#but its just. the First trip in the tardis and she BLOWS UP POMPEII.

[sporadicfrogs]

Pretty fucked up that on her first actual trip with the Doctor, Donna ends up helping him blow up Vesuvius and destroy Pompeii 😳

[denimbex1986]

'In its 60-year history, Doctor Who has seen a number of wonderful companions go on incredible adventures with the Doctor. While many have left the TARDIS with their own fairytale endings in hand, others have not been quite so lucky. It’s hardly the worst way to end an adventure with the Doctor — as some paid the price with their lives — but there’s something especially tragic in the original ending of Donna Noble’s (Catherine Tate) time in the TARDIS. Once the most important woman in the universe, Donna Noble was left without a single memory of her time among the stars.

When Donna collided with the regeneration energy of the Doctor (David Tennant) her mind took on all the information in his brain, creating a human-time lord meta-crisis. To save her life, the Doctor wiped her mind of all her memories with him and everything that would send the meta-crisis into a cascading failure. Now, to quote the Doctor in "The End of Time," "If she ever remembers [him] her mind will burn, and she will die."

Doctor Who is on the cusp of a new era, with Ncuti Gatwa set to take over as the Fifteenth Doctor, but before he arrives, the face of Ten must deal with some unfinished business with his best friend. The series often bridges the time between new doctors and companions with a special episode, and this year’s specials fall upon the 60th anniversary of the franchise. Writer Russell T. Davies has returned as showrunner to celebrate the event with three special episodes that see David Tennant return as the Fourteenth Doctor as he’s set on a collision course with Donna Noble.

Donna Noble Made Ten a Better Person in 'Doctor Who'

The curse of the Doctor’s immortality means that he’s hardly a stranger to loss. After losing Rose (Billie Piper) to an alternate universe in “Doomsday” and later, when Martha (Freema Aygeman) chooses to walk away, he becomes understandably jaded. When Donna Noble suddenly appears in the TARDIS thanks to some wibbly wobbly space magic, the Doctor is forcibly reminded that with all that power, he needs someone to keep him grounded. And Donna, with her good heart and good intentions, is exactly the kind of person he wants to be.

From her very first (intentional) trip in the TARDIS, Donna immediately prioritizes saving people. When the Doctor and Donna end up at Pompeii, days before the volcanic eruption, Donna’s immediate goal is to evacuate the city and save everyone from the horrible fate she knows they’ll face when the volcano blows, timeline be damned. Over the course of the episode, Donna and the Doctor come to realize that they have to sacrifice the people of Pompeii in order to save the rest of the world. Even in the face of that devastating decision, Donna begs the Doctor, “Just save someone.” Later, when the Doctor regenerates into Twelve (Peter Capaldi), he chooses the face of the man they saved in “The Fires of Pompeii,” as a reminder of what Donna taught him. “I’m the Doctor, and I save people,” he says. She brings out the best in him even thousands of years later.

For the entirety of Series 4, Donna is constantly going out of her way to help people. She’s essential in liberating the Ood — an innocent race of alien creatures turned into slaves by future humans — rescuing the citizens of the library, and putting no less than 27 planets back in their rightful places in the galaxy. As the Doctor tells Donna's family after he’s wiped her memory:

“There are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her. There are people living in the light and singing songs of Donna Noble, a thousand million lightyears away. They will never forget her, while she can never remember. And for one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe.”

'Doctor Who's Original Ending for Donna Noble Is Devastating

While it’s a blessing that Donna makes it out of Series 4 alive and with a standard happily ever after — she gets married, wins the lottery, and eventually has a beautiful daughter named Rose — the great tragedy of Donna being the only one to not know what she’s lost is heartbreaking. She’s saved the universe, not just her own planet, and she’s the “most important woman in the whole of creation,” but she can’t even remember having saved them all.

All Donna ever wanted to do was save people and see the galaxy, traveling in the TARDIS and making the universe a better place. When she realizes what the Doctor will have to do to save her life, she begs him not to damn her back to a life of being ordinary, a life where she’s always missing out on the things everyone else gets to enjoy. The real clincher for that scene in "Journey's End" is the way that Tennant and Tate play Donna’s final moments in the TARDIS. Tennant is devastating as it breaks the Doctor’s heart to have to take her memories away, but he’d do anything to keep her safe, even if it meant never seeing her again. And Tate imbues Donna with this innocence that makes the audience ache for what she’s losing.

Donna Noble Deserves to Know She's the Most Important Woman in the Universe

Over the course of her time with the Doctor, Donna found a confidence in herself that she didn’t have before. Sure, she was always loud and a little bit unapologetic, but before she saw the galaxy she was always the first person to disparage her own value. “I’m no one,” she’d say, not knowing the fate of the universe rests in her hands. While the Chekov's Gun of Donna's memories serves as a heartwrenching narrative device, that angst will only pay off in a satisfying way if the Doctor finds a way to save her from that fate once and for all. And well, he's the doctor, and he saves people. The impact Donna Noble had on the universe was unparalleled — and if the series wants to bring her back, the most important woman in the whole of creation deserves to know just how special she truly is.'