The Fantastically Coincidental Miss Donna Noble

(Spoilers for Partners in Crime and the whole of Series 4 on the horizon. Part review, part essay, I'm taking a slightly more annotative route on these as well given that I know how it all ends.)Partners in Crime is all about near misses, and though the Doctor and Donna's antics are played for laughs, we're supposed to remember the farcical coincidences of this episode all the way through the end. He's met Donna before in The Runaway Bride (indeed, she was teleported directly into the TARDIS), and he meets her again (she HAS been looking for him, to be fair, but it took forever for it to happen to Sarah Jane and she basically used the same technique). He met her grandfather by coincidence at Christmas (though Bernard Cribbins' character wasn't yet that at the time). She parks her car right next to where the TARDIS would land seconds later.

Is there destiny in the Whoniverse? Well, there are fixed points in history that must happen, but can yet be derailed, so it looks like there isn't. But in a few timey-wimey cases, we've seen effect precede cause, which happens a lot in Series 4. If there's any truth to the TARDIS "choosing" its crew (a theory proposed in the About Time series of reference books), it does so instinctively as required by the "web of time". It is a machine out of time, but in tune with the spacetime vortex. It may need companions to take care of its pilot (the Doctor), and it may just have the foresight to know just how and when such companions will become important.
However, throughout the new series, we've seen (and will see) the TARDIS unusually drawn to Time Lord minds, which probably interface best with it - a function of the "fast return switch" of old? In Utopia the year before, the TARDIS hurling itself to the end of the universe was blamed on Captain Jack's "fixedness", but he's been aboard since with no problems. Instead, isn't it more likely that it was drawn there by the Master? In that episode, it essentially CAUSES the Master to be reborn.

Later in this series, in The Doctor's Daughter, it will make an uncontrolled jump to once again create a Time Lord (or something akin to it) in Jenny. Is it deliberately trying to recreate (or reawaken) the Time Lord race? Is it doing so as some kind of failsafe, or simply trying to fulfill the Doctor's unconscious bidding? Its relationship to Donna is much the same since, as we know, she'll share a Time Lord consciousness in Journey's End. All timelines seem to wrap around her, back from that point, and certainly, the TARDIS must be aware of that. Consider also that the TARDIS would have been destroyed in Journey's End if Donna had not been aboard. Self-preservation from a machine? (The TARDIS may also have had a similar relationship with Rose "Bad Wolf" Tyler.)

Of course, when watched without the benefit of hindsight, Partners in Crime's first act is a perfectly timed comedy as the two regulars keep narrowly missing each other, culminating in Donna's wonderful miming through windows. And what can I say about Catherine Tate? Everyone was skeptical, remembering her loud and obnoxious comedy skit persona and the similarly irritating first half of The Runaway Bride. But by the end of that Christmas special, we saw a different side to Donna, and a very effective and affecting one at that. This is the Donna we get in the Series opener, and she only gets better from here. Full props as well to her great family, her mom Sylvia who's always down on her, and her always touching grandfather Wilfred (who I only later recognized as Tom from the second Dalek movie).
As a threat, the Adipose - alien babies made from weight watchers' fat - are ridiculous. Your mileage may vary enormously. On the one hand, they may be the cutest - and thus to some, STUPIDEST - Doctor Who monster in history (have they forgotten the plush Yeti?). On the other, they fit such a story terribly well. Part of Doctor Who's appeal is that it can switch tonal gears so easily. In a comedy, why not a comedy monster? (Take a look at Miss Foster's delay before actually dropping to the ground in the climax - it verges on a Roadrunner cartoon.) In other words, I'm fine with it. My biggest beef is actually that this story scans a heck of a lot like the Bubble Shock story from Sarah Jane Adventures' pilot, especially their virtually identical head villains, Miss Foster and Mrs. Wormwood.
Those orange bubbles certainly don't help. Be that has it may, Partners in Crime is a light-hearted beginning that shows a lot of promise for the Doctor-Donna pairing, with a forgettable plot that nevertheless leaves you with unforgettable comic performances.

Things to watch out for
Donna's Destiny: Well, if my above theory is correct, why the near misses then? What's preventing destiny from asserting itself? If destiny is really only the TARDIS' machinations, then imagine a timeline in which it DOESN'T need Donna. The Doctor investigates trouble, but Donna was never given the mental push (the TARDIS gets into your head, can it choose to open your mind?) to look for him. He would still have been guided to a serviceable companion. After all, that's his immediate need. The poor, poor lonely Doctor...
I'm talking about Penny, the young journalist whose feistiness gets her in trouble. She's also at all the same spots the Doctor is, and in a Donna-less world, would no doubt have been rescued by the Doctor, taken along on this adventure, and been influenced positively. As it is, she is ignored and winds up angrily calling the Doctor "mad". As further evidence, there was once a companion called Penny on the drawing board, and Russell T Davies had fun lending this character that name.
Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey: Sylvia's friend Suzette has something on her back... oh, it's an adipose. False alarm.
They call it foreshadowing: Cars are already equipped with ATMOS (The Sontaran Stratagem).
Are you my mommy?: Heading towards Journey's End, Series 4 has an unusual number of transformations. Here, people are turned into adipose children by parthenogenesis (coincidentally how "Doctor Blue" is born). Donna has a Catherine Tate moment when she think the Doctor said he wanted to mate (he just wants a mate), but again, it's a kind of Doctor Blue reference.
Where's my planet?: The Adiposian breeding planet, Adipose 3, has been mysteriously lost, which is why Miss Foster is using Earth as a surrogate.
The bees' knees: "So I looked everywhere, you name it - UFOs, sightings, crop circles, sea monsters. I looked, I found them all. Like that stuff about the bees disappearing, I thought, I bet he's connected." He's not. Not quite yet.
Dusty Rose: Speaking of near misses... She's back from the alternate universe, and though she crosses paths with Donna, she doesn't know enough to follow her to the Doctor. Damn, that Doomsday music gives me the shivers.
The reference section: The Doctor asks to see an Adipose taker's cat flap, which might seen like a nod to a scene in Rose, but he replies to "I'm not really a cat person" with "No, I've met Cat People", which might be the humanoid cats from the year 5 billion.
But did you know the 7th Doctor adventure Survival was initially titled Catflap and featured teleporting Cheetah People?

Next Monday: Volcano Day