Catherine Tate’s Donna Was the Best Part of ‘Doctor Who’

There have been several tear-jerking moments on Doctor Who: David Tennant’s 10 leaving behind the love of his life; Rory waiting almost 2,000 years to be reunited with his wife Amy; The Doctor losing his TARDIS. But it’s Doctor Who‘s funniest character who delivered the series’ most devastating and introspective arc. On the extraordinary Catherine Tate‘s birthday, we need to lend a moment of appreciation to Donna Noble.

Since the show began in the 1960s the Doctor’s companions have almost always been normal people. It’s that dynamic that’s largely responsible for the central charms of the show. Each episode this time-traveling madman shows a bunch of regular Joes and Janes how truly marvelous humanity is. Yet even among the Doctor’s long history of companions, Donna Noble was aggressively average. She didn’t have any secret outer space know-how, medical training, or even Rose and Amy’s instincts for adventure. She was just an everyday temp worker in London with a short temper and a loud mouth. But that’s what made her incredible. Because she was so supremely confident and comfortable in her ordinariness, she became one of the most extraordinary companions the Doctor ever had.

There’s typically a puppy-eyed trust that exists between a Doctor and his or her companions. That’s even carried into Jodie Whittaker’s spectacular take on the role. The Doctor can fix or better anything, and his or her friends have the privilege of watching. Donna was never awestruck by the alien man beside her, and she never used his incredible powers and intellect as an excuse to get tripped up in her own ego. From the first time they met, Donna saw the Doctor as her equal, and even when he was at his cruelest she never let go of that power dynamic.

And the Doctor desperately needed someone like Donna in Series 4. Tennant’s Doctor wasn’t the eternal optimist of Whittaker’s 13 or the wise and composed saint of Peter Capaldi’s 12. He was a person in the throes of grief who was slowly being torn apart from the inside by his own resentment and self-hatred. The Series 4 Doctor needed someone who was ballsy enough to slap him out of his brooding; yet kind enough to show him all of the good he was ignoring. That’s what his best mate Donna did for him, episode after episode. Though the Doctor is the one who almost always gets credit for saving the universe, she was the one who saved him.

Thanks to Tate’s excellent acrobatic performance, Donna Noble still stands as one of this show’s most complicated characters. One minute she was spitting out hysterical insults and doing pratfalls. The next she was quietly reflecting about what love means to the universe. Donna Noble was a lot of things: messy, sassy, slightly unhinged, loud, a bit dumb. However it was Tate’s constant sincerity that made her feel like the truly selfless friend she was.

It’s fitting that this incredible character would meet one of Doctor Who‘s most devastating ends. In “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End,” Donna absorbs the totality of the Doctor’s knowledge, an action she takes to ensure her best friend won’t die in an alternate timeline. She does this knowing that her sacrifice will most likely hurt or kill her. It’s in those last moments that the Doctor finally sees the incredible woman before him, the woman who endangered her own life in an act of love because of how important her friend is to the universe. It took the threat of Donna’s life ending and the permanent erasure of her memories about their wonderful adventures for him to see something Donna understood from the beginning: they were equals.

It’s easy for a companion to praise the Doctor. Every version of the Doctor is brilliant and every one knows exactly how to straighten the parts of space and time that need some sorting out. Donna always did something harder, and more complicated. She challenged Tennant’s Doctor. She lifted him up. And through her enduring friendship, she became a true hero for both this series and her precious alien boy.

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