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President Roslin, Baltar, Starbuck, Helo and the majority of Galactica’s fighter pilots and their craft are aboard the damaged rebel Cylon ship when it jumps, apparently in response to the reconnected Hybrid sensing danger. The ship makes its way toward the Resurrection Hub, but en route, President Roslin issues new orders to Helo: she is altering the agreement with the Cylons, and wants D’anna Biers brought to her immediately rather than allowing her to be debriefed by her fellow Cylons. Aboard the Hub ship, D’anna is revived by Brother Cavel, who hopes that a few token words from her will bring a swift end to the civil war among the Cylons. She refuses to cooperate, and is surprised when a joint Cylon-human attack leaves her in the hands of the rebels and the Colonial fleet. The Resurrection Hub is destroyed, putting an end to the Cylons’ ability to download into a new body and leveling the playing field by making the human model Cylons helplessly mortal. Mortality is also on Roslin’s mind after she hears an injured Baltar’s confession that he helped bring an end to civilization as she once knew it - and feels little remose for that act.

written by Jane Espenson
directed by Paul Edwards
music by Bear McCreary

Guest Cast: Tahmoh Penikett (Helo), Lucy Lawless (D’anna Biers), Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben Conoy), Donnelly Rhodes (Doc Cottle), Lorena Gale (Priestess Elosha), Dean Stockwell (Brother Cavel)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Snatched out of the TARDIS in mid-teleport, Donna finds herself in an artificial world, where she meets the man of her dreams, has children, and enjoys a normal life with no sign of the Doctor or the TARDIS…until he suddenly appears in the place of her therapist, Dr. Moon, who she seems to see quite regularly. In the library, the Doctor’s attempts to detect his shadowy adversaries are being jammed by something, somewhere, and the ranks of the expedition are dwindling as more of its crew are consumed. Only the enigmatic Professor River Song can be of any real help to him, but the Doctor is still worried about how well she knows him - especially after she whispers one word to him that proves she knows him very well, and again when she proves that she’s more than willing to sacrifice her life to save him. Donna runs into a familiar face in the virtual construct, another victim of the Vashta Nerada who clues her in to the true nature of her new life, and she begins to question everything as her artificial world starts to collapse on itself. The Doctor realizes that Donna - and almost everyone else who was in the library before the shadows fell - have been saved in the Library’s massive computer core, but as the Vashta Nerada try to claim the library world and bring it to the brink of destruction, they may not leave him enough time to recover the survivors.

written by Steven Moffat
directed by Euros Lyn
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Alex Kingston (Professor River Song), Colin Salmon (Dr. Moon), Harry Peacock (Proper Dave), Steve Pemberton (Strackman Lux), Jessika Williams (Anita), O-T Fagbenle (Other Dave), Eve Newton (The Girl), Mark Dexter (Dad), Jason Pitt (Lee), Eloise Rakic-Platt (Ella), Alex Midwood (Joshua), Talulah Riley (Miss Evangelista), Jonathan Reuben (Man)

Original Title: River’s Run

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green (click here for review and more details…)

With both President Roslin and the newly-arrived Admiral Adama aboard the base ship, D’anna tips the balance in the Cylons’ favor: she takes Roslin hostage and demands that Adama escort her back to Galactica, where she announces that the final five must be allowed to come to the base ship of their own accord to rejoin their own kind. Shuttle traffic is not to be slowed down, examined closely or stopped. Lee Adama, in one of his first acts as the new president of the colonies, is forced to acceed to D’anna’s demands - and then orders his father to undertake a risky rescue mission which, if success looks impossible, will end in the destruction of the base ship and the hostages aboard. One by one, the Cylons in the fleet reveal themselves: Tory goes to the base ship supposedly to bring Roslin’s medication to her, and admit her true nature at the same time. Tigh admits to Adama that he’s a Cylon, and goes to await his fate as Adama turns the final corner into a nervous breakdown. As they try to figure out why a new signal has brought them to Starbuck’s viper, Tyrol and Sam Anders are arrested before Starbuck’s eyes for being Cylons, after Tigh reveals them to Lee. Lee threatens to airlock Tigh, Anders and Tyrol unless D’anna calls off the hostage situation; instead she locks all of the base ship’s nukes on the civilian vehicles in the fleet. Starbuck finds the source of the signal that drew the newly-revealed Cylons to her ship: it’s the ship itself, its instruments somehow pointing the way to Earth. Lee opts to share this information with the Cylons, which ends the hostage crisis, and Cylons and Colonials set a course for Earth.

But the next crisis to strike the fleet is the fact that they actually get there.

written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle
directed by Michael Rymer
music by Bear McCreary

Guest Cast: Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh), Aaron Douglas (Tyrol), Tahmoh Penikett (Helo), Michael Trucco (Anders), Alessandro Juliani (Gaeta), Kandyse McClure (Dualla), Lucy Lawless (D’anna Biers), Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben Conoy), Rekha Sharma (Tory Foster), Bodie Olmos (Hotdog), Keegan Connor Tracy (Jeanne), Brad Drybrough (Hoshi), Vincent Gale (Lt. Peter Laird), Don Thompson (SP3 Anthony Figurski), Alexandra Thomas (Hera), Lara Gilchrist (Paulla Schatter), Heather Doerksen (Sgt. Brandy Harder), Finn R. Devitt (baby Nicky), Sonja Bennett (SP3 Margie Brasko), Barry Norling (Adama’s Corporal)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The Doctor is eager to take a trip to the uninhabitable planet of Midnight, whose sun’s radiation renders the surface completely inhospitable to any known kind of life - or so the legend has it. Faced with the choice of either this or sunbathing next to an opulent swimming pool, Donna lets the Doctor go off on his own for once. The Doctor gets acquainted with fellow passengers along the way, but when the tour ship comes to a sudden halt, so does the cameraderie - especially when the pilots’ cabin is wrenched away from the ship and something begins knocking on the hull from outside. One of the passengers is apparently taken over by some form of life which has defied expectations and evolved on Midnight, and in its new body it begins rapidly learning about human characteristics such as speech. But when the other passengers become terrified enough to discuss throwing the possessed woman out of the ship to certain doom, just to rid themselves of the alien life form, it appears that the being is learning some of humanity’s darkest behaviors too. And this time, there’s almost nothing the Doctor can do to stop the worst from coming out of everyone present.

written by Russell T. Davies
directed by Alice Troughton
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Billie Piper (Rose Tyler), Lesley Sharp (Sky Silvestry), Rakie Ayola (Hostess), David Troughton (Professor Hobbes), Ayesha Antoine (Dee Dee Blasco), Lindsey Coulson (Val Cane), Daniel Ryan (Biff Cane), Colin Morgan (Jethro Cane), Tony Bluto (Driver Joe), Duane Henry (Mechanic Claude)

Notes: A few episodes after meeting the Doctor’s daughter, this time around we meet the Doctor’s son - in real life. Guest star David Troughton is the son of the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, and played a minor role in the last second Doctor story, The War Games, in 1969. He played a much more visible role opposite the third Doctor in 1972’s The Curse Of Peladon. Like his father, he’s no relation to this episode’s director, Alice Troughton, who has also directed installments of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green (click here for review and more details…)

During a visit to a futuristic Chinatown, Donna is lured into a fortune teller’s booth, where her fortunes aren’t so much predicted as changed drastically. She finds herself over a year in the past, at the moment when she decided to take a job her mother found for her instead of going to work as a temp at H.C. Clemens - where she was working when her path became inextricably linked with the Doctor’s. History changes. Without Donna to convince him to show the Empress of the Racnoss some mercy, the Doctor’s mission to stop the Empress becomes a suicide mission. UNIT finds the Doctor’s body, having suffered too much damage to regenerate - the last of the Time Lords has died. Without the Doctor, history unfolds very differently, but few notice the divergence until the moment when the starship Titanic slams into Buckingham Palace and its reactor goes critical on impact, destroying London totally. Donna and her family are assigned to a home in Leeds in a besieged and increasingly xenophobic Britain, a world that they would never have chosen to live in. Further events that would have been stopped by the Doctor continue to drastically alter the world: America is laid to waste by the Adipose incident, while the Atmos devices choke millions across the globe. And with each disaster, a young woman named Rose appears to Donna, insisting that she is the most important woman in human history - Donna must go with Rose to fulfill her destiny and set history back on its rightful course. But why should Donna Noble believe a total stranger who claims to be from another dimension of reality?

written by Russell T. Davies
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Billie Piper (Rose Tyler), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Joseph Long (Rocco Colasanto), Noma Dumezweni (Capt. Magambo), Chipo Chung (Fortune Teller), Marcia Lecky (Mooky Kahari), Suzann McLean (Veena Brady), Natalie Walter (Alice Coltrane), Neil Clench (Man in pub), Clive Standen (UNIT Soldier), Bhasker Patel (Jival Chowdry), Catherine York (Female Reporter), Ben Righton (Morgenstern), Loraine Velez (Spanish Maid), Jason Mohammad (Studio News Reader), Sanchia McCormack (Housing Officer), Lawrence Stevenson (Soldier #1), Terri-Ann Brumby (Woman in doorway), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells), Paul Richard Biggin (Soldier #2)

Appearing in footage from The Runaway Bride: Sarah Parish (Empress)

Notes: The Trickster is mentioned as being the architect of the beetle-like creature on Donna’s back; though he isn’t actually seen in this episode, the Trickster did feature prominently in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?, in which he threatened to remove the Doctor from time; presumably Turn Left is where he tried to make good on that threat. Sarah Jane and her three young friends from that spinoff series, Luke, Maria and Clyde, are said to have been in the same hospital where Martha Jones worked (and died), and in the absence of the Doctor, Sarah is said to have prevented the Earth from being blasted by an accelerated MRI machine (as seen in Smith And Jones), paying for that bravery with her life and the lives of her young friends. Similarly, Captain Jack, Gwen and Ianto of Torchwood apparently prevent the Sontaran takeover of Earth (The Poison Sky) at the cost of their own lives. Chipo Chung guest starred in the 11th episode of season three as well, as Chantho, while Lachele Carl’s American news anchor - after appearing in episodes since the first season and even appearing in the same role in the Sarah Jane Adventures - finally picks up a name.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green (click here for review and more details…)

Confronted with the imminent arrival of Rose from the alternate universe, the Doctor and Donna make a quick jump to modern-day Earth, finding that everything is all right and returning to the TARDIS. But a sudden displacement of time and space leaves the TARDIS floating in space - without Earth. The Doctor flies into action to try to track the planet down, even going so far as to pay an unannounced visit to the Shadow Proclamation, an intergalactic law enforcement body, where he talks his way past Judoon guards and discovers that Earth isn’t the only planet missing: the Shadow Proclamation has placed the entire universe on alert. Taking note of the mass and properties of the missing worlds, the Doctor hypothesizes that the planets may have been stolen to become components of a massive engine, generating energy on a scale not seen since the creation of the universe. The representatives of the Shadow Proclamation are prepared to go into battle, but only if the Doctor surrenders his TARDIS; he opts to go it alone instead.

On Earth, chaos has broken out. Night has fallen around the world, and the sky is now teeming with unfamiliar planets. At UNIT HQ in New York City, at Torchwood in Cardiff and at Sarah Jane Smith’s home in Ealing, former companions of the Doctor are among the first to hear a message transmitted from an oncoming barrage of spacecraft: a Dalek voice endlessly repeating the word “exterminate”. The Daleks attack the planet, concentrating their firepower on military installations or entities that have prior knowledge of the Daleks: Torchwood and UNIT are among the first targets. An unlikely ally unites Martha, Torchwood and Sarah, using a technology invented for an emergency in which the Doctor hasn’t arrived to save the day. But the TARDIS does indeed make its way to Earth, finding the stolen planets time-shifted within the Medusa Cascade. The Doctor discovers that Davros, creator of the Daleks, has survived the Time War and bred a new race of Daleks to do his bidding. As the Doctor’s former companions race to join up with him, Torchwood comes under Dalek attack and Gwen and Ianto are left to fend for themselves. Sarah finds herself at the mercy of the Daleks, and even when Rose finds the TARDIS, it may not be enough to save the Doctor when he finds himself in a Dalek’s gunsights.

written by Russell T. Davies
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Billie Piper (Rose Tyler), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Penelope Wilton (Harriet Jones), Adjoa Andoh (Francine Jones), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Thomas Knight (Luke Smith), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Julian Bleach (Davros), Michael Brandon (General Sanchez), Andrea Harris (Suzanne), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells), Richard Dawkins (himself), Paul O’Grady (himself), Marcus Cunningham (Drunk Man), Jason Mohammad (Newsreader), Paul Kasey (Judoon), Kelly Hunter (Shadow Architect), Amy Beth Hayes (Albino Servant), Gary Milner (Scared Man), Barney Edwards, Nick Pegg, David Hankinson, Anthony Spargo (Dalek Operators), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice), Alexander Armstrong (voice of Mr. Smith)

Notes: Davros first appeared in 1975’s Genesis Of The Daleks, and returned to terrorize each of the Doctor’s successive incarnations until his final appearance in 1988’s Remembrance Of The Daleks. Even the cancellation of the original series didn’t slow him down, as he returned to do battle twice more with the sixth Doctor, and then with Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor in Terror Firma, and even appeared in his own audio spinoff series, I, Davros. Apparently he’s been missing since a battle during the first year of the Time War, which - just to drive fans crazy - remains unrecorded in either novel or audio form. Actor Julian Bleach becomes the fourth actor to play Davros, having played the Ghost Maker in an episode of Torchwood’s second season. Bernard Cribbins, as Donna’s grandfather, has come up against the Daleks before - 42 years before this episode’s premiere, in the 1966 feature film Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. starring Peter Cushing as Doctor Who. Penelope Wilton returns as former Prime Minister Harriet Jones, not seen since the then-newly-regenerated Doctor uttered six fateful words in The Christmas Invasion. Appearing as himself, evolutionary science advocate Richard Dawkins is the husband of former Doctor Who co-star Lalla “Romana” Ward; coincidentally, they were introduced by former Doctor Who writer and script editor - and Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy author - Douglas Adams.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green (click here for review and more details…)