History Recap / DoctorWhoNSS4E11TurnLeft

* Even before Donna goes back in time, the conversation with Rose where Donna realizes that dead is dead:

** The look on Donna's face (and her immediate reaction) mirrors just about every fan watching the episode.

Without the Doctor around to stop it, [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned the starship]] ''[[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned Titanic]]'' [[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned crashed into London the following Christmas]], nuking it with its nuclear engine. Donna and her family are OK, because they left London for Christmas on the advice of a mysterious blonde woman.

** Further support for this: the guys carrying his body say he didn't regenerate because it was "too sudden." He wasn't killed by the Racnoss, [[HordeOfAlienLocusts since his body was intact], and drowning is not a quick death. If he had the same face, he had to have ''chosen'' not to regenerate, like [[spoiler: the Master in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E13LastOfTheTimeLords Last of the Time Lords."]]

** Further support for this: the guys carrying his body say he didn't regenerate because it was "too sudden." He wasn't killed by the Racnoss, [[HordeOfAlienLocusts since his body was intact], and drowning is not a quick death. If he had the same face, he had to have ''chosen'' not to regenerate, like [[spoiler:the Master in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E13LastOfTheTimeLords Last of the Time Lords."]]

* BlackBox: The TARDIS

** Also, revisiting the events of "[[Recap/DoctorWho2006CSTheRunawayBride The Runaway Bride]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS3E1SmithAndJones Smith & Jones]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned Voyage of the Damned]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E1PartnersInCrime Partners In Crime]]" and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E4TheSontaranStratagem The Sontaran Strategem]]"/"[[Recap/DoctorWhoNSS4E5ThePoisonSky The Poison Sky]]". And references to ''{{Torchwood}}'' and ''TheSarahJaneAdventures''.
** The bug on Donna's back is confirmed to be a nod to the spider on Sarah Jane's back from the classic series episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E5PlanetOfTheSpiders Planet of the Spiders]]"

* CosyCatastrophe (The middle part, at least - before the Emergency Government starts up a new Holocaust, and the stars start going out)

** Although at least we avoided the Master's reign of terror (though that was cosmic-retconned away anyway) as without the Doctor's intervention he presumably died at the end of time.

*** Also there is The Doctor "future" actions that happen "in he past". See FridgeLogic for more.
* FridgeHorror: When you think about it, the water in the Racnoss tunnel was moving slowly enough for the Doctor and Donna to be able to escape... so the Doctor must have just chosen to remain. In The Runaway Bride, Donna would stopped the Doctor FROM KILLING HIMSELF. Which is kind indicative of how much the Doctor must have been affected by what happened in the previous events, and Donna was the only thing keeping him alive for a time there. Which indicates just how much the Doctor needs companions... Fridge Woobieness?
* HarsherInHindsight: Britain has recently had a resurgence of hate against immigrants due to the credit crunch. They are often accused of "taking" jobs away from "real" British people. The slogan "England for the English" is horrificly close to "British Jobs for the British". Worse still, there have been more laws against immigration recently.

* OhCrap: the Doctor from the second Donna mentions that Rose was blonde. Then it gets worse not once, but twice.

* PlanetOfHats: Shan Shen is basically FriendlyLocalChinatown

* ResetButton

* ShoutOut: Possibly an unintentional one but the plot of the middle half of this episode, a series of disasters at home and abroad leading to Britain beoming a fascist police state lead by a totalitarian government who are forcing minorities into death camps is remarkably simmilar to the backstory in VForVendetta.

* WhatIf
* WonderfulLife: And just to evoke this trope even more, the point of incident takes place before Christmas.

* HarsherInHindsight: Britain has recently had a resurgence of hate against immigrants due to the credit crench. They are often accused of "taking" jobs away from "real" British people. The slogan "England for the English" is horrificly close to "British Jobs for the British". Worse still, there have been more laws against immigration recently.

* HarsherInHindsight: Britain has recently had a resurgence of hate against immigrants due to the credit crench. They are often accused of "taking" jobs away from "real" British people. The solgan "England for the English" is horrificly close to "British Jobs for the British". Worse still, there have been more laws against immigration recently.

* HarsherInHindsight: Britain has recently had a resercence of hate against immigrants due to the credit crench. They are often accused of "taking" jobs away from "real" British people. The solgan "England for the English" is horrificly close to "British Jobs for the British". Worse still, there have been more laws against immigration recently.

The Doctor and Donna drop by the Chinese-inspired planet Shan Shen, a long way from Earth, where the Doctor does some shopping while Donna lets herself be talked into a free fortune-telling session. But the fortune-teller is interested in Donna's ''past'', not her future... specificially, she wants to know how Donna came to meet the Doctor.

* AlasPoorScrappy: The Italian man (Rocco Colastanto) and his family get sent off to a "labor camp" as the situation gets worse.
** "That's what they called them [[WorldWarII last time]]...."

* BritainIsOnlyLondon: ''Technically'' averted, as the latter sections of the story are said to take place in Leeds, in West Yorkshire OopNorth. Since the location filming for both the London and Leeds sequences was done in Cardiff however, the visual difference is virtually non-existent.
* BrokenAesop: For as much as HumansAreSpecial has been a theme of the past few seasons, it appears that, without the Doctor around to pull us out of the fire every few months, we'd be living in a bona fide CrapsackWorld.
** To be fair, he did have help all those times. You can't really judge unless you do a WhatIf for every episode with only the Doctor and no companion to help out.
** And also, all the human characters were still fighting heroically to prevent the catastrophes from getting too out of hand, showing that they're willing to fight and die for their planet even without the 900 year old alien leading them.
** Also, we DID see a what if for the Doctor with no companion to help out, it's the premise for the episode. He goes and gets himself killed. Really the Aesop is about teamwork, and how you can't do it on your own..

** And as the ethnic minorities are taken to the camps, [[FridgeHorror the Cybermen theme plays.]]

* CrowningMomentofFunny: "This...''(dramatic water glass)'' is to combat dehydration."

** There's a bit of FridgeHorror, since you don't see The Doctor's face as he's being carted away. It's possible that he died, regenerated, died again, over and over, until he ran out of regenerations.
** The really most likely explanation is that the Doctor didn't see the point of regenerating, so he didn't.

* FridgeLogic: The explosion due to the ''Titanic'' impact, while catastrophic, is contrary to the earlier description in "[[Recap/DoctorWho2007CSVoyageOfTheDamned Voyage of the Damned]]".
** The stars going out simultaneously seems questionable, considering the speed of light.
*** The BBC factfile had this to say, (emphasis mine)
---->As the constellation of Orion is 93.6 light years away from Earth, either it vanished 93.6 years ago (as it would have taken that long for light from its stars to stop reaching us) or '''mysterious forces are at work'''...
**** Even when they try - and they clearly are trying here - they still get it wrong. The distinctive shape of the Orion constellation consists of seven bright stars, all at different distances. The blue star Rigel at bottom right is something like 800 lightyears away; red Betelgeuse at top left is somewhere around 400 lightyears.
*** Ultimately justified as Earth was being removed from space-time anyway.
** So the Doctor dies in 2006, and everyhting he does after that point is undone. But that's 'after' from HIS perspective, which includes events in Earth's history! So...Shakespeare was killed in mysterious circumstances, Agatha Christie was killed in mysterious circumstances, and (most jarringly) the Pyroviles apparently got bored of taking over the Earth and left, leaving everything as it was before in every respect. I need a Timey Wimey stress ball...
*** In The Sarah Jane Adventures, the trickster admits to turning away the invasions Sarah had faced in order to cause the maximum amount of chaos possible. It's what he's done here, apparently.
** Alternatively, FanficFuel. We see multiple disasters narrowly averted thanks to the HeroicSacrifice of various other characters. Maybe Caecilius and family stopped the Pyroviles, the Unicorn killed the Vicar after he figured out her secret, and um...[[MuchAdoAboutNothing Beatrice]] [[SureWhyNot killed the witches before their evil plot came to pass.]]
** Also consider that Donna Noble was hired as a temp for the express purpose of being filled with the phlebotinum and the phlebotinum's transportation powers are the reason the Doctor was there in the first place. This means that either they didn't find a suitable candidate and the Doctor couldn't have been there or there should have been someone there to tell him to get out as the phlebotinum-filled person needed to be present at the wakening of the giant spiders.
*** Or it just might mean that there was a phlebotinum-filled person there - a different temp, probably - but they weren't level-headed and argumentative enough to remind their rescuer to get out before it was too late. As it was said upthread, this episode is full of FanficFuel.

* NightmareFuel. The giant bug clinging to Donna's back and that she can only get glimpses of it. Also ParanoiaFuel when you consider the whole concept, that there could be a giant bug on your back and it's twisting your entire world and you'd never know it.
** Donna's earth. Never mind the Daleks and the Cybermen, nothing tops the very human evil that consumes Britain as it's new totalitarian "Emergency Government" begins shuffling off anyone who's a minority to "Labour Camps". HumansAreBastards in full effect

* SpecialEffectFailure: The alien beetle appears to be made of plastic; otherwise the effects are pretty good.

->-Wilfred Mott

* YouShouldKnowThisAlready: When the Sontarans attack, Rose negates the WhamEpisode TwistEnding of Season 2 of ''{{Torchwood}}'' by only mentioning Ianto, Gwen and Jack. Sucks that fewer people have BBC America (Torchwood's channel) than Sci-Fi (Doctor Who).

** The bug on Donna's back could have been a nod to the spider on Sarah Jane's back from the classic series episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E5PlanetOfTheSpiders Planet of the Spiders]]"

* AlasPoorScrappy: The Italian man and his family get sent off to a "labor camp" as the situation gets worse.

* WonderfulLife: And just to evoke this trope even more, the point of incident takes place just before Christmas.

* YouShouldKnowThisAlready: When the Sontarans attack, Rose negates the WhamEpisode TwistEnding of Season 2 of ''{{Torchwood}}'' by only mentioning Ianto, Gwen and Jack. Sucks that fewer people have BBC America (Dr. Who's channel) than Sci-Fi (Torchwood).

* NightmareFuel. The giant bug clinging to Donna's back and that she can only get glimpses of it. Also NightmareFuelUnleaded when you consider the whole concept, that there could be a giant bug on your back and it's twisting your entire world and you'd never know it.

** And as the ethnic minorities are taken to the camps, [[FridgeHorror the Dalek theme plays.]]

** And as the ethnic minorities are taken to the camps, [[FridgeHorror the Cybermen theme plays.]]