The episode’s twist ending resolved a major plot point from 2008.

By Morgan Jeffery

Published: Saturday, 25 November 2023 at 19:30 PM

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*Warning: Spoilers ahead for Doctor Who’s first 60th anniversary special The Star Beast.*

Doctor Who is back, kicking off a trilogy of 60th anniversary specials with The Star Beast – the new episode from returning showrunner Russell T Davies saw the Fourteenth Doctor (who looks an awful lot like the Tenth Doctor, for reasons yet to be revealed) and old friend Donna Noble reunited to face off against the not-so-sweet Beep the Meep.

Of course, the reunion of the Doctor-Donna was never going to be straightforward, even leaving aside the intervention of the cute but definitely not cuddly Meep.

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Fans will remember that the pair’s original time spent travelling together was cut short when Donna was enveloped by regeneration energy and acquired knowledge equal to that of a Time Lord in the 2008 episode Journey’s End. It was more than Donna’s human brain could handle and the Doctor was forced to wipe her mind, saving her life but erasing all memories of their time together.

Bar a couple of close shaves in 2009/2010 two-parter The End of Time, Donna has been kept apart from the Doctor ever since by her family, who are armed with the knowledge that if she remembers her friend, her mind will burn…

But fate conspired to bring them back together in The Star Beast, with Donna’s memories of her TARDIS travels gradually returning. So how did she escape a nasty end?

What happened to Donna in The Star Beast?

The climax to The Star Beast saw Donna join the Doctor aboard the Meep’s spacecraft, which was threatening to destroy all of London in order to accrue enough energy to escape Earth.

The pair ended up separated by a glass (or some space-age substance like it) panel, thwarting the Doctor’s efforts to avert the Meep’s plan by sabotaging their ship.

In a moment of terrible realisation, the Doctor twigs that the only way to stop the Meep is to unlock the Time Lord knowledge in Donna’s brain, which would gift her the skills to help him disrupt the craft’s take-off but would also almost certainly result in her death.

Ever the hero, Donna volunteers to sacrifice herself to save London – as she reminds the Doctor, her daughter Rose (Yasmin Finney) will be one of the Meep’s victims if she doesn’t.

Using a series of trigger words, the Doctor undoes his previous mind-wipe and Donna’s knowledge is restored. The pair are successful in disrupting the Meep’s scheme and London is saved – but, just as it was once before, the power now contained within her mind is too much for Donna. She collapses to the floor, apparently dead.

How did Donna survive in The Star Beast?

BBC Studios 2023, Alistair Heap

But – there’s a twist! Donna’s alive! (Well, of course she is – she has to hop back onto the TARDIS for more adventures in Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle.)

How, though? Well, it turns out that Rose Noble was the key…

With Donna having given birth since she first absorbed that regeneration energy, some of that energy was transferred to Rose, who – we now discover – was also ‘activated’ at the same time as her mother, gaining expanded knowledge which allowed her to assist the Doctor and Donna in defeating the Meep from her position on the ground.

With the crisis averted, Donna and her daughter are able to release the energy safely, its destructive power now halved as it is shared between the two of them.

Donna’s memories remain intact and, with the Doctor’s presence no longer presenting any threat to her (although Sylvia might have a thing or two to say about that…), the former companion decides to step back aboard the TARDIS for a quick hop to visit her grandfather Wilf.

The presence of a coffee machine in the new TARDIS interior leads to chaos, however, as Donna spills her hot beverage on the console, hurtling her and the Doctor to… who knows where? One week till we find out what lies in store for these friends reunited.