the thoughts about Donna Noble being a Steven Taylor mirror haunts me. spasificly the scene in Fires of Pompeii, while Donna is screaming at the doctor to defy the laws of time and save someone! anyone! and its relation to the massacre! Steven shouting at the doctor, screaming that he should have saved Anne Chaplet, so i had to explain and add my reasoning
"STEVEN: Nicholas? You had to leave Anne Chaplet there to die. DOCTOR: Anne Chaplet? STEVEN: The girl! The girl who was with me! If you'd brought her with us she needn't have died. But no, you had to leave her there to be slaughtered."
the doctor is trying to stall, to explain away Anne as maybe surviving
"DOCTOR: Well, it is possible of course she didn't die, and I was right to leave her. STEVEN: Possible? Look, how possible? That girl was already hunted by the Catholic guards. If they killed ten thousand how did they spare her? You don't know, do you? You can't say for certain that you weren't responsible for that girl's death. DOCTOR: I was not responsible.STEVEN: Oh, no. You just sent her back to her aunt's house where the guards were waiting to catch her. I tell you this much, Doctor, wherever this machine of yours lands next I'm getting off. If your researches have so little regard for human life then I want no part of it."
the doctor's reaction, not letting on... just letting Steven leave, not relenting, still feeling the shakles of the rules of time, only recently he learned that he cannot intefear too much in the past and they don't get and he has to show control... he just lets Steven leave!!
approximately 4 dacades later... Donna comes up to the Doctor, screaming at him for the same issue, the same thing happend again, another human friend has jumped up at him, screaming at him so sae someone!!! anyone!!
do you think he had flashbacks to that scene?? among other things, to Steven leaving him??
heck, the fact that Donna is basically a mordfern version of Steven must have tied it all together, both of them are little hates (affectinate) that are not afraid to call the Doctor out on his bulshit.
here he is again, having to stand against his companion, that is screaming at him in a way that he cannot ignore, he cannot step away and lement like he did last time, he cannot sit down alone, while surly Donna would leave him again, she indeed made him admit that he needs someone, he needs someone to be with him. and... at this point why not? why can't he just save one person?
so HE DOES IT, HE SAVES THAT FAMILY
what if as he saved them, he remembered Steven, he finally did good by him in a way he was truly unable to back in the day. god