Doctor Who-Turn Left

                         While visiting a Chinatown-like community on the planet Shan Shen, Donna indulges herself in a visit to an oddly persistent fortune teller who continually asks her about her past,how she met the doctor and what she was about to do on the events up to her wedding day before everything was put into motion. Unaware that an alien insect like creature is on her back,Donna recollects her road trip to two separate job interviews with her mother Sylvia. At the urging of the fortune teller,she decides to take her mothers advice to take a right turn instead of the left. Never having met her fiancee or attended the Christmas party where she first encountered the doctor,history changes around her. The doctor is killed during his encounter with the Racnoss and a whole section of London is destroyed. Then the Spaceship Titanic crashes into Buckingham Palace-prompting a massive atomic detonation that destroys London and makes most of Europe uninhabitable. America's attempts to render aid are hampered by the Adipose killing off millions of its own citizens. Meanwhile Sarah Jane Smith,her adopted companions as well as Martha Jones all day.

                      Donna,Sylvia and Wilf are forced to live with an Italian family as refugee's of London's destruction. Donna meanwhile continually encounter Rose Tyler,who will not tell Donna her name but tells her that she like Donna once traveled with the doctor,and that it was his presence that saved the Earth from these disasters. She tells Donna the only way to save her world,even as all the stars in the sky begin blinking out. The catch is if Donna goes,she is going to die. Rose takes her to UNIT headquarters where they have constructed a rudimentary time machine based on the TARDIS which was found floating in the Thames. Donna is shown the creature on her back through a series of mirrors. Its an unknown alien that feeds on time. And in order to set events right,Donna must return to the last few moments before Donna and her mother made that right turn. Once there,Donna gets run over by a truck-forcing her past self to take the correct turn. The dying Donna whispers two words to her counterpart who then appears back in the fortune tellers shop where the teller herself runs from Donna,noting she is too powerful. After the doctor examines the remains of the creature that redirected Donna's life,she tells him the words her alternate self whispered to her-which he then sees everywhere around him: bad wolf.

                      It would seem this story was a budget motivated companion based story in lieu of the big season finale for this series of the show. The doctor appears for nearly a total of a two minutes in this story-which focuses on an alternative history tale about Donna and her family. We realize that Donna's main motivation for travelling with the doctor is her low self esteem-fostered by her tormented and overbearing mother Sylvia. In a state of almost pacified resignation Donna watches a London vaporizes in a mushroom cloud and,in one of the saddest scenes in the episode her families jovial host Rocco and his weeping family being hauled away to a concentration camp after radiation wrecks havoc across Europe. The alien that attempts to consume time through Donna's memories is something that appears to be known to the doctor. But on the other hand represents an intense threat to him that even he doesn't seem to realize. The fact that Martha Jones and Sarah Jane Smith are key points in this alternate history as well-along with Jack Harckness's Torchwood  gives credence to the fact Rose points out that the doctor needs to help with the issue of the stars disappearing. And it is an event that points to something that would begin to occur on another occasion even for the doctor and Donna.