Move over, Doctor — there’s a new pilot at the TARDIS console room controls, and a lifetime’s temping in Chiswick has prepared her to be the universe’s greatest defender.
Big Finish has announced that its latest Doctor Who audio drama will bring Catherine Tate back behind the microphone as one of the show’s finest companions, Donna Noble… except this time, Donna’s flying solo.
Yes, there’s no Tenth Doctor around in Donna Noble: Kidnapped!, a four-story series from Jacqueline Rayner, John Dorney, James Goss, and Matt Fitton. Set shortly after the events of the season four two-parter “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead” — which saw Donna briefly sucked into a digital happily-ever-after-life where she lived in wedded bliss, only to lose it all when the titular library’s archival systems were restored — Kidnapped! sees Donna briefly return home for a little break between adventures in time and space… only to immediately get wrapped up in her own adventures.
Tate will of course reprise her role as Donna, as she previously has for two seasons of Doctor/Donna adventures with David Tennant for Big Finish, and will be joined by Jacqueline King as Donna’s judgemental mother, Sylvia.
Donna will not only get to pilot the TARDIS on her own in Kidnapped!, but even get her own quasi-companion, in the form of a new character, Nat, played by Niky Wardley. One of Donna’s best friends on Earth, she is, at least in Sylvia’s eyes, everything Donna isn’t: a successful career woman, happily married, confident in her goals for her future. But as Nat will learn getting roped into Donna’s secret life as a wanderer in the fourth dimension, maybe there’s more to a good life than work and marriage.
It’s an interesting angle to take a Donna Noble story, given the tragedy of her arc across her time in Doctor Who already. With no Doctor to fall back on, it’ll be nice to see Donna step up to the plate and save the day on her own terms. Kidnapped! is set to release in May 2020.