I am always amazed by public transport. I caught the second bus into work today, and I am typing this on my phone for later blogging. Tis 6:30-ish and half the folks are sleeping, about a fourth are reading and the rest are just sort of here.

Which gives me a perfect lead in to talk about Dr. Who.

This past weekend, Reneé and I watched the season finale and I thought it well done. But I want to look at the last four episodes of the season as both individual pieces and as part of the whole Russell Davies Doctor Who.

We begin with Midnight. The Doctor, bereft of his companion, is going on a little sight-seeing trip. He is going via conventional means, as he quips to Donna, "Ah, I'll be fine. Taking a big space truck with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight... What could possibly go wrong?"

When I first saw this episode I thought it was, perhaps, derivative of The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street; human nature at its finest. And there are parallels between the episode and the short story when the episode is taken as a stand alone piece. But there is much more, starting with the nakedness of the Doctor.

The Doctor usually has a great many tools to work with, the best being his brain. "I am clever," he continually points out in this episode - as he has throughout the season - though that is only part of it. He has lived a very long time and has learned much across time and space. "I am clever," is almost code for "I can't tell you how I know that because it would pollute the timeline," and it gets used many times through out the current Doctor’s regeneration. Yet here, in this situation, that answer isn't good enough.

Then there are the Doctor's comments about "humans." Generally these are taken as self-referential, in no small part due to the fact that his companion is human and acts as a sort of shield for him. But this time there is no companion and the humans, further keyed up by an enemy’s meddling, take notice and it starts to turn ugly. Oh yes, this episode displays humanity in an ugly fashion, as whiny sheep, easily led or at least easily confused to paralysis. But it’s not something that happens right away. Rather it builds, like boiling a frog. Each scene seems to get more intense and, if you were to take some of the scenes out of order they would be very jarring but the slow build of hatred and fear throughout the episode holds it all together.

And this episode questions who the Doctor is. This time he cannot blithely say, “John Smith” and get away with it. This time there is reason to fear the unknown and the Doctor is one of the biggest unknowns there is. This makes the ending even more delicious and irony filled as the person who saves the day is the unnamed flight attendant, as anonymous in her way as the Doctor is in his. Nobody knew her name any more than we know the Doctor’s. And yet, her ability to realize the truth, to change as she matures, is part of what the Doctor loves about humans. She may have been one of the first to say, “Get rid of the menace,” but she also was the one to recognize her own mistake and redeem herself. And that becomes key to understanding the whole, four season long arc of Russell Davies, redemption for mistakes. But before we get there, we must Turn Left.

Turn Left has very little Doctor and a lot of Companion. Again, it first seemed derivative of It’s a Wonderful Life, but it is very different. The Doctor doesn’t get to see what happens if he wasn’t there, but we do. The premise is simple. Donna Noble goes a different way and doesn’t end up meeting the Doctor as she isn’t the Runaway Bride. And, because of that, the Doctor dies when fighting the Empress of Racnoss. But here’s the interesting thing, he escapes because Donna prompts him to. This would have been just after he lost Rose, when he may have felt he had no real reason to live. And throughout this season, we have learned a great deal about the Doctor’s past. He had children, whom all died when he led the Time Lords into battle in the Time War. He has lost a great deal because of his actions, actions he really had no choice in making given who he is. In this episode, however, Rose implies that he didn’t escape the Thames flooding into the tubes and drowning the Empress of Racnoss because Donna wasn’t there to remind him that he himself was worth saving. And his death led to all of his companions being forced to take his place.

It has been stated that Death and Destruction follow the Doctor wherever he goes. And that is true, if for no reason other than it makes good, dramatic television. But here we see something else, something more important: had the Doctor not been there, the casualties would have been worse, the sacrifices much greater. The Doctor chooses his course of action based on the events that occur around him, but he has little choice of what those events are. In the confused, overlapping rivers of time that may see him in Ancient Pompeii one day and New, New, New^26 York the next, his life is only linear in what he experiences. And, like a moth to a flame, his TARDIS is drawn to events that require intervention. The Doctor himself has stated that certain this must happen in order for the universe to be. One of his roles has always been to appear when those things are going off course and correct them.

And here, in Turn Left, we see the whole world going off course. Unlike the cataclysms that Captain Jack and Rose and Martha Jones stave off, all of which the Doctor would have been instrumental in staving off had he been there, the resolution to this episode has only one savior: the lowly temp from Chiswick, able to type 100 words per minute. But she has shown herself throughout the season to be more than that. She pieced together the clues in the Doctor’s Daughter, she sees things in a way that is different and valuable and is brilliant. And, once more, thinking outside of the box, she realizes the solution to the problem and, at a greater cost than any of the other companions, she steps in and puts time back to rights, just as the Doctor would.

Some might see this episode as little more than an empty plot vehicle to get to the four season culmination of Bad Wolf, but there is much more to it than that. Donna Noble was changed by the Doctor. The brash woman of the Runaway Bride whose mother spent years telling her she was no good, that’s the woman we see stumbling through life in Turn Left. The Doctor made her see that there was a universe and that she was much more than the sum of her parts. And that is the person we need for what happens next.

In The Stolen Earth, the Earth is, well, stolen, from right under the TARDIS. And the Doctor and Donna head to the Shadow Proclamation. Once again, it is Donna the temp, Donna who knows many things even if she doesn’t know how to put them together, who comes up with the critical bit of information about the bees. So the Doctor and Donna are off to find the planets while the companions are on Earth to find solutions of their own. And here we have another redemption motif, Harriet Jones.

Reneé, who was only introduced to the Doctor this last year through me, has been catching up on old episodes as they have aired in reruns on BBC America. Her first introduction to Harriet Jones (Prime Minister) came during the Sycorax invasion, when the Tenth Doctor had just been regenerated and could regenerate his lopped off hand and take down the government with six little words, after Harriet Jones (Prime Minister) ordered the destruction of the Sycorax vessel. When next we saw, out of order obviously, in Aliens of London/World War Three, Reneé’s comment was that she didn’t like Harriet Jones, but that was because she knew what happened to her, what she did to the Sycorax. And here in the Stolen Earth, we once more meet Harriet Jones (Former Prime Minister). She is unrepentant and feels she did what she needed to in destroying the Sycorax but she has created the Subwave Network that allows the companions to communicate. In fact, she freely gives up her life to allow this communications system to exist, which redeemed her in Reneé’s eyes, and also mine.

But Rose, as she has been for the last two seasons, is still sidelined. She was able to watch while the rest of the companions talked but she was still without the means to communicate. But she still found her Doctor, together with Jack and Gwen but the Doctor gets shot by a Dalek and poor Donna, who doesn’t know about regeneration, is left in the dark as the episode closes with the Doctor regenerating and companions in peril.

And so we come, finally, to Journey’s End. Here we get two more companions brought into the mix, Mickey and Rose’s mom, Jackie, who save Sarah Jane Smith. There are many things I could say about this episode, but this paper is really only going to explore a couple of key points.

Davros, about to destroy the universe, is interrupted by two groups: Martha Jones, ready to destroy the Earth with the Osterhagen key and the other companions, who are about to destroy the main computer of the ship. Which leads Davros to proclaim:

The man who abhors violence, but this is the truth: you take ordinary people and fashion them into weapons... How many have died in your name? The Doctor, the man who keeps on running, never looking back because he dare not, out of shame. This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself.

But he hasn’t, not really. Yes, the companions of the Doctor are acting as weapons but they are not acting as mindless weapons. Take Martha Jones. Sitting before her console with the Osterhagen key, she tells the other operators that she can’t initiate the destruction yet, she has something else to do first. At which point she opens up a channel to the Daleks. Just as the Doctor always gives his opponents a chance to recant, Martha also gives them that chance. Not because she is afraid of blowing up the Earth, but because she wants senseless destruction no more than anyone else and will attempt to stop it if possible.

The same with Captain Jack, Sarah Jane Smith, Mickey and Jackie. They could have destroyed the mainframe but they had to give the Daleks a chance. If these be weapons, they be even-tempered ones that will not strike first nor strike unnecessarily.  Of course, Davros, having foreseen this through Dalek Caan, brings them all onboard, easily disarming them. But Dalek Caan hasn’t shared everything he knew with Davros, and thus the sudden appearance of the TARDIS with a newly generated Doctor (based on the hand cut off by the Sycorax) who is half-human and half-Time Lord and Donna Noble is the Deux Ex Machina to resolve the plot. But it is much more than that.

The new Doctor, only half-Time Lord, is caught. But Donna Noble, temp from Chiswick, who has given up everything for the Doctor so she can spend the rest of her life travelling with him, she isn’t. And Davros sparks awake her intelligence which has now been matched with the Doctors through the regeneration process. And it is she who saves the day.

But, and I have to stress this, it may be that the Doctor’s intellect gave her additional information that she didn’t have, but her solution to the Daleks was hers and hers alone. Her unique brilliance that led to putting pieces together in a new way, her perception that helped her solve the riddle in the Doctor’s Daughter, that uniquely Donna Noble-ishness, that’s what saved the day.

And, in the end, the redemptions multiply forth. Mickey, dear old coward Mickey who left earth for the alternate universe so he could be with his Gran and fight Cybermen, now he is a hero who is much more mature than he was.

The newly generated Doctor, who killed all of the Daleks like his predecessor Doctor before him, who will grow old and die with only one heart, he gets to be with Rose. He gets to tell Rose the truth, that the Doctor loves her. Not an easy thing for the Doctor as generally he will outlive any he loves, but in this case, he can grow old with her and die. And, as the old Doctor explains to Rose, the newly generated Doctor needs to learn compassion from her, acknowledging not only that he loves her but that he needed her and that she was responsible for him becoming who he was.

Which leaves us with the ever enigmatic Doctor and Donna Noble, temp from Chiswick. And choices. The Doctor who burst upon the scene as the Ninth Doctor 4 years back and took Rose Tyler for the ride of her life, was a broody man, a bit violent. From him we learned bits and pieces of the Time War. And he didn’t want passengers. While all of the “lore” about the Doctor talks about his companions, we see him alone and actively trying to dissuade Rose from joining him. Maybe it was because he had lost everything he cared about, maybe it was because he felt he was a monster who had committed Xenocide. But that Doctor grew and changed. His association with Rose Tyler changed him, softened him.

And now he has left Rose, again. And while she may have a doctor, he doesn’t have her.  And Martha Jones has gotten on with her life. All he has left is DoctorDonna. And now she’s even more of a match for him. And yet, that won’t last. She cannot exist with his intellect without killing herself. Alone of perhaps all of the companions who have ever joined the Doctor, she did so of her own free will, knowing what she was giving up, planning to spend the rest of her life with him. It was River Song who who phrased it best:

When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever for one moment, accepts it. Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, Every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives.

The Doctor, accused by Davros of running out of shame, has hit a wall. Today, not everyone will live. Well, technically, that’s not true.

Donna: I was gonna be with you; forever.
The Doctor: I know.
Donna: Rest of my life, traveling in the TARDIS... the DoctorDonna. (increasingly frantic) Oh, oh my.. I can't go back. Don't make me go back, Doctor. Please, please don't make me go back.
The Doctor: Donna... Oh, Donna Noble, I am so sorry, but we had the best of times. The best. Goodbye.

The Doctor removed her memories of him, of their life, of who and what she had become, even before she became DoctorDonna. And he takes her back home, to her mom, her grandfather. He cares about Donna but she can never know about him. It’s not what he wants to do, but he doesn’t have a choice. Donna is redeemed by his loss and perhaps her mother got what the Doctor told her:

Doctor: I just want you to know, there are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her. That there are people living in the light, and singing songs of Donna Noble. A thousand, million light years away. They will never forget her, while she can never remember. But for one moment... one shining moment... she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe.
Sylvia: She still is. (insistently) She's my daughter!
Doctor: Well, perhaps you should tell her that once in a while.
[Sylvia looks shocked, but Donna walks in the room before an argument can develop]
Donna: (indignantly) Hey, I was asleep, in my clothes, lying on the bed, like a flippin' kid! Why did you let me do that?! (disinterestedly, to the Doctor) Hi, Donna, don't mind me. 

Donna, who turned out to be much more than a temp, was unable to get the permanency she so craved. And yet we know, because we saw contrasted between the entire season of who she was compared to the time she spent in Turn Left where she had never encountered the Doctor, we know she has the potential to be so much more.

And the Doctor? A complicated riddle. Davros accused the Doctor of running out of shame. But I don’t think that’s it at all though I can see why Davros would see it that way. The last Dalek in the episode Dalek accused him of surviving because he was a coward. And it is quite possible that the Doctor saw himself as either or both of those at times, especially after losing Rose. But the Doctor is something else entirely. Son of Mine captured him eloquently in The Family of Blood:

He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing -- the fury of the Time Lord -- and then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he had run away from us and hidden... He was being kind. He wrapped my father in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star. He tricked my mother into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy to be imprisoned there, forever. He still visits my sister, once a year, every year. I wonder if one day he might forgive her, but there she is. Can you see? He trapped her inside a mirror. Every mirror. If ever you look at your reflection and see something move behind you just for a second, that's her. That's always her. As for me, I was suspended in time and the Doctor put me to work standing over the fields of England, as their protector. We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure we did.

And so the Doctor goes on, running to his next adventure, knowing he will meet River Song at some point, and every meeting will be bittersweet because he knows already how she dies.

And we run with him, cheering him on, feeling his pain, seeing ourselve reflected in the glasses he wears.

Peace, gentle readers