#Doctor x donna

[deeneedsaname]

Can we have a moment of silence for Sylvia, who now has an Alien living in her backyard, and a moment of triumph for Wilf, who now has an Alien living in his backyard

[sevenjetc]

For months now, I cannot stop about the way the word FRAGILE just hangs there between them...

[thelittlecoughsomewhere]

There is something to be said about how Donna is the only companion (New Who) who sees the inside of the Tardis before she sees the outside and how that paralells that she is the only one who when first meeting them sees the Doctor how he really is: raw, emotional, even forced to be honest about his deepest wound (the fact that he "loses" companions), his powers and ship incredibly intimidating and scary for humans (a spaceship that can snatch you from thin air where you can open the doors and look outside into space)

She meets the real version of him before she meets the public persona of him. In first meeting him she sees aspects of him he normally hides and only reveals later because he doesn't want to scare people away (like the inside of the tardis who he doesn't show to anybody).

And in the end she still chooses to trust him. She saw him at one of the worst day of his life, depressed, defeated and lashing out at her and still said I trust you.

The runaway bride is essential for understanding the Doctor Donna dynamic.

[ali-houston]

[doctordonna-protection-squad]

Ngl, I really really want Donna to find out how Ten died. Imagining her finding out that her best friend gave himself up to save her grandfather… it would tear her up inside. Wilf really was like a father to Ten

[hero-the-meep]

Why is the Doctor making Donna a cup of coffee so significant?

Well, he is trying to impress her, to get her to travel with him again – like he tried to do by using the TARDIS to make it snow at Christmas the first time he asked her to travel with him.

But he got that attempt wrong. Donna doesn't like Christmas, and the Doctor having the power to make it snow "scared her to death."

A cup of coffee, just how she likes it, is (on the surface of it) a smaller gesture to show that he remembered the little details about her. A cup of coffee is what brought them together all those years ago.

But it's what Donna told the Doctor about what Lance making her that cup of coffee meant to her that the Doctor really listened to and remembered.

"I was temping. I mean, it was all a bit posh, really. I'd spent the last two years at a double glazing firm. Well, I thought, I'm never going to fit in here. And then he made me a cup of coffee. I mean, that just doesn't happen. Nobody gets the secretaries a coffee. "And Lance, he's the Head of HR, he didn't need to bother with me. But he was nice, he was funny. And it turns out he thought everyone else was really snotty too. So, that's how it started, me and him. One cup of coffee, and that was it."

Donna fell in love with Lance because he made her a cup of coffee. So used to being unnoticed and uncared for, something as simple as an 'important' man taking the time to make her a cup of coffee meant everything to Donna.

She thought it was a sign that he was kind, that he was nice. She thought it was a sign he noticed and cared for her.

And the Doctor sees how it devastates her to learn the real reason why he was making her coffee was to drug her for his own ends. Despite their differences, he's gentle when he breaks it to her. And it connects her to him in a shared grief.

So when the Doctor makes her a cup of coffee after she regains her memories, he's not just telling her that he remembers the little details about her like how she likes her coffee, but the big things too.

He's showing that he sees her, that he cares about her thoughts and feelings, that he wants to care for her after all these years when he couldn't. That he knows how important this is to her.

But that's not all.

In the alternative timeline, Donna never meets Lance. And yet, when she is upset, and afraid, she asks Rose Tyler for a cup of coffee. Steam rises from her mug as they stand around the console inside the dying TARDIS, and have the most honest conversation they've had yet about the Doctor and their feelings towards him.

In the proper timeline, the person we see Donna drinking coffee with is Wilf. In moments of joy and moments of upset they bond over coffee. Before she finds the Doctor again, Donna brings Wilf a thermos to escape Sylvia's criticisms.

Wilf is the only person in Donna's life who she can be herself around, who has unconditionally cared for her, and who she takes joy in caring for back.

Even in the alternative timeline, Wilf has held onto not only the telescope but the exact same thermos Donna brings him coffee in when he's up on the hill.

For the Doctor to remember how she takes her coffee, we know they must have had moments together like this off-screen too.

So when the Doctor makes her a cup of coffee, just how she likes it, he is communicating he remembers not just the small details of her but that he remembers all these things that she associates with making someone a cup of coffee – kindness, acceptance, being noticed, caring for someone and being cared for, home, and family.

It's possible, for the Doctor, there's an apology in that cup of coffee too.

But wait, there's still more.

Did Donna spill the cup of coffee on the console on purpose?

The slight of hand was rather obvious. And it came at a time when Donna was trying to convince him not to leave her, to come back home to her, if only just for a visit.

He'd not said no, but she'd easily seen through him the first time he lied about coming inside to have dinner with her family that first Christmas, and likely saw through him again – the avoidance of eye contact, fiddling with the TARDIS, the wane "yeah, maybe."

She also rather clearly wanted to go on another trip with him (she never wanted to stop in the first place), and was only saying no because of her obligations to her family. It's possible she was buying time by spilling the cup of coffee – just one more than one last trip, without it being her "fault."

She had, after all, just dropped a cup of coffee on a computer and lost a job she'd probably hated, knowing Donna. And before things had gone really wrong, she'd definitely been enjoying herself.

It's also possible she's still quite angry with the Doctor, but unable to fully verbalise this yet.

He connects the cup of coffee to remembering every detail of her. She has not been able to remember any detail of her life with him. The last time they were standing around the console together, he took her memories against her will. He says it killed him; but she – or that version of herself, the one she actually liked – was arguably the one who was killed.

And she might be remembering Lance, another man she truly loved and trusted, and how a cup of coffee seemed like a kindness but was in fact a lie, a violation.

The Doctor quite possibly also suspects something like this is what might have happened, given his level of anger at her.

Despite the fact that this Doctor is more able to admit his feelings, we don't see what happened between them when he took her memories ever properly resolved in words.

Instead, there are a series of proxy arguments that stand in for it – Donna's anger that she gave away all her money because of him, that he sees taking the slow path, living a life day after day as such agony when he made her do it, his anger at her faith that he will know how to defeat the Toy Maker.

And their most emotional proxy argument of all – who is at fault for stranding them at the edge of the universe? Is it Donna, who spilt the cup of coffee, or the Doctor, who she couldn't stop from wandering off?

Thematically, however, there is some resolution. The Doctor lets Donna decide to regain her memories, even if it means she'll die. The Doctor knows Donna enough to save her from being left to die alone, even if it is at the very last moment. The Doctor admits he used to think he knew everything, but now he knows he doesn't.

Donna gets to tell him it's not all about him saving her, gets him to stop, finally gets him to come home with her.

And in their last scene, it's the Doctor who is having the cup of coffee.

[wispedvellichor]

Donna : Do you ever want to talk about your emotions, Doctor? Ten: No. Fourteen: I do! Donna : I know, honey. Fourteen: I’m sad. Donna : I know, honey.

[northernfireart]

based on a conversation I had with my best friend and after 10 minutes of crying laughing we agreed that this was very doctordonna coded.

[tatennant]

"Where you lead, I will follow..."

[moonah-rose]

Considering Donna was very much not dead when Fourteen was cradling her, she probably heard every word he said, including the bit about him egging on the soldiers to kill him because he didn't care what happened to him anymore.

A few days later when they're all settled in France she finally brings it up like; "Right, Spaceman, sit your skinny Martian arse down because we need to unpack some of this self-destructive things you got going on! Mum, you make the tea, Shaun, go buy some biscuits, Rose start piling your teddies around your Uncle."

[paradox-n-bedrock]

[deeneedsaname]

“I really do remember though. Every second with you. I’m so glad you’re back, cause it killed me, Donna. It killed me, it killed me, it killed me.”

The recognition of the fact that losing Donna was such a last straw for the tenth doctor though. He lost her, and Donna had been so perfect for him, and just…this line and the delivery is exactly about that.

[repoart]

I colorized my sketch 🖌

[thegingergoddess]

+bonus

Doctor Who AU: fake!marriage "The Doctor and Donna Noble pretending to be a married couple on a reality TV show." — No Place, The Tenth Doctor Adventures

[ali-houston]

[thelittlecoughsomewhere]

Whenever I think about how the Doctor and Donna causing the eruption in "Fires of Pompeii" narratively functions as a parallel/microcosm to the Doctor destroying Gallifrey in the Time War I go insane and have to lie down.

Because this time he isn't alone, Donna is with him and he says the words out loud "Push this lever and it's over. Twenty thousand people." and he is waiting for her reaction and she puts her hands on his and they pull the lever together. And this time he doesn't have to make the choice alone, so he subsequently doesn't have to carry the burden of guilt alone.

And maybe, just maybe, this can be seen as his first step into his healing journey regarding his Time War guilt. Donna Noble - a woman who he grows to love and admire and regard as his guiding light - made the same choice (yes on a much smaller scale, but functionally the same choice) he did when he destroyed Gallifrey. He will never ever forgive himself (at least during his time as Ten), but maybe when he realizes that he doesn't blame her and doesn't want her to feel guilty for what she did in Pompeii he starts to be a little kinder to himself. For Donna's sake.

I really believe that during season 4 both Donna and the Doctor are on a healing journey. They make each other better, they begin to heal the wounds of the other person. Donna's self-esteem grows and the Doctor's guilt complex gets a little less heavy. Just a little. Baby steps. But they are walking them together.

And then Journey's End happens, and their healing process gets interrupted and without Donna nothing makes sense and he almost turns into Time Lord Victorious (this arc is so insane)

Because why should he stick to the rules of a universe that took Donna from him?

But he gets stopped. Adelaide stops him and later he himself recognizes that he's lived too long.

And he turns from the man who regrets into the man who forgets.

And then day of the doctor happens. And Gallifrey falls no more. And yet, he still has to live with the memories of 4 incarnations (war, nine, ten, eleven) and hundreds of years during which he believed he killed his own people. But now he has an excuse not to face that.

Anyway, thesis statement: Donna helped the Doctor confront his Time War guilt complex in a way no companion before or after her did. (shoutout to Martha though for making him open up about Gallifrey!!!)

And neither the character of the Doctor in the show or the show itself narratively ever continued to truly confront the trauma of the Time War guilt or continued the healing process Donna started.

Until now.