History Characters / DoctorWhoRevivalSeriesCompanions

-->"[[PlanetOfHats Planet of the Hats]], I'm ready!"

'''Sybeline Priestess:''' ''(about to stab her)'' THIS PRATTLING VOICE WILL CEASE FOREVER!

* ThePowerOfFriendship: The Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors unreservedly describe Donna as their best friend, though being incarnations of the Doctor ([[TheyreCalledPersonalIssuesForAReason and thus very reluctant to bring up personal stuff]]), there are things they don't share even with her.

** After her debut episode, drove around with every type of clothing she might ever need to travel with the Doctor, just in case he showed up again one day and made her a companion.

* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: She's loud and abrasive because deep down she believes she isn't important. In "Wild Blue Yonder" the Doctor states that Donna doesn't just belive she is stupid - she also believes she is brilliant at the same time.

* LowerClassLout: PlayedWith. She is comes from a more middle-class suburban background than Rose, but she has a much bawdier attitude with a strong London accent to match, as well as many tomboyish traits. After stepping out of the TARDIS doors, her usual first instinct when encountering a complete stranger is to get snarky with them. The Tenth Doctor's clone picks up her "rough" vernacular and other aspects of her personality as part of the two-way biological meta-crisis that created him.

!!Wilfred Mott (Tenth [[spoiler: and Fourteenth]] Doctor[[spoiler:s]])

->'''Played by:''' Creator/BernardCribbins (2007–10, [[spoiler: 2023]])[[note]]A cameo in the 2007 Christmas Special, a RecurringCharacter in the 2008 season, finally PromotedToOpeningTitles as a companion in a 2-part story which aired on Christmas Day 2009 and New Year's Day 2010.[[/note]]

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Because Donna begged Ten to "save someone" in Pompeii, he saved Lobus Caecilius and his family. This led to the Doctor choosing the face of Caecilius when he became Twelve so that he could always remember to "save someone", which led to him saving Ashildr by making her immortal. Making Ashildr immortal led her to much misery, and Ashildr herself led to Clara's death.

* BadassNormal: His first thought during a Dalek invasion is to shoot one Dalek in the eyestalk. '''With a paintball gun'''. It didn't ''work'', but that's still quite a few levels of badassness above the norm. Bonus points for it being his first encounter with the aforementioned pepperpots.

** In a comic set after her departure, it's revealed she made a recording in the TARDIS as she believed there was a good chance she'd could be killed in her adventures with the Doctor, to tell him she didn't regret any of it.
* CursedWithAwesome: [=DoctorDonna=]: a human woman with a Time Lord brain and mankind's unique spark that makes her use her newfound intellect at maximum proficiency, even surpassing the Doctor himself. But the strain this puts on her human frame is so hard that it starts to ''kill her'' and forces the Doctor to make her forget ''everything'' about her travels with him in order to suppress her super intellect and save her life. Worse yet, if Donna ever remembers ''anything'' about her time with the Doctor, her Time Lord brain will resurface and she will ''burn''. [[spoiler:She eventually gets around it by transferring the meta-crisis energy into her daughter, buying her enough time for the two to dissipate the rest harmlessly.]]

* ThePowerOfFriendship: The Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors unreservedly describe Donna as their best friend.

* TheBusCameBack: Makes a brief reappearance at the end of "Wild Blue Yonder" after having not been seen since "The End of Time: Part Two" 13 years prior.

* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: She's loud and abrasive because deep down she believes she isn't important.

!!Wilfred Mott (Tenth [[spoiler: and Fourteenth Doctors]])

!!Wilfred Mott (Tenth Doctor)

->'''Played by:''' Creator/BernardCribbins (2007–10)[[note]]A cameo in the 2007 Christmas Special, a RecurringCharacter in the 2008 season, finally PromotedToOpeningTitles as a companion in a 2-part story which aired on Christmas Day 2009 and New Year's Day 2010.[[/note]]

* AbusiveParents: Donna's mom, Sylvia, is verbally abusive to both Donna and Wilf (Donna's grandfather) in a depressingly realistic way. The Doctor is actually shocked when he realizes the extent of it, and tells Sylvia to stop it. By the time of "[[Recap/DoctorWho60thASTheStarBeast The Star Beast]]", Sylvia has cleaned up her act, going so far as to slap the Doctor when she thinks he'll endanger her daughter's life.

* LamarckWasRight: [[spoiler:Her daughter, Rose, inherits some of her mom's part-Time Lord nature, which also helps prevent Donna from dying when her mind and memories are restored, since some of the energy leeched off into Rose.]]

* MissingTheGoodStuff: In "[[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride The Runaway Bride]]", her first appearance, she has (somehow) managed to avoid all of London's previous encounters with extraterrestrials. She slept through the Auton massacre. She was hungover for the Sycorax invasion. And she was scuba-diving in Spain during the Battle of Canary Wharf. It may have been an early sign that the universe was finding increasingly implausible excuses to keep her out of danger before her destined meeting with the Doctor. Tragically, her LaserGuidedAmnesia at the end of Series 4 means that she believes she missed every subsequent alien invasion, including the ones she personally thwarted.

* ThePowerOfFriendship: The Tenth and Fourteenth Doctor unreservedly describe Donna as his best friend.

A new companion introduced in 2021's six-part storyline ''Flux'', filling the void left by Graham and Ryan's departure. A slightly eccentric but otherwise ordinary middle-aged bloke from Liverpool whose principal interests include [[UsefulNotes/BritishFootyTeams the Reds]], helping poor families at his local food bank, and pretending to be a tour guide at the Museum of Liverpool, Dan is spirited away by a foul-tempered dog-man named Karvanista, who turns out to be his assigned protector for the coming apocalypse.

* CursedWithAwesome: [=DoctorDonna=]: a human woman with a Time Lord brain and mankind's unique spark that makes her use her newfound intellect at maximum proficiency, even surpassing the Doctor himself. But the strain this puts on her human frame is so hard that it starts to ''kill her'' and forces the Doctor to make her forget ''everything'' about her travels with him in order to suppress her super intellect and save her life. Worse yet, if Donna ever remembers ''anything'' about her time with the Doctor, her Time Lord brain will resurface and she will ''burn''.

* DeathOfPersonality: Dalek Caan constantly foretells her death during the Dalek Invasion of Earth, but this was only MetaphoricallyTrue. She was arguably condemned to something much worse: a heartbreaking case of LaserGuidedAmnesia that erased all of her wonderful experiences with the Doctor from her mind. However, "The End of Time" reveals that Donna's true personality is still FightingFromTheInside and there's a lingering spark of hope that she may be fully restored someday.
** [[spoiler:It only took 15 years, but "The Star Beast" ends with her mind and memories fully restored.]]

* GoodWithNumbers: It's more than just math, though — she's spent most of her life temping, and she's gotten ''ridiculously'' good at it, having gained a knack for spotting patterns in numbers not even the Doctor would notice.
** For one, her skill with numbers proves vital in ending the Human-Hath War. How? She figures out the numbers stamped on the different sections of the complex are are actually dates, ones in the New Byzantine Calendar according to the Doctor. They aren't counting down to anything; instead, they're counting ''up'' from the Source, aka the original landing site for the colony, because they're dates from when the sections were completed -- namely, one week earlier.
* HalfHumanHybrid: In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd "Journey's End"]], she saves herself from Dalek-inflicted doom by splicing her DNA with the Doctor's. She then indulges in {{technobabble}}, yelling like the Doctor, and hijacking the Dalek's motor commands to make them spin in circles. Fun is had by all, but it does not last. Although apparently she remains part Time Lord even after her memory is wiped, because the Master's use of the Immortality Gate to turn all humans into Masters in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime The End of Time]]" does not affect her.
** [[spoiler:"The Star Beast" reveals that her daughter Rose also carries some Time Lord genes from the Meta-Crisis and is capable of sharing Donna's power, thereby saving her mother's life.]]

* MeaningfulName:

** "Noble" can be used to describe someone with a strong moral fiber and great integrity. Despite her sarcastic wit and shallow exterior, Donna is a kind and upstanding woman who can't bear the thought of just leaving people to die if she and the Doctor can help them.
* MetaGuy: She [[LampshadeHanging comments on how fantastic]] things like a "translation circuit" are, calls the Doctor out on his TechnicalPacifist traits and knew the best place to find him was where there was [[WeirdnessMagnet anything weird going on]].

* SaveThisPersonSaveTheWorld: Mainly just one episode, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E11TurnLeft "Turn Left"]]. Rose goes out of her way to get her out of town, and then to use her to change her past.
** Her importance to the universe as a whole is lampshaded by the Doctor in the same episode: "Most times, the universe just compensates around [changes in the timeline], but with you? Great big parallel world."

* LaserGuidedAmnesia: The Doctor had to give her this after she became the [=DoctorDonna=] so she wouldn't die. [[spolier: "[[Recap/DoctorWho60thASTheStarBeast The Star Beast]]" shows that she [[AmnesiacResonance retains some portions of memory in the form of dreams and slips of the tongue]], and she eventually regains her memories altogether.]]

* DeathOfPersonality: Dalek Caan constantly foretells her death during the Dalek Invasion of Earth, but this was only MetaphoricallyTrue. She was arguably condemned to something much worse: a heartbreaking case of LaserGuidedAmnesia that erased all of her wonderful experiences with the Doctor from her mind. However, "The End of Time" reveals that Donna's true personality is still FightingFromTheInside and there's a lingering spark hope that she may be fully restored someday.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Despite the whole "getting your mind wiped and unable to remember all the stuff you did or you will ''die''" thing, Donna does eventually get to marry a nice bloke who genuinely loves her, her mother starts being nice to her, and one of the Tenth Doctor's last acts is to make sure the Temple-Nobles are financially secure.

* FightingFromTheInside: Even after the mindwipe, Donna's true persona is still buried in her subconscious and occasionally manifests at key moments, namely when she bought Wilfred an autobiography about Joshua Naismith without realising why.

Played by established comedienne [[Series/TheCatherineTateShow Catherine Tate]]. Originally a one-off character for the 2006 Christmas Special [[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride "The Runaway Bride"]], Donna returned as a regular companion for the fourth series as well as a role in the Tenth Doctor's last two specials. She's set to return in the 60th Anniversary specials.

A newspaper salesman from 21st century Chiswick, London. Originally a one-off character in [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned "Voyage of the Damned"]], Wilfred was eventually revealed to also be Donna Noble's grandfather (a last-minute rewrite due to the actor hired to play Donna's father dying). This resulted in quite a few recurring roles throughout the fourth series, leading to fan-favourite status for the character and finally full-fledged companion status in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]], the Tenth Doctor's final story.

* ManlyTears: His friendship with Ten is very emotional.

* NoLongerWithUs: In "The Star Beast", filmed before Bernard Cribbin's passing but released after, the Fourteenth Doctor asks after Wilf and is told he's not with the Nobles anymore. As in, Kate Stewart had him put in sheltered accommodation on UNIT's dime when his advancing age meant he couldn't get up and down the stairs anymore.

* StatingTheSImpleSolution: [[spoiler: The ultimate solution to the Meta-Crisis? Simply making the conscious choice to let go of the power, [[WomenAreWiser something the Doctor was unable to even consider because of his ego]].]]

* AbusiveParents: Donna's mom, Sylvia, is verbally abusive to both Donna and Wilf (Donna's grandfather) in a depressingly realistic way. The Doctor is actually shocked when he realizes the extent of it, and tells Sylvia to stop it.

* LaserGuidedAmnesia: The Doctor had to give her this after she became the [=DoctorDonna=] so she wouldn't die.

** "Noble" can also be used to describe someone with a strong moral fiber and great integrity. Despite her sarcastic wit and shallow exterior, Donna is a kind and upstanding woman who can't bear the thought of just leaving people to die if she and the Doctor can help them.

* WindsOfDestinyChanged: Implied but never fully made explicit in "The End of Time" that Wilfred has been chosen by destiny to prevent the Doctor dying a final death at either Rassilon or the Master's hands, which is why they keep running into one another. The Woman merely tells him he "stands at the heart of coincidence".

* HalfHumanHybrid: In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd "Journey's End"]], she saves herself from Dalek-inflicted doom by splicing her DNA with the Doctor's. She then indulges in {{technobabble}}, yelling like the Doctor, and hijacking the Dalek's motor commands to make them spin in circles. Fun is had by all, but it does not last. Although apparently she remains part Time Lord even after her memory is wiped, because the Master's use of the Immortality Gate to turn all humans into Masters in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime The End of Time]]'' does not affect her.

* HiddenDepths: As said above, she began as a fairly one-dimensional PluckyComicRelief caricature of Tate's usual roles, but quickly established herself as a much deeper character when she returned as a regular companion. As it turns out, she acts loud and assertive to cover her deep-seated insecurities and low self-esteem, the result of years of emotional abuse at the hands of her overbearing mother.

[[Characters/DoctorWhoFirstDoctor 1]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoSecondDoctor 2]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoThirdDoctor 3]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoFourthDoctor 4]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoFifthDoctor 5]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoSixthDoctor 6]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoSeventhDoctor 7]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoEighthDoctor 8]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoWarDoctor War]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoNinthDoctor 9]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoTenthDoctor 10]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoEleventhDoctor 11]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoTwelfthDoctor 12]] | [[Characters/DoctorWhoThirteenthDoctor 13]]\\

* CharacterOutlivedActor: In "The Star Beast", Donna's NoLongerWithUs comments initially make the Doctor think he died, but he's actually living in sheltered accomodation provided by UNIT. Bernard Cribbins died in 2022.

* WistfulAmnesia: In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]], her grandfather Wilf describes her as occasionally being sad, but not remembering why. In addition, despite the fact that she reverted to her shallow original personality when her memories were initially erased, Donna as seen in the two-parter acts somewhat more like the person she became after travelling with the Doctor.

** Her married name, Donna Temple-Noble. Fans have noted that "tempus" means "time" in Latin, and that "noble" is a word for "lord". Add that "Donna" comes from a word meaning "lady"...

->'''Played by:''' Creator/BernardCribbins (2007–10, 2023)[[note]]A cameo in the 2007 Christmas Special, a RecurringCharacter in the 2008 season, finally PromotedToOpeningTitles as a companion in a 2-part story which aired on Christmas Day 2009 and New Year's Day 2010.[[/note]]

%% Don't add the Fourteenth Doctor until she actually meets him onscreen
!!Donna Noble (Tenth Doctor)

Played by established comedienne [[Series/TheCatherineTateShow Catherine Tate]]. Originally a one-off character for the 2006 Christmas Special [[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride "The Runaway Bride"]], Donna returned as a regular companion for the fourth series as well as a role in the Tenth Doctor's last two specials.