Doctor Who Series 4 Episode 11 - Turn Left

What a trailer that was! It had everything! The Doctor, Donna, Rose, Martha, Jack, Sarah-Jane, Gwen, Ianto, Luke, Harriett Jones, Daleks and The Kandyman! Okay maybe not The Kandyman but surely he can’t be far off a return?

Before the trailer, we had this new show about Donna and ‘turning left’, it was great! We were given a Doctor-lite story, in which The Doctor wasn’t really missed! It was a ‘What If’ story, What if Donna had never met The Doctor? Well the world would not be the same, put it that way!

Donna is tricked by a palm reader (Chipo Chung, who played Chanto in ‘Utopia’) as a ‘time beetle’ crawls on her back. We are then taken to the moment in which Donna ‘turned left’ and made her way to the company, in which the events of ‘The Runaway Bride’ came from. Instead, under pressure from her mother, she turns right and takes a job at another company.

It was a name drop heaven and I’m sure we are set for a few more surprises! We are presented with a series of familiar events, as The Doctor dies during the events of The Runaway Bride, without Donna there to help him (presumably some other bint was infected with the stuff that brought Donna on board the TARDIS in the first place). Then The Judoon take the hospital, Martha dies and instead of The Doctor, Sarah-Jane and her team of young kids try to prevent the disaster but end up dying as well. The Titanic crashes and blows up London. I didn’t really like that part, surely those refugees could have been put up in a hotel, b+b, holiday camps, caravans and even prisons. I just didn’t understand the ‘3 families per house’ bit, I would rather live in a tent to be honest!

The Adipose then pop up in America, which is where they should have gone in the first place, seeing as more people live there! Then we have the Torchwood team just about preventing the Sontarans but they end up dying and Jack is transported to the Sontaran homeworld, presumably to do some ‘cloning’ of his own!

How can I forget the return of Rose? She kept appearing and disappearing and seemed to be telling UNIT what to do. I wondered if it really was Rose, I don’t think it is, to be honest. It just didn’t seem like the Rose we know. Either way, we are set for two epic episodes!

Overall, it was a cleverly written episode, the last couple of minutes are just wonderful. It was an interesting concept to see how events would have differed if you had turned one way instead of another. It makes you think doesn’t it? Once again Catherine Tate was just wonderful and has surely shut up the critics. Including me!

9.5/10

Next Week: Jack counts heads and wonders whether or not he’s had as many people at the same time!

'The Stolen Earth' Trailer