"Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead"

The Stephen Moffat story is always a highlight of the relaunched Doctor Who and here, he is given a two-parter for the first time since 2005. Moffat’s previous stories have had interesting ideas, explorations of primal fears, great characters and fantastic dialogue and "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" certainly has that. The setting is a planet called ‘The Library’, because that is what it is, a repository for every book ever published. But The Library is silent, its aisles and reading rooms empty. Into this, the Doctor and Donna land and are soon joined by a group of archaeologists in the pay of Strackman Lux (whose family own the library) trying to find out what happened- and find something horrible. The main monsters in the story are the Vashta Nerada, microscopic creatures that can strip a human body of its flesh in less than a second and hunt in swarms that look like shadows. Any shadow. Moffat has taken a very common childhood fear and relaunched it in our consciousness with instantly effective results. However, his inventiveness doesn’t stop there. The communications system that the archaeologists use is ‘wirelessly’ connected with the user’s nervous system, an arrangement that has a disturbing side-effect. When the user dies, their thoughts are stored for a while in their communicators- a ‘data ghost’. In a very memorable scene, the ditzy Miss Evangelista is killed by the Vashta Nerada, leaving only a skeleton. However, her voice remains, asking where it is, asking to speak to Donna (the last person who was kind to her) before her thoughts eventually break down and her voice loops on one phrase: ‘ice cream’.

All this occurs in "Silence in the Library", but there are greater terrors to follow. Donna is teleported back to the safety of the TARDIS, but her teleportation stream is intercepted. "Silence in the Library" ends with Donna’s face on an information node stating repeatedly: ‘Donna Noble has left The Library. Donna Noble has been saved. In "Forest of the Dead", we find that she is seemingly living a normal life, but she soon figures out something is wrong. Her life appears to be edited like a film, with boring bits like walking cut out. However, the mysterious figure of Doctor Moon is there to reassure her that everything is fine and she settles down. But a visit from Miss Evangelista (who has also been saved, but imperfectly) brings to light something terrible- her children are not real. Donna refuses to believe this and, when even they say ‘We’re not real, are we Mummy?’ she sobs, holding them tight in a vain effort to stop them blinking out of existence. This is something which must have stirred a feeling of solipsistic horror with anyone who was watching, particularly parents- what if our loved ones only existed in our minds? This is connected to the key to this whole mystery- the strange girl who dreams of the library in her sleep. We first see the Doctor and Donna as intruding characters in her dreams. Doctor Moon is there too and he chillingly states to her: ‘The real world is a lie, and your nightmares are real’. For ‘Doctor Moon’ is really the virus-checking satellite of ‘The Library’ and the girl is the personality and mind of Strackman’s aunt, who suffered from a terminal illness as a child- Charlotte Abigail Lux: CAL. She stored the teleportation streams of all the survivors to her hard drive- they have, quite literally, been saved.

There are so many ideas in this story, it seems fit to burst- but it never does. One reason for this is that Moffat never forgets character. Each character is well written and played, with Steve Pemberton making Strackman Lux more than the usual ruthless magnate and Talulah Riley being delightful as the scatter-brained Miss Evangelista. We have the inimitable Colin Salmon as Doctor Moon. Moffat even comments on the fact that you seldom see two people with the same name in a story, so we have two Daves here. However, the key supporting character is River Song. This is a character who is engaging from the very start, but it is clear that she knows more about the Doctor than appearances would indicate. She is a companion from his future, one whom he has known as a fellow traveller and, perhaps, as something more. She can send messages to the Doctor’s psychic paper. She has a future version of the Sonic Screwdriver at her disposal. And, most critically, she whispers the Doctor’s greatest secret into his ear- his true name. This is great stuff on paper, but it would not work anything like it should were the performers not up to scratch. Alex Kingston is utterly electrifying from her entrance and her rapport with Tennant is fantastic. This is the reason why we believe it when the Doctor dives into the core of The Library to save a woman he has just met. The Doctor is more compromised than he has been for ages, yet he is as bold, brilliant and downright fantastic as he has ever been. Catherine Tate, however, is not to be overshadowed and her performance, especially in the scenes in the virtual reality of CAL.

Euros Lyn puts in his best work yet in this story. The ‘CAL world’ is like a 21st century version of the Matrix in The Deadly Assassin and Lyn’s work would do David Maloney proud. A huge array of moods and settings are thrown up by the story and Lyn is more than equal to the task of moulding them into a cohesive whole. He is helped by the usual sterling efforts of the production team, with great cinematography, sets, costumes and special effects.

"Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" broke Doctor Who’s winning streak at the prestigious Hugo awards, but this is still a fantastic piece of television that is full of emotion, terror and excitement. Most of all, it has hope for the future, that the Doctor’s best days are ahead of him- a man who can quell an army with a single glance, who can open the TARDIS with a click of his fingers. I can’t wait...

NEXT: "Midnight"