It was both with Midnight, actually. Every season bar the first has had one episode which is Doctor-light (and usually companion-lite as well): Love and Monsters in S2, which I hated other than the Jackie scenes, and Blink in S3, which I would have liked more except that it felt completely out of place in the continuity and mood of the season at that point (a common problem with Moffat scripts).

This year, they elected to split Donna and the Doctor up and have both a Donna-light episode and a Doctor-light one. So Midnight was when Donna was filming Turn Left, as LabRat says, for which the Doctor was hardly needed. But Midnight was also the 'bottle show', the low-budget episode; they have to have two or three of those every season, and Midnight, with so few locations and very little in the way of special effects, was very low-budget indeed (though, as the Confidential tells us, the sound-effects people had a lot of overtime on this episode).

I can see that the lack of Donna would be disappointing - because, yes, she was amazing this year. But for me that didn't matter so much, partly because of what the episode revealed about the Doctor without his companions (and why he needs them so much) and also for the last five minutes. She was absolutely wonderful in those scenes, especially the way she didn't even need to ask what happened before realising how badly he needed a hug, and even more so that he felt comfortable enough to admit that he wasn't all right and to tell her what happened. Absolutely adore that part of the episode smile

[Linked Image]


Wendy smile

Just a fly-by! *waves*