It's funny because I just wrote a fic expressing my distaste for her ending. Donna was the most annoying person when she first appeared in TRB and then in Season 4, we saw her develop from this small-minded selfish woman who missed ALL the alien invasions to this compassionate, best friend there ever was for the Doctor and universe-saving Human/Time Lord hybrid.
And then it all got taken away.
That totally blew.
I'm a D/R shipper all the way and I was so so sad at JE when Ten manfully left 10.5 with Rose, but you know what? At least she got to keep a memento of her time with the Doctor.
Did Donna? Noooo. I honestly cried more in her scene than I did in his parting with Rose.
So I think that what RTD wrote in was good for emotional impact, it just sucked.
I feel odd with Donna because I think I preferred her in her first episode before she mellowed. (I call it that, but in some ways it feels like she got rebooted as a slightly different character.)
I loved her in her first episode. But I think she was under immense stress in "The Runaway Bride" (apparently kidnapped by a skinny Martian in a weird box, abducted by robot Santas, forced to jump for her life on the motorway, and missing her wedding), so if she was a little calmer in "Partners in Crime," I think that made sense.
Plus, by the time that we got back to Donna in PiC, she had spent however long looking for the Doctor and investigating weird alien things. She'd found a purpose in life when she didn't have that earlier.
It's an interesting question really. I mean, you've got to give RTD credit for creating the ultimate emotional punch for her character. Even death would have been less tragic for Donna. In some ways, it seems like RTD was taking an easy way to write out her character without killing her off. But I don't think that was entirely it. Though given she, like Rose, wasn't likely to just jump TARDIS any time soon it needed to be an exceptional ending
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I think the biggest reason for Donna's growth was someone having belief in her and what she could do. I don't think it was an issue of who, so much as someone offering that consistently. The Doctor did.
And that's what makes the Doctor such a good friend at times. When he told her mum to do that, it seems that she has, and while Donna isn't the pure Doctor-Donna awesomeness she achieved before leaving the TARDIS, she did seem less high-strung than before in other glimpses we had.
And that's what makes the Doctor such a good friend at times. When he told her mum to do that, it seems that she has, and while Donna isn't the pure Doctor-Donna awesomeness she achieved before leaving the TARDIS, she did seem less high-strung than before in other glimpses we had.
Agreed. Part of what made the Doctor and Donna brilliant together was that he offered her what she really needed at the time. And that was a friend who believed in her, would give her the opportunity to grow and would also listen to her. Understand that she was a lot more than just a loud voice. She was smart, funny and caring.
I think Silvia played a large part in her issues with talking herself down, so I think being treated better by her mother would definitely have helped. I wish we could have seen, or had hints about more of who Donna was post-JE.
For some reason it annoys me a lot more than with Zoe and Jamie. With them it was the tragic ending to something that took weeks (or hours on DVD) to play out. It's punishment for the Doctor and it hurts like it should. I don't get the sense that anyone had written themselves into a corner or anything like that
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This! Absolutely, with Donna, it feels like it's a plot device to get rid of a companion, and for her to have a Sad Ending so the Doctor can angst and wallow in guilt. To be honest, I'd rather Donna had made the choice to leave herself, to choose life without him rather than death.
I usually like RTD's writing, but this whole thing was just...I don't know, a mess?
I understand why RTD did it - but as Donna is my fave character it hurts me that she can never remember her time with The Doctor... as she reminds me so much of how I would act with him.
It was also hard cause she had just finally accepted her greatness!
I have always mostly liked Donna's ending, personally. It's clearly written as pure tragedy and with the intention of making all of us bawl our eyes out, and it achieves that purpose. The main tragedy is that her arc of realising she's brilliant all by herself is erased, and she goes back to thinking she won't achieve anything, but I may be optimistic but I think there's some of that belief left in her, and it will get encouraged by Wilf and Sylvia
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I've been mulling this topic over and thinking that it's not bad writing just because I don't like it. However, I think if it had been written that Donna chooses to give up her memories to preserve her life, it would have been a more satisfactory ending. Which points to it being badly written.
I have always mostly liked Donna's ending, personally. It's clearly written as pure tragedy and with the intention of making all of us bawl our eyes out, and it achieves that purpose.The thing is, though, there's a difference between "tragedy" and "making the audience bawl their eyes out." If RTD had made a beautifully-executed, heart-twisting montage of the cutest puppies you've ever seen in your life being ruthlessly exterminated by Daleks, it would probably make a good chunk of the audience descend into undignified sobbing, but it would be cheap tear-jerking, not tragedy. Tragedy implies some sense of narrative appropriateness. I won't restrict it to the narrow classical sense of "the fall from grace of a hero who starts out with everything going for him, but winds up in utter ruin through a characteristic fuck-up on his part that gets magnified all out of proportion by circumstances," although Ten's s3 arc arguably has elements of classical tragedy. In a broader sense, Doomsday is tragic because the fissure between Ten and
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It's funny because I just wrote a fic expressing my distaste for her ending. Donna was the most annoying person when she first appeared in TRB and then in Season 4, we saw her develop from this small-minded selfish woman who missed ALL the alien invasions to this compassionate, best friend there ever was for the Doctor and universe-saving Human/Time Lord hybrid.
And then it all got taken away.
That totally blew.
I'm a D/R shipper all the way and I was so so sad at JE when Ten manfully left 10.5 with Rose, but you know what? At least she got to keep a memento of her time with the Doctor.
Did Donna? Noooo. I honestly cried more in her scene than I did in his parting with Rose.
So I think that what RTD wrote in was good for emotional impact, it just sucked.
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And then the writers took it all away *glares*
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And that's what makes the Doctor such a good friend at times. When he told her mum to do that, it seems that she has, and while Donna isn't the pure Doctor-Donna awesomeness she achieved before leaving the TARDIS, she did seem less high-strung than before in other glimpses we had.
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Agreed. Part of what made the Doctor and Donna brilliant together was that he offered her what she really needed at the time. And that was a friend who believed in her, would give her the opportunity to grow and would also listen to her. Understand that she was a lot more than just a loud voice. She was smart, funny and caring.
I think Silvia played a large part in her issues with talking herself down, so I think being treated better by her mother would definitely have helped. I wish we could have seen, or had hints about more of who Donna was post-JE.
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I usually like RTD's writing, but this whole thing was just...I don't know, a mess?
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It was also hard cause she had just finally accepted her greatness!
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I've been mulling this topic over and thinking that it's not bad writing just because I don't like it. However, I think if it had been written that Donna chooses to give up her memories to preserve her life, it would have been a more satisfactory ending. Which points to it being badly written.
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