Last night, Butter and I watched “Turn Left,” the eleventh episode of the fourth season, and the first episode of the three-part story arc that will make up the season finale.

Russel T. Davies wrote this episode, and boy!  — does he have a way of stirring up shit! Using a plot concept from an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. I stopped watching that show after the first episode, not because it wasn’t a good show, but… well… I guess it was because it wasn’t a good show. If I was between 8-12 years old, I would have been fascinated by it. But here I am, 25, an English lit major, and it’s just a little too contrived.

Yes, I know the Beeb intended it for children, but if you’re going to tie it into an adult series, you have to realize some adults will want to watch it! Throw in some literary irony, or some clever plot twist, or SOMETHING to make Sarah Jane and her “Sonic Lipstick” not so wangled, to borrow a term from my colleagues across the pond.

Anyhow, Turn Left featured an extremely fake-looking Beetle that was part of the Trickster’s Brigade, borrowed from the aforementioned series. It was a Doctor-lite episode, featuring primarily Donna Noble and… GASP… Rose! We had NO IDEA she was going to be showing up. Nearly all the prior episodes in this season gave a hint that Rose was going to be turning up sooner or later, after two years ago the writers taking great pains to explain to us that Rose is NEVER returning to this dimension, that the rift between dimensions was SEALED TIGHT, and was IRREVERSIBLE, forever and ever, AMEN.

So of course, here she is, hopping dimensions like she’s a reject from the 1995 television series Sliders with Jerry O’Connell.

I digress. Besides these complaints, I really did enjoy the episode. It was all about causality, and how the simple act of turning right instead of left at an intersection can change your life. If Donna turned right instead of left, she wouldn’t have gotten a job at the temp agency, and wouldn’t have met the Doctor during “The Runaway Bride”, and wouldn’t have saved his life, and he would have been dead. Therefore, all the times he’s saved the world wouldn’t have happened. The Atmos systems, all the various Christmas special shenanigans, the Starship Titanic nuking London — it all happened.

Great Britain (or England, at the very least), is a post apocalyptic police-state, most Americans are dead, their fat converted into those little beings from “Partners in Crime,” all because Donna turned right instead of left.

Though not necessarily original, it’s a plot that is worth exploring with the Russel T. Davies twist. Not only does he incorporate plot elements from the last two seasons, but at the very end — *SPOILER ALERT* — he draws back to the very beginning, with BAD WOLF.

I’m going to reserve the majority of the judgment on this until I see the next episode or two. But meanwhile, here are some thoughts from “Turn Left.”

• Thought not the first time Torchwood has been mentioned in Doctor Who, it is the first time the Sarah Jane Adventures have been.

• At the end, as the Doctor and Donna rush into the TARDIS, we hear the cloister bell! This is a throwback to the Tom Baker days, and hasn’t changed a bit. Bravo for your continuity, Russ!

• Okay, so the TARDIS is barely functional and is dying because the Doctor is dead. So how is it that Rose and a group of generally clueless UNIT personnel manage to make the time travel element work, much less outside the TARDIS itself? Granted, it didn’t work well, but still… That’s a little hard to believe.

• As I said earlier, the Time Beetle is LAME. It could have been so creepy, because the idea is really creepy. But it looks like a plastic backpack made to look like a bug! They could’ve gotten away with it back in the old days, but now, it’s either CGI or bust. Take a look:

• Did anyone else recognize the fortune teller as Chantho from “Utopia” last season? I thought I did, but had to Wikipedia it to make sure.