Silence in the Library & Forest of the Dead by: Steven Moffat and directed by: Euros Lyn

 

“Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble with Alex Kingston as Prof. River Song, Colin Salmon as Dr. Moon, Eve Newton as the Girl, Steve Pemberton as Strackman Lux, Jessika Williams as Anita, Talulah Riley as Miss Evangelista, Harry Peacock as Proper Dave, and O.T. Fagbenie as Other Dave.  They were written by: Steven Moffat and directed by: Euros Lyn with Helen Raynor as Script Editor, Phil Collinson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  They were originally broadcast on Saturdays from 31 May to 7 June 2008 on BBC One.

 

July 17, 2007 was the date when showrunner Russell T. Davies made the offer to Steven Moffat to take over production of Doctor Who for its fifth series to be produced in 2009 and aired in 2010.  After three rigorous years of production, the fourth only just beginning, and the approval to forgo a full series in 2009, Russell T. Davies realized that if the show were to succeed as it had in its original 26 year run, there would come a point where the reigns would have to be handed over and Steven Moffat was the obvious choice.  All three of his previous episodes were critically lauded and it was a position he had always wished, making him the obvious choice for the role.  Now, Moffat actually took time to put things in place before accepting the offer in late October, but in addition to the offer, and to make up for not being able to deliver a two-part story for the third series, Davies offered Moffat the second two-part slot in the fourth series.  After writing “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances”, Moffat had several ideas and proposed “Silence in the Library” and “The Doctor Runs”, set in a library that is actually a planet, in the initial 2006 idea menaced by angels, but after “Blink” having characters menaced by shadows instead.  With the acceptance of the showrunner position, Moffat developed the character of Professor River Song, somebody intended to be recurring once he took over as showrunner, allowing future references with the intention that David Tennant would be staying on for a fifth series after the specials.  As the scripts developed some integral ideas were changed, the Doctor Moon was made just a computer program and not a future incarnation of the Doctor, the real life version of the character Lee was not revealed as an overweight woman (which even for the time sounds like an awful joke to make), and the second episode would go through several titles.  By the time production started under director Euros Lyn in the eighth production block, it was “Forest of the Night”, but as Davies developed the following episode “Midnight”, Moffat suggested “Children of the Library”, “A River Song Ending”, and “River’s Run” which it would have broadcast as until post-production.  Julie Gardner would ask Moffat for a final title going through several more including “Return of the Dead” and “Saved” before finally settling on “Forest of the Dead”.

 

“Silence in the Library” opens with one of the odder pre-titles sequences in the show’s history and one that feels slightly ineffective for the episode that follows.  It is an at home therapy session between Dr. Moon, played by Colin Salmon, and a little girl, played by Eve Newton.  The girl imagines a library that is big but empty and is somehow invaded by the Doctor and Donna.  While not a bad sequence, or a bad idea, flashing back to the Doctor and Donna in the TARDIS as leadup to this moment makes the initial scenes after the opening titles feel odd, especially when there’s quite a bit of time in between the sequences of just the Doctor and Donna exploring the library.  These scenes emphasize the silence and emptiness of the library, something that is already an interesting opening, especially with the message on the Doctor’s psychic paper indicating somebody the Doctor potentially knows (or in actuality will know).  Opening with the pre-titles sequence means the emptiness highlighted by Euros Lyn’s direction feels slightly less empty, although intrigue is there.  The episode may have actually had a stronger opening without the usual pre-titles sequence and just saved the little girl’s first appearance to the moment the Doctor and Donna briefly see her.  Outside of this, the sequences with the Doctor and Donna just exploring before the lights go out are some of the most atmospheric moments in Doctor Who history.  David Tennant and Catherine Tate play the mystery well and the real danger comes just from lights going out which is already a creepy image.  The addition of the Nodes is this fascinating little science fiction idea that seems normal, people already donate their organs and bodies to science, so why not their faces as well as part of robots, but they’re shot right in the uncanny valley with these human but inhuman voices.

 

Once the episode really gets going with the addition of the archeological team led by Professor River Song, played by Alex Kingston, Moffat gets the chance to really ramp up the horror.  The rate at which information is revealed about the library through this first episode is incredibly well done.  The archeologists have been spending time breaking through the Library’s defenses and this is the first time since it went dark and thousands of people vanished a century ago.  The timing from the other characters’ arrival and the first death.  Miss Evangelista, a member of the crew essentially there in a secretarial role played by Talulah Riley, has her flesh stripped in seconds, the audience hears her scream and we (along with the characters) find her skeleton just sitting in a room as the neural computer in her suit gives her a few final moments of life.  This happens a considerable way through the episode, giving the story a slower pace that really works to build the atmosphere and tension.  Steve Pemberton as the financer of the expedition, Lux, gives this wonderfully stubborn performance as his attempts to bring the Doctor and Donna under his control, giving them contracts which they promptly rip in half and refuse to sign, while not listening when the Doctor pleads for the team to leave before the bodies truly begin to pile up.

 

The shadows killing people here are the Vashta Nerada, microscopic scavengers that shouldn’t be this aggressive, but something has them becoming active predators.  Moffat’s script is excellent at giving enough information to understand the concept but also elevates these creatures into a thing that nobody can reason with.  While there is one monologue from the Doctor about alien weaknesses that ends with this brilliant point that for Vashta Nerada you can only run, run and hope, they don’t have an actual visual form.  They eventually reanimate the skeletons so there are astronaut suit skeletons filling the proper monster quota for the story, but not knowing adds to the almost cosmic horror.  These are creatures that are just eating and expanding, not actively being malicious, and there’s no way out.  The climax and cliffhanger of the episode in particular are perfectly shown as frantic as the Doctor attempts to teleport Donna to the TARDIS for her own safety while he is going to go to the center of the Library with the team, but something goes wrong.  Donna Noble has left the Library, Donna Noble has been saved.  The message is how the dead from a century prior are described while a reanimated Proper Dave, played in life by Harry Peacock who is apparently a famous comedic actor in the UK that I am unaware of, has them trapped by a locked, wooden door.  It’s an amazing ending to an amazing episode.  9/10.

 

“Forest of the Dead” is one of the few times where the second episode of a two-part story is just as good as the first episode.  While it maintains the horror tone, it also goes into a surrealist sequence as it expands on Dr. Moon and the little girl, as it opens with Donna waking up in an institution with Dr. Moon as her doctor, a montage showing her recovering and falling in love with a man called Lee, getting married, and having children.  This is an equally horrific sequence as it develops through the episode, being shot both stark but with the pacing of a dream adding to the surrealist quality.  It is clear to the audience that Donna is just being put through the motions of the mentioned events, as soon as something is mentioned it immediately happens, and there are little hints that are eventually pointed out by a Miss Evangelista who was uploaded into the computer by the Library itself, though due to an error has become a monstrous veiled woman with far more intelligence.  When the illusion is ripped away from Donna, she can do nothing but despair and scream at the loss of her husband and children, even if their relationship was something that was never real.  As a sequence, integrated quite well into the episode, it’s there for essential character development for Donna despite not moving the plot forward.  Remove it and the information about the heart of the Library and the meltdown the little girl has because of the danger would still happen, as well as the explanation of Dr. Moon, but you’d also lose much of what makes Donna work as a character and what she is kind of looking for in her eventual future, something that is quite sad as this is the episode where her eventual fate is more blatantly foreshadowed.

 

Alex Kingston and David Tennant are the crux that “Forest of the Dead” rests on, Steven Moffat using “Silence in the Library” to set up the idea that River Song is someone the Doctor will know, but this second episode gives River her tragic fate and real relationship with the Doctor.  The big twist that wouldn’t be revealed until the end of the sixth series was already intended by Moffat when writing the character’s appearance here, and something that was guessed by fans through internet forums, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an interesting twist.  From the moment River tells the Doctor his own name, whispered in the ear and shot so the audience has no inkling as to what it is, the viewer knows exactly who she is and any tension between the characters, tension played wonderfully between Tennant and Kingston, dissolves.  The trust is there and it makes River’s sacrifice at the climax of the episode even more tragic because we know we will se her again, but like the Doctor we know she is going to die.  Yes, her fate to live on in the computer is the second example of Moffat being unable to kill characters, but since the last time he did that was 2005’s “The Doctor Dances” it hasn’t quite gotten stale yet.  The relationship and River Song as a character also is helped by being in a script edited by Russell T. Davies with his final pass, despite claims that Davies never made changes to Moffat scripts, the rejection of some of the ideas mentioned at the beginning of this review indicates that that wasn’t entirely true.  Alex Kingston as an actress is also wonderfully snarky in her performance, knowing when to hold back from the Doctor and when to be amazed, River’s realization at the climax is genuinely a heartbreaking sequence that adds to the sacrifice of the character.

 

The resolution of the episode is also fascinating in general.  The Vashta Nerada take both Other Dave and Anita (with whom the Doctor was developing a rapport) before being able to actually speak with the Doctor.  The reveal as to why the Vashta Nerada are on the Library adds this interesting environmentalist slant to the story, the building of a planet sized library means a planet’s worth of trees would be used for the books, and it is made explicit that these books are made from pulping trees into paper and binding them into books.  The Vashta Nerada are creatures that spore in forests and the Library has become their forest.  They are a species that deserve to be protected in the Library, the story itself coming from one big misunderstanding and human error, reflective of much of the damage the human race has done on Earth, the ordinary people unable to stop things.  This is revealed in tandem with the fact that the little girl is actually a relative of Lux, a dying little girl wired into the core of the Library to give her an immortal life.  Sadly, Moffat doesn’t do much to examine this fate for Charlotte Lux, it’s a fate that kind of brings to mind “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” on one level but doesn’t quite since she isn’t in pain.  The fate is horrific since this is a child who has been given immortality and health but is consistently lonely with the Dr. Moon to guide her and a father figure that’s just known as Dad with no real life.  This goes unexamined by Moffat, instead giving River this same fate, though surrounded by those who have died in the Library as a way to circumvent their horrific deaths at the hands of the Vashta Nerada.  It means there is an ending  that in an attempt to have a happy bent actually feels horrific and cruel, something that will become commonplace during Moffat’s era proper.  9/10.

 

Overall, as a glimpse as what’s to come from Doctor Who when Steven Moffat takes over “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead”, while suffering from individual issues, manages to be one of the high points thus far for the fourth series of Doctor Who.  David Tennant and Catherine Tate make great work of their respective plots, the guest cast is excellent, Euros Lyn’s direction is one of those epic directions aided by a quieter Murray Gold score, while Alex Kingston is the perfect actress for River Song, taking the material and truly making it her own.  The first episode suffers from a less than stellar integration of a B-plot while the second’s lack of examination of its ending slightly brings this story down to being near perfect.  9/10.