One (of many) reasons why Donna Noble works for me
No spoilers except for the fact that Donna Noble is the latest companion and she’s in her thirties. And maybe a brief one for S4 Ep1.

I don’t relate to the characters within my age group in shows like Friends, Sex and the City, or Grey’s Anatomy. They’re living completely on their own, far away from their family and their family’s influence, and in control of their lives. Sure, they may lose their job or screw up a surgery or be in a bad relationship (and ok, Meredith is still affected by her mom), but there’s the sense that they know who they are and what direction their life will take, even if that direction is to sleep with as many people as they can and go clubbing every night. They’re done with growing, it’s all about being the fully formed adult now.

Then you get to the crime shows and legal shows and soap operas where being in your thirties (or sometimes 21) mean that you have a house, a career, and family, and depending on the show, time to cheat on your spouse on the side with the good-looking neighbor.

After twenty years of watching shows like that, you wonder why I told my sister one day that entertainment never makes any show with characters that I can identify with (though there are characters who I can relate to, mostly in sci-fi.)

So you can imagine how much I appreciated it when we first see Donna go to her home and her mother yells, “Where have you been?” and Donna snaps in exasperation, “how old am I?”

As someone’s who nearing thirty and constantly being treated like a child who doesn’t know better by most of the people I know, it was such a “Oh yes, FINALLY!” moment to have a character who was actually in the similar situation that I’m in. Probably the same situation that many others in their late twenties to middle-ages are in. Not that we all still live with our parents, but a lot of us boomerang back to our family, and even those who don’t probably have family who are pressuring them to be a certain place in life. Even without the family pressure, I can see Donna speaking to a lot of people because she’s not fully established, she’s still growing, and not only is she still growing as a person, she’s still growing UP.

I’ve always had the impression, and this lasted until I was about a few months ago, that I was supposed to stop growing up after I hit 25. I would know everything about the “real” world that I would ever know, because don’t ask how this got stuck in my brain, I had the impression that the brain stopped taking in new information after that age. We no longer evolved after that. We found who we are, we establish ourselves, we know ourselves, we accept it if it turns out we’re losers, and we plunge into the next 60 years with no change, except maybe one day in our forties we’ll discover that we really like country music. Oh, and we will no longer have the teenage bouts of depression and angst, and we get no new internal issues (all issues will be external, like unemployment and debts, but no issues like identity or loneliness) and, well, in brief, we were supposed to be all grown up at 25.

You can’t blame me for thinking that. Seeing the way characters are portrayed in media, and media being our supposed mirror of reality, it seems society believes that one way or another, people are established around 25, and we hit a plateau where is there no more development or maturing to be done. We have matured as much as we ever will, and those who haven’t matured fully are either regressive or socially inept in some ways (slow is the word I’m thinking, with all the negative connotation in the recent usage of the word.)

So it’s actually rather revolutionary to me to see a character like Donna who’s over thirty who’s still growing up. She matures over the series, and really just blossoms as she discovers a place that she fits in, and you don’t get that a lot with older characters. It’s a role reserved for youths (especially females) within the teens to mid-twenties range that seems to be the arbitrary age acceptable to still be exploring. That’s the word I’m looking for! Explore. Asking questions, discovering more about the world. Young girls and youths explore. After 25ers stick their roots down and stay there. Not Donna. She’s still trying to figure out her place in the world, and she’s still trying to see where she fits in, and of course she encounters people who sees all the time it’s taking her to get there as a great waste, and she’s not fulfilling what they believe should be her duty in her life (oh, do I have several of her Mom in my life.)

Best thing about Donna though is that she kick ass. Let’s face it, the fans LOVE Donna. She’s a fantastic person. None of the usual “oh, she’s in her thirties and still exploring therefore she must be socially inept and unable to cope with reality” with her. Donna’s a warm, compassionate, highly capable person, who’s also responsible and intelligent. That means a lot to me, as I’m still in process of maturing, but consider myself a sane, responsible person who works hard at my job and takes care of my own messes (and unfortunately, the messes of others). Just because our lives lack a solid direction and status doesn’t mean we’re all out of touch with reality.

So I love Donna because she shows that just because you’re ignorant about the world around you as you approach middle doesn’t mean you can’t change. She shows that it’s possible to be over thirty and still ask questions, not only about the universe but about yourself, and that there’s still lots to discover and learn, and it’s okay to not know everything and have everything together when you’re over 25. She shows that it’s all right to be growing up even after the age society thinks you should have settled down and known everything you need to know, and you can still be a good, strong person while you’re at it.

Which is excellent because I’m 28 and I’m still growing up, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be done growing up anytime soon ^_^