David Tennant Is Back for Doctor Who’s 60th Anniversary Special, and He’s Still Breaking Our Hearts

Full spoilers follow for Doctor Who: “The Star Beast.”

Something funny happened on the way to the Doctor Who 60th anniversary special. For, as celebratory as the occasion is, it’s also proved to be a reminder of how intrinsically tragic the Doctor’s life can be.

First, the celebratory part: Not only is David Tennant – surely one of the most beloved of the Doctors – back for three specials, the first of which debuted on Saturday on Disney+ in the U.S. and BBC One in the U.K., but so is writer-producer Russell T Davies, who re-launched Doctor Who back in 2005 after a 16-year absence (not including the American TV movie). Davies gave us many of the hallmarks of modern Doctor Who, including casting Tennant and creating Donna Noble, the Catherine Tate companion who is also back for these specials.

But Donna is where some of that tragedy comes in. As “The Star Beast” kicks off, the Doctor gives a quick “previously on” direct-to-camera, reminding us that, in order to save her life, he had to erase his former companion’s memory when we last saw her (long story). That means Donna has no memory of the Doctor, their time-and-space-faring adventures together, or all of the good they did for the universe (including saving it from annihilation!).

And yet, when we pick back up with her in her domestic London life in “The Star Beast,” something is gnawing at Donna.

“Sometimes, I think there’s something missing,” she says. “Like I had something lovely, and it’s gone. And I kind of look to the side, like something should be there, and it’s not.” Donna acknowledges that she has a family who loves her and that she should be happy. “But some nights,” she says, “I lie in bed thinking, what have I lost?”

Donna has lost the same thing that any companion of the Doctor eventually does: a life of unrealized dreams that were, against all odds, incredibly realized.

She’s lost the same thing that any companion of the Doctor eventually does: a life of unrealized dreams that were, against all odds, incredibly realized, the chance to travel to the furthest reaches of time and space, and back again, and see untold wonders. Who can say if she’s better off or not than any other former companion, since she can’t even remember what she’s lost since leaving the Doctor’s side, only to return to the humdrum reality of life on Earth. Perhaps her memory wipe was a blessing.

I’m reminded of one of the great stories from Davies’ original tenure on the show, back in the first David Tennant season. In the 2006 episode “School Reunion,” former companion Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) returned to Doctor Who, having originally appeared in the 1970s alongside the Third and Fourth Doctors. Here, the Tenth Doctor is overjoyed to encounter his old friend, but the perspective on the matter for the time-hopping alien super-genius is quite different from that of Sarah Jane, who feels as if she was essentially abandoned by the Doctor years earlier.

“I waited for you. I missed you,” Sarah Jane tells the Doctor. 

“Oh, you didn’t need me. You were getting on with your life,” the Doctor cluelessly responds.

“You were my life,” she says.

It’s a heartbreaking moment, and this is in an episode that’s also about school teachers who are secretly giant, flying vampires rendered in bad CGI, so that’s saying something. But just like Donna, who can’t quite remember why she has an aching hole in her soul, Sarah Jane spent years pining for, as she puts it, “the splendor” of her days with the Doctor.

Perhaps, though, the even more tragic figure is the Doctor himself. In “School Reunion,” Sarah Jane presses the Doctor on why he never came back for her. He flatly states that he couldn’t. And at the end of “The Star Beast,” Donna – now with her memories restored and the day saved, of course – declines travelling with the Doctor again, but she does suggest that he could pop by every now and then for a visit and a cup of tea. “Why is it such a big goodbye with you?” she asks. The Doctor, however, is oddly non-committal about the prospect.

It all comes down to the immortality of the Doctor, doesn’t it? At one time he was thought to have a cap of 12 regenerations, but has since exceeded that (gotta keep the franchise going). That means that our favorite Time Lord could very well live forever, but at the very least he’s got to be thousands of years old by now. (It’s hard to calculate precisely.) Imagine the colossal loneliness of that existence, even if it is peppered with companions here or there for what must be, from the Doctor’s perspective, brief moments in time. Moments that he apparently fully remembers and never forgets. “I really do remember, though. Every second with you,” he tells Donna.

It’s not a new concept – that the immortal figure must watch all that he loves get old and die, time and again. While Donna being freed of her memory wipe and having adventures with the Fourteenth Doctor again by the end of “The Star Beast” is certainly a happy ending, she will have to, inevitably, say goodbye to him again in just a few weeks. And as the Tenth Doctor told Rose (another companion he has long since left behind) in “School Reunion,” he is ultimately alone: “That’s the curse of the Time Lords.”

Talk to Executive Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!