Wilfred Mott Wilfred Mott was the husband of Eileen Mott , the father of Sylvia Noble and the maternal grandfather of Donna Noble . He was also a one - time travelling companion of the Tenth Doctor , and the final companion with whom the Doctor travelled in that incarnation . Unlike many of the people of Earth , Wilfred was willing to believe aliens would come in peace one day , and that humanity would eventually travel out to the stars and mingle with them . A witness to several alien invasion s of Earth in 2009 , he was instrumental in stopping the Time Lord s ' return from within the time - lock which had sealed them in the Last Great Time War . In that effort , he trapped himself in a chamber about to be flooded with lethal radiation . His rescue was the proximate cause of the Doctor ' s regeneration into his eleventh incarnation . Biography . Military service . Donna Noble said Wilf had enlisted to fight in World War II while underage . ( AUDIO : " The Nemonite Invasion " ) In 1948 , he was a private in the 6th Airborne Division of the British Army , stationed in the British Mandate of Palestine at its end . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) Years later , a mysterious Time Lady pointed out he had served in the military without once taking a life . Wilf defended this fact , feeling proud not to have killed anyone . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) 21st century . In the 2006 elections , after the death of the British Prime Minister at the hands of the Slitheen , ( TV : " Aliens of London " ) Wilfred claimed to have voted for Harriet Jones ; his daughter disputed this . ( TV : " The Stolen Earth " ) On Christmas Eve 2007 , Wilfred was laid up with Spanish flu , unable to attend his granddaughter ' s wedding . ( TV : " The Runaway Bride " , " The Sontaran Stratagem " ) He manned his newspaper stand in London on Christmas Eve 2008 , where he met the Tenth Doctor for the first time . Earth was aware of alien life and the threat they posed . Given the Sycorax ( TV : " The Christmas Invasion " ) and the Racnoss , ( TV : " The Runaway Bride " ) Londoners believed aliens might attack on Christmas ( " again " ) . Wilf told the Doctor and Astrid he was the only person in London apart from Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace ; everyone else had fled to the countryside . He was furious when the " Titanic " hurtled over London , yelling for the aliens not to dare ruin the one Christmas in the last two years to not have an invasion . ( TV : " Voyage of the Damned " ) Sometime before this , his wife , Eileen Mott , died . ( PROSE : " Beautiful Chaos " ) An amateur astronomer , he pitched a tent behind his daughter ' s house in Chiswick and spent most of his nights on top a hill with a telescope looking for aliens among the stars . In 2009 , Donna waved to him from the Doctor ' s TARDIS while flying away . Seeing the Doctor again through his telescope , Wilf felt happy for his granddaughter for being able to travel the universe , yelling and cheering as the TARDIS took off . ( TV : " Partners in Crime " ) Donna visited her mother and him after she had returned to Earth . She told Wilf , but not her mother about the Doctor , for fear she would react badly . She told him about ATMOS and what they were doing . When the Doctor turned up with a UNIT soldier , Wilfred realised the Doctor was the same man he had met at Christmas . He opened the family car to investigate an ATMOS device and was trapped inside when it was triggered . He began to suffocate ( TV : " The Sontaran Stratagem " ) but was freed by his daughter Sylvia Noble . The next day he told Donna he would keep her secret and not tell her mother . ( TV : " The Poison Sky " ) At some point , Wilfred discovered a new star , which was named after him . ( PROSE : " Beautiful Chaos " ) When the Earth was moved into the Medusa Cascade , he and Sylvia tried to fight the Dalek s . Wilf fired a paintball at a Dalek ' s eyestalk , hoping to blind it , but it dissolved the paint . As it was about to exterminate him , Rose Tyler teleported to the scene and killed the Dalek . Sylvia and Wilf took her to their home . A message came from a Sub - Wave Network . They couldn ' t respond , as Sylvia thought webcam s were " naughty " and didn ' t let her father have one . He watched as Martha Jones and her mother , Torchwood 3 and Sarah Jane Smith spoke with Harriet Jones . ( TV : " The Stolen Earth " ) After the Earth was returned to its proper place , they celebrated . When the Doctor brought Donna back to them without any memory of her adventures with him , Wilf was distraught at the thought of her returning to her previous life . He promised to look up at the sky every night and remember him on Donna ' s behalf . ( TV : " Journey ' s End " ) The End of Time . As Christmas 2009 approached , Wilf , along with everyone else on Earth , began having nightmares involving the laughing face of the Master . Seeking refuge in a church , he was approached by a mysterious woman , who told him the church had been a convent in the 1300s , had been attacked by a demon from the sky and saved by a " sainted physician " ; then she vanished . The next day , Wilf organised a " Silver Cloak " of old age pensioners . He quickly found the Doctor and in a café learned of his prophesied death . On Christmas morning , Wilf was watching the Queen ' s speech when it was interrupted by the mysterious woman , whom only he could see . She told Wilf he would have to take up arms , that the Doctor could still be saved and that Wilf must not tell the Doctor anything of what she had said . Wilf took his old service revolver , met the Doctor outside the Noble house and joined him in tracking down the Master . They arrived too late to stop the Master turning every human on Earth into a duplicate of himself , but Wilf was protected from the effect behind a radiation shield . He escaped with the Doctor to a spaceship . During this time , Wilf and the Doctor felt they would both be proud to have been related to each other . After another encounter with the woman , he gave the Doctor his gun and urged him to kill the Master . The Doctor initially refused , but on learning the Time Lords were behind everything , he took the gun . In the fight that followed , Earth shot missiles at the ship . Wilf manned one of the guns and had the aliens land so he could join the Doctor . He freed someone trapped in the radiation booth , but as a result was himself trapped . After he witnessed the Doctor and the Master defeat Rassilon and the Time Lords , Wilf then knocked on the booth door to be let out , fulfilling the prophecy , " He will knock four times . " Due to the nuclear bolt still being active , the radiation would flood the booth and kill him , but not harm anyone else . To save him , the Doctor would have to sacrifice himself . Wilf was willing to die instead because he " had his time " , but the Doctor saved him and absorbed a fatal dose of radiation , which caused him to start to regenerate . He took Wilf home and promised to see him one more time before he changed . At Donna ' s second wedding , Wilf met the Doctor once again , just like he promised . The Doctor gave Wilf and Sylvia a winning lottery ticket he had purchased with money borrowed from Geoff Noble before leaving . Wilf and Sylvia gave Donna the ticket and Wilf tearfully saluted the Doctor as he took off . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) At some point , Wilf was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have his record as a companion of the Doctor taken . His memories of the visit were subsequently erased and he was sent on his way . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Alternative timeline . In an alternative timeline created by a continuity bomb , the Doctor allowed Wilfred to die in the radiation chamber instead of saving him from death , viewing himself as the more useful of the two to the universe . This led to the Doctor becoming a tyrant that ruled the cosmos with an iron fist until his death . ( COMIC : " Four Doctors " ) Parallel world . On Christmas Day 2008 in a parallel world , Wilfred was in the English countryside on holiday with his daughter and granddaughter , courtesy of Donna ' s winning raffle ticket . He and his family were spared the nuclear destruction of London caused by the " Titanic " crashing onto Buckingham Palace , but the lingering radiation forced their evacuation to Leeds , where they had to share a house with other families . Wilfred adjusted to this life , joining in the shanty singing in the kitchen . He was upset when all non - English residents were forcibly deported to " labour camps " , noting this had happened before in his life . Wilfred set up his telescope behind the house at Leeds ; it was there that he and Donna first noticed the darkness spreading over the night sky , eating up the stars . It was this sight that finally convinced Donna to find Rose Tyler and come with her . ( TV : " Turn Left " ) Personality . Wilfred had a positive attitude . Even in a crisis , he turned to good war - time spirit . He was a strong patriot , loyal to Queen Elizabeth and his beloved England . He also had a good relationship with his granddaughter Donna Noble and encouraged her companionship with the Doctor , even keeping it a secret from his daughter , Sylvia , for a time . ( TV : " The Sontaran Stratagem " ) Wilfred also proved a loyal companion to the Doctor , from searching him out when prompted to by the mysterious woman , to giving the Doctor his gun and prompting him to kill the Master , as well as serving as a gunner when the ship they were on was under attack . He convinced the Vinvocci to bring him back to help the Doctor . He also showed a willingness for self - sacrifice by saving someone trapped in a radiation booth and being willing to die there so the Doctor could live , saying he was an old man who had had his time . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) When the Doctor brought Donna back with her memories erased , Wilfred was devastated as he felt she had grown into a better person after her travels with the Doctor and even tried to get him to talk to her , remarking that he needed her when the Doctor admitted he had done wrong whilst travelling alone . However , he didn ' t share his daughter ' s hard feelings against him for wiping her memories , and promised to look up at the sky every night on her behalf . ( TV : " Journey ' s End " , " The End of Time " ) He developed a paternal relationship with the Doctor , trying to comfort him when he began to cry during their conversation and wanted him to be happy and have someone to make him laugh . He was also willing to give up his life to let the Doctor live . This relationship was picked up by others , with the Master sarcastically referring to Wilfred as the Doctor ' s father . Wilfred admitted he would be proud to have the Doctor for a son and the Doctor said he ' d be honoured if Wilfred was his father . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) Skills . A trained soldier , Wilfred survived the Second World War without killing anyone . Being proud of his service , he wore a Parachute Regiment pin on his signature red hat . He still kept his service revolver as a memento , which he later gave to the Doctor to use against the Master . He also proved to be a proficient gunner when he shot down some of the missiles that the Master had fired at the Vinvocci ' s spaceship . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) He momentarily blinded a Dalek with a well - placed paintball shot to its small eye stalk , although the Dalek recovered its vision almost instantly . ( TV : " The Stolen Earth " ) Unlike so many others who had spent years searching , Wilfred and the small gang of pensioners whom he commanded found the Doctor within only a few hours of his arrival , much to the Doctor ' s bewilderment . ( TV : " The End of Time " )