Doctor Who is on the cusp of celebrating the franchise’s 60th anniversary later this year. The upcoming 60th-anniversary specials for the longest-running sci-fi show in television history not only marks the grand homecoming of the beloved David Tennant, who will appear as The Fourteenth Doctor, but also Catherine Tate, who once more reprises her role as Donna Noble. Tennant’s return to the franchise was a surprise, but Catherine Tate’s return as Donna Noble was equally surprising. But who is Donna Noble? Why did she and The Tenth Doctor ultimately have to part ways? We’re going to explore the significance of their friendship, their relationship dynamic, Donna's eventual fate, and why the reunion of The Doctor and his “best friend” is so special.
The Adventures of the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble
Noble technically makes her first appearance in the Doctor Who revival Season 2 finale, "Doomsday," as "The Bride." It’s not until the 2006 Christmas special, "The Runaway Bride," that her first true story with The Doctor unfolds. Noble was unwittingly drawn into a plot involving the Racnoss Empress and Donna's fiance, hence her first appearance in a wedding dress. While Donna declined The Tenth Doctor’s first offer to become his companion, it would not be the last time they meet.
Donna and The Doctor were drawn together once again in the opener of Season 4, "Partners in Crime" while they were both investigating a potential alien connection to Adipose Industries. It turns out the company’s shadowy figurehead, Miss Foster, was using a miracle weight loss drug to secretly seed humans with alien young, called Adipose. If accelerated, the morphogenesis of the young could be fatal to humans. The Doctor and Donna foiled the plot, and this time, Donna was ready to travel the cosmos with the Time Lord.
The Doctor and Donna shared many adventures. They reluctantly brought about the destruction of Pompeii by causing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, freed the Ood from subjugation, solved a murder mystery with Agatha Christie, and battled the Daleks and their creator, Davos. In the Daleks' latest plot, they absconded 27 planets, including Earth, into a pocket universe to power a "reality bomb" to erase all life and existence, except for themselves. In the Season 4 finale, "Journey’s End," Donna and The Doctor managed to stop all that. Donna inadvertently absorbed all The Doctor’s knowledge during the conflict, essentially making her part-human, part-Time Lord; a "Doctor Donna."
Multiple factors made The Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble an excellent Doctor/Companion pairing, which became one of the most beloved partnerships of the franchise since its 2005 revival. Tennant and Tate had excellent chemistry onscreen, and they played off each other tremendously well. Tennant’s Doctor has a wild, manic energy, and Tate is so wonderfully charismatic that she could match the more outgoing aspects of The Tenth Doctor’s personality. Besides the actors' electric chemistry, from a writing and storytelling standpoint, they balanced each other well as characters. Donna was unmatched in her compassion for others in need and sentient aliens who were mistreated, such as the Ood. During her travels with The Doctor, she typically acted as a conscience for the Time Lord, helping him see the reason and the compassionate side when The Doctor didn't want to get involved. In the Season 4 episode, "The Doctor's Daughter," Donna was the one who named The Doctor’s genetic offspring, Jenny, and encouraged The Doctor to recognize Jenny as his daughter. Donna Noble served as the moral compass for The Tenth Doctor when he needed it most.
Conversely, The Doctor showed Donna the moral dilemma he constantly faces making impossible decisions. In “The Fires of Pompeii,” Donna is forced to realize that there is no way to avert the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and save the Earth from an invasion by the Pyroviles. The Doctor doesn't make these choices lightly, but Donna understands that The Doctor doesn't make these decisions out of a sense of cruelty or malice. It's simply a matter of how "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Sometimes, The Doctor has to make a terrible sacrifice that comes at the cost of others to stop a terrible menace. If there is a fixed point in time, nothing can be done to change it. However, Donna still convinced The Doctor to save one family from Pompeii’s destruction which became a crucial moment much later on during the journey of The Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi). Donna’s influence on the Doctor left reverberations for multiple lifetimes of the time-traveling Gallifreyan.
It was nice to see such a wonderful, platonic friendship depicted onscreen. Before The Doctor and Donna went off on their adventures, the show established that their relationship was not romantic. The Tenth Doctor is not Donna’s type, since she likes macho, stronger men. She was never attracted to The Doctor in that way. Meanwhile, The Doctor was not looking for a romantic partner at the time. As The Tenth Doctor hilariously explained to Donna, "I just want a mate." He didn’t want "to mate," he wants a "mate" -- a friend. The Doctor needs a partner, not in the romantic sense, but someone who can see the details that he can’t, someone who can see the forest from the trees and the big picture when he is unable to connect the last two dots. As The Doctor also pointed out in "The Fires of Pompeii," "Sometimes I need someone." Donna more than fulfilled that role. Yet, their love for each other was unquestionable. They forged a special bond that is rarely matched between Doctor and Companion. When Donna Noble received the title "Doctor Donna" it was a bittersweet, emotional moment not only because she rescues all existence and the entire universe, but she can never remember that she became the most important person in The Doctor’s life.
What Made The Doctor And Donna Noble Separate?
In the Doctor Who Season 4 finale, "Journey’s End," while the collective knowledge of The Doctor’s entire existence up until that point helped Donna thwart the Daleks, it yielded an unfortunate byproduct in literally burning out Donna’s mind, slowly killing her. Seeing no other choice in order to save Donna’s life, The Doctor regretfully erased her memories of all their adventures and time together. They were destined to never see each other again, otherwise, the memories they shared would resurface and put her life at risk. But that is not the end of Donna Noble’s story in the Doctor Who saga.
Donna appeared one last time in the two-part holiday special, "The End of Time." When The Doctor’s archenemy, a newly returned Master (John Simm), comes back to life, he manages to transform every human on Earth into his duplicate, creating what he calls a “Master Race.” The process works on every human except for Donna and her grandfather Wilfred Mott (the late Bernard Cribbins). When The Master’s duplicates attempt to hunt Donna down, she appears to regain her memories of her time with The Doctor, but a mental failsafe The Doctor loaded into her mind activates, protecting Donna from The Master and resetting her memory block.
In the story’s epilogue, The Doctor pays one last visit to Donna Noble’s family during her wedding to her new fiancé. In his dying moments, The Tenth Doctor makes sure Wilfred and Donna’s mother Sylvia Noble (Jacqueline King) receive a wedding present for Donna in the form of a winning lottery ticket, using money he was lent by Donna’s late father, Geoffrey. The Doctor and Donna do not meet again, but he at least has some solace seeing Donna and her family at the wedding. It was a great, tearful sendoff for The Tenth Doctor, but the show avoided truly bringing The Doctor and Donna back together.
Donna Noble Makes Her Long-Awaited Return To The Franchise
That episode aired way back in January 2010, bringing us to 2023 and the year of the franchise’s 60th-anniversary celebration. Based on footage of the teaser trailer for the upcoming specials, The Doctor and Donna Noble will finally reunite. But there's an interesting wrinkle in the situation: When the first female regeneration of The Doctor, The Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) underwent her regeneration, she regained the form of The Tenth Doctor. Such a situation isn’t necessarily unprecedented or impossible. In the 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor," The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) encountered a mysterious museum curator, portrayed by The Fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker.
The fascinating meeting suggested that perhaps The Doctor could potentially revert to some of his old personas in the future. When The Eleventh Doctor remarks that he "never forgets a face," the curator replies, "I know you don’t. You might find yourself revisiting a few, but just the old favorites, eh?" The clear implication is that Tom Baker’s curator is The Doctor as well, possibly from the future, simply from another regeneration somewhere down the line, enjoying a not-so-serendipitous meeting with his previous persona. Granted, it is also possible the curator is not The Doctor at all from any timeline, but merely a helpful individual who knows about The Doctor, Gallifrey, and the Time Lords. The mythology of the franchise has also established that The Doctor is capable of taking on the physical visage of people he/she has encountered in the past, hence the physical appearances of The Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and The Twelfth Doctor.
The new teaser footage shows that while Donna Noble's memories of her time with The Doctor are still erased, she appears to have a nostalgic sense of what she has lost. She says in the trailer, "Sometimes, I think there’s something missing. Like I had something lovely…and it’s gone." The ailment plaguing Donna of her memories burning her mind out is clearly still in play. As The Fourteenth Doctor points out in his dialogue, "If she ever remembers me, she will die." That explains the other scene where Sylvia Noble hilariously attempts to hide The Doctor behind her back when Donna yells at him, "Skinny man!" Despite Donna's erased memory, it appears she still retains some muscle memory regarding old insults.
It remains to be seen where the mysterious villain, portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris, fits into all of this. It remains to be seen if Donna will finally regain her lost memories and have her true reunion with her old partner, and how it might take place without causing her irreparable harm. However, Doctor Who has never been shy about presenting complex problems or hard rules and finding creative loopholes around them. The Doctor's restriction from traveling back through his own timeline is one of them. The answers will arrive later this November when new episodes of Doctor Who return with the 60th-anniversary specials, which will stream on Disney+.