New Who Review for “Turn Left”
Posted By Kathleen David on July 19, 2008
This one is the beginning of the rollercoaster that leads to the end of the 4th season. I have to yet again say that some of what I might be commenting on might not have been in the SciFi airing but in the BBC version which will be (fingers crossed) the DVD version.
And Bad SciFi! No biscuit for you with those previews of the next episode. You would have been much better served by using what the Beeb used for the preview which worked very well and didn’t give away so many large plot points and one whopping surprise.
Overall it is a very interesting episode that is hard to quantify without spoilers really. I can say that it is Donna-centric. Catherine Tate, Bernard Cribbins, and especially Jacqueline King gave such wonderful performances. Ms. King’s is often overlooked but just watching happening to her through out the episode and how she act, reacts, or doesn’t react is just amazing.
Onto the fuller discussion behind the cut. Remember that we are only talking to Turn Left. Please hold discussion of the Stolen Earth and Journey’s End until the appropriate time. Thank you.
I am grateful for the wealth of stuff that RTD mined in this episode.
Firefly fans probably felt right at home at the opening to this one. I half expected to see Mal and Kaylee walking around the corner.
It is one of those “what if” episodes. What if Donna had turned right instead of left? How would this have affected the world much less the universe? Well there were others to step in like Torchwood (since the creation of Jack was before Donna I expect he was there), Sarah Jane, and others. But they could only do so much and needed the Doctor not to die. The Adipose in the US was a bit of a twist and probably did put the US into a downward spiral. The Titanic crashing into the palace and blowing up London.
Having Rose there to warn Donna was a bit of a stretch but I was willing to suspend disbelief on that one. And Donna’s confusion as to why her and what was on her back was very well played. Any guesses to how many Donnas we are going to see at D’Con with insect backpacks?
And having Donna figuring out the solution to the problem. What she has to do to make herself turn left. It works better than the argument she would have had with herself and her mother.
Overall a very powerful episode that can be watched more than once since there are a lot of subtle stuff going on.
Then there is the return of “Bad Wolf” which I am lukewarm on but it does set up for the next two episodes.
A great episode, I thought. One element I thought was really good that I haven’t seen anyone else note was Catherine Tate’s makeup. It changes subtly enough that you don’t notice it from scene to scene, but then when you see it contrasted with someone else–like Rose, or with herself in the climactic scene–it suddenly becomes very striking how she’s become (apparently) devoid of makeup and looks so worn and tired and refugeeish.
I loved this episode – actually, with hindsight, I think I may actually love it more than the next two…
Really tight, really clever, and I am so grateful that Catherine Tate got the chance to act her little cotton socks off and give a big Donna-ish two fingered salute to all those who doubted the wisdom of casting her as an ongoing companion.
Hmm.. didn’t Rose say Jack was taken off to the Sontaran home world after defeating their fiendish plans?
Cheers.
Since i didn’t watch the ScFi run, what was the Bad Thing they did in their trailer?
I recall at the time this ran on BBC someone commenting on the laugh that ended the BBC trailer…
The commentary on this episode was 49:42 in length which implies that there were a few minutes not included in the SciFi broadcast that I saw. [The Stolen Earth commentary is 46 minutes so there might not be anything left out there and SciFi is going to have a 90 minute slot for Journey’s End whose commentary is 1:03:25.]
“Hmm.. didn’t Rose say Jack was taken off to the Sontaran home world after defeating their fiendish plans?” I guess that is something we didn’t hear in the SciFi version. We just heard that a small group was battling on the Sontaran ship and were left to assume that it was Torchwood folk.
I enjoyed the episode, though it was weird that the fortune teller had Donna’s consciousness (?) go back in time to turn right while Rose had to send Donna back so there would be two of them there. Then the surviving Donna actually remembered things of the alternate timeline Donna. Or maybe, her consciousness just snapped back when the timeline was fixed?
About the Adipose – since England was devastated by the Titanic they wouldn’t have had all those people concerned about weight loss and so Adipose wouldn’t have been set up there. So, that was a nice touch that it hit the US instead.
In the commentary [director Graeme Harper, production manager Tracie Simpson and standby art director Nick Murray] they say that the fortune teller was played by Chipo Chung who played Chantho in Utopia (also part 1 of 3 to end the season). I believe they say that the set for the fortune teller is the same location as the Torchwood vaults. They were quite surprised over the transformation to China planet. Graeme Harper says he was nervous about doing another story without the Doctor, though his presence is felt throughout. They wanted to give a feeling of the World War II evacuation and pulled that off very well. At the end, apparently Julie Gardner didn’t think they had enough Bad Wolf signs the first time through so they had to redress them.
I’m looking forward to the next two weeks.
Neil
Ahhh, right… Are SciFi showing Torchwood and/or the Sarah Jane series? Maybe they figured it was a bit of expendable continuity.
In the episode as aired in the UK, Sarah-Jane and her “team” get a name check as having perished while defeating the Judoon on da moon, and Rose tells Donna after the Atmos episode that Gwen and Ianto are killed whilst Cap’n Jack is taken to the Sontaran homeworld.
Final episode ran 65 minutes in the UK, so I guess SciFi will pad it to 90 minutes with trailers and advertising…
Cheers
“Ahhh, right… Are SciFi showing Torchwood and/or the Sarah Jane series? Maybe they figured it was a bit of expendable continuity.” SciFi shows Sarah Jane, but BBC America runs Torchwood. So maybe that’s one reason why the Sarah Jane death survived, but the Torchwood references didn’t.
Neil
Neil-
You may have hit the nail on the head. There is no Torchwood on SciFi therefor it does not exist and must not be advertised on Scifi (even though it was a linchpin in the season ender last year.)
ROTFLMAO…
Someone in the SciFi editing suite is going to be a busy wee beaver then…
Cheers!