isn't there to stop it in this alternate reality"; it's relevant that that was the moment Donna agreed on Rose's plan (rather than, say, the Sontaran invasion) because it signalled to the audience that it was linked to the finale. No problems there.

6) Donna is important *because* the Doctor is important, she needed to be there to save his life. Donna is, at the end of the day, just an ordinary woman but something she does has a massive effect because it saves the life of someone who's extraordinary; that was the meaning of the whole "Donna is the most important person in the universe" thing.

Personally, I liked it, a four-star episode for me. There were numerous problems (the rubbish and unimaginative "trickster" design, the sledgehammer-subtlety of the "labour camps" moment) and I agree with your argument that there was no real reason for Donna to be sent back in time to make herself turn left but I thought it made for an entertaining and involving 50 minutes of telly.

Completely agree with the review but, since I've bitched about this episode elsewhere, I wont elaborate too much.

What I will say is that the overriding theme of this episode (intended or otherwise) is "Life is shit without the Doctor", which I found painfully ironic for a Doctor-lite episode.

"I thought all that stuff about work camps to be hugely manipulative and out of line. Something so horrible just being chucked in so he can pile on the 'human tragedy' just so he can cheapen it at the end. So, that's it, then? Without the Doctor and Donna the British government turn to tyranny on its own citizens? Oh. Great."

I think what was implied was rather darker than that; the population of most of the South of England had been uprooted and moved to the North and Davies was, I think, playing out what he thought was the endgame of the tension this would create. I didn't get the impression it was the government doing this of its own accord but the government doing this under pressure from the populace ("England for the English"). My main problem was the "extermination camps" aspect which was both unsubtle ("it's Nazi Britain!!") and far too sudden. It'd have been more convincing if we'd been shown racial/social tensions rising rather than reaching their conclusion in the space of what must have been around a year. Even the Nazis took years before they decided to implement the holocaust.

> I don't agree that this episode was hard to understand and I don't believe the reviewer is in a position to tell me what a 'SF newbie' would not understand about this.

I didn't say the episode was hard to understand, but that it tries to play SF unaware AND use quickie jargon - familiar from other shows - to clean up its story is trying to have your cake and eat it. And I simply don't think that washes.

> There have been better "alternate universe" stories but this show doesn't have some sort of duty to match the best of them

EVERY show has a duty to try to match the best of its type. If you can't manage originality - and it is hard to do so - then you have to push for humour, emotional oomph, creativity, interesting ideas. Taking old ideas and reusing them in a LESS well-structured and well-written way is not the stuff of good TV.

If recycling at lesser quality is all anyone need try and do, then AVP2 is apparently a great movie.

> Of course Donna doesn't know who Rose is, she's never met her. That the audience knows who she is is irrelevant

On the contrary, the whole thing only works if it's meant for the audience. Donna finds out about the deaths of Martha and the Torchwood team...why? Does it have an impact on her? They're only important names to us. Just as Rose is important to us. Using Donna as a mere cypher seriously wastes the character. Especially when it comes to putting her in scenes with Rose. That we're ahead of Donna in the story weakens her. And that Rose can't BE Rose, because nobody knows who she is, kills a lot of the joy around her return.

> But isn't it the case that a) the Doctor usually keeps time "in line" which is why it remains so hardy

People die in the episode teasers. The Doctor's not correcting anything there. He fixes the big stuff, but the show allows stacks of changes - many in scenes the Doctor isn't even in - and Time remains essentially unchanged.

> Donna is important *because* the Doctor is important

Which makes the dozens of others - companions and guest characters - just as important as Donna. It does nothing to enhance or mythologise the character, yet it's trying to do both. Turn Left shows us that Donna's usefulness is entirely limited to a chance encounter. Without that, she'd be nothing - she wouldn't find other ways to help people. The Doctor is important, and she isn't. Which is a sucky message, and not the one RTD was aiming for.

> I don't believe the reviewer is in a position to tell me what a 'SF newbie' would not understand about this.

I almost forgot - why not?

"EVERY show has a duty to try to match the best of its type. If you can't manage originality - and it is hard to do so - then you have to push for humour, emotional oomph, creativity, interesting ideas. Taking old ideas and reusing them in a LESS well-structured and well-written way is not the stuff of good TV."

No it doesn't, all it has is a duty to entertain and avoid doing things like insulting the audience's intelligence (see series one of Torchwood); you might not have liked "Turn Left" and fair enough but I think your argument that it had some sort of duty to live up to or surpass any previous film/television with a similar plot is a bit much. "Midnight" wasn't as good as some of the "Twlight Zone"-type stories it was riffing on but it was hardly a failure or even a disappointment.

"On the contrary, the whole thing only works if it's meant for the audience. Donna finds out about the deaths of Martha and the Torchwood team...why? Does it have an impact on her? They're only important names to us. Just as Rose is important to us. Using Donna as a mere cypher seriously wastes the character. Especially when it comes to putting her in scenes with Rose. That we're ahead of Donna in the story weakens her. And that Rose can't BE Rose, because nobody knows who she is, kills a lot of the joy around her return."

But it's about Donna and Donna doesn't know who Rose is nor should she. The audience knows who Rose is so we recognise her but because to Donna she's just some girl with an odd interest in her life she can't play much of a part until towards the end when Rose manages to convince Donna of the worth she has. I honestly can't see your point here; it felt fine to me.

"People die in the episode teasers. The Doctor's not correcting anything there. He fixes the big stuff, but the show allows stacks of changes - many in scenes the Doctor isn't even in - and Time remains essentially unchanged."

Your whole point, though, was that the show "can't" base a story around the notion that little things can make a big difference because you say the show thrives on the idea that time is hard to derail yet, as I pointed out, this is because the Doctor (and earlier the Timelords in general) keep it in line and the whole point of the trickester is that it perverts the timeline taking the doctor out of the picture and causing chaos.

"Which makes the dozens of others - companions and guest characters - just as important as Donna. It does nothing to enhance or mythologise the character, yet it's trying to do both. Turn Left shows us that Donna's usefulness is entirely limited to a chance encounter. Without that, she'd be nothing - she wouldn't find other ways to help people. The Doctor is important, and she isn't. Which is a sucky message, and not the one RTD was aiming for."

Well, yes, all the companions *are* important. But the thing is Donna isn't "special", she doesn't cast some inner-light onto the world or any other schmaltzy and, frankly, American thing. When she doesn't meet the Doctor she doesn't go on to actively fight the Sontarans or save the world, she can't even save that poor Italian and his family. She's just an ordinary person like the audience and she just watches the horror unfold, powerless. *That* I think is RTD's message; Donna isn't essential to the universe because of some inner worthiness but because she happens to do something that saves the most important person *in* the universe and when that thing doesn't happen she's just, well, this girl. Donna's existance is hugely influential but, ulitimately, as a person, she's just flawed and powerless like the rest of us. I can't see anything wrong with this; so it's not aspirational? There's no especially heartwarming message in there? Who cares?

> I think your argument that it had some sort of duty to live up to or surpass any previous film/television with a similar plot is a bit much.

I said it had to TRY, and I don't think this did. Insulting the audiences intelligence, for me, includes showing them old stories that they've already seen, telling them less well, and pretending you've made a deeper point than you have. If you want to get two-star reviews, fine. If you want to be great TV, you have to aspire to more, I think, than rehashing. Suggesting that it's fine not to try too hard, and that should still win you good reviews, is bizarre.

> "Midnight" wasn't as good as some of the "Twlight Zone"-type stories it was riffing on but it was hardly a failure or even a disappointment.

Because the episode DID show real ingenuity. It had decent characterisation, and a genuinely brilliant horror/actor gimmick. It TRIED to be the equal of other stories of its type. I genuinely don't believe this did; or, if it did, it totally failed to understand why those stories worked. Whereas Midnight understood what it was doing and did it well.

> I honestly can't see your point here; it felt fine to me.

One more time: The reveal of information and of characters in this episode is designed for the viewing audience, because we're the ones they mean something to. Thus Donna is only there as a passive witness to events, which for me is a fundamental screenwriting flaw.

The episode isn't about Donna. It uses Donna as a pair of eyes, which is rubbish for the character. And, for me, Rose is robbed of what made her interesting by surrounding her by people who don't know her.

> yet, as I pointed out, this is because the Doctor (and earlier the Timelords in general) keep it in line

And my point is that the Doctor keeps BIG things in line. But not the small decisions. Not by miles. The Time Lords aren't compensating for the deaths that occur before the Doctor's arrival, for objects that are moved and turnings that are made differently.

The small decision made in the episode is the right turn. It's why the episode is so named. The bug didn't kill the Doctor, it changed Donna's decision. That's all. Leaving acres of time and space for Time to compensate. The message 'a small change can mean everything' is the POINT of the episode. Only it fumbles the ball, because, for me, it's not a show where that argument really works.

> *That* I think is RTD's message; Donna isn't essential to the universe because of some inner worthiness but because she happens to do something that saves the most important person *in* the universe

If you're happy with that, that's interesting. Because we keep being told how she's extraordinary.

If you took away the episode's message as being 'Donna doesn't matter, she just happened to be in the right place once' then good, fine, that's what I got too. The difference is that I don't think that's what the show MEANT to say at all. And thus it failed.

I really don't think the message was meant to be 'You could have been anybody, really'.

Although I disagree with your opinion of the episode (I'm one of those people who actually liked it), you are actually the first person I've seen who's attempted to give proper reasons for why they didn't like it. So congratulations, I guess.

However there are a couple of points I'll pick you up on:

1. Were they really pretending that they were the first show to do a parallel reality storyline? That's not the feeling I got. What made you come to this conclusion?

4. The perfectly plausible explanation I've heard for this one is that because the parallel universe was created around the idea of Donna turning right, it couldn't contain anything that would prevent her from doing so (e.g. the destruction of the Earth by the pyroviles in Pompeii). So instead of propagating the Doctor's death back and forth throughout time, the beetle just takes a snapshot of the universe at the point where Donna makes her decision and plays it out from there.

And who's to say that the butterfly effect didn't occur? Maybe Donna turning right caused the Doctor to get up on the wrong side of bed one morning and decide that instead of doing the runaway bride episode he'd skip ahead and sort out all of the Earth's past to ensure that the Earth still exists up to the point that Donna makes her decision. You say that time is hardy, but you have no proof of that because we're only shown a ludicrously small subset of all the infinitely possible alternate realities/parallel universes. Maybe there's a 1 in a million chance of the doctor not destroying civilisation every time he farts, and we just happen to be being shown the universe where his farts never bring death.

In short: This is a series based around the notion of time travel. This gives the writers a license to do whatever they want, and no amount of complaining about logical inconsistencies will prevent them from doing that. This is why time travel sucks as a plot device.

> Were they really pretending that they were the first show to do a parallel reality storyline? That's not the feeling I got. What made you come to this conclusion?

As I've said above, if you know this has all been done before, you have no excuse for the pedestrian execution throughout. That's my point, really. If you know this stuff's been done before, you have a duty to at least attempt something new with the format. This episode is the Who equivalent of 'The Simspons Already Did It'. Which is fine, so long as your take is new.

Standing in awe at the idea that a small change can knock-on enormously is...naive at best. The entrier audience watches and says "Well DUH."

> This is why time travel sucks as a plot device.

I don't disagree. I just find the whole episode unravels too easily...and that it recycles a premise that, arguably, has no place in Who. But had it done so with brilliant insight, I'd have been more willing to look past that.

> 1) You can't do a parallel-reality story as if you're the first show to do it, and rely on a quickie explanation that assumes everyone already knows what you're on about. This was a wholly unoriginal story, done more impressively in so many other places, and the only excuse is ignorance. For not knowing that 'paths not taken' stories already exist, and that they need to be written with more care, substance and cleverness, you can only shrug and say 'I thought I'd invented it!' But to hold that line, you can't then shrug off a quick, clunky explanation at the end. SF newbies will struggle to grasp the implications of the finale - where an alternate reality has been created and played out, based on a simple decision - and may be wondering why Rose has shown up inside Donna's 'what if' mental fantasy.

You might want to read that back and wonder why you're even continuing to watch the show. Paragraphs like that hardly even deserve a response. You've really lost it this time!

For a start, the fact that The Trickster was mentioned shows that RTD knows full well that this idea has been explored in his own fucking universe already, so he wasn't trying to pretend he had invented it or anything. You would be very lucky to find a sci-fi writer of any kind today who uses wholly original lynchpin concepts, whether it's RTD, Peter F Hamilton, RDM or who the heck ever. This is irrelevant anyway because MILLIONS of people who watched Turn Left couldn't give a flying fuck about whether Buffy or any other show or book used this idea. The important thing is to choose a GOOD idea to use, and by the Lords of Kobol it frakking well is.

Personally I thought the way RTD handled everything in Turn Left was quite fresh and exciting. I don't know, maybe that's because I'm watching these episodes to be entertained rather than making notes in my little black book, STILL being pissed off at Tate like a big baby, or detaching myself so far from reality that I'm forgetting I'm watching BBC1 on a Saturday evening and we as a nation of morbid, blood-baying cunts don't deserve this level of quality programming due to our obsession with fake sob stories on 'reality' 'talent' shows. We are not worthy of RTD's Doctor Who - FACT!!! I give this 4/5. The only reason it isn't 5 stars is the brilliance of the likes of Blink.

THIS IS THE FIRST PART OF A THREE-PART FINALE!!!!!!!!! That's why we haven't been given the full picture. Donna Noble is the most important woman in all creation. Why? We'll find out. How could Rose appear in Donna's parallel world? Well, it was kind of explained, for those of you who actually had your ears open, but MORE is obviously coming about it in episodes 12 and 13. And, like with Midnight, NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE GIVEN TO YOU ON A PLATE. Sometimes things have to happen because...it's a story, a work of fucking fictional entertainment!

Wow, someone missed his Ritalin...

> The important thing is to choose a GOOD idea to use, and by the Lords of Kobol it frakking well is.

See the umpteen responses on this. It's a great concept, but used - I felt - with laziness and faux naivety.

> maybe that's because I'm watching these episodes to be entertained rather than making notes in my little black book

Not how I watch the show. But then, if I'd written a more positive review, would you be saying something so personal? Just because we disagree on the episode, doesn't mean 'the way I watch the show' is somehow at fault.

> STILL being pissed off at Tate like a big baby

FUCK OFF you massive idiot.

I LOVE Tate in this show. Been vocal in my approval since she arrived. You're responding to the review in your head - this one, which actually exists, praises the woman, for crying out loud.

> We are not worthy of RTD's Doctor Who - FACT!!!

And I don't disagree, you massive twat. I'm the guy - you may remember - who's been insisting that season 4 is as much fun as New Who has been. That Fires of Pompeii was a five-star episode, that Planet of the Odd was magnificent, that even the Sontaran two-parter beats its equivalent stories on other seasons. I'm categorically NOT the guy who says "It's been a lacklustre series so far, but thankfully Moffat showed up".

So - hey - does my love of the series so far ALSO come from checking my notes in a little black book? Or did I watch for fun, have a blast, and then articulate it?

Since when does this review suddenly become a diss of four series of work? (See my oprevious comment "I LOVE Davies, and would write entire volumes about how great his work is, both in general and on Who")

Turn Left disappointed me hugely - and ironically I chose to review this one partly BECAUSE it was RTD and Tate, I had simple expectations of loving this ep to bits and was looking forward to giving it a glowing appraisal. I don't mind that people disagree with the opinion, but it's not unreasonable, once disappointed, to try to articulate that disappointment.

For that matter, though, you did notice it's not ALL negative, right? It's not a one-star review. Or were you too busy manufacturing bile?

The 'little black book' thing and the Tate bashing wasn't really a response to what you'd said. I just can't believe the number of people in general who didn't like the episode.

> FUCK OFF you massive idiot.

No, YOU fuck off, you...horrid gentleman.

> I just can't believe the number of people in general who didn't like the episode.

To be fair, I can't believe the number of people who thought it was good - not just 'okay', but genuinely good. But then, I can't believe Pompeii and Ood aren't on everyone's list of great things about this season...

I'm do wish this one was balanced by a second opinion, though; that way everyone would be happy and I could rest easy with my disappointment.

Please, can't everybody hold this debate in a Red Dwarf forum? This is surely the most logical and reasonable thing to do?

> Please, can't everybody hold this debate in a Red Dwarf forum? This is surely the most logical and reasonable thing to do?

Fuck you.

Or words to that effect.

For someone with Good Sense you sure seem to spend an awful lot of time in a place you don’t enjoy.

What’s with the way Rose delivers the line “Great hair. Some REALLY great hair.” It’s like it was written as a joke (one which should have been written out before filming began) but it’s performed with such ridiculous gravitas! Hopefully in a future episode we will see Rose in the past discovering the Doctor’s hair and it will all make sense.