Donna Noble
Why people love her
She stands up to the Doctor
No romantic interest in the Doctor
Compassion, empathy, female solidarity (lady/lady
relationships)
She was a change of pace (much funnier, faster, different
feeling, older, matier)
Why people hate her
She stands up to the Doctor
“nag” and a “hag”
Old, fat, ugly
Loud, obnoxious, annoying voice, grating
What I think about her
She stands up to the Doctor: this is something that I
personally love about Donna, especially because I think it is something the
Doctor desperately needed. My favorite instances of this were when the Doctor
or others valued him as a Time Lord over her and she was never afraid to step
in and say “I’m a human and I have just as much say as he does because I’m here
and I’m willing to do what needs to be done.” Yeah Donna! We are not second
class citizens because of the bodies we were born into! I think this really
came through in the End of Time
episodes, as the Doctor chooses the humans over the Time Lords, and makes the
ultimate sacrifice to save Wilf even though he felt he had so much more to
offer. I mean, the Doctor was a real mess. Who knows what he would have become
without Donna there to check his intense emotions and curb his darker
tendencies. Actually we do know: according to Turn Left, he would have let himself die in The Runaway Bride. And failing that, I bet he would have gone all
“Time Lord Victorious” earlier, with no one to check him and none of the past
experiences he needed to battle his newfound power.
On the one hand, I get how the disagreements can be seen as
negative. For one, as a society we are moving toward favoring cooperation over
altercation. This is especially difficult for someone like Donna, since women
are expected to be more considerate and therefore more cooperative; therefore
she gets judged more harshly for arguing because she is going against societal
gender roles. Furthermore, as in most arguments, someone has to be wrong. And
sometimes that someone is Donna. I don’t think anyone would argue that Donna
isn’t flawed, and her outspoken contrariness is definitely part of those flaws.
But at the same time, that’s how she shows her passion, courage, and sense of
right, which I think is what the Doctor loves about Donna. I wonder if there is
similar audience logic at play here as what turned us against Martha. “Donna is
yelling at the Doctor, the Doctor is always right, therefore Donna is wrong”
instead of “Donna is yelling at the Doctor, Donna has a good point, therefore
the Doctor is wrong.” For some reason we are always taking sides; even though
the Doctor wasn’t hurt by Donna’s yelling at him, audience members feel the
need to defend him against her. Even though, in fact, I think her yelling was
helping him. Really I think he was much happier with Donna, disagreements
included, than he was with Martha, who was always trying to please him.
Seeing this theme, I have to wonder if there’s sexism at
play. Why do some many of us take the Doctor’s side and trust his judgment even
though he has shown us so often how wrong he can be? Do we have some sort of
bias towards trusting men over women? A bias to value logical judgments over
emotional and circumstantial assessments?
So what do people say about Donna’s standing up to the
Doctor? It’s not that she’s brave or intelligent, quick-witted or determined.
It’s that she’s “bossy.” This word has gotten a lot of flak recently for its
pejorative connotations and bias against girls (and I think rightfully so). In
my opinion, I’d say the Doctor is bossier than Donna because he’s the one who
more consistently acts like the boss. He’s always giving out orders and
expecting to be followed because he’s the cleverest. He outright tells people
that he’s in charge and he delegates jobs to everyone, including Donna.
Donna much more rarely assumes that she is the boss of
people she has just met. She is more likely to take the empathetic route. In fact,
when she goes off it’s usually not telling people to do things, but rather
voicing what she will not let others do to her and with her help. (i.e. “You
can’t just leave them.” “You’re not mating with me, sunshine.”) She demands the
respect she feels any human deserves, as opposed to demanding respect because
she thinks she is better than the people she is speaking to (as the Doctor
sometimes does). So why do we hate her but love the Doctor? Do we think that he
has more claim to the boss title? Is Donna “bossy” precisely because she acts
like a boss but cannot be one? Why can’t she be one? Because we don’t think she
has any right to be the boss, to make decisions, to let people know what she
thinks?
And what qualifies one to be the leader anyway? Sure the
Doctor has more experience in space than Donna does, but he’s just as capable
of making mistakes. It’s like Dumbledore says, as he’s “rather cleverer than
most men, [his] mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.” The Doctor only
rarely asks for input, so if you disagree with him you’ve got to be vocal about
it. He’s also a tad arrogant, which means that it takes a lot of determined convincing
to change his mind. In some ways, he’s really not a very good leader. I think
this is something that the Doctor has slowly started realizing. That maybe
sometimes he can’t be the leader, but he can be the advisor instead. That he should be more empowering and less
overpowering.
Is Donna a good leader, or is she just a “nag”? Obviously
Donna does tend to harp on a bit, but I don’t think she is a stereotypical
“nag” character. First of all, we are allowed to like her, which is unusual.
Second of all, she gets some development so that we understand why she nags
instead of just laughing at her or hating her for it. I think one of Donna’s
strengths is that she does use her leadership to empower, instead of using it
to belittle like her mother does. For such a “bossy” person, she was really
unendingly compassionate. She was never cruel, she just had a harsh way of
trying to make the world a better place. As the Doctor said, she was always
“yelling at the world” only because she felt it was the only way to be heard.
Donna had a lot of flaws, but of all the companions I personally
think that hers were the most well-written. They were explored and explained
and had background. We see a lot of her interaction with her mother, who has
obviously shaped her in a major way. Same with her Grandpa. She also grows and
learns a lot, which is why it’s so sad when that growth is taken away from her.
The writers also explain some of her flaws, writing in background that makes
sense with those flaws. For example, I think Donna does like ordering people
around; this is because it gives her the power, or at least a sense of control
over her life. And in her everyday life she didn’t often get to feel that. She
was a temp, the ultimate in being told what to do; her mother was obsessed with
controlling her life; her dad was taken from her pretty recently; and I think
she probably felt like she didn’t have a voice because she didn’t think she was
able enough to work in politics or any other profession that has a say in how
things turn out. In fact when we met her, she didn’t even think she had any
control in her friend group—she was convinced that somehow Neris had hired the
Doctor to ruin her wedding day. And then it turns out that she had been
manipulated by her fiancé for months and was being used as an instrument in the
Racnoss Emperess’s plans. So yeah, I’d want to try for some control too.
Now on to some other complaints: She was a bit loud. I guess
that’s just up to the person whether that annoys them or not. I found Catherine
Tate’s acting choices to be funny and poignant, and not annoying. But I concede
that it was loud. What’s interesting about this though is that people basically
universally loved it when David Tennant got loud to match her. So again, why is
there an imbalance there?
Some people apparently disliked Catherine Tate’s accent (I
ain’t bovvered, though). It is a bit affected, but I personally think it worked
really well. I think it came off as affected because of all the yelling, as
that required her to pronounce her words in a specific way to make sure she was
heard and understood. Her voice was really realistic in quieter and more
serious scenes. I think the affected accent is something she does for comedic
effect, and lots of people eat that up so I don’t fault her for it.
She’s a hag: I’ve heard people say things like “she’s so
(insert negative qualities here), and she’s not even cute!” As though her attractiveness
could make up for her negative qualities, or that unattractiveness is itself a
negative quality. Unfortunately, I think this is something generally
perpetuated by Doctor Who, as it does
tend to cast very attractive young ladies as companions. In my opinion this is
particularly sad, as I think Catherine Tate was a much better actor than any of
the other companions and yet people write her off based on her looks, her
weight, and her age. Although I would just like to say, I think Catherine Tate
is good-looking. She’s Hollywood Homely, as in everyone around her is way above
average and she’s just a little above average, which makes her seem ugly in
comparison. She’s probably average or even below average weight in America, but
again, she’s not what people want to ogle. And she’s about 10 years older than
every other companion, which can make a big difference in our youth = beauty
culture.
Lastly, I think Donna had an additional obstacle: people
didn’t like her when she was introduced. I think this was kind of essential for
her character arc, so that we would be more invested when her memory and
therefore growth was on the line. But honestly, the way she was introduced was
weird. A lot of people hated her in The
Runaway Bride because it was a bit of a jolt right after Rose, and that
drove the audience to compare the two of them. Then she disappeared for a year with no
opportunity for improvement. Donna’s waspish personality was also not explained
at all in that episode, so people were not looking forward to her return
because they didn’t understand her. I think sometimes the writers of the show
really overestimate the audience’s capacity for forgiveness, although it seems
to me that the majority of viewers did eventually get over this.
Just an anecdotal thought about Donna hate: I have noticed a
somewhat gendered division when it comes to opinions about Donna. The people
who hate her are usually men or people who are devoted to the status quo.
People who love her seem to be made up of mostly women or people who otherwise
related to her “differentness.” I think she was sort of a symbol for women’s
rights (and no that’s not because I think that all women should rule over men
and order them around). It’s because Donna operates as a check to the Doctor’s
assumed inherent authority, exposing him as only one half of a team that needed
her. I think she was also a huge encouragement to women (and any one under
cultural pressure dealing with non-acceptance) who felt like they were not
special because of their age/weight/looks/lack of education and lack of
privilege. So maybe people who identify with the Doctor didn’t want to have
their authority questioned (and privilege checked) and were uncomfortable with
the thought of getting bossed around. Those who identify with Donna are
probably those who feel like they often get looked over, and were itching to
see the tables turned with a hero that represented them and who wouldn’t back
down. I think women probably also enjoyed seeing a female character who was
talented and important who maybe reflected more what the average woman looks
like rather than what the average man is attracted to. I will tell you, it is
nice to be catered to in your entertainment, which is why some heteronormative
men may have felt gypped that they were not being catered to in that way.
I think there are a lot of good things about Donna relating
to this that were missing in some of the other companions. Because there was no
romance, the writers had to find other ways to make her interesting and
relatable. Sad to say, but I think the romance threads in the other companions
have just been lazy writing, and filler in place of realistic personality
traits, and just thrown in to cause a bit of superficial drama. I think Donna’s
reception shows that a lot of viewers are ready to move above that. She didn’t have to waste time with the tired
jealousy trope (because no romance = no jealousy, which I don’t think is
necessarily actually real, but it seems to be what the writers think—and the
inverse as well, if there’s romance there must be jealousy. So. Tired.) We
hunger for something different, something that doesn’t just represent one small
subset of what a woman can be, but is holistic and realistic, something that
explains what we see within ourselves as viewers. Donna was so different that
we got to see and understand a different part of ourselves through her. And we
loved it. Plus, Catherine Tate had at least 10 more years acting experience
than any other companion, which is just pleasant to watch. And she’s a
comedian, which meant that we got to actually see a companion making jokes instead of being the butt
of them. Score for women everywhere, especially funny ones. I think Donna was
also good for audience members who see the Doctor as more of a dad or brother
figure than a lover, because they could finally relate to a companion. And
Donna had really interesting, mature relationships with female day-players,
which as I talked about in this blog post, we don’t see nearly enough of on TV
shows like this. Plus, it was just a welcome change of pace. David Tennant was
able to work off of Catherine Tate marvelously, and it made for faster and
wittier interactions that were more interesting to watch. Instead of having
clever lines written for them, the cleverness was in the delivery, which is
much more fun. And the show knew that they were breaking the mold with Donna,
which led to all sorts of fun jokes and character explorations. Because she’s
different, Donna gets to sort of make fun of all the tropey things the show has
done in the past (with all the “not a couple” jokes especially.)
I personally think that Donna was the best written
companion. So I’m pretty pleased with her representation because this is what I
want most: well-written female characters that I can relate to. And I think the
writing for her was feminist in a lot of ways. I think it was quite feminist
for them to cast and create a woman who did not fit the companion mold, because
the companion mold is really pretty mainstream in the current patriarchal
system. I still have sort of reservations about the writing, and one is the use
of comedy. And I always have a problem with what writers paint as funny that I
think should be taken more seriously, so I’m not sure if there’s really a
solution. The “nag” is a trope that’s used in comedy that really puts down
women and says that they shouldn’t be able to offer input, and when they do it’s
stupid and funny. I think the writers did a good job trying to subvert that with
Donna, but obviously not well enough if viewers still peg her as a nag and
detest her for it. And they did often try to make it funny that she was so
eager to share her opinions. So I don’t always know what to do with that.
Studies show that women are much less confident than men are. If we want to
change that, we have to stop putting them down for speaking up.
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