application.
[nick / name]: Eri
[series]: Doctor Who
[character]: Donna Noble
[character history / background]: TARDIS Wiki
Born an only child to two parents, Donna has lived in Chiswick all her life, never amounting to anything extraordinary. She'd been working temp jobs for the immediate past, and lives with her mother and grandfather at home. She first meets the Doctor after he loses Rose - Donna, having been dosed with Huon particles by her fiance, was drawn into the TARDIS when they activated and sought out the existing particles aboard the ship. She is unfazed at first by this occurrence, until she attempts to leave via the door and opens it up to outer freaking space spread out before her. She still reacts fairly abnormally, angry that she's been 'kidnapped' by an alien and taken away from her wedding. The Doctor queues up her time line immediately and brings her back to earth, where she finally is faced with the scope of what just happened. The impossibility (to her) of the TARDIS being apparently finite on the outside and bigger on the inside hits home with her. Still, shortly after she seems to accept it and is back onto her goal of making her wedding again. On the way, she is kidnapped by a robot dressed as Santa Claus being controlled by the Empress of the Racnoss who had ordered Donna's fiance to dose her with the Huon particles to begin with. Donna's reaction, other than being bewildered, is one of anger: "Santa's a robot!" she exclaims. The Doctor rescues her again, they spend some time at the reception, are attacked and then hurry off to find out the truth about her place of employment. They, along with Donna's fiance, discover the empress and manage to escape after her fiance reveals his true intentions. Donna is brought back by the Huon particles, but the Doctor saves her life and proceeds to rain down his Time Lordy wrath upon the Empress, draining the Thames into the building and drowning her progeny. Donna presses the Doctor to leave once he's done enough, effectively saving his life (more on that in the Turn Left Universe below). They depart the building, the Doctor drops her off at home but not before asking her if she'd like to travel with him. She declines, a bit shaken by the experience and scared that it would be that way all the time.
The next time Donna and the Doctor meet up, it's after he's spent time with another companion. Donna has been traveling on her own, across earth, and found the experiences lacking what she was trying to get back. By that time, she's realized that the only way she'll scratch the itch is to find the Doctor again and go along with him. She begins investigating a company that turns out to be an alien nanny harvesting fat into Adipose for a contracting species. Once they defeat the nanny and the creatures depart, Donna essentially clings on to the Doctor; unpacking multiple suitcases (and a freaking hatbox!) once she tricks him into asking her to come along again. He expresses that he just wants a mate and Donna reacts in disgust, misinterpretting his meaning and declaring that he would NOT mate with her and effectively establishing their platonic friendship from the start. She has a spaz attack about the fact that her car and the TARDIS were parked right next to each other. When she goes to find a place to dump the keys for her mother to pick up, she talks to a blond woman who turns out to be Rose Tyler.
Their adventures together bring them to Pompeii, just before Vesuvius is about to erupt. Throughout the episode, Donna struggles with the concept that the Doctor cannot stop the eruption or save the people in Pompeii. She finally convinces him to save just one family, which in turn helps him understand that her aggressive humanity grounds him in a way. Next up they visit the Ood Sphere, where the species has been enslaved and mentally neutered in order to serve the human race. The Ood have started going wrong, however, experiencing a phenomenon called Red Eye, becoming murderous and then put down by humans. Donna is given a chance to show her manipulative side when she accompanies the Doctor and infiltrates the company that sells them and then works information out of the employees. She helps him investigate the truth, coming upon a group of imprisoned, natural Ood. The Doctor psychically makes it so that Donna can hear the song of mourning the Ood sing, and unable to endure it, Donna apologises and asks him to take it away. The first mention of the DoctorDonna comes from the Ood in this episode, foreshadowing Donna's fate.
Afterward, the Doctor gets a call from an old companion, Martha Jones, who Donna gets along with right from the start. They face the Sontarans, a race of war-loving aliens who plan to convert the entire planet into more Sontaran soldiers. Donna stays with the Doctor at first, helping investigate the ATMOS factory and pointing out the fact that there had been no sick days, no days off at all. Afterward, she leaves to spend some time with her family. She rejoins him after they save her grandfather from suffocating inside his ATMOS car and the Doctor stick her in the TARDIS for safekeeping. However, the TARDIS is stolen by the Sontarans and transported to their ship. Donna manages to sneak out and kill the one guarding the ship with a hammer to the vulnerable spot on the back of his head, despite her fear of being killed. She returns to earth, the Doctor destroys the atmosphere integral to the Sontarans' plan and sends them packing. As Martha says goodbye to Donna and the Doctor, the TARDIS closes its doors and begins to transport to the distant future where a war wages between humans and the Hath. The Doctor is 'cloned' or, progenated, really which results in a fully grown daughter named Jenny. She's bred with combat skills and the will to fight because of the nature of the machine, and throughout the episode Donna tries to convince the Doctor to accept her after initially dismissing her. She also shows her skills with filing and numbers, determining that number stamped above arches are in fact dates, revealing that the entire war that had been fought for generations was really only a week old. Jenny is shot when she takes a bullet for the Doctor, who mourns her loss and returns to earth for Martha, who warns Donna about the stress traveling with the Doctor produces. Donna declares here that she wants to travel with the Doctor forever.
Next up is Agatha Christie, where we see Donna's personality with a little bit of light on it. Impishly, she continues to mention plot devices or characters from works Christie had not yet written and upon questioning, Donna will request it be copyright to her (and of course the Doctor will chide her for it). We also see a bit of her compassion and mothering, as she tries to connect with Christie a few times and attempts to help her feel like she's worthy and smart. Near the end of the episode, she attempts to save Christie's life by throwing a necklace that connects her psychically to the alien about to kill her into a lake so that it will follow and drown.
After Agatha Christie, the Doctor receives a message and takes Donna to The Library, where there are no people but there are creatures called the Vashta Nerada that look like shadows and devour living flesh in seconds. The Library is run by a computer-core named CAL that is the consciousness of a little girl who had a fatal disease, and 'saved' all of the people that had once been in the Library from the Vashta Nerada. Over the course of the episode, Donna is 'saved' and put into a virtual world where she recovers from mental instability, meets a man and marries him, has a few children and seemingly lives a life spanning years when in fact it was only hours due to the programming. She is aware that things happen quickly but she doesn't fully focus on it until another woman who had been saved but corrupted, Miss Evangelista, brings it to her attention that her two children are the same as everyone else's. As soon as Donna begins to accept it, the children disappear -- she's pulled out of the world as she runs toward her husband in fear. At the end, when she and the Doctor are about to leave, Donna has the chance to read about her future, take a peek at the spoilers of why the future companion/'wife' of the Doctor had never met her.
Later, after the Doctor goes off on an adventure of his own, Donna having stayed behind to sunbathe, they travel to a planet called Shan-Shen. A fortune teller approaches Donna to have her past examined and in the process, revisit the decision that resulted in Donna's encounters with the Doctor. She recalls that it was the fact that she decided to continue working at her temp job at H.C. Clements instead of turning right in the car to attempt to get a better job at her mother's insistence. A Time Beetle attaches itself to Donna's back as she recounts the scene and the fortune teller convinces her to make the choice again, instead turning right. This leads to the Doctor never meeting Donna and dying when he kills the Empress of the Racnoss.
With the death of the Doctor, major changes happen that result in the whole of London being demolished in addition to:
-Sarah Jane Smith/Martha Jones/Torchwood Team dying along with millions in the US. Residents of London are made to live as refugees elsewhere. The beetle, which is a second out of sync with Donna's time line, is noticed by a few passing friends, as well as Rose Tyler, who breaks into the parallel world in order to help Donna travel back in time and right the past so that the Doctor lives. Their relationship is rocky at the start, with Donna feeling pressured and confused, hollering at Rose before finally giving in once her grandfather notices the stars blinking out. Once she arrives just before she made the decision to turn right for the interview, Donna realizes that she won't be able to make it to past-her to stop herself. Instead, she throws future/present/omg these distinctions-her in front of a truck to stop up traffic and make it impossible for her to turn right. This breaks the parallel world and she returns to her present with the Doctor on Shan-Shen, who inspects the beetle and notes that it feeds off minute changes in time. At the very end, the series is thrust into it's final arc when Donna repeats Rose's message to him: Bad Wolf, AKA the end is freaking nigh.
Fearing the worst (what does that even mean, really?) the Doctor and Donna head back to earth and are confused to find it just fine. Until it disappears from under them, leaving the TARDIS where it stood, but floating in space. He takes her to the Shadow Proclamation (outer space police) where they determine 27 planets total have been stolen, and rearrange when in proximity. Donna seems to be zoned out, hearing a mesmerizing heartbeat that she's made to snap out of by one of the policewomen at the Shadow Proclamation, who also makes mention of something on her back, and then mourns her future loss. They're lead to a rift called the Medusa Cascade, by Donna's mentioning of the disappearing of the bees, whose prior escape leads them to a trail they can follow to find the planet. Donna breaks down when the Doctor admits there's nothing they can do, but the former companions/associates on earth work together to send the Doctor a signal that he follows back to earth. And of course, just as Donna sees Rose and he runs to meet her, he's shot with an extermination ray, carried into the TARDIS by Rose, Jack and Donna and begins to regenerate! Only...he doesn't. The energy siphons off into his hand, allowing him to heal and stay in his tenth incarnation. Donna proceeds to boggle, watch on as he reunites with Rose and then hit on Jack. Obnoxiously.
Then the Daleks steal the TARDIS, sneaky bastards. The four of them set to surrendering and exit the TARDIS, but Donna's consumed by the beating again, and before she can leave, the TARDIS shuts her doors. The Daleks see it as a trick and throw the TARDIS into the core of their ship, intent on destroying it and Donna inside it. As the TARDIS sinks, Donna begins to suffocate from the smoke, and is drawn to the Doctor's hand by the heartbeat again, reaching forward to touch it and causing a biological meta-crisis who was half-timelord, half-human with the appearance of the Doctor, along with his memories and a bit of Donna's personality. He saves the TARDIS and Donna from destruction and he explains what happened to her, resulting in her asking why she heard the heartbeat, and why everything has been converging on her. She denies that she's special, leading the metacrisis Doctor to the insight that she truly believes she's not worth it and trying to convince her that she is. He begins to put together the fact that they'd been deliberately drawn together.
The Daleks are about the use the reality bomb and destroy everything, when the TARDIS materializes in the midst of the Daleks, and metacrisis Doctor exits, planning to shoot Davros with a ray that will reverberate in the rest of the Daleks, killing them all. However, Davros is faster and zaps him with enough of a charge to disable but not kill him. Donna tries afterward, and is zapped too, activating the synapses in her brain and creating the DoctorDonna, essentially just Donna with the Doctor's brain. It's as she's running out that she'll be brought into the City.
[character abilities]: Best temp in Chiswick! Also...plain old human.
[character personality]:
Meta-wise, Donna's a very strategic companion for the Doctor. She's his very vocal and aggressive conscience, without being shackled by an attraction to him. In fact, as her first appearance came to a close, she turned down the offer to travel with him because of the scope and nature of his life. However, once she was left alone she found that she couldn't match the sense of importance and adventure she'd experienced with him on her own. Her relationship with him has been described by the Doctor as 'best friend' and doesn't turn toward the romance possibly because of her knack for the maternal (whether it be coddling him or smacking him).
Her most obvious traits are those that make her brash and obnoxious. Donna criticizes everything. EVERYTHING. It doesn't matter if you're about to toss her into a pit of lava filled with lavasharks, she will berate you because WHOEVER HEARD OF LAVASHARKS. Offering to let her borrow your car? She will complain that it smells like cabbage and your brakes are terrible. Canonly, the Doctor lends her his coat and she criticizes him for being so skinny. In a parallel universe, the hospital from series 3 disappears the same day Donna is fired and all she can think about is being angry about being fired, acting pettily and taking things she thinks she's entitled to.
Independence is likely her driving trait. She almost never waits for permission or a sign that a certain action might be the proper one, which can work in both her favor and big time against her. On the one hand, she will not only defy the Doctor's orders advice, she will actively fight him on it. This is an effect of her fixation on accomplishing whatever task she's set her mind to, regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. Kidnapped by an alien, almost walk out into space? Of course, all she can think about is suing him when she finally gets married. Kidnapped by Santa, who turns out to be a killer robot? Don't be afraid, just express disbelief at that insanity! She barrels into everyone else's lives whether they ask her to or not and doesn't really stop until she's smacked in the face with it (and not even then, most times).
The trait that makes Donna who she is and defines her is that she doesn't think she's worth the air she breathes. Continually throughout the series she will swing between two modes: overstating her importance and understating it. "I'm a temp from Chiswick," to "I'm Donna. I'm a Human Being. Maybe not the stuff of legend but every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you" It's a running theme in regards to her, along with the fact that she never wants to know her future; maybe because she doesn't believe she has one. Likely connected, Donna shows more concern for everyone else than she does for herself -- not that this should be interpreted as an unwillingness to survive or not suffer. She's got great survival instincts, but she finds it very difficult to see others suffer or be done unjustly and will vocalize these opinions until she's blue in the face. Her lack of self-worth results in the loud, obnoxious attitude that's both a cover-up for her insecurity and a cry out for attention. She's failed all her life, likely feels like she fails even when she tries her hardest and so she has turned to accepting temp jobs in order to get by without much risk.
This compassion is what evens Donna out -- the salt to her pepper, if you're inclined to use cheesy metaphors. Where she's ignorant and rude, she can also connect and walk in another person's shoes given half a chance. Against her better judgment, Donna will sympathize with anything that might appeal to her bleeding heart.
The virtual world Donna ends up in during Forest of the Dead reveals Donna's ideal world; she is married with two children, and seems to be a stay at home mother. She shows an unwillingness to 'wake up' from the false life, clinging to her children and sobbing in depression once she cannot sustain her belief that they aren't really hers. It could be rationalized that her actions are influenced by Dr. Moon, the antivirus software protecting the core, allowing Donna to maintain her virtual reality. In this manner, her motivation could be looked at in two ways; both in that she is determined to have her family life, love her husband and care for her children and in that she's also determined to reveal the truth of her own world, regardless of the heart breaking consequences. This is something Donna struggles with both internally and externally. It explains some of the fundamental actions of Donna, her trend of missing the big picture while trying to balance the good of everyone else, keeping everyone happy though possibly excluding herself. Example from the episode? Upon realizing that inside the virtual world, she is not operating her own body, Donna remarks, "I've been dieting!" The fact that she might not be real, that's not so much a scary though for Donna, that's her self-worth on a daily basis. However, the potential loss of her children is something Donna cannot deal with, more than anything.
A lot of her issues and traits likely stem from her mother treating her badly most of the time she is on screen. Donna, in her mother's eyes, is never good enough. She doesn't make the right choices, she's a disappointment, she is a waste of space and won't amount to anything so she'd better find a man who will support her or else she's going to die alone with nothing. Her grandfather seems to balance it out a little, obviously finding worth in her and encouraging her endeavors - even that of traveling with the Doctor. Donna seems to mirror most of these traits, though not to a serious extent and not to the point that she's cold or heartless, like her mother.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: 4.13, Journey's End - post-metacrises, pre-zap.
Application Thread.
[series]: Doctor Who
[character]: Donna Noble
[character history / background]: TARDIS Wiki
Born an only child to two parents, Donna has lived in Chiswick all her life, never amounting to anything extraordinary. She'd been working temp jobs for the immediate past, and lives with her mother and grandfather at home. She first meets the Doctor after he loses Rose - Donna, having been dosed with Huon particles by her fiance, was drawn into the TARDIS when they activated and sought out the existing particles aboard the ship. She is unfazed at first by this occurrence, until she attempts to leave via the door and opens it up to outer freaking space spread out before her. She still reacts fairly abnormally, angry that she's been 'kidnapped' by an alien and taken away from her wedding. The Doctor queues up her time line immediately and brings her back to earth, where she finally is faced with the scope of what just happened. The impossibility (to her) of the TARDIS being apparently finite on the outside and bigger on the inside hits home with her. Still, shortly after she seems to accept it and is back onto her goal of making her wedding again. On the way, she is kidnapped by a robot dressed as Santa Claus being controlled by the Empress of the Racnoss who had ordered Donna's fiance to dose her with the Huon particles to begin with. Donna's reaction, other than being bewildered, is one of anger: "Santa's a robot!" she exclaims. The Doctor rescues her again, they spend some time at the reception, are attacked and then hurry off to find out the truth about her place of employment. They, along with Donna's fiance, discover the empress and manage to escape after her fiance reveals his true intentions. Donna is brought back by the Huon particles, but the Doctor saves her life and proceeds to rain down his Time Lordy wrath upon the Empress, draining the Thames into the building and drowning her progeny. Donna presses the Doctor to leave once he's done enough, effectively saving his life (more on that in the Turn Left Universe below). They depart the building, the Doctor drops her off at home but not before asking her if she'd like to travel with him. She declines, a bit shaken by the experience and scared that it would be that way all the time.
The next time Donna and the Doctor meet up, it's after he's spent time with another companion. Donna has been traveling on her own, across earth, and found the experiences lacking what she was trying to get back. By that time, she's realized that the only way she'll scratch the itch is to find the Doctor again and go along with him. She begins investigating a company that turns out to be an alien nanny harvesting fat into Adipose for a contracting species. Once they defeat the nanny and the creatures depart, Donna essentially clings on to the Doctor; unpacking multiple suitcases (and a freaking hatbox!) once she tricks him into asking her to come along again. He expresses that he just wants a mate and Donna reacts in disgust, misinterpretting his meaning and declaring that he would NOT mate with her and effectively establishing their platonic friendship from the start. She has a spaz attack about the fact that her car and the TARDIS were parked right next to each other. When she goes to find a place to dump the keys for her mother to pick up, she talks to a blond woman who turns out to be Rose Tyler.
Their adventures together bring them to Pompeii, just before Vesuvius is about to erupt. Throughout the episode, Donna struggles with the concept that the Doctor cannot stop the eruption or save the people in Pompeii. She finally convinces him to save just one family, which in turn helps him understand that her aggressive humanity grounds him in a way. Next up they visit the Ood Sphere, where the species has been enslaved and mentally neutered in order to serve the human race. The Ood have started going wrong, however, experiencing a phenomenon called Red Eye, becoming murderous and then put down by humans. Donna is given a chance to show her manipulative side when she accompanies the Doctor and infiltrates the company that sells them and then works information out of the employees. She helps him investigate the truth, coming upon a group of imprisoned, natural Ood. The Doctor psychically makes it so that Donna can hear the song of mourning the Ood sing, and unable to endure it, Donna apologises and asks him to take it away. The first mention of the DoctorDonna comes from the Ood in this episode, foreshadowing Donna's fate.
Afterward, the Doctor gets a call from an old companion, Martha Jones, who Donna gets along with right from the start. They face the Sontarans, a race of war-loving aliens who plan to convert the entire planet into more Sontaran soldiers. Donna stays with the Doctor at first, helping investigate the ATMOS factory and pointing out the fact that there had been no sick days, no days off at all. Afterward, she leaves to spend some time with her family. She rejoins him after they save her grandfather from suffocating inside his ATMOS car and the Doctor stick her in the TARDIS for safekeeping. However, the TARDIS is stolen by the Sontarans and transported to their ship. Donna manages to sneak out and kill the one guarding the ship with a hammer to the vulnerable spot on the back of his head, despite her fear of being killed. She returns to earth, the Doctor destroys the atmosphere integral to the Sontarans' plan and sends them packing. As Martha says goodbye to Donna and the Doctor, the TARDIS closes its doors and begins to transport to the distant future where a war wages between humans and the Hath. The Doctor is 'cloned' or, progenated, really which results in a fully grown daughter named Jenny. She's bred with combat skills and the will to fight because of the nature of the machine, and throughout the episode Donna tries to convince the Doctor to accept her after initially dismissing her. She also shows her skills with filing and numbers, determining that number stamped above arches are in fact dates, revealing that the entire war that had been fought for generations was really only a week old. Jenny is shot when she takes a bullet for the Doctor, who mourns her loss and returns to earth for Martha, who warns Donna about the stress traveling with the Doctor produces. Donna declares here that she wants to travel with the Doctor forever.
Next up is Agatha Christie, where we see Donna's personality with a little bit of light on it. Impishly, she continues to mention plot devices or characters from works Christie had not yet written and upon questioning, Donna will request it be copyright to her (and of course the Doctor will chide her for it). We also see a bit of her compassion and mothering, as she tries to connect with Christie a few times and attempts to help her feel like she's worthy and smart. Near the end of the episode, she attempts to save Christie's life by throwing a necklace that connects her psychically to the alien about to kill her into a lake so that it will follow and drown.
After Agatha Christie, the Doctor receives a message and takes Donna to The Library, where there are no people but there are creatures called the Vashta Nerada that look like shadows and devour living flesh in seconds. The Library is run by a computer-core named CAL that is the consciousness of a little girl who had a fatal disease, and 'saved' all of the people that had once been in the Library from the Vashta Nerada. Over the course of the episode, Donna is 'saved' and put into a virtual world where she recovers from mental instability, meets a man and marries him, has a few children and seemingly lives a life spanning years when in fact it was only hours due to the programming. She is aware that things happen quickly but she doesn't fully focus on it until another woman who had been saved but corrupted, Miss Evangelista, brings it to her attention that her two children are the same as everyone else's. As soon as Donna begins to accept it, the children disappear -- she's pulled out of the world as she runs toward her husband in fear. At the end, when she and the Doctor are about to leave, Donna has the chance to read about her future, take a peek at the spoilers of why the future companion/'wife' of the Doctor had never met her.
Later, after the Doctor goes off on an adventure of his own, Donna having stayed behind to sunbathe, they travel to a planet called Shan-Shen. A fortune teller approaches Donna to have her past examined and in the process, revisit the decision that resulted in Donna's encounters with the Doctor. She recalls that it was the fact that she decided to continue working at her temp job at H.C. Clements instead of turning right in the car to attempt to get a better job at her mother's insistence. A Time Beetle attaches itself to Donna's back as she recounts the scene and the fortune teller convinces her to make the choice again, instead turning right. This leads to the Doctor never meeting Donna and dying when he kills the Empress of the Racnoss.
With the death of the Doctor, major changes happen that result in the whole of London being demolished in addition to:
-Sarah Jane Smith/Martha Jones/Torchwood Team dying along with millions in the US. Residents of London are made to live as refugees elsewhere. The beetle, which is a second out of sync with Donna's time line, is noticed by a few passing friends, as well as Rose Tyler, who breaks into the parallel world in order to help Donna travel back in time and right the past so that the Doctor lives. Their relationship is rocky at the start, with Donna feeling pressured and confused, hollering at Rose before finally giving in once her grandfather notices the stars blinking out. Once she arrives just before she made the decision to turn right for the interview, Donna realizes that she won't be able to make it to past-her to stop herself. Instead, she throws future/present/omg these distinctions-her in front of a truck to stop up traffic and make it impossible for her to turn right. This breaks the parallel world and she returns to her present with the Doctor on Shan-Shen, who inspects the beetle and notes that it feeds off minute changes in time. At the very end, the series is thrust into it's final arc when Donna repeats Rose's message to him: Bad Wolf, AKA the end is freaking nigh.
Fearing the worst (what does that even mean, really?) the Doctor and Donna head back to earth and are confused to find it just fine. Until it disappears from under them, leaving the TARDIS where it stood, but floating in space. He takes her to the Shadow Proclamation (outer space police) where they determine 27 planets total have been stolen, and rearrange when in proximity. Donna seems to be zoned out, hearing a mesmerizing heartbeat that she's made to snap out of by one of the policewomen at the Shadow Proclamation, who also makes mention of something on her back, and then mourns her future loss. They're lead to a rift called the Medusa Cascade, by Donna's mentioning of the disappearing of the bees, whose prior escape leads them to a trail they can follow to find the planet. Donna breaks down when the Doctor admits there's nothing they can do, but the former companions/associates on earth work together to send the Doctor a signal that he follows back to earth. And of course, just as Donna sees Rose and he runs to meet her, he's shot with an extermination ray, carried into the TARDIS by Rose, Jack and Donna and begins to regenerate! Only...he doesn't. The energy siphons off into his hand, allowing him to heal and stay in his tenth incarnation. Donna proceeds to boggle, watch on as he reunites with Rose and then hit on Jack. Obnoxiously.
Then the Daleks steal the TARDIS, sneaky bastards. The four of them set to surrendering and exit the TARDIS, but Donna's consumed by the beating again, and before she can leave, the TARDIS shuts her doors. The Daleks see it as a trick and throw the TARDIS into the core of their ship, intent on destroying it and Donna inside it. As the TARDIS sinks, Donna begins to suffocate from the smoke, and is drawn to the Doctor's hand by the heartbeat again, reaching forward to touch it and causing a biological meta-crisis who was half-timelord, half-human with the appearance of the Doctor, along with his memories and a bit of Donna's personality. He saves the TARDIS and Donna from destruction and he explains what happened to her, resulting in her asking why she heard the heartbeat, and why everything has been converging on her. She denies that she's special, leading the metacrisis Doctor to the insight that she truly believes she's not worth it and trying to convince her that she is. He begins to put together the fact that they'd been deliberately drawn together.
The Daleks are about the use the reality bomb and destroy everything, when the TARDIS materializes in the midst of the Daleks, and metacrisis Doctor exits, planning to shoot Davros with a ray that will reverberate in the rest of the Daleks, killing them all. However, Davros is faster and zaps him with enough of a charge to disable but not kill him. Donna tries afterward, and is zapped too, activating the synapses in her brain and creating the DoctorDonna, essentially just Donna with the Doctor's brain. It's as she's running out that she'll be brought into the City.
[character abilities]: Best temp in Chiswick! Also...plain old human.
[character personality]:
Meta-wise, Donna's a very strategic companion for the Doctor. She's his very vocal and aggressive conscience, without being shackled by an attraction to him. In fact, as her first appearance came to a close, she turned down the offer to travel with him because of the scope and nature of his life. However, once she was left alone she found that she couldn't match the sense of importance and adventure she'd experienced with him on her own. Her relationship with him has been described by the Doctor as 'best friend' and doesn't turn toward the romance possibly because of her knack for the maternal (whether it be coddling him or smacking him).
Her most obvious traits are those that make her brash and obnoxious. Donna criticizes everything. EVERYTHING. It doesn't matter if you're about to toss her into a pit of lava filled with lavasharks, she will berate you because WHOEVER HEARD OF LAVASHARKS. Offering to let her borrow your car? She will complain that it smells like cabbage and your brakes are terrible. Canonly, the Doctor lends her his coat and she criticizes him for being so skinny. In a parallel universe, the hospital from series 3 disappears the same day Donna is fired and all she can think about is being angry about being fired, acting pettily and taking things she thinks she's entitled to.
Independence is likely her driving trait. She almost never waits for permission or a sign that a certain action might be the proper one, which can work in both her favor and big time against her. On the one hand, she will not only defy the Doctor's orders advice, she will actively fight him on it. This is an effect of her fixation on accomplishing whatever task she's set her mind to, regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. Kidnapped by an alien, almost walk out into space? Of course, all she can think about is suing him when she finally gets married. Kidnapped by Santa, who turns out to be a killer robot? Don't be afraid, just express disbelief at that insanity! She barrels into everyone else's lives whether they ask her to or not and doesn't really stop until she's smacked in the face with it (and not even then, most times).
The trait that makes Donna who she is and defines her is that she doesn't think she's worth the air she breathes. Continually throughout the series she will swing between two modes: overstating her importance and understating it. "I'm a temp from Chiswick," to "I'm Donna. I'm a Human Being. Maybe not the stuff of legend but every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you" It's a running theme in regards to her, along with the fact that she never wants to know her future; maybe because she doesn't believe she has one. Likely connected, Donna shows more concern for everyone else than she does for herself -- not that this should be interpreted as an unwillingness to survive or not suffer. She's got great survival instincts, but she finds it very difficult to see others suffer or be done unjustly and will vocalize these opinions until she's blue in the face. Her lack of self-worth results in the loud, obnoxious attitude that's both a cover-up for her insecurity and a cry out for attention. She's failed all her life, likely feels like she fails even when she tries her hardest and so she has turned to accepting temp jobs in order to get by without much risk.
This compassion is what evens Donna out -- the salt to her pepper, if you're inclined to use cheesy metaphors. Where she's ignorant and rude, she can also connect and walk in another person's shoes given half a chance. Against her better judgment, Donna will sympathize with anything that might appeal to her bleeding heart.
The virtual world Donna ends up in during Forest of the Dead reveals Donna's ideal world; she is married with two children, and seems to be a stay at home mother. She shows an unwillingness to 'wake up' from the false life, clinging to her children and sobbing in depression once she cannot sustain her belief that they aren't really hers. It could be rationalized that her actions are influenced by Dr. Moon, the antivirus software protecting the core, allowing Donna to maintain her virtual reality. In this manner, her motivation could be looked at in two ways; both in that she is determined to have her family life, love her husband and care for her children and in that she's also determined to reveal the truth of her own world, regardless of the heart breaking consequences. This is something Donna struggles with both internally and externally. It explains some of the fundamental actions of Donna, her trend of missing the big picture while trying to balance the good of everyone else, keeping everyone happy though possibly excluding herself. Example from the episode? Upon realizing that inside the virtual world, she is not operating her own body, Donna remarks, "I've been dieting!" The fact that she might not be real, that's not so much a scary though for Donna, that's her self-worth on a daily basis. However, the potential loss of her children is something Donna cannot deal with, more than anything.
A lot of her issues and traits likely stem from her mother treating her badly most of the time she is on screen. Donna, in her mother's eyes, is never good enough. She doesn't make the right choices, she's a disappointment, she is a waste of space and won't amount to anything so she'd better find a man who will support her or else she's going to die alone with nothing. Her grandfather seems to balance it out a little, obviously finding worth in her and encouraging her endeavors - even that of traveling with the Doctor. Donna seems to mirror most of these traits, though not to a serious extent and not to the point that she's cold or heartless, like her mother.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: 4.13, Journey's End - post-metacrises, pre-zap.
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