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[hasthreefingers]

The presence and nature of the Doctor and TARDIS
Key to understanding how Donna fits into the canon as a Companion, as well as comprehending the basic theme of the series

The Doctor is an alien. This much people know. He may look human, and according to the Doctor himself, he might even be half-human, but the Doctor is a lying liar who lies. He may be in the 900-years-old range, or that might be vanity because he's said he's older than that in previous incarnations. But. That's okay. He's worth it. Because for all his lies, he really, truly, genuinely cares about the human race and wants to protect it. He sees humanity's raw potential for greatness and goodness, and even when they disappoint him, he still sees that potential. He's sort of adopted humans and considers himself, to some extent, Earth's protector. Like a barmy uncle who, when he finds out his niece or nephew is being bullied, goes to the schoolyard and beats the bully's ass.

Over time, he's taken to having people travel with him. This can be attributed to wanting to show off, which he does enjoy doing, but it's likely because it can get lonely traveling alone for so long. Having other people around is an adventure in itself. They make him adjust, and they can challenge him, and they appreciate the wonder of the universe and help him keep his sense of wonder, too. They remind him how lucky he is to be able to see nebulas and the formation of worlds.

Each of his companions challenge him in a distinct way. Rose helps him get over the loss of the Time Lords and is just as ready for adventure as he is, Martha helps him get over the loss of Rose and demands his respect, and Donna calls him on everything. As soon as he agreed to take her on as a companion, she made it clear that he was a skinny streak of alien nothing and she wasn't going to mate with him.

The Doctor, it turns out, is not accustomed to having people tell him off. He's surprised every time it happens - Martha does it, too. He's the one who shows them the universe, he's the one who knows so much history, has been there to affect so much history, and here are these tiny little humans who haven't experienced a quarter of what he has, telling him he's wrong, and they're right. And even though he doesn't always like it, he needs it, and part of him knows that.

The Doctor that Donna knows is the Doctor's tenth incarnation. He has an entire wardrobe accrued over centuries to choose from and ends up wearing one of two things - a brown suit and a blue suit. He's incredibly fond of Chuck Taylor shoes. Er, that style of shoes, actually, since there were licensing/marking issues on the show and they had to cover up the star. He's tall, skinny as a pole (Donna remarks that he's so thin that if you hug him, you get a papercut), and when his hair gets mussed up, he looks like a rooster. Donna comes to love him - only in a platonic sense, but still. Of course, she hasn't met him the second time yet, but in canon, they become best friends.


The TARDIS, standing for Time And Relative Dimension In Space,is a living machine, made from coral, that travels through time and space. The space inside, while incredibly, isn't infinite. The Doctor sometimes has to let entire rooms go in order to make space for other things (like letting go of Romana's room after she decided to stay in E-space. Over the years, the Doctor has put in a "pool" room (that actually looks like a beach), a library (absolutely massive), a massive wardrobe for himself, and several hundred other rooms, not all of which he needs or even can find again (he lost the pool room).

The TARDIS has long been suspected of having a mind of its own (though this started in fanfics to explain how the Doctor found himself in places he didn't intend to go, it was hinted at in some Doctor Who novellas and then confirmed completely in The Doctor's Wife). The Doctor has a relationship with the TARDIS that will never compare to anything else - he loves the TARDIS the same way a 16-year-old loves their first car, especially if it could go through time and included a kitchen. Oh, and if it could fly. The TARDIS prefers some companions to others, letting some of them operate the TARDIS if it means saving the Doctor and causing them to get lost or trapped in certain areas in the TARDIS if she thinks the companion will cause the Doctor harm or threaten her relationship with the TARDIS.

During one of the Doctor's many trips to Earth, the TARDIS's chameleon circuit broke. The chameleon circuit, which would normally allow the TARDIS to resemble it's surroundings and blend in (like a chameleon, get it?) was now stuck looking like a police box. The Doctor has come to be rather fond of it, even though searching for a "blue box" on the Internet allowed people - usually conspiracy theorists and government agencies - to track him with varying degrees of success. It's a good thing he's rather fond of it, since he's tried to fix the circuit before and couldn't figure it out.


The more common alien species that appear in the canon

The most common alien species that appear in canon include the following:

Time Lords
Hee. Because the Doctor is a Time Lord, so they appear in every episode. Get it? Um... Right. It's- Um. I guess it wasn't funny. BUT. There are other Time Lords, and even Time Ladies! And the Doctor's eighth incarnation pretty much murdered them all, but only in order to win the Time War (technically the Last Great Time War). After that, the Doctor never stopped running. And then it turned out the Time Lords wanted to come back, but they're really an absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder type thing. When the Doctor found out they were trying to come back, he was more or less terrified and tried to stop it.

Daleks
These little toilet-plunger-nosed dudes are the sworn enemies of the Time Lords. Once, the Doctor was sent back in time to prevent the Daleks from becoming the sworn enemies of the Time Lords. He... ended up making the Daleks the sworn enemies of the Time Lords. Tensions built up to the point that the Daleks and Time Lords were major players in the Last Great Time War, which bent time itself. The Doctor was responsible for ending the war, but in so doing, he also murdered all the Time Lords, as well as all the Daleks. Except for the part where several Daleks survived and are now making more and more Daleks. There are enough of them that they have a rather crowded asylum planet. They still don't like the Doctor, though they will sometimes use him to accomplish their own ends (see: Asylum of the Daleks).

Cybermen
Not even the Daleks like Cybermen. No one likes the Cybermen. If you ever see a Cyberman trying to cry, it's because they just realized that nobody likes them. They were originally humans who tried to survive by using more and more artificial parts. As they became more logical in their thinking, they decided that the best way to survive was to spread across the universe and create more Cybermen out of the other species they found. This put them at odds with the Daleks, who were trying to conquer the universe themselves, and the Doctor, who was trying not to let anyone conquer anything else at the expense of another species, ever. Though they were eventually trapped in an alternate universe, they have continued, like the Daleks, to show up from time to time.

Sontaran
Sontarans are the Napoleon wannabes of the universe. They, too, are bent on conquest, but they're kind of short and look like baked potatoes sticking out of space suits. They're rallying cry, greeting, and general "Bro" phrase is "Sontar-Ha." Sontarans are very big on military strategy and consider honor in battle to be Very Very Important. They don't run from fights, because that would be dishonor. One of the reasons they go to war is to accrue more honor in battle, so that they can be praised and be considered Very Very Important. Unfortunately, they still look like baked potatoes that can walk around. Oh, and they have little holes in the back of their necks that if you hit it, can knock them out. And only three fingers. Except for their military prowess, nobody knows why these guys would be respected, really. Potatoes. Po. Tay. Toes.

Sycorax
These guys are assholes. Not necessarily common in the universe, but I wanted to point out that they're assholes. Lizard people who want to take over worlds, they basically use voodoo that they don't do so well, threatening to make people kill themselves unless the planet gives in to Sycorax rule. But it's basically a con and they fail and then Harriet Jones has Torchwood blow up their retreating ship because, as she says, the Doctor won't always be around and humans have to defend themselves.

Catkind
Catkind is... what it sounds like. Anthropomorphic cat-people. They've taken on the duties of healing, and are outrageously successful. Mostly because they choose some people to experiment on in order to find a cure. After the Doctor shows them the error of their ways, most of them realize what they're doing is wrong and try to do better, such as taking care of the Face of Boe while he was dying. Which brings us to...

The Face of Boe
One of the Doctor's friends, the Face of Boe is a giant face with tentacles in a glass tank. Very wise. Very old. And might actually be Jack Harkness. The Face of Boe died in Series 3, so Donna missed him.

Jack Harkness
Technically a human, when Rose absorbed the Time Vortex in Series 1, she brought Jack back to life and turned him into a fact. He can be injured, but if he's killed, he'll come back to life with no wounds. He's extremely flirtatious, even without his nigh-irresistible 51st-century hormones, and most people really, really like him. The Doctor tries to keep him from flirting, but can't be everywhere - Jack is an omnisexual for a reason. Donna likes him. Really likes him. Which is weird, since that's the episode where she learns that he might be the Face of Boe.

Ood
Ood are awesome. Everyone should know an Ood. Not have an Ood - they were enslaved across the universe until the Doctor and Donna set them free - but should have one in their lives. Ood are extremely trusting and helpful and kind and considerate and are somewhat psychic, like how they warn the Doctor that his song is coming to an end. And yes, they look a little weird. They're bald and kind of cone-headed, definitely big-headed, and instead of noses and mouths, they have tentacle beards. Oh, and they hold their brains in their hands when they're born, though thanks to technology, they can use their brains to communicate with species other than the Ood. They're simply awesome. Even if they are susceptible to suggestion and can kind of be turned to murder people. But those events are rare.

Weevils
Possibly extraterrestrial in origin, no one's caught them landing here or found out where they're actually from. They mostly live in the sewers, making them the rats of the alien species on Earth, but occasionally come to surface level and attack humans. They look like this.

Racnoss
The first alien Donna ever met, the Racnoss is a species of... spider people. Like spidrens in the Tamora Pierce stories. Centaur-spiders. Bottom half spider, top half mostly human (big teeth, though, which means they speak with a lisp). They were here when the Earth first formed, and the Empress tries to revive the species with Huon partners which have been fed to Donna through her coffee. The Doctor offers to take them to a planet where they won't have to hurt anyone, but the Empress refuses. He ends up blowing up her lair, she teleports out (as does the Doctor, at Donna's urging, which saves his life), and her ship is blown up. So now the Racnoss are dead, too. BUT STILL IMPORTANT TO DONNA. She will never look at spiders the same way.

Weeping Angels
These little twerps make no sense, but whatever. First, they look like angel statues, which begs the question of what came first, the weeping angels or our vision of angels, but I digress. Anyway, if they ever look at each other, they turn to stone for real. They also feed off potential energy, which means two things - the first, that when they feed off this energy, they touch a victim and cast them back in time so they can feed off the years the person would have lived in the present. The second, they want the TARDIS, because that thing is LIMITLESS potential energy. That isn't the only reason the Doctor dislikes them, though. Weeping Angels are malevolent - if they can't feed of a person but need to get rid of them, they'll kill the person. They can't move while someone is looking at them, but they can cover a great amount of space in an eye-blink. Anything that holds the image of an angel can become an angel. And there's more than one kind of angel- supposedly, even the Statue of Liberty is an angel (MOFFAT WERE YOU THINKING AT ALL).

Um... thank you for reading this far?