Dr. Who Series 4 - Turn left
Added 2022-09-10 14:00:05 +0000 UTCPart 1 of the Series Finale. Enjoy :)
Comments
Yes I remember Penny. :) I had some comments about her. I would have liked to see her as a companion, but than again...Catherine :) Wow you put a lot of work into this alternate storyline. I mean wrtiting every single detail about it. It felt like reading an exiting book. :) That throwback would have been nice indeed, but than again Catherine :D Am I repeating myself?....I guess I do. I´m sorry but I just love Donna too much. :) But thank youf for letting me know about the alternate plan of this episode. It would have been really good, too. :) Aha another mirrors classic story? I´m curious already :D
Nicologik
2022-09-26 15:58:53 +0000 UTC"You're not gonna make the world any better by shouting at it." - Wilfred Mott, "Turn Left" Do you remember Penny Carter? Penny Carter was going to be the Series 4 companion before Catherine Tate agreed to return as Donna - meaning Penny Carter never got to be a companion. This story, "Turn Left", is a Penny Carter story! Here's part of RTD's stream-of-consciousness email on his ideas for this Penny Carter episode. I find it fascinating to see the story structure getting created. ... Penny and Moira (Penny's mother) in that car. Fateful, casual decision: how's it quickest to get to ...? Turn left or turn right? In 4.1, she turns left. In 4.11, she turns right - so Penny never meets the Doctor. And she has a time-psych-thing creature living on her back, feeding off this alt-life. Ooh, but certain people can see it - old women, psychics, Penny's nervous, quiet friend, glimpsing the beast in mirrors. Is Penny going mad? Problem: life without the Doctor is dull. Nice idea, the alt-life, but what's happening? Apart from simply living that life? And the occasional glimpse-of-monster-in-mirror? Worrying about a monster on your back isn't enough. But what if the Doctor is dead? If Penny didn't meet the Doctor, then the Doctor died. (Which means that I must write a scene in 4.1 where Penny saves the Doctor. But I'd have done that anyway.) Penny in 4.11 becomes a bystander to the events of 4.1, trapped outside the bowl or whatever with the army and police. She sees the Doctor's body being carted away, some soldier saying, "He gave his life, killing the creature" or something. The story becomes not just What If Penny Never Met The Doctor? but What If The Doctor Were Dead? A world without its protector. While Penny is continuing her "normal" life, getting paranoid about a glimpsed beast on her back, the weather is getting warmer, strange reports on TV, aliens are moving in; we're getting invaded, and there's no Doctor to save us. With Earth falling, Penny needs to travel back in time to stop her original self from turning right. But how does Penny travel in time? The thing on her back? No! The TARDIS! Of course! The Doctor is dead, but he left the TARDIS behind, so UNIT has gutted it. A big empty warehouse, pool of lights at the centre, the police box, innards gutted, scientists all around. They can't really use the TARDIS, because it's beyond them, but they can make one person travel back in time - and they've worked out that Penny is at the heart of the nexus. Penny has to travel back to that road, on that day, to stop herself. But it needs a chase, so Penny is on foot. Running. I love running. Especially if the lead character is running. The cannibalised TARDIS equipment is faulty, she arrives back in time, but half a mile away, it's too late, the car is pulling out, so to stop the original car turning right ... she runs in front of the traffic. She kills herself. Alt-Penny has to die. In dying, she fades away, with a blissful smile, because she never existed. The traffic to the right screeches to a halt, original Penny and original Moira can't see what's happened, just some cars tailing back, so they have to turn left. And time goes back into its groove. [Major editorial worry - and this is rare, so it has square brackets — the story requires the lead audience-identification character, Penny, to throw herself under a car! Don't do that kids!] I love Donna. But seeing Penny's car just casually turning left in 4.1 (and the viewer not paying attention to the significance of it) and leading to whatever would happen in the original 4.1 - and then seeing the same scene in 4.11 where she turns right - would have been a very nice callback within the series. In the end we see it all compressed into this episode - which is fine - but I think it's a bit sad to have lost the other version. Re: the mirrors. Rather than the circle of mirrors being a reference to Kinda, I take it as a reference to a 1960s Doctor Who story - which I'm not going to tell you anything about. There's a reference in this story to a "Sarah Jane Adventures" story as well. (Not just the report of the Sarah Jane group getting killed in the Alt-Judoon event) There was an idea for the "Turn Left" Alt-Donna to have a husband and children making her potentially more reluctant to change history, but in discussion with Steven Moffat he decided that it worked better for the "Forest of the Dead"'s Alt-Donna to have the family. "And you, daughter of London, there is something on your back.", Lucius, "The Fires of Pompeii"
Andrew Vignaux
2022-09-12 00:17:03 +0000 UTC
