Donna Noble

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Character
Name: Donna Noble
Occupation: Temp, companion
Relationships: The Doctor, Lee, Shaun Temple, granddaughter of Wilfred Mott
Fandom: Doctor Who
Other: played by the actor Catherine Tate
"black and white head and shoulders portrait of Donna Noble, with a black sky and moon in the background"
Donna Noble by ONTV (2008)
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Donna Noble was one of The Doctor's companions during the Tenth Doctor era of Doctor Who.

Her relationship with the Doctor in canon was a strong friendship, without the shippy vibes that cropped up with several of the other New Who companions.

Canon

Donna Noble first meets the Tenth Doctor when she is mysteriously transported into his TARDIS as she walks down the aisle to get married. Following the defeat of the Racnoss, Donna is upset and grieving, and she declines to travel with the Doctor.

She does meet the Doctor again and they save the world from the Adipose. This time Donna accepts his invitation to travel with him.

In the Library, Donna meets River Song, and River provides the first hints that Donna's days with the Doctor could be numbered.

When Donna visits a fortune teller, she is infected by a Time Beetle, which causes her to make a different choice in her own past. As a result, an alternate timeline is created where she never meets the Doctor. He is killed in his encounter with the Racnoss; without his intervention, the world is drastically changed from the world Donna previously knew. Ultimately Donna time travels to change her own fate for the better of the world.

In the battle against Davros and the Daleks, Donna witnesses a partial regeneration - in which the Doctor channels the extra energy into the dismembered hand he lost during his last regeneration. Trapped in a dissolving TARDIS with the strangely glowing hand, she accidentally touches it, bringing about the Meta-Crisis. A second Doctor grows from the hand, a part-human version with many of Donna's personality traits and a single heart, while Donna herself gets the Doctor's mind. Together, Donna and the Meta-Crisis Doctor return to Davros' ship, where Donna distracts the Daleks and the Meta-Crisis destroys them, saving the Time Lord Doctor and his companions.

As the Time Lord mind burns her brain, they realize the only way to save her is to destroy every shred of the Doctor in her mind, including every memory of her time with him. She begs him not to do it, but the Doctor can't let her die. Donna wakes up at home with her mother and Wilf, and briefly greets their friend John Smith, of whom she has no memory.

Later Donna goes on to marry Shaun Temple.

During the 60th anniversary specials, the Doctor runs into Donna, and because of a crisis situation where the were trying to stop an alien called The Meep, Donna was forced to remember her original time with the Doctor, but it did not destroy her as it should have, because she had shared her power/memories with her daughter. They went on to have more adventures, and then Fourteen settled down in semi-retirement with Donna and her family.

Fandom

Donna Noble is generally very well received in the fandom, and became a much beloved companion. {Initial negative reaction viz Runaway Bride, turning into much-beloved companion over the course of Series 4?}

Donna Noble's story is heartbreaking. Of all the companions we've met so far in the revived Doctor Who, I'd argue that her arc is one of the widest and definitely the saddest. I was going to say "tragic", but apparently Aristotle's theory of tragedy involves a reversal of fortune that is down to an action taken by the hero. Donna, instead, is caught in the web of fate, tying her inexorably to the Doctor. [...] Fate has not been kind to Donna, but without her the universe would have suffered beyond belief. She might never know it, but she was completely magnificent.[1]

Fans often debated Donna's canonical departure from the show, where her memories of travelling with the doctor are removed for her own survival. Some have called it misogynist.[citation needed] In the essay Double Trouble: The Death of Doctordonna by PlaidAdder, she argues that "of all the companions (in the new series) up to this point, Donna comes the closest to being the Doctor’s peer; and I would suggest that this is a major part of her appeal to the viewers," and that by erasing her memories the writers indicate that "this partnership thing was fun as an experiment; but they’re not going to make it permanent."[2]

Common Tropes and Storylines in Fanworks

  • Donna Gets her Memories Back: Probably the most common trope in Donna Noble stories was fixing the end of series 4, which many fans were unhappy with for taking away Donna’s memories and thus the character development that had happened over the course of the series.
  • Humor: fanworks focusing on Donna often have a humorous bent, or contain humorous scenes, similar to canon.
  • Donna Meeting Other Incarnations of The Doctor: although the majority of fanworks feature the Tenth (and later the Fourteenth) Doctor, it is not uncommon in fanworks to have Donna meet other iterations of the Doctor, from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth.
  • Donna Meeting Other Characters: having Donna meet other Whoverse characters that she did not meet in canon is common, a popular choice being Amy Pond.

Pairings

The majority of fanworks are often focused on the canonical friendship between The Doctor and Donna, or on shipping the two of them together. There is also a small number of fanworks that feature Donna's relationship with her later canonical husband Shawn Temple. Femslash pairings are very small, but the largest ones are with Rose Tyler and Martha Jones, both of whom Donna met canonically.

Challenges

Fanworks

Fanart

Fanfiction

Vids

  • Don't Slow Down by seduff, dashafeather said of Don't Slow Down, "This is very well edited, fast paced, and truly captures the YAY-BFF feeling series 4 had."[3]

Meta

Archives

Resources

References

  1. ^ Being Magnificent: the journey of Donna Noble essay by torn_eledhwen at Idol Reflection, 23 Aug 2009. (Accessed 4 Feb 2012)
  2. ^ Quoted text from: Double Trouble: The Death of Doctordonna by PlaidAdder. AO3, posted 2013-10-17.
  3. ^ fanvid recs, part 1 post by dashafeather, 21 Feb 2010. (Accessed 4 Feb 2012)
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