Doctor Who: Silence in The Library/Forest of the Dead

Posted by ScuzzBuster

June 12, 2008

Series 1 brought us the first really gritty, bare bones good Doctor Who with two part story The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. This was fantastic 2 parter that really keyed us in on the magic of what the series can be about now. From the introduction of Captain Jack to the gas masked face of a little boy haunting people with “Are you my mummy?” that was some serious shit on the screen courtesy of Stephen Moffat

Jump ahead to series 3. The story that sealed the deal for me on Moffat was The Girl in the Fireplace. This really exemplifies for me the great depth and artistry of what can be done with a Doctor Who script in a 45 minute time frame. The structure and pacing of the story was pitch perfect, leading us in a linear manner through a somewhat non-linear concept. Interesting villains, a real mystery…and a twist at the end that was not necessary to seal it’s place as a great story. However, that little twist was a genious and managed to tie the entire story into a completely logical conclusion and elevate the episode to genious…for me at least. Moffat was rapidly propelling himself to becoming to new Doctor Who what Robert Holmes was to the classic series.

Of course, we have other Moffatish goodness in the past 3 and a half years, so now we get another 2-parter from the man himself.

Silence follows the Doctor and Donna to THE LIBRARY. The ultimate repository of books in the universe. Every book ever written in a library the size of a planet. All volumes faithfully reprinted on paper. For good measure, we even get a direct MONTY PYTHON reference from the Doc.

The Doctor has been summoned there by a mysteriously brief anonymous message.

Inter-cut with the the Doctor’s investigation are scenes of a young girl at home and being treated by a therapist for her “delusions” or daydreams of being in THE LIBRARY. Of course, as the viewer, we know the library is real, and it is left to us in part one to decide what the hell is going on with the girl.

We come to find that the Library has been infested with a particularly nasty bacterial life form that is basically a microscopic piranha that will strip all the flesh from a living organism in seconds that thrive only thrive in the dark and conceal themselves as shadows.

Enter a team of archeologists during this discovery. They’ve come to find out what happened to the Library and why it’s been deserted and sealed for the past 100 years. They’re a typical team of unwitting scientists/by-standers who’s likes we see crop up in Doctor Who throughout it’s history. This time though, they’ve thrown in a twist and one of the archeologists, Ms. River Song (played by Alex Kingston formerly of ER) somehow knows the Doctor–but he doesn’t know her and it takes some exposition and cute exchanges betwen them before they come to the awkward realization that the Doctor hasn’t met her yet in his time line even though she apparently has some sort of relationship that has gone on for years starting sometime in his future. She is the one that summoned him, only to realize that her summons inadvertantly reaches him at a time before they had actually met for the first time.

So there we have the three elements that make up the story:

River Song and her connection to the Doctor
The Monsters: the nasty Vashta Nerada, creatures of shadow
The Mystery: who is the girl, what is her connection to the Library and what happened to the people in it. Evidence shows that they were not killed by the monsters

Moffat has been criticised for re-using similar themes here to some of his earlier work in the series, but ultimatly, he knows what drives a good story, and even though you could possibly define this as familiar Moffat formula at this point, it’s still very effective. Ultimately, the main plot of the monsters invading the Library takes a back seat for me because of the driving force that is unraveing the mystery of River Song. Those of you watching series 4 may remember that early in the year, the prophecy of the Ood to the Doctor that his “song would end soon.” The Doctor semi-dismissed it, and many fans saw this as early foreshadowing of the end of the David Tennant era for the show with a regeneration at the end of the season or during the 2009 specials.

In the end, the mystery of the girl and the Library is unraveled at a satisfactory pace with the Monsters acting as a foil to deter the main characters from accomplishing their goal of figuring it out. All in all, it made a pretty solid 2-parter. What really drove this story above and beyond average was the gradual and tantalizing journey we take with River Song and the Doctor–a subplot that jumps into the front seat and takes the steering wheel by the last few minutes of the 2 parter leaving the the audience taken aback and awash from conflicting emotions. By the time credits roll we can infer a lot from the meaning of the relationship, but we are still let with more questions than answers…not the least of which is will we see River Song again? I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion.

David Tennant gives probably one of his best performances yet, which is high praise indeed. Catherine Tate I believe hands down does her best work of the series so far, and the supporting cast, particularly Kingston, is solid to great top to bottom. Tate is really for me turning out to be a much more interesting character than Freema ever was as Martha. This is probably a shame, because once again we get some bad feelings about her eventual fate. In Fires of Pompeii we have the ominous prophecy that she has “something on her back” and in this two parter, not only does River Song know of Donna’s name, she appears uncomfortably horrified about meeting her leaving a strong impression that she knows something bad about Donna’s fate.

Top Notch Doctor Who. Among the best. I don’t rank it quite the calibre of the Empty Child two parter or Girl in the Fireplace, but easily the best of series 4 so far.

In the end, I’m left with two impressions that make this episode stand apart from normal WHO fare:

We find the Doctor in a rare position with River Song in this story. It’s rare that we see the Doctor without the upper hand intellectually in any relationship with other characters or situation. Usually he is the one explaining time paradoxes and the nature of living through time in a non-linear fashion. With the exception of multi-doctor stories from the past, he never really seems to be on the receiving end of these encounters that put him at a disadvantage. The tables are turned this time.

The epilogue to the story stands on very ambiguous philosphical ground with the Doctor’s treatment of River Song not even to mention the question of whether or not Donna herself is really Donna or a copied, stored and reproduced version. Definitely food for thought and another example of the intellectual approach that often elevates Moffat’s treatment of the WHO universe.

Good stuff.

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