Holistic Review: Another classic from the pen of Moffat, but its greatest strengths are, in some ways, also its greatest weaknesses.

Talk about pressure! Poor, dear Steven Moffat. After the crazy-wild success of Blink, I know that I for one had massive expectations for this two-parter. The great thing is, you don't get the feeling that Moffat felt the pressure... developing intriguing ideas into fun, enthralling, tense episodes seems to be as natural to him as breathing air. In this case, he may have been breathing some helium as well, or perhaps the time crunch got to him, because there were some lapses that I wasn't expecting from a storyteller with his talent. But the fact remains that, lapses aside, this is still one of the very best stories this year, and it's certainly the most original. While I may not have loved it as much as Blink, Andrew evaluated it with the highest praise, so I suspect that I might be in the minority. Still, re-watching it twice has only strengthened my opinion on its positive and negative points, so I don't feel that I'm being overly critical.

The funny thing about Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead is that while they're brimming with fantastic ideas and characters, it's mostly those same ideas and characters that present the problematic issues that I noticed. I guess it's like they say: you can stay safe and risk being boring, or you can reach high and risk falling further. Well, that's not entirely accurate here — Moffat only gets a bit tripped up, he certainly doesn't fall — but I'm glad he took a chance and tried these ideas out, even if they're not 100% successful.

Since we've got such an interesting duality of highs and lows within the same concepts, let's just look at each of them in turn, and talk about where they went right and where they maybe needed a bit of tweaking. We'll begin with the one that's both the highest high and the lowest low...

Case #1: the Vashta Nerada

Strengths: The Vashta Nerada are another brilliant example of Doctor Who writers (mostly Moffat and Gatiss) taking an everyday object — in this case, shadows — and giving them a terrifying twist. It's not so much of a stretch here, because unlike stone angels, television sets and gas pipes, shadows and darkness are inherently creepy. The phrase "count the shadows" alone can send chills up your spine (even if it doesn't come to as much in the end as "count your own shadow" does), as does the fact that their Hindu-sounding name translates into "the shadows that melt the flesh". They're given some great backstory — tiny invisible flesh-eating monsters that live in dark forests — and this is then put to excellent use when it turns out that their forests were pulped, turned into books, and brought into the Library, where the new swarm hatched. (One does wonder who made the stupid decision to cull that particular planet for wood, and how the loggers managed to stay alive on the Vashta Nerada homeworld, or whatever planet it was that had so many of their spores in its trees. Presumably they only worked during the daytime. And I'm suddenly realizing that Doctor Who now has its own untold version of the X-Files episode "Darkness Falls".) It's also pretty cool that they are apparently telepathic to some degree, and can use the neural relays to communicate their thoughts. One of the best visuals of the entire year is the Doctor tossing the chicken leg into the shadows, and seeing it instantly turn into a bone, the moment it crosses into the darkness. (Or it could just be clever editing that makes it look whole for the first half-second... it's hard to tell for sure.) Basically, the Vashta Nerada are a fantastic addition to the roster of Doctor Who monsters — they're everywhere, they're invisible, they can eat you alive in a second, and in order to avoid them, you have to avoid the darkness at all cost, which is absolutely a marvellous premise.

Weaknesses: The problem is that shadows are ubiquitous. It's not just a matter of avoiding the discrete dark patches in a room. You've also got people's individual shadows, as the Doctor points out, and you've got shadows of items scattered throughout the room. In order to really sell the Vashta Nerada, the characters ought to be terrified of touching any shadow at all, lest they be eaten alive. Unfortunately, as wonderful as the actors are, and as talented a director as Euros Lyn is, there are so many shadows on the set that it's almost impossible for the actors to keep totally clear. (And then there's the question: what percentage of darkness constitutes a shadow? Is Miss Evangelista "in the shadows" the moment she steps out of the most well-lit patch, or is she still considered "in the light" unless she steps into the very deepest shadows and it's hard to make out her features? I mean, technically, everything outside those small pools of light is a shadow... so why aren't the Vashta Nerada swarming in them?) Worse, it's not just a matter of shadows being impossible to avoid; the actors don't even seem to be trying. There are almost an uncountable number of instances (although I tried) in which people interact with shadows in one way or another, without looking the slightest bit nervous, despite the fact that they've been very clearly warned not to have even the slightest contact with the shadows. One of the worst examples is when River reminds her crew to avoid letting their shadows cross, and then does it herself about a minute later, without batting an eyelid (or even noticing). I think that part of the problem is down to the fact that the Library is meant to be both dilapidated and creepy, and you can't get "dilapidated and creepy" without mood lighting. Had they made the Library ultra-hi-tech, with glaring fluorescent lights that blasted away all but the most persistent shadows, then maybe people would have been more hyper-aware of the shadows that existed, but it might also have drained away the atmosphere. So, ultimately, we have people crossing shadows, letting their shadows fall on other people, letting their shadows cross into the darkness, picking up objects that are casting shadows, walking blithely through rooms without even glancing at the ground, stepping into the darkness, and even striding boldly forth into the darkness, sometimes when they know that a swarm of Vashta Nerada is in the room with them, all with next to no consequences and very little hysteria. (It's not until Proper Dave finally displays two shadows that Anita actually learns to tiptoe around them without making contact.) Which makes us, the audience, think: "well, if 99% of all shadows are safe, then what's all the fuss about?" It might have helped a bit if it were more clear when people made a fatal mistake and picked up the Vashta Nerada. But even when someone does get infected, we're never really told exactly how it happened... it could have been any one of dozens of shadow-crossing moments, so it just looks like random chance.

As I mentioned, I tried to make note of every time someone violated the Doctor's "no-touching-shadows" rule. There are undoubtedly far many more than what I have listed here, partly because I'm sure I missed a few, and largely because many of the shots only show the charaters above the waist as they're moving around, so we have no way of knowing where their shadows fell.

Time		Violation
16:20		The Doctor makes the rules clear: "Don't let your shadows cross! Seriously, don't even let them touch!"
18:35		the Doctor's shadow crosses Anita's shadow
19:15		Donna's shadow crosses the Doctor, Lux's shadow crosses Donna, and Miss Evangelista's shadow crosses Lux
22:00		Miss Evangelista stands in the shadows
23:25		the Doctor's shadow falls on Lux's collar
23:51		the Doctor's shadow smothers Donna
24:32		Miss Evangelista unwisely crosses several shadows to get to the open door
24:48		River's shadow falls on the Doctor
25:24		Miss Evangelista walks through massive shadows between pools of light
26:05		Miss Evangelista is apparently killed while standing (more or less) in a pool of light
26:25		River's shadow crosses the Doctor
30:00		River's shadow crosses Donna
32:27		Proper Dave's shadow crosses both the Doctor and Lux
34:48		the Doctor races straight into the shadows
37:01		River's shadow crosses Anita
39:22		the whole group races through hallways full of shadows
05:58		River reminds the group: "Don't let your shadows cross!"
07:07		River lets her shadow cross the Doctor's
09:07		Other Dave's shadow crosses River's
31:11		Anita's shadow crosses River, and Lux's shadow crosses Anita (who is infected with Vashta Nerada)
31:39		River's shadow crosses Anita

So you can see why I might feel that they weren't really making their best efforts to maintain internal consistency. Thankfully, some of this is explained away by the Doctor's assertion that while the Vashta Nerada can inhabit any shadow, they're not in every one, but it still lets some of the tension out, in my opinion. (Had they all been handled like the early scene in which the Doctor keeps Donna from stepping into a shadow, or even the scene with Ace and Shou Yuing from Battlefield — and I can't quite believe that I'm wishing any part of a Moffat script would be more like Battlefield — then I think it would've been more effective.)

The Vashta Nerada also suffer from some slightly puzzling trends in their modus operandi. I think I wish to enumerate them here, all at once. You can see that, while individually these would be no great shakes, put together they present a significant stumbling block.

• How exactly do the Vashta Nerada latch onto their victims? Presumably you have to actually touch an infected shadow with some part of your body. But given that they seem to travel in and through shadows, shouldn't it be just as bad if your shadow comes into contact with their swarm? Couldn't they then migrate into your shadow? (If so, Donna lets this happen when the first Vashta Nerada shadow appears.)

• If, as the Doctor later claims, the Vashta Nerada live in shadows because they don't like the light, then why do they keep extruding their shadows into the light? I could understand it if they were somehow manipulating objects to create shadows to move into, but the Doctor clearly says that nothing is casting the shadow that he and Donna see on the floor. Which means that, essentially, the Vashta Nerada are crawling en masse into the light and somehow bringing their shadow with them. Maybe that protects them from the light somehow? But, if so, why don't they just do that all the time? Why don't they ooze around on the floor like shadowy amoebas, stalking their prey?

• And if they can extrude themselves into the light like this, then why do they go sniffing at the security camera, when there's fresh meat mere inches away from it? Wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense to lunge at the Doctor and Donna, who clearly haven't even noticed them moving?

• The Vashta Nerada just strip people's flesh; despite the traditional decrepit associations with skeletons, they don't actually age their victims. So why, after Miss Evangelista dies, is her uniform shredded as if by years of exposure to the weather, and her collar has become dilapidated to the point of being pockmarked and brittle? It ought to be intact and pristine, like the Daves' and Anita's. (Granted, they attacked those three from inside their suits, but still!)

• If the Vashta Nerada can attack and consume your entire body in less than a few seconds, then how did Miss Evangelista have time to scream? Were they a bit full, and therefore eating slowly? (For that matter, what have they been subsisting on in the Library for the last 100 years? Apparently, either they have extremely long lifespans and infrequent need for food, or there's a lot of roadkill in the stacks.)

• The Doctor describes them as an infection, or an infestation, both extremely evocative words that make them sound really cool. But later, they actually communicate with the Doctor, and are very clearly shown to be capable of independent (if possibly hive-mind) thought, and apparently they can even (mysteriously) interface with the Library technology. So, which is it: are they sentient, or are they just a mindless hungry swarm?

• So, Vashta Nerada, right? Look just like shadows? Hate the light? So why on earth would they ever look like dust motes in a beam of sunlight?! What would possess them to happily drift about in such bright light?

• Why is it important for the Vashta Nerada to keep food fresh? If they've latched onto a living organism, how much fresher can it get? Was Proper Dave dirty and they needed to give him a good bath before they ate him? Why not just pounce and wolf him down immediately? If they did something after they killed him, to keep him fresh, then it would make a little more sense.

• If the Vashta Nerada are essentially shadows, and they live by merging into other shadows, then why — when they start flowing across the floor to the Doctor — do they make the other shadow retreat, as if they're changing the angle of the light? Shouldn't they just blend right into the other shadow? I mean, it looks cool and all, but it doesn't really make much sense.

• Finally, I don't really understand why the Vashta Nerada agree to the Doctor's deal. Yes, he's a vastly powerful being who has defeated whole armies just by looking at them. They could still gobble him up in an instant. And what does this deal give them, aside from presumably the "we won't wipe you out" clause? If the Doctor un-teleports everyone and then takes them off the planet, that's absolutely it for the Vashta Nerada's meat supply. They'll surely all starve to death. (although I guess if they can go 100 years without a meal...) So isn't it "possible immediate death" versus "certain long-term death"?

Case #2: Professor River Song

Strengths: It's about time we got to see the Doctor meeting someone out of sync with his personal timestream, so I think River is a very cool idea. She's also a great character, with obvious shades of Bernice Summerfield (a flirty and irreverent archaeologist with a strong sense of humor and a beloved diary) yet some clear differences as well (she idolizes the Doctor in ways that Benny never did, seems somewhat more prissy, and never touches alcohol as far as we can tell). I love the fact that she divulges tiny bits of the Doctor's future, including some very fascinating and totally irrelevant hints, yet she never implies that she's met another regeneration. Which makes me exceedingly happy in that it implies we'll have Tennant around for a good while to come. Her self-sacrifice is a wonderfully sweet moment, and very tragic even though we barely know her. And Alex Kingston is clearly a wonderful actress... I love her scene with Tennant, trying to place when in their relationship arc they are (it makes you wonder what their first meeting was / will be like — how well does the Doctor feign surprise? — and it also makes you wonder if we'll get to see her again in future, which would be a little problematic since this is the oldest River is supposed to get, but Alex Kingston will not, alas, be getting any younger).

Weaknesses: Well, the problem with River is that she's known the Doctor for so long, she builds him up into practically this mythical figure, who makes armies flee with nothing but a look and opens his TARDIS door with the snap of a finger. While I do love this characterization of the Doctor, and I suppose it makes sense that he would build up more of a legend in his "old age", it's something that was pretty much never touched upon in the original series — at least not to this degree, only things like Thal legends that nobody really believed — and as such it feels like it's being laid on pretty heavy-handed in the revival. Someone should make a compilation of all the "he's like fire, and ice, and the storm in the heart of the sun" speeches next to one another. I bet they'd look pretty silly, if read back-to-back. It's as if the Doctor isn't even a man any more; they're taking the "lonely god" thing and running with it, and I'm not sure I love the Doctor being this famously terrifying mythical legend, rather than a wanderer and moral crusader who just happens to be really clever to boot. So, as much as I love River, all of her grand proclamations about the Doctor, put together, sort of make the story groan under their weight.

Case #3: the plotting

Strengths: Steven Moffat has written a script that really keeps the audience intrigued, particularly during part 1 when so many interesting things are happening and we just don't know why. How are the Doctor and Donna inside a little girl's dreams? Why does she turn out to be a security camera? Why is she the only one who can hear the phone ringing? What are the shadows, and why are they moving? What danger do they pose? Where have all the people gone? Why does River seem to know the Doctor? What does she whisper to him to get him to trust her? Why would the Doctor tell someone his real name, and what is it??? (I don't really want to know the answer to that last one.) Where does Donna end up? Who is Doctor Moon? And then finally all the pieces start slotting into place, and it's extremely satisfying.

Weaknesses: On the whole, I have nothing bad whatsoever to say about Steven Moffat's plotting skills. Certainly compared to some of the other writers, he seems to construct a deftly-told and tightly-plotted story with effortless ease. Which is why, I think, I'm being a bit hard on him here, since what would be minor niggles from any other writer really jarred to me here. First, we have a slightly overlong scene dealing with Miss Evangelista's death; fortunately it does set up a lot of important future information, so it's easy to excuse, but it does go on! Second, and particularly post-Blink, I was really looking forward to seeing a Moffat-constructed cliffhanger in a story that's been well-advertised as scary. To my distress, I found it pretty dreary! (although Andrew seemed to like it way more than I did.) The problem with it is that cliffhangers should be shocking, and this one shows its hand waaaay before the end. Proper Dave starts ghosting at 37:24, and from that point on, he repeats "Hey! Who turned out the lights?" 5 times while ghosting, and another 8 times while pursuing them before the cliffhanger. Then we get "Donna Noble has left the library. Donna Noble has been saved." which really grated on my nerves by the fifth repetition, yet we get it 10 times (!) before the cliffhanger. Sure, there's a brief shot of the Vashta Nerada cutting off their escape route, but I was definitely leaning more toward "annoyed" than "petrified" as the Doctor and crew were trapped between "Hey! Who turned out the lights?" and "Donna Noble has left the library. Donna Noble has been saved." (Thankfully the Donna Node shuts up after the cliffhanger, but Proper Dave goes on moaning about the lights 9 more times in the next episode!) Third and finally, at the start of part 2, we have a scene in which River loudly exposits to everyone — who already knows it — that the Doctor hasn't met her yet, and that they shouldn't tread on each other's shadows. Again, compared to the rest of the story, this is minor stuff, but I'm surprised that it wasn't smoothed out in one of the drafts.

Tennant gets to try on a lot of interesting Doctorly facets in this story — he's commanding and insistent with the archaeological party, worried and frantic as the Vashta Nerada attack, and quietly confident and proud when he discovers his ability to snap the TARDIS doors open. The expression on his face, and the way he says "Yeah. Yeah, we're good" after River whispers his name in his ear, is amazing. He and Tate get a classic moment as they simultaneously shred Lux's confidentiality agreements. And I love his athletic leap up the stairs when he's headed off to save River (not to mention his table-vaulting trick!).

Donna fares reasonably well in the story, but I can't help feeling that her entire second-episode arc totally sidelines her from the plot. Part of me wants to say that they could have taken out all of Donna's virtual-reality scenes and it wouldn't have affected the overall plot one bit. Is that entirely true? I'm really not sure. They really don't provide us any information that we wouldn't have gotten from the Doctor or Lux, but it does illustrate the concepts well. Because of these scenes, we have a better understanding of how Charlotte lives, how she was able to save everyone in the library, and how the 4,022 saved people have been spending the last 100 years. Do we really need that information? I don't know. Given that it's always better to pad a story with rich background details instead of running up and down corridors and having battles, I'm willing to give these scenes the benefit of the doubt; but they might perhaps have been better if Donna had taken the initiative to discover what was wrong with the world, instead of having to be told about it by Miss Evangelista (and then still refusing to believe it).

During part 1, though, Donna is given some great material. Again, she's proving herself to be much more perceptive than she was originally given credit for. I like that she confronts the Doctor on his sudden shift of interest, changing course from the beach to a library, and she notices the look on River's face when she hesitates in telling Donna how she stops travelling with the Doctor. (That look worried me a lot, too, but somehow it puts my mind at ease knowing that Donna's aware of it too.) She gets a great "you go, girl" moment when she kicks the library door in — not something I would have expected her to be able to do, but definitely not something I would have imagined Rose or Martha doing at all. Her sensitive side comes out again, as she comforts Miss Evangelista both before and after her death, and tries to make her feel useful and valued. She's pretty cute about Lee's stammer, too ("Oh, skip to a vowel, they're easy!"). She's very modest, to the point of embarrassment, when Miss Evangelista calls her "the nice woman" — I love that she's a little reluctant to claim the title. Then we even get to see her loving, maternal side, with her fake children, which is certainly an aspect of Donna that we haven't seen before. And I like her purple outfit (as well as the green bracelet she's wearing when she hugs Lee). I think I'd like Donna no matter what, but the fact that we seem to have the same favorite color certainly doesn't hurt. Tate gets a handful of really great scenes in this story, chief among them her teary-eyed attempts to console the dead Miss Evangelista, and her agonized howling when her children vanish in front of her. I like the look on her face in the reflection in the window as Lee snuggles her after Miss Evangelista's nighttime visit to their home.

Among River's crew — well, okay, Lux's crew, but they never really listen to him, do they? — I think my favorite, unexpectedly, is Jessika Williams as Anita. Part of me wants to say that her acting is kind of wooden, and yet she absolutely makes me sympathize with Anita, and I was really sad at her death, so clearly I appreciated her performance. I think it helps that Anita gets some nice heart-to-hearts with the Doctor, and a handful of really great lines. It was clever of Moffat to let her live so long, throwing us off the scent and thinking that maybe, somehow, she was going to survive. I was all set to love Talulah Riley as Miss Evangelista. My sneaking suspicion was that she was going to get a kind of woman-power arc, where everyone found out that even though they thought she was stupid, she was really quite capable, or at least could be capable under the right circumstances... but she never does. She was just stupid, and then she died. Which actually was kind of cool, since it totally subverted my expectations, and although I'm kind of sad that she didn't get to prove herself, I've gained a better appreciation now for the way she was written out. (I did love "My dad said I had the IQ of plankton, and I was pleased.") Steve Pemberton as Strackman Lux underwhelmed me at first, but he gained a lot of interest when he revealed that he was just trying to protect poor little Charlotte. That was a great twist! I also liked O-T Fagbenle as Other Dave, although he makes his best impression right at the beginning, with his funny speech about why he's Other Dave and not Proper Dave. (Great character names, by the way, Mr. Moffat.)

Eve Newton is a definite highlight as the perpetually young Charlotte, with her expressive face that ranges mostly between curious and upset. Her delivery of "Daddy! No, daddy!" was heartbreaking. She's a fantastic actress, and I'm ashamed to admit that I kept wishing we'd had someone of her caliber in a certain other episode that prominently featured children. And speaking of fantastic child actresses, how about Alex Midwood as Donna's son Joshua, and Eloise Rakic-Platt as the utterly adorable Ella? Her line "Mummy, what's wrong with the sky?" had me melting into a little pool of wibbles. Colin Salmon was a definite highlight as Dr Moon, with his calmly reassuring voice, and his authoritarian manner, which could have been threatening but wasn't at all. A very well-pitched performance. I thought Jason Pitt as Lee was a very sympathetic and likeable character, and also one who briefly sounded like Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean ("Big daddy hugs!"). The fact that he really did exist, but couldn't call out to Donna in time, is very sad and very sweet, and part of me hopes they'll reunite again someday, although I know that (a) chances are slim, and (b) it might mean Donna leaving the TARDIS. (Although I don't think she would have left the Doctor here, if even if she had found Lee. What do you suppose she would have done? Would she have dragged Lee along for the ride?) And, in the Library, Sarah Niles is great as the matter-of-fact Courtesy Node, who very calmly reports all sorts of terrifyingly shrieky messages (like "Argh. Slarg. Snick." which manages to be both horrific and hilarious at the same time).

Eleven days before Silence in the Library aired, news broke confirming a longstanding rumor: Steven Moffat is set to take over control of Doctor Who once Russell T Davies leaves in 2009. To which I can only say: Woohoo! There's no finer candidate for the position, particularly when you consider Moffat's exceedingly high track record over the past four years. Even if I haven't been deeply in love with each of his stories, nobody can deny that they were all very good, and they owed him the job for Blink if nothing else. (Sudden thought: do you suppose he might want to bring back Sally???) This two-parter is a wonderful example of his creativity and originality; even though many of the themes can be traced back to his other episodes ("killing" people without actually killing them, River's desperation for a chicken leg perhaps unconsciously mirroring Sally's desperation to keep looking at the statues, "everyone lives!" in the end ["Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today."], and, well, scary monsters), there's so much new stuff in here that you're dazzled by it all. The central idea, of a library as large as a planet, is cool enough — I love that it's apparently got every book ever written, specially re-printed in charmingly old-fashioned bound paper volumes. But then we add in a computer at the core of the planet, a "doctor moon" maintaining the system, explorers with neural relays in their suits, and flesh-eating alien shadows stalking people hungrily... it's fantastic. The real kicker is when we discover that Lux wasn't trying to protect his investment, he was trying to protect his preteen aunt, who was saved from dying when her mind was transferred into the computer to run the Library. This revelation brings a great emotional kick to the story and makes it feel that much more rounded. The opening and closing are brilliant, beginning and ending with total blackness, with each bookend scene having a fairytale quality. Of course it goes without saying that Mr. Coupling is overall brilliant with the dialogue. So many quotable lines throughout, including a couple that I really totally adore.

Aside from the whole "don't let your shadows cross" business, I have nothing but lashings of praise for Euros Lyn, directing his first story since The Runaway Bride. It's so nice to have him back; I think for the first time since Blink, I really felt the director's hand in the story. There are so many shots to praise, chief among them: the angled one-shot as the Doctor and Donna leave the TARDIS, the shadows spreading outward from Proper Dave's body, and the Doctor clambering along the scaffolding. There's also the amusing cut from the Doctor on TV to a screaming cartoon monster. This may go partly under set design, but it's a brilliant idea to have the virtual world (particularly Charlotte's home) so bright and colorful, in contrast to the dark-and-colorful world of the library. The only choice of his that I question is that we never see the Doctor and Charlotte's television conversation from the Doctor's point of view... so, having already been sideswiped by the revelation that she was actually a security camera, we never find out who exactly he thinks he's talking to. For all we know, they were looking at an oscillogram on the monitor. River just asks "Who was that?", which could be referring to the voice rather than the image. The Doctor does mentions wanting to speak to Charlotte's mother, but this doesn't necessarily mean that he was looking at a little girl; maybe he thought it was the logical response to an oscillogram asking if he wanted to speak to its dad. It's not until the end of part two, when they hear Charlotte's voice in the computer control centre, that we actually find out that they did see a little girl on the monitor.

Murray Gold shocks me here; this score is really good. At one point I thought he was dipping back into his Blink well again for Moffat, but he ended up crafting something quite distinct. My particular favorites were the opening music, the quaint music as Donna recovers in hospital, and double praise for Gold and Lyn with the fantastic rockin' music plus cut after the line "I am what is left of Miss Evangelista." There are times, actually — and see if you agree with me on this — when his music sounds really similar to the score from Tomb of the Cybermen.

The sets are likewise wonderful, with beautifully redressed interiors (and an exterior or two) for the library. Perhaps more impressive, the CGI shots meld with them fantastically, and really sell the idea that this world is all one giant library. I especially liked the shot of the Doctor and gang racing down a clear tube connecting two parts of the Library. There's an awesome effect of Proper Dave's skeleton-in-a-suit lurching forward, and his shadows lurching with him.

I was kind of able to watch this one "for the first time" twice — once with Gray in Hong Kong, and then again with Andrew when I got back. Gray has been spoiled on some future developments regarding Donna, and saw the seeds of it here, which has me intensely curious, even though he's not sure if I'm going to like this particular plot development. (He was also very amused that Mac keyboards were being used to represent the futuristic keypads of the Library. I'm not even sure I would have realized!)

Minor points:

• I love love love the opening... between Doctor Moon's voiceover, the music, and the fairytale quality of the script and the direction, it's just fantastic. Great hook. (Aside from the fairytale vibe, there was something about this story that reminded me of Firefly and Serenity. I think it may have been partly the witty banter and partly the fact that we have a character named River...)

• And speaking of fairy tales, here we kick things off with a great quote:

  Dr Moon: "How do you move around?"
  Charlotte: "By wishing."

• I wonder why Charlotte is under the relative misapprehension that nobody can get into her library? I mean, granted, the seals are apparently tough to crack, but she seems to think that nobody has ever been in her library. Did she do something, after saving those 4,022 people, to isolate and protect her thought patterns and memories? (However, I adore that the "something" which has gotten inside turns out to be not a big scary monster, but rather the Doctor and Donna!)

• Mmmm... deliciously poetic.

  Doctor: "Without death, there'd only be comedies. Dying gives us size."

• Donna speaks the truth when she asks the Doctor "Isn't travelling with you one big spoiler?" And I love his response — that he tries to avoid showing her big plot developments — which definitely answers some questions about why they don't venture into major near-future events very often.

• This must be a post-Survival rule, although you'd think that story would have been a prime example of why this is an oversimplification. (And I love Donna's followup comment!)

  Donna: "Maybe it's a Sunday."
  Doctor: "No, I never land on Sundays. Sundays are boring."
  Donna: "Well, maybe everyone's really really quiet."

• What a freaky and cool idea that the computer can detect a million million non-humanoid lifeforms that aren't showing up to the naked eye. At first I assumed that the 4,022 people who disappeared must have been turned somehow into malevolent (or just accidentally scary) shadows, so I'm glad that turned out not to be the case.

• When the Doctor and Donna are contemplating opening the book, what's the noise that makes them jump? It sounds kind of like the Doctor but I don't think it was...

• Great line!

  Doctor: "It's alive."
  Donna: "You said it was a security camera!"
  Doctor: "It is. It's an alive one."

• And this is an example of why I love Catherine Tate:

  Donna: "It chose me a dead face it thought I'd like? ...That statue's got a real dead person's face on it!"

• Hilarious and freaky...

  Donna: "Oi! Hands!"
  Doctor: "Shadow. Look."
  Donna: "What about it?"
  Doctor: " 'Count the shadows.' "
  Donna: "One. There. I've counted it, one shadow."
  Doctor: "Yeah. But what's casting it?"

• I didn't even catch this one until the last viewing, so subtle is it:

  Doctor: "Tell your grandchildren you came to the Library and lived. They won't believe you."

• Great line by the Doctor, and great introduction for River:

  River: "Got a problem with archaeologists?"
  Doctor: "I'm a time traveller. I point and laugh at archaeologists."
  River: "Ah. Professor River Song. Archaeologist."

• And another I really loved:

  Doctor: "If you understand me, look very very scared."
  Everyone looks at him, blank-faced.
  Doctor: "No. Bit more scared than that."

• More freaky!!!

  Doctor: "It's not irrational. It's Vashta Nerada."
  Donna: "What's Vashta Nerada?"
  Doctor: "It's what's in the dark. It's what's always in the dark."

• Donna's response is a contender for my Top Favorite Line of the story:

  Doctor: "Oh, I'm Pretty Boy?"
  Donna: "Yes! — oh, that came out a bit quick."

• Oh, so droll!

  Charlotte: "Hello. Are you in my television?"
  Doctor: "Well... no, I'm... I'm... sort of in space."

• You know, what with River having shades of Benny, I was really hoping to see a copy of Down Among the Dead Men somewhere in the Library. How sad, then, that we never could make out a single title (which is even more tragic given that apparently the set designers put in copies of Black Orchid and Everest in Easy Stages, among others). And as long as we're speaking of Benny, I also wondered if River might not have been about to say that she was from the University of Dellah. Who wants to bet that it was Benny who introduced her to him in the first place! You know they must have heard of one another. Intergalactic archaeology across all of time and space can't be that big of a field.

• I like the character moment when Anita says "My grandfather lasted a day. Kept talking about his shoelaces." Besides giving her a nice bit of background, it also explains why characters' thoughts seem to degrade at varying rates (with Miss Evangelista, perhaps unsurprisingly, powering down the fastest).

• This is a bit confusing. When explaining Miss Evangelista's addled state to Donna, the Doctor says, "She's a footprint on the beach, and the tide's coming in." So is the voice talking to them fully Miss Evangelista, with all of her actual memories and feelings, or just a vague impression of her former self?

• Sweet line, and I love Tennant's delivery:

  Doctor: "Help her."
  Donna: "She's dead!"
  Doctor: "Yeah. Help her."

• Eep, plot niggle! I totally get how Charlotte was able to save everyone before the Vashta Nerada attacked... but how does she save the neural imprints of people who are attacked? Can she somehow sense the attack and make a copy of the person's mind before they're killed? But if that's the case, why not just teleport them out of their suits? So she must do it after they've been killed, in which case I guess she snags them before any signal degradation sets in?

• What a cool line, and an awesome delivery! (The editing, and Murray Gold's music — I know, right? — are a huge help here too.)

  Dr Moon: "The real world is a lie, and your nightmares are real. The library is real. There are people trapped in there. People who need to be saved. The shadows are moving again. Those people are depending on you. Only you can save them. Only you."

• If River knows Donna's fate, and the implication is that it is not a fate Donna would wish to know, then why does finding out Donna's identity make River open up to her? If she had just kept her mouth shut, she never would've tipped Donna off that her travels with the Doctor are going to be brought to an end by something potentially unpleasant.

• Super quote:

  River: "Every shadow?"
  Doctor: "No. But any shadow."

• Followed by the very effective:

  River: "So what do we do?"
  Doctor: "Daleks, aim for the eyestalk. Sontarans, back of the neck. Vashta Nerada... run. Just run."

• I love this! The Doctor really has Donna figured out! (Between this and his hilarious "Donna, let me explain..." right before he teleports her...)

  Donna: "But Doctor, we haven't got any helmets."
  Doctor: "Yeah, but we're safe anyway."
  Donna: "How are we safe?"
  Doctor: "... We're not, that was a clever lie to shut you up."

• The moment when Proper Dave's visor goes black, even though I saw it coming, is very creepy. Likewise, the moment when his skull falls forward against the visor: freaky!!! The second time it happens, though, you get the feeling that the "revealing the skull" moment is just "the thing to do" in a Vashta Nerada story, like it's their trademark scary moment now. By the time the same thing happens with Anita, it's getting to be yawningly old-hat. (It would have been freakier, and more unnerving, if it had just happened casually in the background of a shot, I think. I mean, clearly gravity is almost inevitably going to cause the skull to fall forward, but we don't have to make such a big production out of it each time.)

• A big thumbs-up for their renaming of part two; Forest of the Dead is a way cooler title than River's Run, and I'm still not sure what that one was supposed to mean, unless it's a sort of metaphorical way to say "River had a good innings"!

• Tate's comic abilities come into play well here; this line is delivered hilariously, yet Donna is clearly just plain confused:

  Donna: "You said 'river', and suddenly we're feeding ducks."

• When Donna asks Doctor Moon "How did we leave it, him and me?", I thought she meant that she had some kind of invented backstory in which she and Lee used to date, but she couldn't remember why they'd broken up! Their actual (rapid) courtship, though, is quite cute... but given that only about thirty seconds elapsed between the time they met and the time they married, you have to wonder how well they really knew each other, unless people in the virtual reality are able to absorb information about each other in the same way that their minds are able to fill in the inexplicable gaps in their memories (i.e., how they got from the dinner table into bed).

• This memory-revision thing that Doctor Moon can do (or at least influence) is so cool!

  Donna: "The Doctor! I saw the Doctor!"
  Dr Moon: "Yes, you did, Donna. And then you forgot."
  Donna: "Doctor Moon! Well, hello! Shall I make you a cup of tea?"

• A big missed opportunity — how cool would it have been to watch the gang try to avoid the Vashta Nerada after sunset? Then again, maybe they couldn't have defended themselves, and would've just ended up as dinner. But again, I sense the chance for some good tense Scully-flails-and-hits-their-only-lightbulb type "Darkness Falls" moments.

• Here's one of those overly-awed quotes about the Doctor, but this one I really like:

  Lux: "And who is the Doctor?"
  River: "The only story you'll ever tell, if you survive him."

• Great pair of quotes... the first one sets up the second beautifully, and it really made me laugh.

  Doctor: "Know what's interesting about my screwdriver? Very hard to interfere with. Practically nothing's strong enough! Well — some hairdryers, but I'm working on that."
  ...
  Doctor: "Someone, somewhere in this library, is alive and communicating with the moon. Or possibly alive and drying their hair."

• Possibly the moment that made me really like Anita:

  River: "Just keep it together, okay?"
  Anita: "Keeping it together. I'm only crying. I'm about to die, it's not an overreaction."

• Interesting... is this meant to be a subtle reference back to Donna's comment about the faces on the courtesy nodes, and the fact that she is now a potential template? (I wonder if the Doctor ever told her about that?)

  Donna: (re: Ella's clay "mommy" doll) "Where's the face?"
  Ella: "I don't know."

• I like that, after living in the virtual reality for a while, Donna starts to "go native" and begins filling in the gaps in her memory on her own.

• Yay for Snarky!Donna, and it's a cool quote:

  Miss Evangelista: "No you didn't."
  Donna: "I'm sorry, what?"
  Miss Evangelista: "You didn't get my note last night. You got it a few seconds ago."

• I was really impressed by the way they filmed the scene in which we learn that all the children in the virtual reality are the same two children — if you pay attention, you can figure it out beforehand, but of course I certainly didn't notice it. I wonder, though — does that mean that there were only two children in the Library when everyone was saved, and the virtual reality is using their template for all children, or are they really just completely invented? I suppose it must be the latter, since otherwise you'd think that once their patterns were rescued from the teleporter, these two children would have memories of having, what, two thousand sets of parents or something? (since, after all, Lee and Donna clearly retain their virtual-reality memories in the real world.) And incidentally, since River inherits them at the end... how does she think she got them? Did she shack up with Proper Dave or something???

• Second only to the devoured chicken leg, in terms of memorable moments, is the moment when Donna rips off Miss Evangelista's veil, revealing her twisted face, and she and Charlotte both scream... and what's super-cool is that it's not a brief glimpse; the camera goes back to Charlotte's TV and we get a good long look at her, giving us a chance to take it all in. I don't know why that moment works for me so very well, but it really does.

• Ooh, so now it's Snarky!River, is it?

  Doctor: "I am the Doctor."
  River: "Yeah, someday."

• And moment #2 when Anita won me over:

  Doctor: "Can I get you anything?"
  Anita: "An old age would be nice."

• I don't know that this is really a plot hole, but it does seem a bit odd. When they hatched, didn't the Vashta Nerada kill anybody in the Library? If not, how did anyone know to set off the alarm? The Doctor strongly implies that the computer was able to save everybody who was in the Library before the Vashta Nerada attacked ("She saved everyone in the Library."), but that seems very unlikely, unless maybe the hatching showed up on the sensors somehow?

• Also a contender for my Top Favorite Line of the story:

  Donna: "So... this isn't the real me? This isn't my real body? But I've been dieting!"

• The new-and-improved Miss Evangelista hypothesizes, "I think a decimal point may have shifted in my IQ." Soooo... just how low was it to begin with?! Let's be generous and assume that her IQ was shifted to 200, which is the very upper limit in the "highest genius" range. (Over 200 is apparently "unmeasurable genius", which I shouldn't discount as a possibility for her new self.) If that's the case, then her original IQ would have been 20, which is classified as "severe mental retardation". Somehow, I don't think so. Looking at the scale, it seems that Miss Evangelista — if she really was as dense as everyone claimed — would have probably fallen into the "normal or average intelligence" range (90 — 109) or the "dullness" range (80 — 89). Even at the low end of that scale, if her IQ had started at 80, then shifting a decimal point would have put her at an IQ of 800, which is waaaay beyond the limit of "unmeasurable genius". So I guess she ended up being really really really smart.

• Poor Ella — right after she (well, Charlotte) injures her knee, Donna starts frogmarching her back home! Shouldn't she be carried home, at the very least?

• Love this quote:

  Ella: "Where are we going?"
  Donna: "Home."
  Instantly, they appear at home.
  Joshua: (brightly) "That was quick, wasn't it, mummy?"

• If the doctor moon is set up as a sort of failsafe for the computer, then it seems a bit silly to give the computer the option to turn it off!

• Of Charlotte, Lux says proudly, "She loved books more than anything." Yeahhhh, sure she did. All we ever see her doing is coloring, watching cartoons, and watching an awful lot of reality TV. She never cracks a single book!

• Ha!!

  Doctor: "And before you say anything else, Professor, can I just mention in passing as you're here, shut up!"

• Now that's just sneaky. We have no way of knowing when the Vashta Nerada ate Anita, because her neural relay lights don't even start blinking until after the Doctor reveals that she's been dead for a while (and then, suddenly, they're very low).

• Cooool quote.

  Doctor: "She's nearly gone. Be kind."
  Vashta Nerada: "These are our forests. We are not kind."

• But not as cool as this one (and what a great solution, even if I don't understand how they manage to do it):

  Doctor: "I'm the Doctor, and you're in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up."

• Yay River! Way to quote Hartnell!

  Doctor: "Time can be rewritten."
  River: "Not those times. Not one line. Don't you dare."

• I love the fact that, as in The Doctor Dances, the Doctor seems to (more or less) save everyone here — but, wow, 4,022 people sure seem to be clustered onto a small part of the planet! Maybe the teleports didn't restore them to their original location, but rather to one specific sector, so that they could be more easily evacuated.

• You have to wonder, did the Vashta Nerada think "well, they won't miss just one" and take a quick nibble after all the people were returned? Staring at all that meat wandering around, and being forbidden to touch it, must have been torture!

• I'm glad that Euros Lyn spares us the sight of River's (presumably) charred body.

• Silly Donna:

  Donna: "I made up the perfect man. Gorgeous, adores me, and hardly able to speak a word. What's that say about me?"

• This one, however, does win my Top Favorite Line (and notice that all three of my contenders were Donna lines!), mostly because I love the emotion behind it:

  Donna: "What about you? You all right?"
  Doctor: "I'm always all right."
  Donna: (considers him) "Is 'all right' special Time Lord code for 'really not all right at all'?"
  Doctor: "Why?"
  Donna: "'Cause I'm all right too."

• I was so hoping that the Doctor would go back for his futuristic sonic screwdriver, à la Hartnell and Cameca's brooch, and then he does! — although not at all for the reason that I thought he would. How very cool that the Doctor was able to think of a way to save her, and that his younger self picked up on the clue.

• It's pretty awesome that, when the Doctor saves River, Charlotte also (somehow) brings back her entire crew to keep her company. But, er, how does she fix Miss Evangelista's transcription error? Maybe it wasn't difficult to do, once she was aware of the problem.

• For all that I'm not sure I want to see the Doctor get built up into a cocky godlike being, I have to say that I do really like the moment when he finds out that he can open the TARDIS door with a snap of his fingers. (Clearly it responds to him very well! And that should be handy if he ever loses the key.)

Overall, I think the plot niggles keep it from quite becoming a top-tier story, but then again, it also suffers by comparison to Blink. In the context of season 4 — which, like season 2, has so far been of remarkably consistent quality — it's a definite high point, with lots of characters and concepts to gawp at in admiration. If this is any indication of what we can expect from the Moffat years to come, then bring them on as fast as possible!