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Ethical dilemma
Here's a question to think about.
Let's change "The End of Time" in the following way: While the Doctor is talking to Wilf in the cafe, Wilf asks him to come back and fix Donna, to give her back her memories and her life with the Doctor. We know that the Doctor can't do that, but let's change it so that at that moment, he realizes that he knows how to do it - he can use his current biodata to filter from Donna what's actually him and remove it, leaving just her behind as a perfectly normal human, with intact memories of her life up through traveling with the Doctor.
With that knowledge, he and Wilf go off to find Donna to fix her, but the other events of the episode begin to happen, and they proceed as we saw on screen. After the Doctor defeats Rassilon and Gallifrey retreats back into the Time War, Wilf knocks four times. The Doctor then must choose: if he saves Wilf, he not only dies, but the regeneration rewrites his biodata and he can no longer fix Donna; but to save Donna, he must let Wilf die.
So, the question is, what do you think the Doctor would choose? And also, what would you want him to choose, since they are not necessarily the same thing? (Note: Meta is not within reach, so you can't choose "Save Wilf, then go get Meta to fix Donna." ;) )
Let's change "The End of Time" in the following way: While the Doctor is talking to Wilf in the cafe, Wilf asks him to come back and fix Donna, to give her back her memories and her life with the Doctor. We know that the Doctor can't do that, but let's change it so that at that moment, he realizes that he knows how to do it - he can use his current biodata to filter from Donna what's actually him and remove it, leaving just her behind as a perfectly normal human, with intact memories of her life up through traveling with the Doctor.
With that knowledge, he and Wilf go off to find Donna to fix her, but the other events of the episode begin to happen, and they proceed as we saw on screen. After the Doctor defeats Rassilon and Gallifrey retreats back into the Time War, Wilf knocks four times. The Doctor then must choose: if he saves Wilf, he not only dies, but the regeneration rewrites his biodata and he can no longer fix Donna; but to save Donna, he must let Wilf die.
So, the question is, what do you think the Doctor would choose? And also, what would you want him to choose, since they are not necessarily the same thing? (Note: Meta is not within reach, so you can't choose "Save Wilf, then go get Meta to fix Donna." ;) )
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I didn't clarify a lot of points for this because it was meant to be about the Doctor's decision, not Wilf's decision. As far as the defense mechanism goes, I don't think it's an issue. It's pretty obvious from the show that it takes a hell of a lot to get it to fire: everyone in the world, including her Mum and Shaun, turning into the same insane-looking man and Donna fleeing in terror was not enough. It didn't fire until she was being mortally threatened in an obviously alien situation - and I expect that's probably the exact trigger the Doctor planted. In my opinion, it was a protection against extraordinary events, knowing that as his former companion, Donna may become the target of unsavory alien menaces. I really don't think he'd allow it to go off just because Donna saw a wasp, even if it was alien and/or flippin' enormous. (If it was just about to kill her, sure.) Unless she's in the habit of getting into situations where she's about to be killed in an alien situation, it will probably never go off again in her lifetime. And that's part of Wilf's point, too, that Donna's life is no longer exciting like that.
I'd also be surprised if, in the handful of moments that he has to take the decision out of the Doctor's hands, Wilf remembers the defense mechanism going off and makes the connection that the Masters who were hurt by it had reverted to actual humans. This also assumes that he knows what happened - he was only on the phone with Donna and would have heard the whoosh and Donna falling to the ground. He didn't see the scene like we did. (And from what he heard, he could easily conclude that Donna was the one that got hit by whatever energy weapon was being used; he only has the Doctor's conjecture (since he didn't see it either) that Donna had prevailed. But we have to go with what happened in the episode, so we know that he believed that Donna won.) He has no idea what actually happened or if anyone actually got hurt. For all he knows, she might have teleported to a safe place. Anyway, the point is, that standing there in the nuclear bolt chamber watching the Doctor wrest with himself over who to save, I doubt Wilf will think about the unknown number of people who were chasing Donna down on the previous day.
And this, this, is why you don't want to be canon-paralyzed like me. Everything is analyzed and over-analyzed. I'd be surprised if you even got as far as reading this paragraph. :D
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And the Doctor only thinks about extraordinary events. But what about the cumulative effects of the little problems the mind-wipe will cause Donna? If the trigger is a major, life-threatening event that still leaves a lot of chances for her to know something's wrong. She might sense that the people around her know more than they're telling, and if she can confront them without triggering the mechanism what would that do to her mental well-being? What would the Doctor do if Wilfred brought that up? Do you think Wilfred would say that he would gladly die if that's what it took to free Donna to live to her potential? And would he call the Doctor out on choosing for his companions?
And what if UNIT objected to the Doctor's mechanism? I could see someone like Kate L-S (although perhaps not her, since I don't know enough to tell) insisting that he find another solution or remove Donna from Earth. I mean, what if aliens started coming Earth's way to try to use Donna for their own ends? The most important woman in the universe? Leaving her without a way to knowingly protect herself against such threats?
It's definitely an interesting thought experiment. I can only imagine what DT would think of.
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I don't think Wilf would call the Doctor out on choosing for his companions. He doesn't know about any other choices the Doctor may have made for his companions. He and the Doctor both know that the choice made for Donna in this particular instance is not the perfect solution, and I believe he agrees with the Doctor that given the only two choices the Doctor had at the time - taking Donna's memories or letting her die - the Doctor chose the right one. Wilf would rather have Donna back without her memories than have her die. (Personally, I agree with them. I don't interpret Donna's "No no, don't make me go back" in JE as her rational choice of "I want to die. Please kill me." To me, they were panicked statements of protest against what was happening to her.)
As far as UNIT goes... Kate wouldn't have the guts. The problem is that her character is designed to look like a competent, strong, independent leader of UNIT but only just so that she can either be showed up by the Doctor in a heroic moment or bring up the Brigadier for fan service. If you keep her in character, then UNIT wouldn't be able to make a decision about a potentially dangerous Donna.
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It is not valid to compare Donna's situation to the current discussions about consent to sexual activity. There are certainly cases of the Doctor not respecting companions decisions that are questionable and can be compared to that, but Donna's is not one of them.
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I don't fault the Doctor for not wanting Donna to die. What I DEFINITELY fault him for is that he HAD the time to ask her before she started deteriorating, while they flew the others home, and see if that bit of Human could come up with alternatives. But he didn't.
Perhaps the big issue for me is, how safe is she from further harm? Could there be a slow deterioration from the strain of the meta-crisis still being inside her? What effect would that have on her life and on her family? And what if an enemy goes after her? (I could've seen Missy going after her, as part of a plan to torment the Doctor.)
Maybe I'm a little too good at thinking about how things could go wrong with the Doctor's ideas? Or maybe I've looked at some books on how the Human mind works and wondered how effective the mind-wipe will be at keeping her from making enough connections on her own.
*sighs* I guess I'll leave it at that for now. Is it fair to suppose that the fact that all sorts of topics can be brought into the discussion - whether applied rightly or not - is a sign of how big the plot holes were regarding the entire resolution - for lack of a better word - of Series 4?
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(In no way intended to refute or belittle your good point, upon revisiting the whole scene, I think that Donna already knew and had no solution either. The characters don't tell the audience this directly; instead, RTD communicates it in that way he does so well, through the characters' actions. The moment they get back in the TARDIS, Donna begins babbling about where they should go next, in the same way that the Doctor babbles when he's trying to either hide a problem or keep the other person from saying something he doesn't want to hear. (Refer, for example, to the same scene the year before with Martha.) This isn't a Donna character trait - it's absolutely the Doctor's, given to her through the metacrisis.
As the Doctor tries to gently broach the subject, Donna gets increasingly desperate to shut him up with babble, until her mind breaks down. She already knew it would happen and was trying to deny it. The other clue is her line, "If it's in your head, it's in mine." She not only knew, just like he did, what was going to happen, but she also knew what he would do to fix it - her first line after admitting the problem is "I want to stay", indicating that she knew he was going to send her back. Thus, she had as much time as he did to come up with an alternate solution, and we can only conclude that she was unable to.
Of course, he STILL should have talked to her directly about it earlier!)
I'm very hesitant to, as a general philosophy exercise, to go down the "what happens after the Doctor leaves" rabbit hole. it's a great idea for, say, a single story, in which something specific happens as a result of a specific action and the author explores the consequences of that. But the general question is too, well, general. The Doctor's had something like 40 companions and almost all have gone on to life after traveling with him. Whatever life they have must be influenced to a small or large degree by their interactions with the Doctor, and all of those what-if questions apply to them as well. For example, Missy could have easily gone after any of them. Any of them could develop issues from things they encountered in their travels or things the Doctor had to do to solve the situation at the time. (In fact, Tegan did - she developed cancer from something she was exposed to when she was with the Doctor. And exploring that made for a great audio.) I really can't see any meaning in exploring the general question of "should the Doctor be held responsible for everything that might possibly go wrong in the future." (Which, of course, is why Ashildr's storyline fell completely flat.)