Donna Noble: Kidnapped!

Donna Noble: Kidnapped!

Released: 5 March 2020

Listened: 11/8/22

Out of this World

This story sets the tone for the series, being somewhat less hectic than a Tenth Doctor story, because Donna is trying to relax a bit. She’s back home with her mother, which isn’t relaxing at all, but does let us have some Sylvia/Donna banter. Sadly, Bernard Cribbins wasn’t available, so we’re denied the support of Wilf. Donna hasn’t explained the truth about the Doctor to her mum, and certainly hasn’t told her about the Library, so Sylvia is at a loss to why Donna seems sad. So Sylvia signs Donna up for speed dating? And then things go badly off the rails. Donna is looking for alien trouble, which she admits is presumptuous of her…and then finds it, several flavors of it, which is more than she bargained for, apparently. She keeps expecting the Doctor to swoop in and rescue her, but it doesn’t happen, so she’s on her own. Jac Rayner normally specializes in historical stories, but in this one she really captures Donna’s snarkiness, and spins a fun story. Niky Wardley is Donna’s old friend Nat (not friends enough to be invited to the wedding, I guess), and she and Tate have exquisite comic timing that carries the story along. It ends with Donna and Nat in the TARDIS, but without the Doctor, and Donna having to bluff her way along.

Spinvasion

Like several of the other new-series spin-offs, this box is really more or less one story, so it continues from where the last one left off. The Collectors force Donna to prove she can operate the TARDIS, and much to her surprise, she manages to fly it to the planet Valdacki, which has recently been invaded. With the Collectors out of the way, Donna and Nat discover that the planet was invaded more or less bloodlessly, with the help of a native PR firm. Bloodless is good, but the population is still being enslaved, even though they don’t realize it. As Donna notes, most people on this world seem rather dim. Which is probably why she’s able to succeed when she decides to liberate the world. This is a John Dorney story, one that isn’t very timey-wimey, but “invasion via PR” is one of those concepts that would only work in the modern series, much like his “Infamy of the Zaross.” Unfortunately, it does require a lot of the characters to be rather stupid, which is fine for comedy, but Doctor Who generally doesn’t run on that kind of trope. The guest cast in this is remarkable: There’s Dan Starkey, playing a number of roles, but also Phil Cornwell, who played the merchant who didn’t speak Celtic in “The Fires of Pompeii,” and Nisha Nyar, who played the programmer in “Bad Wolf” and “The Parting of the Ways,” and also played a Red Kang in “Paradise Towers,” as well as the fabulously named Zanzibar Hashtag in “Harvest of the Sycorax.” Well acted all around, but the story itself is just OK.

The Sorcerer of Albion

Following the usual pattern, we’ve had a story set in the future, so now we get one set in the past. It’s a rather indeterminate past, just a place with a castle and knights and a wizard, who believes Donna is Merlin. As she’s learned to do from the Doctor, Donna simply leans right into it, except she doesn’t actually have any magic powers, so ends up tossed in a cell. And stays there for most of the episode, so Niky Wardley’s Nat gets to do most of the work. This story works out a bit better for her, at least for a bit, as she gets along with the wizard’s granddaughter, and is taken for a magician’s apprentice when it turns out she can read ancient Babylonian (thank you, TARDIS). Speaking of the TARDIS, Nat activates one of those emergency holograms, which in this case takes the form of her husband Garrison, to put her at ease. Except she’s not getting along so well with Garrison, so it really doesn’t put her at ease, and as she gets into the mystery of what’s going on in this castle, her weirdness meter goes past tolerance and goes sproing, resulting in a bit of a breakdown. Ultimately, the story ends with a stronger relationship, because Donna is able to admit that she’s been trying to act like the Doctor, to show off for Nat. The resolution is a bit low-key, but well within Donna’s and Nat’s abilities, so that’s nice to see.

The Chiswick Cuckoos

Donna manages to get the TARDIS back home, except it’s really the TARDIS doing the work, but oh well. She’s following a signal from the Doctor, who’s been captured, but is communicating via the psychic paper. Turns out that the Collectors are replacing people with copies, resulting in a much more successful version of Donna, whom Sylvia likes quite a bit. Faux-Donna is working at a data analytics firm that just happens to be run by Nat’s husband Garrison, with the Collectors as a client, although he doesn’t know that. (He’s not evil, just tricked.) There’s a good bit of running around and rescuing, and amazingly, lots of Doctor / Donna banter even though the Doctor’s side is mostly read by Nat over the psychic paper, and it still works. In a remarkable show of good sense, Donna tries to call in UNIT for help, and gets Lieutenant (not yet Captain) Josh Carter, whom she wastes no time in flirting with. This is a Matt Fitton story, so what actually happens, while fun, is less important than how the characters relate to one another. Sylvia has now gotten a few close-up looks at Donna’s new world, and is starting to come around to how special her daughter actually is, which will be useful later. And although this is a bit of a spoiler, David Tennant his own self shows up to play the Doctor at the end, having a nice heart-to-heart with Donna about how the Library affected both of them, which they didn’t have at the end of that episode. On the whole, the boxed set is pretty good as a single story. There’s variety, and yet it’s all fairly plausible as taking place right after the Library. It’s not exactly necessary, but it also does no harm, which is a good thing.