Over the past couple of days, the BBC have announced that Catherine Tate would reprise her “Runaway Bride” role and be the new companion on Doctor Who.
I’ll admit that my initial reaction to this was negative.
The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that my negative reaction was based mostly on the character of ‘Donna’ as portrayed by Tate in the beginning of “the Runaway Bride” (well, and the fact that I was really hoping that the new companion would be Sally Sparrow from “Blink.”).
The thing is, though — thinking about “the Runaway Bride” (which is being shown on the Sci-Fi Channel tomorrow, kicking off their series 3 broadcasts), I realized that Donna was only really loud, brassy and annoying at the beginning. Over the course of the episode, she softened considerably. (Her reaction to seeing the formation of the Earth, for example, was really wonderful to watch). Given that, I think it only fair to wait and see how she’s handled in the new series. She could come off a bit like Tegan redux, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing….and it will also be an interesting dynamic change not having a wide-eyed teenager/twenty-something as the companion.
Plus, Steven Moffat (author of “Empty Child” from 2005, “Girl in the Fireplace” from 2006 and “Blink” from this year) is being given a two-parter to write. So it can’t be ALL bad.