Unpopular Opinion Alert: Donna in 'Journey's End' = Perfect

[arabian]

I'm putting any and all thoughts behind the cut even though it's been a week, because it was a week ago on BBC one, but it will be a bit of time before it airs on the Sci-Fi network. (How anyone can wait that long is beyond me, but there ya go ...)

Comments

[chalcidice]

How you can take such a horrible ending of the series, in my opinion, and string it into something more deep and complex is beyond me. I am truly amazed. I don't know if you have swayed my dislike for the ending of this series of Who. But it does give another perspective on the entire matter.

I am still hoping by some miracle that Donna will return, I know it's not going to happen any time soon, but she could give us fans a major shocker if she appeared in one of the specials next year. Maybe not as a companion but just popping into the storyline. Yes, I know it's not going to happen. But I just hate how Donna was ripped away from the life she wanted, it's so very Rose-like, so I am hoping for her return, even if it causes her to be consumed. That's right I am THAT selfish!

Back onto your post, I did love that the Doctor told Sylvia that maybe, she should be voicing her opinion about Donna being great. That if maybe she were a little more supportive Donna would feel like she is capable of greatness and could achieve greatness. I think we all read into that line as the Doctor telling Sylvia off for not being the "best" mother when it comes to her daughters self confidence.

Rambling again. But I did like your take on the Donna losing her memory stuff :D

[arabian]

I think I can see this so clearly because it comes from personal experience a bit. I had a complicated relationship with my mother, similar to the surface of what we saw with Donna and Sylvia, and so I know how much it means when your mom believes in you. And that's all Donna needs.

I think the best thing for the specials that would help a lot of viewers would be to have happen in one of the specials:

(A) Rose and 10.5 in Pete's World. I'm hoping that is one of the potential plans because why else would they scrap the TOTALLY AWESOME that is Ten giving 10.5 a bit of the TARDIS to grow his own from the script? Why? So I'm hoping that we'll see Rose (possibly pregnant, knowing Billie Piper's condition) and 10.5 taking their first trip into this universe in their TARDIS.

(B) In one of the other specials in THIS universe have Donna and the brilliance she's become again somehow come to the Doctor's attention. I'd like a cameo by Catherine Tate, but even him just hearing about it and wearing that oh, so proud smile would do wonders for those heartbroken about the ending.

Oh, reading your post makes me so sad that you thought it was horrible. It really does. I had issues (as you know), but those issues were with how Tennant played the Doctor in some scenes, and how Rusty didn't show enough pain in Ten over leaving Rose behind. The conclusion itself, I had no issue with, just some of the execution. But Donna's story I thought was perfection. Considering Catherine Tate was only around for one series, and considering that Donna wouldn't have left any other way but death, just perfection.

[wendymr]

I had a complicated relationship with my mother, similar to the surface of what we saw with Donna and Sylvia, and so I know how much it means when your mom believes in you.

So did I - and that's why I disagree with you entirely over the likelihood of Donna ever getting that reassurance from her mother. Emotionally abusive people - which is what Sylvia is - do not change their behaviour. Think about that scene. Yes, Sylvia defended Donna, but then she would. The Doctor is an outsider. She can criticise her daughter all she wants, but anyone outside the family can't. It's not their place. It's none of their damned business.

Then the Doctor tells her that she should tell Donna that some time. Not long after, Sylvia tells him, very curtly, that he should be going. That says to me that he crossed a line with her by telling her what to do - by daring to criticise her. She won't listen to a word he says. His opinion is irrelevant to her, because she knows how to behave towards her own daughter, thank you very much.

I know that kind of mother-daughter relationship, because I've seen it several times in my own family, and I've seen it in other family dynamics. Sylvia won't encourage Donna to do better. She won't boost her self-confidence. Why should she? She's had 40 years of putting Donna down at every turn, telling Donna she's useless, no brains, never achieved anything, never managed to keep a man, the one time she got a man to the altar she mucked it up... and so on and so on. She never saw Donna do the brilliant stuff the Doctor did, and anything she did see she wrote off as either someone else doing it or it all being 'their fault' for interfering.

And, while I'd love to believe that Wilf will be a catalyst for Donna to become again what we know she can be, I can't see that either, for the same reasons: he's been part of Donna's family dynamic for 40 years, and if he hasn't managed to do anything about it in that time he never will. He's as much under Sylvia's thumb as Donna is.

So I think it was a horrible ending for Donna. No, it's not as bad as her dying, and I would have hated that more. I just wish she'd been given some dignity. A job offer on Earth she couldn't refuse, plus Lee reappearing? It could have been tied with some reason, related to the Time Lord intelligence in her head, why she couldn't stay with the Doctor, just to add logic to her decision. Far, far better than turning her back into the brainless, loud, shallow person she was in TRB. That was just awful, given everything we saw her become, and I can't accept your reasoning that it was brilliant. :(

[arabian]

As I wrote in response below, the reason I think it WILL be different this time is because Sylvia had proof that Donna WAS this amazing, brilliant person. And I don't agree that Sylvia is emotionally abusive; I know she's hard on Donna, but it always came across more to me as disappointment that Donna never achieved anything which to me read more a thought based on that Donna HADN'T achieved anything. She was a temp, and then when PiC came around, she was essentially living off her mother (and had been since the Doctor left) seemingly unable to get a job.

Sylvia didn't know that Donna was trying to find the Doctor, she just knew that Donna had spent a year "trying to find a job" and was still failing miserably. Sylvia just needed to KNOW that Donna had it in her, which DONNA hadn't shown her at this point. Now that Sylvia DOES know it, she will push Donna the right way.

[wendymr]

But when did Sylvia actually SEE Donna be brilliant? She didn't actually see anything. She wasn't there at crucial moments, and she's also the type of woman - and, again, I know the type - who sees only what she wants to see. In her world-view, Donna is useless, worthless, has never amounted to anything and will never amount to anything, and she's seen nothing to change that view. Even if she had seen just one example, I'd argue that she'd explain it away as Donna just being in the right place at the right time, or it being something anyone could do - oh, and she'd also be standing there haranguing Donna for getting in people's way and making herself out to be important when she's just a useless unemployed temp. Sorry, but that's how Sylvia is shown to us in the episodes, and she's incapable of seeing her daughter through other people's eyes.

And, with everything I saw of Sylvia, and the understanding I have from my work of issues around abuse, I have no hesitation in calling her emotionally abusive. She's a bully. She undermines Donna, destroys her confidence, saps any ounce of ambition that Donna might have had. I see conditioned responses in Donna's reaction to her, too, that tell me she's heard it all before. It's not as vivid as Donna ducking any time her mother's hand comes near her might be (yes, that's another conditioned response, one to physical abuse, and I'm very familiar with that one too), but there are still clear signs of it in Donna. Bullying behaviour is ingrained, and bullies rarely, if ever, change their behaviour - and not without some kind of intervention, such as therapy.

So, no, I just can't believe for one second that Sylvia has remotely changed her opinion of Donna, or that her behaviour will change :(

[arabian]

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. As I said to afrocurl, when there is no concrete answer in canon and I can make it make logical sense in my brain then I'll happily accept the happy alternative. We just do see Sylvia differently and if I saw her the way you did, I would agree with your point of view.

[chalcidice]

I think I have gotten over Donna's ending. I am now happy they didn't kill her. When the series ended I thought it would have been better then kill the character than take away her year with the Doctor. But giving it time I can appreciate the ending.

I would love to get some specials with Rose and 10.5. I think it would be nice to have a true conclusion about their life, but I don't see that happening. I think may of the Who fans will feel that RTD is just continuing his shipping for Rose/Doctor. But it would be nice to see where Rose and 10.5's relationship goes, what kind of life they are having and so forth. I was always the kid who wanted to know what happened after "Happily Ever Afer".