“I don’t know if I can save your life this time.”
Fifteen long years passed between Catherine Tate’s “final” appearance on Doctor Who and her character’s surprise return in the ‘Star Beast’ special.
This whole time, for timey-wimey reasons too convoluted to get into here, we’ve been led to believe that Donna will die if she ever recalled her travels with the Doctor.
Sylvia, Donna’s mother, was understandably frazzled when the Doctor showed up on her family’s doorstep in the first 60th anniversary special. And she was right to be, because by the end of ‘Star Beast’, Donna’s memories did indeed return. Cue a dramatic “death” scene where it looked like Tate’s character really had snuffed it.
Thankfully, Donna turned out to be fine. That’s because the ‘metacrisis’ energy she’d been carrying, the whole reason her mind had been wiped in the first place, was split when she gave birth to her daughter Rose, thereby halving its destructive potential.
Phew. That was a close one! Imagine if Russell T Davies actually killed off such a beloved character right after bringing her back. Wouldn’t that be funny? Imagine that!
Next up was ‘Wild Blue Yonder’, a cosmic horror that literally took us to the edge and back where evil doppelgängers trapped the Doctor and Donna on a spaceship about to explode in slow-motion. They both eventually make it back onto the TARDIS, but not before the Doctor accidentally brought the wrong Donna on board.
Believing everything to be ok, the Doctor was getting ready to teleport off the ship, leaving the real Donna behind to die in an explosion. It’s only at the last second that he realised something was wrong, so he made one last ditch effort to save Donna and threw her duplicate back off the TARDIS into certain death.
That doesn’t sound too hair-raising on paper, but Davies really did leave this escape to the very last moment. Our Donna, unable to believe that the Doctor chose a doppelgänger over her, stared into the oncoming flames with tears in her eyes, fully believing that she was about to die. And for just a moment, one brief, horrible moment, we did too.
When the Doctor and Donna did reunite on the TARDIS, realising how close they came to Donna’s death, they both looked physically shaken in ways we’ve rarely seen before. The Doctor clung to Donna, kissing her on the forehead, completely overcome by the horror of knowing he’d almost lost her for good.
Now, call us paranoid, but just two episodes in, we’ve already been forced to endure two death fakeouts where Donna’s death genuinely seemed plausible. What if Russell is trying to tell us something? What if he’s setting up another fakeout in Donna’s third and final episode, except this time, her death takes place for real?
Longtime fans always expected Donna to die if she returned thanks to the mind-wipe, and even though that’s now been sorted, lulling us into a false sense of security with these previous two fakeouts could make her actual death the third time round that much more devastating.
It’s not like Donna was ever supposed to come back anyway. Companions almost never do, except for the occasional guest appearance, and with a new TARDIS team already waiting in the wings, it’s entirely feasible that Doctor Who could do the unthinkable and kill Donna off completely.
The worst thing of all is that this horrifying possibility isn’t just a paranoid ramble on our part.
https://x.com/omenofgallifrey/status/1731078579834724742?s=20
Let’s start with the trailer for these three specials, specifically a moment where the Doctor tells Donna: “I don’t know if I can save your life this time.”
That line hasn’t been spoken yet in the first two episodes, so we know it’s coming in ‘The Giggle’, which is set to be Catherine Tate’s final appearance before the new gang take over.
Admittedly, these kind of ominous moments are the bread and butter of any good trailer, and in isolation, this line doesn’t really mean much at all.
But wait, there’s more.
Back in August, the official Doctor Who account teased the phrase “Doctor, danger, dancing, Donna” on Instagram, to which Davies replied: “Doctor, danger, dancing, Donna… and disaster 😞 xxx”.
And before that, a post from April, which asked what the future might hold for Donna, got this response from Russell: “Oh. Terrible things 😞.”
Davies, being the master storyteller he is, knows exactly what he’s doing with these kind of replies. Whether Donna dies or not, these dramatic teases are almost unbearably juicy, although it’s worth pointing out here that these “terrible things” he speaks of may not mean Donna’s death. They could also speak to the death of someone she loves…
Either way, it does look like “disaster”, as Russell puts it, is indeed on the horizon.
Set images of a devastated-looking Ncuti Gatwa taken from Doctor Who’s upcoming Christmas Special have led some to theorise that he may end up visiting Donna’s grave in ‘The Church on Ruby Road’.
Okay, that might be a reach, but then why is Donna’s daughter seemingly back again in season 14 without her mother? In Doctor Who Magazine #594, Davies mentioned that Yasmin Finney, who plays Rose, had only just “wrapped a few days ago,” which means she was still filming long after these 60th anniversary specials had been finished.
Again, that’s not proof exactly, but put everything together and Donna’s impending death is looking more and more likely by the second.
After all, we’ve already been told that the Doctor’s upcoming fight with the Toymaker is a fight that he “can never win.” And it’s hard to think of a greater loss than the death of Donna so soon after the pair have finally been reunited following all those many, many years apart…
