Recap / Doctor Who 60th AS "The Star Beast"

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The Star Beast

Partners in crime, together again. ^note Also, yay, the diamond's back!

Written by Russell T Davies, from a story by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons
Directed by Rachel Talalay
Air date: 25 November 2023

The Doctor: And now this face has come back... why?!
Donna Noble: It's like a storm in the air, about to break...
The Doctor: I think... the story hasn't ended yet.

— The Prologue, catching us up to speed.

The one where Doctor Who celebrates its own birthday by revising the ending to an old story, in more ways than one...

This is the first episode of the 2023 Specials Trilogy created to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who, and the first episode to be broadcast on the Disney+ streaming service. It is also the first televised story to have an actor who portrayed a former incarnation of the Doctor return as the incumbent to portray a new one.

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Once Upon a Time, or if you prefer, Once Upon a Time Lord, there was an alien with a time-travelling blue box who once hailed from the planet Gallifrey known as the Doctor, and there was a woman from Earth named Donna Noble, who befriended said alien after being caught up in a ruse with a giant spider monster who sabotaged Donna's wedding back in Christmas of 2007. The Doctor and Donna then went on to have plenty of adventures during the year 2009, but when the Doctor had to deal with the biggest Dalek invasion on Earth, his own regenerative Time Lord power, and the knowledge of a Time Lord, was accidentally passed to Donna, though saving the world as we know it — and, as a result, he locked the power in Donna's mind alongside all of her memories with the Doctor to prevent her brain from blowing up due to the overwhelming amount of information in a Time Lord mind, the worst Sadistic Choice amongst lifetimes of them.

Fifteen years have passed for Donna since the Tenth Doctor parted ways with her, and many centuries have passed for him. After becoming a handsome, fez-loving bloke with a bow-tie, a stern yet altruistic old Scottsman who preached for kindness but loved shutting people up and a really brilliant woman who found out that her own species were using her to gain her regeneration powers (on top of them becoming extinct off-screen!), the Doctor has now been given a familiar form that resembles their tenth incarnation.

And recently, Donna has been dreaming about monsters, aliens, robots, adventures and the like, despite having no memories of them. Despite living a normal, happily-wedded life with her new husband Shaun, on top of mothering her daughter Rose (named after a particular girl Donna might've recalled), Donna needs to find out what has been causing the dreams.

As for the Fourteenth Doctor... he thinks that the story of the Doctor and Donna Noble has yet to truly end. And the next chapter of this story, is about to begin...

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In present-day Earth (i.e. late November 2023), the Doctor arrives in London. They had just been forced to regenerate during an adventure with the Master, the Cybermen and the Daleks, spent an hour or so dealing with simulated Daleks attempting to destroy the universe and made Davros and his assistant proud when it comes to designing a real Dalek. For once, the Doctor definitely deserves to do something relaxing and non-Dalek related, something that will help him find out the reason behind this new yet "familiar" incarnation. And as he helps out a random citizen in the streets of London... he ends up running into Donna Noble. The very last person he can run into, especially given his current face. Donna calls out for "Rose", which greatly confuses the Doctor even more, and we see that this particular Rose is, in fact, the daughter of Donna, and not Rose Tyler (who was last seen in a parallel dimension).

Before this new Rose can introduce herself to the Doctor, out of nowhere do we see a spaceship crashing down onto London. In the midst of the spaceship falling out of the sky, Donna is too busy minding her own business as she stacks all of Rose's arts-and-craft purchases just long enough to miss the spaceship (which, to be fair, isn't the first time that Donna misses out on something that's not even normal to begin with). Thankfully, the Doctor's worries of Donna recognizing him are nulled as Donna snarks on the Doctor's nostalgia-ridden suit he's got on without even remembering who he really is. As Rose leaves with her mother, we hear another person calling out for Rose. This person also ends up being part of Donna's life, as the taxi driver the Doctor encounters is Donna's own husband, Shaun Temple. The Doctor ends up taking Shaun's taxi cab towards the spaceship's crash site thanks to the Doctor's usage of psychic paper (which has yet to adjust to his gender change), and the pair proceeds to "Allons-y!"

As the two men get acquainted, we find out that Donna was able to use her lottery winnings from the Doctor's wedding gift to her for a good cause... and by that, we mean she donated it all away to charity (£166 million, mind you!). Well, after buying a new house, of course. They then turn left onto the next road, as we cut to a BBC news report on the spaceship crash... before it's intercepted by good ol' UNIT, as the militant group heads on over to the crash site, as does the Doctor. We see a wheelchair-using UNIT member investigating the spaceship, and makes note about how the ship was able to pull up and settle down despite making a collision course at first. In other words, the spaceship didn't crash at all. No signs of life are apparent on the ship... or at least, when the ship parked.

Meanwhile, as Donna and Rose walk home, some bullies cat-call Rose by calling her "Jason", which reveals to the audience that Rose is transgender. Donna stands up to Rose though, but Rose is the kind of girl who hides from the crowd. Regardless, Donna loves her daughter very much, and will do anything it takes to protect her. As they enter their home, they greet Donna's mother, Sylvia, who is relived that Donna did not see the flying spaceship crashing into London, and Rose puts away all her arts-and-craft purchases inside her blue shed, where she makes plush toys for her online businesses. Sylvia is still getting the hang of using the correct terminology for her transitioned granddaughter, while Donna takes pride in being a good mother as she gloats to her own mother about it. Donna still questions about the "dreams" she might have remembered in real life, and laments about missing something in her life because of it.

While Rose is taking out the trash, her best friend Fudge runs out of his house to tell her about the spaceship... and how an escape pod managed to fall off from said ship, with a potential alien or two inside. However, when they go to investigate the pod's crash site, the pod is empty. Whatever was in it, is now loose. And it managed it sneak away into the rubbish bags in the alleyway next to Rose's house. Rose carefully moves the bags away... and encounters what seems to be the most adorable extra-terrestrial in the universe, as it meekly "meeps" at her.

This cute baby-faced alien is known as the Meep, and yes, the Meep talks! Rose befriends the poor little Meep as the Meep tells her how the Meep got to Earth: crash-landing into London, and escaping from killer aliens as the Meep deals with a cut paw. Those mean aliens Meep mentioned ends up on Earth as well, as Fudge manages to run into two bug-eyed humanoid aliens with laser pistols. Luckily, he's safe from harm, as the two mean-looking aliens are only here to hunt down the Meep.

Back at the Meep's spaceship crash site, the Doctor continues his investigation with the use of a brand-new sonic screwdriver, as the wheelchair-using UNIT member drops on by to introduce herself as Shirley Anne Bingham, a scientific advisor (just like the Doctor). The Doctor laments to Shirley about his new look, as she mistook him for the Tenth Doctor, while also reminiscing about the times he had with Donna. And given how destiny has been eyeing on her recently, the Doctor is completely worried about what might happen to her if she gets in danger. In any case, the Doctor hitches a ride on a UNIT vehicle so he can reach the Meep's escape pod crash-site. Shirley re-joins the batch of UNIT soldiers as the soldiers take a look inside the Meep's spaceship, which is totally inaccessible for Shirley (no ramp access). That being said, that might have unintentionally been a good thing, as the UNIT soldiers' minds have been brainwashed by a psychedelic wave upon opening the spaceship's door...

Back at the Nobles' house, Rose managed to house the Meep in her shed, as the Meep plays with it's new "little friends", which are just mere toys that Rose made with her own hands. The Meep is saddened by the Meep's own lonely situation, something that Rose can relate to. However, their conversation attracts the attention of Donna, and thus the Meep hides in the pile of plush toys, hoping that Donna won't notice the very realistic-looking plush toy Rose has. However, this "toy" can blink on its own, and Donna decides to see if the "toy" is real enough by poking it straight in the eye. Predictably, this ends up annoying the Meep. Donna exclaims.

The UNIT soldiers arrive at the pod site, and the Doctor heads on over to the Nobles' house, where Donna and Sylvia panic at the sight of the Meep. And then Sylvia hears the Doctor. In a matter of moments, the Doctor makes his way into the house to see the Meep, and all hell breaks loose as Sylvia tries to cover it up. And then Shaun walks in on them, because of Sylvia's good-smelling cooking (tuna madras, by the way). One awkward "meep meep" later, and the UNIT soldiers at the pod site are told by the (brainwashed) soldiers to head towards the location of the Meep...

The Doctor decides to stay put with the Nobles for now, as he mends the Meep's paw and catches up on how the family has been doing as of recent times. The Doctor notices one person being missing from the house — that being good ol' Wilfred Mott. Sadly, he's not with them anymore... or at least, in a literal sense, as he's currently in sheltered accommodation due to his age (as he can't manage the stairs anymore). In fact, he's able to get said housing thanks to Kate Stewart. Speaking of finding a home, the Doctor offers the Meep some help to get him... uh, what're the Meep's pronouns again? Doesn't matter anyway, as the Meep identifies solely as the Meep. As for whom the Meep is trying to escape from, the two bug-eyed aliens we saw earlier are known as the Wrarth Warriors, who, according to the Meep, cultivated Meepkind for their fur, until the galactic council banned them from doing so, causing them to kill their livestock.

Suddenly, the brainwashed UNIT soldiers arrive at the Noble estate to search for the Meep! How does the Doctor know they're brainwashed? Well, by using the sonic of course. Before even considering to escape through the back, the Wrarth Warriors come crashing into the house, and prepare to hunt down the Meep! Now both sides of the house are totally inaccessible due to gunfire and laser-fire. Luckily, the Doctor has a plan; seems the new sonic screwdriver is new in other ways as he's able to create forcefields to protect the family and Meep from fire. That being said, the group has to travel upstairs and through the attic's brick wall in order to escape through a neighbouring house, allowing for a proper escape route via Shaun's taxi cab. All this happens alongside UNIT soldiers trying their best to stop those Wrarth Warriors from intercepting. When the gang manages to escape, the Doctor checks up on a "dead" UNIT soldier... only to find out that they still have a pulse after being shot by a Wrarth Warrior. And why are their lasers not causing scorch marks on the taxi? As the team escapes, the Doctor realizes that things might have gone very wrong.

As the team pulls into a carpark, the Doctor decides to give the Meep an impromptu trial case, as the Meep might have not been telling their story straight. He summons two of the Wrarth as defendants, as the Doctor invokes Shadow Proclamation protocols 15, P, and 6. To start off, Donna confirms that the taxi has no scorch marks from the Wrarth's lasers. Next, the Doctor reaffirms that the UNIT soldiers that were gunned down by their lasers, were not even killed to begin with, as the two Wrarth Warriors (who are truly known as Sergeant Zogroth and Constable Zreeg) confirms that they were using stun guns only, and these ones apply anesthetic! The Meep, however, also reaffirms that the Wrarth wants to kill the Meep... only for the Doctor to remind the Meep that the brainwashed UNIT soldiers were shooting to kill, not stun. Therefore, they might have been working in the Meep's favor. To bring the case to a complete close, the Wrarth explain the truth behind the Meep as a whole. The Meep (as a species) went wild after their planet's psychedelic sun went as mad as they did. And the Galactic Council didn't outright ban the Wrarth from making Meep fur coats (as if the Wrarth even wanted to make coats in the first place), the council was actually eaten by the Meeps. Therefore, the Wrarth were sent in to kill off the species to prevent the Meeps from slaughtering more people across the galaxy. And the Meep that's currently with the group is the only Meep left in the universe, and is also the leader of the Meep species.

How does the witness plead? Guilty.

It turns out this whole entire time, the Meep was faking their sob-story, brainwashing UNIT soldiers for the Meep's sake, and plans to kill off the human race when it proceeds to get their spaceship working again. The now gremlin-like Meep proceeds to shoot the two Wrarth Warriors in cold blood, and corners the gang with the assistance of their brainwashed goons. The Meep then proclaim that the Meep is "THE BEEP OF ALL THE MEEPS!" as Zogroth regrets his decision of taking on this particular duty after he retired. The Meep taunts Donna for being stupid and also taunts her "weird child", which angers Donna. The Doctor attempts to mediate the situation by offering the Meep some knowledge about himself (since he is a two-hearted alien like the Meep is) as long as the Meep spares the Nobles. And while he's able to get the Meep to accept the offer, his next offer in regards to getting the Meep off the Earth safely is rendered useless as the Doctor is knocked out by the brainwashed soldiers. With the group kidnapped, the Meep triumphantly cackles.

When the gang arrives at the Meep's spaceship, they notice that even more brainwashed people have been working on the Meep's side to get the spaceship back up and running. Heck, the brainwashed folk even praise highlines to the Meep! And yes, because of how the spaceship uses a dagger drive to start its engines, it's going to blow London up into a smouldering pile of smoke and ash if it's able start up completely. Luckily, help is on the way, as Shirley is able to take down two brainwashed UNIT soldiers to free the gang from being imprisoned. After all, UNIT-made wheelchairs are equipped with tools and weapons for any situation! However, as Donna leaves with her family to escape, she realizes that she must do more good for the planet, for London, her family, and for her daughter, and runs back to the Doctor in order to help him stop the engines from being activated. However, as Sylvia picks up, Donna just called him "Doctor", something no-one had called him yet...

As the Doctor does his best to stop the clock, the spaceship's deadlocked is sealed... which won't affect the Doctor that much, as he proceeds to use his hands to stop the engines. What will affect him, however, is the spaceship's maxifold bisecting. In layman's terms: The Doctor and Donna are now separated by a glass wall. The Doctor is separated from a Noble by a glass wall. Swap out Noble for Mott, rewind 15 years and the Doctor is quite understandably at his limit. The dagger drive starts digging down, as cracks begin to spread throughout London, with fires being unleashed from the ground up. The only way for the Doctor to stop all of this... is to bring back Donna's memories from all those years ago. As the Doctor angrily yells about how destiny's a bitch, Donna tells him to get on with it. With the key words once uttered all those years ago, binary included, the DoctorDonna is finally unleashed once again, with all of her Doctor-related memories brought back as well.

With Donna fully back in action, what does she do first? Yell at the Doctor because she gave away almost the entirety of £166 million on charity thanks to the memory wipe making her as soft as the Doctor. Oops. With less than a minute left before London's preventable destruction becomes unpreventable, the DoctorDonna and the Fourteenth Doctor get to work on saving the gosh-darn day. 55 seconds later, and they've done it! Sadly, Donna falls ill because of the prolonged use of Time Lord knowledge, and for all we know, dies in the arms of the Doctor. With the brainwashed UNIT soldiers right in front of the two, the Doctor is more than willing to die for good right then and there^note A bullet in each heart would do it., now that he lost one of his best friends, all thanks to his own doing. No matter what, they still managed to save the world.

But wait! The brainwashing is turned off by a familiar person! It turns out that Rose Noble is the one to save the Doctor from being shot to death, and with that... Donna... is alive? Oh. Well then.

Turns out that when Donna birthed Rose, half of her Time Lord power was passed onto Rose. Makes logical sense given how Donna was half-human during all this time, but because of that, Donna was able to survive the mind-blowing side-effect of being a Human/Time-Lord hybrid. Heck, it even explains why Donna's daughter named herself Rose, why the shed was TARDIS blue, and why all of those plush toys she made looked familiar. They were designed after the monsters that Donna and the Doctor encountered both on-screen and off-screen (such as Daleks, Cybermen, Ood, and others). At the end of the day, the Doctor is simply male. And female. And neither, and more! ^note (And jammy.)

As for the Meep, however, a second attempt at revenge is quickly foiled as the Doctor sends the Meep flying off into the night sky and then parachuting down to Earth, grumbling angrish. The following day, the rest of the Wrarth Warriors arrest the so-called "Beep of all the Meeps", and will honor Zogroth and Zreeg for giving their lives to save the galaxy from the Meep. But as the Meep prepares to serve the Meep's sentence, the Meep warn the Doctor about a "boss", as the Meep looks forward to telling said boss about the fact that the Doctor has two hearts like Meep does. Unfortunately, that's all the cryptic information the Doctor's getting, something that they tend to hate.

With the day saved, Donna and Rose choose to let go of their Time Lord power together, and remain as their true selves, something that Rose has never done until now. Aww. As the Doctor tells the Noble family that their house will be fixed up for free thanks to UNIT's insurance policy (they did blow it up, anyway...), he offers Donna one last trip through time and space for old time's sake. While Donna initially declines, the Doctor then offers Donna to take her to see Wilf. She accepts, and the two go inside arguably the most magnificent console room the TARDIS has ever had, complete with coffee maker! It's simply a gorgeous reskin for sure, and, as Donna wistfully looks back fondly on the old days for once, she accidentally spills her coffee onto the TARDIS.

This ends up causing the non-waterproof TARDIS to go haywire, as the Doctor and Donna hold on tight for dear life. As the cloister bells (a.k.a. the TARDIS's signal to switch to brown trousers) chime endlessly, the TARDIS disappears from Earth, sending the reunited partners in crime...into the wild blue yonder.

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Tropes:

• Adaptational Curves: In the comics, The Meep was more round, whereas in the show, The Meep's shape is more defined and hunched over.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: The Meep here follows Bizarre Alien Sexes, while the comics counterpart was explicitly a male. Rose Noble, who is trans, also takes the role of Sharon Davies, who was cis.
• Adaptational Heroism: The Wrarth Warriors were much more trigger-happy in the original comic, placing a bomb inside the Doctor. The audio adaptation mentions that the bomb is powerful enough to destroy a large portion of Britain, the commander even willing to kill the Wrarth Warriors trailing the Doctor. The Wrarth Warriors here are much firmer on not killing, only stunning the soldiers being controlled by the Meep.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the original story, the Wrarth Warriors had to explain to the Fourth Doctor that they were the good guys, and were chasing him because they assumed he was in league with the Meep's true persona. Here, the Fourteenth Doctor realises on his own that they have no malicious intentions and announces this to the Meep.
• Adaptational Villainy: While the Meep in the original comics was The Sociopath, he did not eat his enemies.
• Adaptation Expansion: The whole Donna and Rose subplot obviously wasn't in the original.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: In the real world, there are no derelict ironworks in London. This is because the comic strip version was set in "Blackcastle", a fictional industrial city in Northern England, but the TV episode was reset in London.
• Adapted Out: The briefly-seen commander of the Wrarth Warriors is not present here, nor is the third Wrarth Warrior accompanying Zogroth and Zreeg.
• Always Chaotic Evil: According to the Wrarth Warriors, the Meeps were turned into a race of psychopaths by their living sun going "mad".
• Amnesiac Hero: Donna isn't just missing the memories of her time as a companion, she also has no recollection of the years between her first meeting with the Doctor and her second, which concerns her greatly. Sylvia attributes this to a "mental breakdown" and tries to convince her that nothing special happened in those years for her to be concerned about, but Donna can't escape the feeling that she's missing something vitally important.
• Amnesiac Resonance: Despite the Doctor and Sylvia doing everything in their power to avoid dropping his name in front of her, Donna still unconsciously remembers some things and retains her Character Development, giving the rest of her lottery money to charity after buying her new house because she assumed "it's what [the Doctor] would do". She later bars herself within the factory housing the Meep's ship, declaring that she has to go help the Doctor, something which Sylvia picks up on given that they'd been careful not to tell Donna who the Doctor is.
• Angrish: The Meep descends into this after being forcibly ejected from the Delusions of Grandeur.
• Bad Liar: An easy reason to see why Sylvia's so nervous about Donna; her attempts to pretend are truly unconvincing. It only works because Donna's so oblivious.
• Bait-and-Switch: After a group of UNIT soldiers are told to return to the Meep's ship, the possessed soldiers start a firefight while trying to capture the Meep. Reinforcements show up... and that same group is shown, completely normal.
• Beehive Barrier: When the Doctor creates freestanding forcefields with the sonic screwdriver, they glow with hexagons whenever they get hit.
• Billions of Buttons: The interior of the Meep's rocket ship, in true Retraux fashion, is filled with lots of little blinky lights and switches needing pushed.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: As in the comics, the Meep turns out to be this, with the Meeps as a species being described as "cruel beasts who live for conquests" and the Meep being described as "the most cruel and despicable of all".
• Blind Jump: When Donna spills her coffee on the TARDIS controls, the Doctor says they could be transported anywhere in time and space.
• Bond One-Liner: The Meep fires one off right before shooting the Wrarth Warriors at the mock trial.
  The Meep: Oh, to hell with this! Exhibit C! [The Meep pulls out a gun and shoots both Wrarth Warriors] No stun-guns for me! Just die!
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Several UNIT soldiers end up enslaved by the Meep via psychedelic sun energy from the Meep's ship.
  • According to Zogroth and Zreeg, The Meep species were tragically corrupted by a psychedelic sun and they were driven to madness as a result.
• Breaking Old Trends: There is an explosion in the TARDIS again, but this time it isn't the Doctor's fault. Also, this is first time the TARDIS explodes after showing the new desktop theme instead of the explosion being the catalyst for a rebuild.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: The Sylvia of old never held back her criticism of Donna and always made her feel like nothing she ever did would be good enough. By contrast, Donna goes out of her way to make sure Rose knows just how much her mother loves and supports her.
• Brick Joke:
  • The debate over whether Donna would take the name Temple on marrying her husband in "The End of Time" is answered here; turns out Donna just stuck with her maiden name.
  • Way back when the Doctor first met Donna, she assumed that Nerys orchestrated their meeting, calling him "[Nerys's] best friend". When the Doctor is scrambling to think of an excuse as to why he knows the Nobles, he claims he's a "friend of Nerys".
  • In "The Doctor Dances", the Ninth Doctor spent an incredibly long time trying to resonate concrete with the sonic screwdriver. A few incarnations later, the Doctor's newly updated screwdriver does it much quicker.
  • Way back in "Journey's End", the DoctorDonna said she could think of ideas the Doctor would never be able to think of. This pays off fourteen years later, when Donna and Rose manage to survive being a Meta-Crisis by doing something the Doctor never considered: just giving up the regeneration energy.
  • The topic of Donna giving away all her money is the first thing out of Donna's mouth after she regenerates.
• The Bus Came Back: Donna, Sylvia and Shaun return after last being seen in "The End of Time: Part Two", thirteen years prior.
• Call-Back:
  • Donna's first scene has her back turned while a spaceship is crashing above London, a reference to how she mentioned somehow missing the numerous alien encounters that had plagued London prior to her introduction in "The Runaway Bride".
  • The psychic paper is still giving the Doctor female-designated titles, causing him to slap it and tell it to "catch up!"
  • The Doctor has kept the barrister's wig from "The Stones of Blood", and uses it to conduct a trial against an alien race again.
  • The Doctor invokes Shadow Proclamation Protocols 15, P, and 6 to hold his mock trial and ensure there will be no violence between the two parties. The Meep, of course, eventually disregards this to shoot the inquisitors.
  • The Doctor is once again separated from a friend by a piece of glass and is ultimately forced to make a terrible decision to save the world that ends with someone regenerating. He clearly recognises and does not appreciate the homage.
  • It turns out that Donna and Rose's shared memories extended to making plushies out of the creatures that the Doctor and Donna met, including Daleks, the Judoon, the Cybermen (represented with an "Upgrade in Progress" soundbyte), the Adipose, the Lupari, and the Ood.
• Canon Immigrant: The Meep first appeared in Doctor Who Magazine as an opponent of the Fourth Doctor. It makes its canonical first appearance here as an opponent of the Fourteenth.
• Cardboard Prison: The Meep gloats before being taken away by teleportation that they will eventually escape whatever prison they're put in to resume their rampages.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • The Doctor shouts "Allons-y!" when heading towards the ship crash, with Shaun responding "Oui, monsieur!"
  • The multiple "What?"s return in this episode. Amusingly, it never quite follows the Rule of Three, a-la the last episode.
• Character Development:
  • Compared to the last time he wore this face, the Doctor is noticeably more sincere, casually admitting that Donna was his best friend, paying a seeming Due to the Dead for Wilfred and being more openly regretful of having wiped Donna's memories. He even openly declares his love for both of them, something that surprises him.
    The Doctor: I'm so glad you're back, 'cause it killed me, Donna...it killed me, it killed me, it killed me.
  • Sylvia clearly took the Doctor's criticism in "Journey's End" to heart; though she remains fussy and overbearing, she is nowhere near as demeaning and condescending to Donna as she used to be, actively showing her affection and preparing meals for her family despite not living with them anymore (though Donna is not altogether pleased by the latter).
• Chekhov's Gun: Early in the episode, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to create a transparent but solid screen in mid-air to display data about the Meep's ship. Later, when they're caught in between two sides of a gun battle, the Doctor creates larger versions of the screen and moves them into position to block shots from both sides, allowing everyone to escape up the stairs unharmed. The screens prove to be fairly bullet-resistant in the short-term, although they do shatter under the barrage within a minute or so.
• The Chew Toy: Fourteen has a really bad night. He gets insulted by Donna, shocked, slapped, zapped, clubbed, thinks he's had to kill his best friend and then is mercilessly taunted by her over it. All in the space of a few hours.
• Cliffhanger: Donna spills coffee on the TARDIS console, sending the time machine spinning off into the wild blue yonder.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The Doctor's final line in the prologue directly connects back to Ood Sigma's consolation to the Tenth Doctor:
    Sigma: This song is ending, but the story never ends.
    The Doctor: I think... the story hasn't ended yet.
  • Sylvia's reintroduction is a mirror of her appearance back in "Partners in Crime", with Donna returning home late to find her there waiting. In a sign of Sylvia's Character Development, she warmly welcomes Donna home and tells her that dinner's on.
  • A minor one, but Fudge's surname is Merchandani; In "Turn Left", the Merchandanis were one of the refugee families sharing the house in Leeds with the Nobles and the Colasantos.
  • The Doctor, upon meeting Shirley, notes that he was UNIT's first scientific advisor.
  • The Doctor briefly mentions his regeneration into a person wearing a bowtie, a Scotsman, and then a woman.
  • Donna refers to the Meep as "the bloody Martian in the shed" after discovering the alien.
  • The Doctor is once again slapped by a companion's mother.
    The Doctor: Oh! Here we go again!
  • The Meep declares their chosen pronoun as "the definite article", something that the Doctor notes he's also done.
  • The Doctor notes that it seems the universe is once again revolving around Donna Noble.
  • The Doctor names something of the villain's, this time dubbing the Meep's ship The Delusions of Grandeur.
  • The end of the Trigger Phrase used to fully unlock Donna's memories/the DoctorDonna is "Binary, binary, binary".
  • Just as in "The End of Time", the resurgence of the DoctorDonna is accompanied by a burst of regeneration energy.
  • Donna complains that the TARDIS is "still a bit nippy" and unconsciously echoes her grandfather when she notes how clean it is.
  • The TARDIS having a coffee machine built into the new console is similar to how she put a custard cream dispenser into the last one.
  • The TARDIS is once again flung into an unknown time.
• Contrived Coincidence: The first person the Doctor offers to help on the street just so happens to be Donna. Justified as this may have been another case of the TARDIS deliberately taking him where he was needed, as speculated by the Doctor himself:
  The Doctor: I think all that coincidence was heading here, to save London from burning.
• Corrupted Character Copy: It's been stated that the Meep is based on E.T. from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In the movie, E.T. is left behind by accident and is found by Elliot, who decides to help E.T. get back home and protect E.T. from the United States Government. In the episode, the Meep is forced to evacuate while the Meep's ship is pursued by an intergalactic government agency. The Meep is similarly found by Rose, who decides to help the Meep after she empathizes with the Meep's situation and desires to return home. They even reference the scene where E.T. hides among stuffed toys to hide from a parental figure. However, the Meep is eventually revealed to be evil as the Meep kills Wrarth Warriors Zogroth and Zreeg, before revealing that the Meep will be returning home (but will be using a ship that will destroy London in the process). The ambiguity of E.T.'s gender is also referenced as Rose points out to the Doctor that he's assuming the Meep is male and should really ask if the Meep has any preferred pronouns.
• Crazy-Prepared: Turns out the psychic defence wasn't the only thing the Doctor left behind in Donna's head. Despite all his statements about she would die if she ever remembered, he left a trigger phrase that would do the job, just on the off-chance it was necessary.
• Crowd Chant: The Meep has the brainwashed UNIT soldiers sing praises, for no other reason than stoking their own ego.
  "Hail to the Meep! Hail to the Most High!"
• Cruella to Animals: Subverted. The Meep claims that the Wrarth Warriors are interplanetary fur trappers who have nearly wiped out the entire Meep species for their pelt. Later it turns out that the Meep is lying.
• Death by Adaptation: Zogroth and Zreeg are murdered by the Meep as soon as the latter does the Evil All Along reveal, when they survived in the original comic.
• Death Seeker: While the Doctor is cradling Donna in his arms, the Meep's troops storm in and tell him they have orders to shoot. The Doctor is so overcome with grief that he does not even hesitate before asking them to put him out of his misery.
• Deceptively Cute Critter: Rose finds a small, furry, cute-looking alien named Meep and takes it in. It acts like a cute animal for a while, playing with her stuffed toys and asking for help against the monsters coming to hunt it. It's actually the evil one, eventually breaking the façade after tricking people into fighting for it and then luring the Doctor, along with Donna and her family, into a trap. It digs the knife in by taunting all of them and nearly killing the Doctor and Donna.
• Decomposite Character: In the comic, Zogroth and Zreeg arrested Beep at the end. Here, they're killed and some other unnamed Wrarth Warriors come to collect the Meep.
• Deflector Shields: The Doctor can use his sonic screwdriver to make force-fields to block fire from the Wrarth Warriors and possessed UNIT soldiers. They can only take so much damage, though.
• Demoted to Extra: Aside from the Wrarth Constabulary, Fudge goes from a secondary character in the comic to a throwaway role in the episode.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight:
  • Constable Zogroth dies in Donna's arms after the Meep shoots him.
  • Donna briefly ends up dying in the Doctor's arms, but returns to life soon after.
• Disability Immunity: An amusingly mundane example. Scientific Advisor Shirley Bingham avoids being mind-controlled like the other UNIT soldiers because, being in a wheelchair, she is unable to reach the cockpit of the Meep's ship.
• Disney Death: Donna apparently "dies" for all of a minute before The Reveal that she passed the metacrisis on to her daughter.
• Distinction Without a Difference: When Sylvia brings up the fact that the Doctor said, if Donna ever saw him again, she would die. The Doctor counters that she'll only die if she remembers him, which doesn't put her at ease.
• Dude, Not Funny!: The Nobles react this way to the Doctor declaring the Meep a "fashion victim" after learning that the Wrarth Warriors allegedly hunted the Meeps for their fur.
• Escape Pod: Beep ejects one from their spaceship and lands near Donna's house.
• Evolving Credits: As to be expected. They involve the TARDIS apparently surfing on the Time Vortex. And the return of an old-school logo.
• Explosive Instrumentation: Donna spilling one tiny cup of coffee on the TARDIS console causes the whole thing to start spectacularly bursting into flames.
• Eye Lights Out: Sergeant Zogroth's glowing red eyes fade out as he is dying in Donna's arms.
• Eye Scream: The Meep's attempts to pretend to be a cuddly toy are foiled when an oblivious Donna pokes the Meep in the eye, complete with audible "squish".
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Donna reveals that she lost her job because she spilled coffee on the boss' computer. She ends up doing the same thing to the TARDIS not even a minute later.
• Flight: The Wrarth Warriors can hover and slowly fly thanks to a pair of insectile wings usually hidden under elytra.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The Meep is a cannibalistic and unhinged member of a warrior race driven mad by the light of an insane sentient sun. The Meep is also incredibly cute, resembling a cross between a bush baby and a pet fancy rat. The Meep also refers to themselves as "the Beep of the Meeps" after it shows its true colours in a tone meant to be intimidating.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Wrarth Warriors make no attempt to harm Fudge when he runs into them early on, very much unlike the typical Monster of the Week.
  • The Doctor uses his new sonic screwdriver to create a transparent screen hovering in mid-air which is solid enough to touch. Later, he makes a couple of bigger versions, which turn out to be solid enough to block shots from both sides long enough to allow them to escape up the stairs.
  • Rose telling the Meep that she doesn't feel like she belongs on Earth. It's later revealed that she inherited some of the Meta-Crisis Doctor's consciousness from Donna.
  • UNIT's rounds are shown physically piercing and eventually shattering the Sonic-generated forcefields while the Wrarth Warriors' weapons seemingly have no effect, foreshadowing the true pro/antagonist dynamic in the story.
• For the Evulz: The Meep's ship is powered by a dagger drive, which on powering up will blast down five miles to absorb energy, turning London into a molten pit. The Doctor points out that there are safer ways of making a spaceship and even offers to make one for the Meep, but he gets knocked out for his efforts.
• Game Face: After dropping the cute friendly alien act, the Meep gets sharply angled red eyes with visible fangs and claws.
• Good All Along: The Wrarth Warriors in hunt of the Meep turn out to not be evil hunters, but rather intergalactic lawmen trying to bring a war criminal, the Meep, to justice.
• Happy Ending Override: "The End of Time" showed Donna and Shaun starting off Happily Married, with the implication that the Doctor had helped set them up financially. However, Donna (thanks to the influence of the Doctor still in there) gave all her lottery winnings away after buying a house, and, while Sylvia is much nicer towards her daughter, she and Wilfred have spent the years since walking on eggshells around her, with Wilfred apparently losing a lot of his cheerful rambling about aliens. That said, they're otherwise happy with their lot.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: The guy whose house is nearest Shaun's cab is dozing while wearing headphones, completely oblivious to both the firefight outside and the people breaking into his house through the attic and coming down the stairs.
• Hereditary Curse: The Biological Meta-Crisis ended up passing down to Rose through Donna, enabling them to share the knowledge and take the strain off her brain.
• Here We Go Again!: Quoted verbatim by the Doctor after he gets slapped by Sylvia, resuming the running gag of the Doctor getting slapped by his companions' mothers.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When the Doctor tells Donna that she'll need to die in order to shut down the spaceship, Donna says she's willing to sacrifice herself to save the 9 million people in London, including her daughter. Fortunately, she doesn't die.
• Hero Insurance: Near the end of the episode, the Doctor mentions to the Nobles that UNIT has a great insurance policy to pay for damages to their house.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": The Meep is only referred to as the Meep in-story. During the Meep's Evil Gloating, however, the Meep declares, "I am the Beep of all the Meeps!"
• Homage: When Donna approaches the shed, Rose urgently requests the Meep hide. The Meep does so by blending in with all the cute fuzzy plush toys that Rose created. Donna almost falls for it, but eventually discovers that the Meep is a living being.
• The "I Love You" Stigma: The Doctor catches himself off-guard with how easily he tells the Nobles that he loved Wilf. He's clearly come a long way from prior incarnations who would avoid using that word.
• Immune to Bullets: The Wrarth Warriors seem to take little damage from UNIT's weaponfire, bullets bouncing off their exoskeletons.
• Implausible Deniability: Sylvia initially tries insisting that nothing is happening, even as her granddaughter has brought a small furry alien into the house, until finally she can't keep it up. Claiming that the otherwise normal-looking man who just walked into their kitchen is also not real probably doesn't help her case.
• Indy Ploy: The Doctor ensures the survival of the Noble family and himself by bluffing that he's in league with the Wrarth Warriors, and that the group would need to be captured to find out the Wrarth Warrior' true plans.
• I Never Told You My Name: It's a sign that Donna's amnesia is wearing off when she refers to him as the Doctor despite him going out of his way not to introduce himself by name.
• Insectoid Aliens: The Wrarth Warriors. They have bug eyes, short antenna, exoskeletons, and insectile wings under their elytra.
• Inventional Wisdom: It's a little unclear what the intended purpose of "halfway through launch a wall slides in to block off half the engineering room" is as a feature.
• I Warned You: Sylvia's only response to the TARDIS's bumpy take-off is an exasperated, "I told you!"
• I Will Show You X!: A sign that Donna is really herself again is that she uses this specific phrase.
• Judicial Wig: The Doctor pulls one out of his coat before Pulling the Thread on the Meep's deception.
• Kick the Dog: According to Constable Zreeg, The Meep not only beheaded the galactic council, but they also ate them afterward for good measure.
• Killer Rabbit: As in the comics, the Meep is small and cute, but actually Cute and Psycho.
• Last of His Kind: All the other Meeps were wiped out because they refused to ever stop fighting.
• Leitmotif: With the return of Murray Gold, several RTD1 and Moffat-era themes return, including:
  • "The Doctor's Theme"
  • "Donna's Theme" / "A Noble Girl About Town"
  • "The Doctor Forever"
  • "All the Strange, Strange Creatures"
  • "Four Knocks"
  • "I Am The Doctor"
• Madness Mantra: The people possessed by the Meep have, "Hail to the Meep! Hail to the Most High!", as theirs.
• Malicious Misnaming: Some of the boys from Rose's school bully her by yelling her deadname at her in the street. She shrugs it off, but is clearly upset hearing it, as is Donna.
• Mama Bear: Both the Nobles.
  • Donna expresses a desire to wreck two bullies (one of them Josie Wingate's son) who deadname her daughter. She also later refuses to let Rose set foot in the TARDIS just in case something inevitably happens and whisks her off to God-knows-where.
  • Sylvia slaps the Doctor to stop Donna from spotting him when he get into the house.
• Meaningful Rename: Donna's daughter is named Rose, which is particularly significant since she chose the name for herself when she transitioned. This ties into the reveal that she inherited some of her mother's Meta-Crisis energy and thus likely named herself after a subconscious memory of Rose Tyler.
• Missing the Good Stuff: Just like old times, Donna fails to notice the crashing spaceship because she's more interested in stacking boxes. Rose notices, but Donna doesn't believe her, and Sylvia awkwardly tries to pretend that she hasn't heard a thing.
• Mistaken Identity: Shirley assumes the Doctor she's meeting is the Tenth Doctor, and gets concerned when he mentions becoming a person with a bow tie, a Scotsman and a woman, because she believes those are from his future. The Doctor clarifies that his fourteenth incarnation has regenerated into one of his older faces.
• Mythology Gag:
  • It's subtle, but those helmets that the UNIT soldiers are wearing look notably similar to those worn by the Robomen in Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.
  • The specific attention to the fact that the Wrarth are using stun guns while the Meep isn't calls back to a scene from the original comic, in which the Meep covered up its murder of two soldiers by claiming he was only using "a stun weapon that puts the target to sleep."
• The Needs of the Many: Donna invokes this, stating that her life ultimately pales in comparison to the millions in London, as well as her daughter's. The Doctor doesn't take this very well.
• Nervous Wreck: Sylvia Noble, on account of Donna's "condition", on top of the awkwardness of not being sure of the right thing to say around her granddaughter.
• No Longer with Us: The Doctor asks about the whereabouts of Wilfred Mott, and is told that he's no longer there. Once he offers his condolences, Donna icily tells him that Wilfred is in fact still alive, he's just living in sheltered accommodation due to his advanced age.
• Nom de Mom: Rose uses her mother Donna's last name. Shaun mentions to the Doctor that Donna insisted on it and he didn't fight it.
• No Name Given: As in the comic this was adapted from, the Meep is only referred to as "the Meep" or "the Beep of all the Meeps", suggesting "Beep" is a title rather than a name.
• Non-Human Non-Binary: The Meep's preferred pronoun is the definite article, which means that the Meep prefers "the Meep".
• Noodle Incident:
  • Whatever unspecified accident it was that has befallen Nerys, which, while awful, was not so life-threatening as to stop her being a nuisance to Donna.
  • Suzy Mair has apparently had an accident and become "shorter" because of it.
  • Donna refuses to allow Rose to see the TARDIS because "something will go wrong and you'll end up on Mars with Chaucer and a robot shark". The Doctor confirms it did, in fact, happen to him once upon a time.
• No Ontological Inertia: When the Meep activates the dagger drive, fissures are shown opening up all over London, destroying its streets and causing general mayhem, with Fudge looking on from his bedroom window. After the dagger drive is stopped, the fissures close and the streets appear to repair themselves.
• Not Hyperbole: Donna refuses to let Rose in the TARDIS on the grounds that if she does, something will happen and she'll end up on Mars with Chaucer and a robot shark, before clarifying that that has actually happened to the Doctor before.
• No Waterproofing in the Future: The TARDIS console goes haywire and catches fire when Donna spills coffee on it, despite having a coffee maker built in.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Walking through a random street in London, the Doctor sees someone struggling with a massive pile of boxes asking for help, and naturally rushes over to help. Then he moves enough of them to see who it is carrying the boxes, and it's Donna.
  • Sylvia tries not to let her panic show too much when Donna calls the Doctor by name as she runs off to help him. As the Doctor hadn't given his name yet, the only way she could know it is if she were starting to remember him, which will kill her.
• Out-of-Character Moment: One of the key characteristics of Donna is that she is hot-blooded, defensive, and loves spending money. When Donna loses her memories, she makes subconscious decisions that she thinks the Doctor would make and the most noticeable one is that she gave away £166 million (much to the bewilderment of Shaun and the Doctor) because she felt that the less fortunate needed it more than she did (which is considered too charitable to the Doctor by Donna's standards) and the Doctor sees this as a sign that the memory loss has affected her personality in a bad way. When she regains her memory, the first thing she does is express anger that she just gave away the £166 million without thinking to use it for herself. This signals to the Doctor that the process was a success and the old Donna is back.
• Percussive Maintenance: The psychic paper hasn't quite caught on to the fact the Doctor's identifying as male again, so he has to give it a whack against the mirror of Shaun's taxi.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: The Doctor makes ones about Donna and Wilf.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Once the Meep's true colours are revealed, they refer to Rose as Donna's "weird child".
• Pronoun Trouble: Rose calls the Doctor on assuming the Meep is automatically he, something he admits and then asks about.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: The Doctor and Donna both weaponize this against Sylvia to persuade her to let them to go on one last trip.
• Race Lift: Blonde white kid Fudge Higgins becomes Asian kid Fudge Merchandani.
• Rage Against the Heavens: The Doctor has a brief one when he realizes that the only way to save the Earth is to unlock Donna's memories and endanger her life.
  The Doctor: WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS!?
• Real Time: After the ship announces five minutes to take off, about five real-life minutes pass between the announcement and the DoctorDonna shutting down the ship.
• Rearrange the Song: With Murray Gold back as composer, the arrangement of the theme used during David Tennant's final season was rerecorded.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • The moment the Meep drops the façade of being a cute, innocent and childish alien, the Meep's eyes go from yellow to bloodshot red.
  • Averted with the Wrarth Warriors, who have glowing red eyes but are revealed to not be the bad guys.
• Retirony: A variant; Zogroth's last words after being fatally shot by the Meep are that he regrets retiring from active duty.
• Retraux: Beginning with this episode, the show reverts to the logo used during Jon Pertwee's final season and the first six years of Tom Baker's run, but with a modern twist. The TARDIS's new interior also returns to stark white, once again incorporating the round things.
• Retro Rocket: The Meep's ship has this aesthetic.
• Rule of Three: Subverted. The astonished "what" never quite appears in triple:
  • The first time, the Doctor only manages two "what"s before Rose runs up to meet her mother.
  • The second time, he only manages two "what"s upon encountering Shaun, before rolling his eyes and asking for a ride to the ship.
  • The third time, the "what"s are split between the newly-freed UNIT soldiers, the Doctor, and the Meep... before Donna wakes and adds a fourth.
• Scenery Gorn: The Meep activating the dagger drive. Sure, London is almost destroyed, but the lava fissures look amazing!
• Scenery Porn: The TARDIS gets arguably its most visually stunning console room to date, in both look and size.
• Schmuck Bait: Subverted, when the first set of UNIT grunts get brainwashed, and send the ones guarding the Meep's escape pod to apparently go get zapped themselves. The second team soon reappear none the worse for wear.
• Sequel Hook: Before being teleported off the Earth, the Meep threatens to let "the boss" know about the Doctor's presence.
• She's Back: The Doctor restores Donna's erased memories, returning her to the Donna we knew back in 2009.
• Shout-Out:
  • The brainwashed steelworkers and UNIT troops helping repair and guard the Meep's spaceship before launch bear the Meep to their ship on a litter formed from welded-together pieces of steel that looks very much like a miniature and portable Iron Throne.
  • The Doctor reawakening the DoctorDonna from the other side of a pane of glass with a string of trigger words is reminiscent of Zemo awakening the Winter Soldier in Captain America: Civil War.
• Sinister Shades: The brainwashed UNIT troops have helmets with flip-down shades, which help hide their glowing eyes and make them look extra sinister.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Fifteen years, and Donna's still having trouble with her frenemy Nerys. Or at least she was, before the accident.
• Skewed Priorities: Donna's first words after getting her memories back, while trying to stop London's total destruction?
  Donna: I gave away all my money.
• Social Media Before Reason: The only reaction the people of Camden and Chiswick have to an alien escape pod touching down is gathering to gawk and take photos. Rose even stumbles on to the Meep because she doubles back to get her phone and finds them hiding in a back alley.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In a case of a location undergoing this, the steel mill isn't blown up as a result of the Meep's take-off.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Meep insists on always being referred to as "the Meep".
• Spotting the Thread: The Doctor notices something's up with the Meep's story when he sees that, despite the threatening appearance of the Wrarth Warriors, Shaun's taxi isn't even dinged from their laser blasts, as well as one of the zapped UNIT soldiers being unconscious, not dead.
• Squee: The Doctor and Donna let out a loud one when geeking out over the new TARDIS console and interior, and it's adorable.
• Super Wheelchair: UNIT has fitted Shirley's wheelchair with weaponry, and it's implied that all of UNIT's wheelchair-using personnel have them as well.
• Take a Third Option: In the face of the Meta-Crisis inevitably burning up their brains, Donna and Rose decide to simply let the power of the Meta-Crisis go, enabling them to return to normal.
• Talk to the Fist: Happens to the Doctor, courtesy of the Meep's brainwashed army.
• Technobabble: A hallmark of any good Davies-helmed episode. The Meep starts spouting out science-y words while instructing the UNIT soldiers under their control to prepare their ship. Donna and Rose start doing so as well once they tap into their Meta-Crisis abilities.
  Donna: I'll triple-drive the particle manifesto, overstep the umbilical feed, vindicate the cyberline and roast the hyperfeeds! Like this!
• Teleportation: The Wrarth Warriors have teleportation technology. The Doctor hacks it with his sonic screwdriver to summon them for the Meep's trial and some Wrarth Warriors beam off to space with the Meep at the end.
• Tempting Fate: Seriously, Donna, never ask what could go wrong:
  Donna: Here we are, having a coffee! What's gonna go wrong-- [spills coffee over the TARDIS console] Oh my God, I did it again!
• There Are No Coincidences: The heroes comment on the sheer unlikeliness that the Doctor's path just happens to reunite him with Donna and her family in the way it does.
• Think of the Children!: Shaun is rightfully annoyed when a firefight breaks out in his house between the Wrarth Warriors and the brainwashed UNIT soldiers, pointing out that they have children in the house.
• Third-Person Person: The Meep only refers to themself as "the Meep" up until the Villainous Breakdown.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: The Wrarth Warriors attack with stun rays. The Doctor noticing that the Temple-Noble car is unharmed and the brainwashed UNIT soldiers have merely been rendered unconscious is what clues him in to the realization that the Meep is Evil All Along.
• Trans Tribulations: The Noble family have accepted Rose's gender identity (although Sylvia stumbles over what terms to use), but she still faces bullying from the kids at her school. She admits to the Meep that she sometimes feels like she doesn't belong on Earth at all.
• Trash the Set:
  • The Noble house gets shot up between the Wrarth Warriors and Beep the Meep's brainwashed UNIT soldiers.
  • In an inversion of what normally happens, the new TARDIS interior suffers a catastrophic failure when Donna accidentally dumps her coffee over the console.
• Trigger Phrase: Turns out Donna has one to unlock her Meta-Crisis abilities, which ends up being vital to save the day when Donna is the only one who can reach the controls to shut down the Meep's ship. They are "Westerly, pelican, dreams, tornado, clifftops, andante, grief, fingerprint, susurration, sparrow, dance, Mexico, binary."
• Tuckerization: The steel mill is said to belong to Mills and Wagner, the writing duo behind the original comic.
• Unfazed Everyman: When walking in on his family (plus the Doctor) surrounding the Meep, Shaun simply pauses for a few seconds and then notes that the cooking smells good, and proceeds to take everything that happens afterwards in his stride.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Lampshaded. While being taken away, the Meep gloatingly tells the Doctor that they'll have the last laugh, because "the boss" will be very excited to hear that there's a second being with two hearts on Earth. The Doctor's reaction is annoyance that all the warnings he gets are so cryptic.
• Verbal Backspace: Claiming that he's a friend of Nerys, the Doctor says that she's fine, but when Shaun brings up the unspecified "accident" he backspaces to "not fine", and later that she's "been fined" when Shaun says the accident in question was her own fault, implying she that was in a car accident of some kind.
• Weaponized Exhaust: The Meep's dagger-drive powered ship. Lifting off will turn London into a smouldering crater.
• Wham Line:
  • After the Doctor starts undoing his story and learning the Meep is a twisted monster, the Doctor asks the Meep for their side of the story, with the Meep thinking it over until...
    The Meep: Oh, to hell with this!
  • Donna calling the Doctor by name, even though he hadn't told her what it is. As Sylvia realises, this is a very bad thing...
• White Is Pure: Subverted. Unlike its comic counterpart, The Meep is white instead of blue and it's to emphasize The Meep's innocence over being hunted by The Wrarth Warriors. However, The Meep is actually the villain, and the Wrarth Warriors are the ones trying to arrest the alien.
• Why Isn't It Attacking?: While the Wrarth Warriors are attacking, the realization that they're using the minimum force possible while doing so (notably, no scorch marks on Shaun's taxi and the brainwashed UNIT troops being unconscious instead of dead) is what twigs the Doctor that something's up with the Meep's story.
• Women Are Wiser: Donna and Rose manage to survive being a Meta-Crisis by just "letting it go" and giving up the regeneration energy, something the male Doctor could not (or at least, would not) think of.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Rose is 15-years-old according to Word of God, and the special is set in 2023, which would mean Rose was born in 2008... a whole year before her parents even met. Notably Lampshaded by Davies himself, he revealed that he deliberately "fudged the years" to accommodate Yasmin Finney's casting (Finney was 18 at the time).invoked
• "You!" Exclamation: Sylvia gives one to the Doctor when she sees him for the first time.
• You Monster!: Donna calls the Meep this after the Meep kills Zogroth and Zreeg.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Turns out that if Donna did recover her memories and become the DoctorDonna again, she'd have slightly less than a minute before death.

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