One other thing I noticed that was nicely set up in advance for DW 4x13: When Donna's brain begins to break, and you have her get stuck repeating "binary" (awesome choice of words, that), it brought back to mind not just the Data Ghosts from "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead", but all of "Midnight" and especially the Doctor's horrified "don't do that," when Donna mimics him at the end.

Anne, I totally flashed on Joan Cusack in Toys when she gets broken and starts repeating "I'm all right! I'm alright! I'malrighti'malright!" which had me laughing even as I was horrified.

I'm having a hard time thinking about anything else after that finale, rewatched the ep, rewatched the Confidential (broke me again) and reading the UK thread over at TWoP, where a poster reminded me of River Song's reaction to Donna, where she knew *of* her but didn't know her/had never met her. Oh, Donna, the Doctor will still speak of you!

DW 4.13: Never mind the Osterhagen Key, I just want to know why they sited the base 60 miles from my house?!! Apart from the obvious connotations of the name, of course. Still, the German-speaking Daleks were hilarious. Funnily enough, until somebody mentioned it upthread, it never occurred to me that most of you wouldn't have been able to understand the unsubtitled old woman (who wasn't actually German, but nevermind). Funny, that .

I have a lot still to process about the episode, and I need to watch the Confidential and rewatch the last couple of eps. On the whole, I enjoyed it a lot, except for the plot holes they could have driven a Tardis through. And Bernard Cribbins made me cry - not for the first time, the last Chapter of "The House at Pooh Corner" gets me Every. Single. Time.

I sort of guessed that Catherine Tate only signed on for one series, and I knew that RTD is not in favour of killing off companions. Still, what happened to Donna was harsh .

Can anybody jog my memory - where and when had Mickey and Captain Jack met before?

Fiona, they met in "Boomtown," aka the one where they re-encouner Margaret the Slitheen, who'd managed to become Mayor of Cardiff.

That's the one! Thanks Anne.

I think the writers must have taken half an hour and made a flow chart of who had already met.

Who 4x13

A brilliant post from TWoP: http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3174725&view=findpost&p=10518052 "I don't think I would have liked it if she had lived on as DoctorDonna, because as the name suggests, she would no longer be Donna. She'd be fierce as hell, and it would have been great to see what she was capable of, but it sort of suggests that she finally came into greatness only with another person implanted in her head. I hate the idea of people completing one another in romance novels, I would hate it if Donna Noble could only be great by virtue of having a Timelord (and not just any Timelord, having The Doctor) inside her head. Letting her die because she wanted to remain another person, this hybrid of her and The Doctor, would be wrong in this sense. And I do think that's why Donna didn't want to go back - because until she became the DoctorDonna and saved the world, she was unsure of her own self-worth. Like 10.5 realized, Donna, all this time, thought she was nothing special. Donna was willing to die because she thought her life finally had meaning, substance to it. She saved the world. She was finally special, and she was special because the Doctor was in her head (and not even in the usual way that people influence us - in a literal, his mind was in her head way!) making her, as Wilf said, "better". But Donna is special with or without the Doctor, and she needs to learn that. Sure wiping her memories effectively turned her into a different person than who she became, but at least the person The Doctor reverted her back to was 100% herself, with 100% power to become awesome again. Donna was brassy, loud and an inventive thinker even before she met the Doctor so she's obviously got something inside her own head that can achieve brilliance; if she does so in her new life sans Doctor, then the success is all hers, all her own doing. I like that."

Also, re 4x13, what of the show? I like Donna better than DoctorDonna, and a show with 1.5 Doctor and .5 companion just wouldn't be satisfying enough. Better this than a literal death (I'm still not over her dying in 12), and I did like meeting DoctorDonna.

I would like to have spent more time with an unsad Doctor 10.5, to see more of the Donna in him, now that I think about it.

ita, ITA, I really enjoyed what we saw of Doctor Donna, but that was quite enough, and a whole episode of that would have been incredibly annoying, let alone a whole season.

I just really... I wish that Donna had agreed to the mind-wipe, and gone quietly, so that it didn't come off as the Doctor forcing something on her. I won't say "rape" or violation, but for a man who is willing to give a choice to universally genocidal Daleks, for a guy who wants to talk things through with murderous enemies, couldn't he have talked Donna down for another few more moments, and let her come to an acceptance. THAT would have been awesome. Shit, Donna could have said, "You were fantastic . . . And you know what? So was I!" Or not. The outcome was awful enough without having the act be so aggressive.

I also would have loved to see more of 10.5, not just because I found him quite fascinating and lacking in agency at the end, but also to see Rose find out she's stuck with Donna's personality. Weee!

I really want to watch season one now and compare 10.5's mannerisms to 9's. He's got the jumper, but I'm wondering if the stillness was a Chris Eccleston thing as well.

Julie, that's a great post, and it makes a very good point. It's along the lines of some things I was thinking myself.