10.39: Silence in the Library

In which the Doctor meets a new old friend.

Broadcast: May 2008

Watched: October 2021

“I know it’s in my mind but something’s got inside!” The answer in plain sight in the pre-credits.

Quite possibly the best one. The funniest, cleverest, and (though we don’t find out til next week) saddest one. Possibly the densest concentration of quotable lines in the entire show. (“Y’know, boyfriends, sometimes you need the element of surprise”; the proper/other Dave conceit; “I don’t fancy you”; the IQ/Planton exchange; “The real world is a lie, and your nightmares are real”; “Help her.” “She’s dead.” “Yeah, help her.”) Also, bits that aren’t quotable, but are just brilliant, like the terrifying scan which shows the empty library has billions of lifeforms in it (although, bacteria? Hmmm), or the bit where the Doctor and Donna wordlessly and simultaneously tear up the contracts.

And my god, the ideas. The creepy, empty, echoey library, which seems to be situated in a little girl’s mind. The Vasta Nerada (“The dust in sunbeams” – as in Blink, Moffat’s goal is to make kids petrified of things they’ll see every day). The data ghosts (oooh, Miss Evengelista, clever name, I just got that). 

But obviously the most amazing thing about watching it now is... You see it from River’s perspective, even if you don’t want to. Because we have her knowledge of the future, the “You’re doing a very good job, acting like you don’t know me” exchange is no longer about the Doctor unravelling a mystery, it’s about the Doctor not knowing her, and it is heartbreaking. It’s a piece of the Moffat era arrived two years early, the closest the TV show could ever get to something like Cold Fusion.

Then that cliffhanger: the killer space suit (their presence in both season 6 and Oxygen suggests that Moffat thinks space suits are inherently quite scary) chasing them, as a node with Donna’s face announces, “Donna Noble has left the library”. She’s not in the next time trailer, either, the sneaky sods. It’s amazing. I’ve probably seen it a dozen times and I still spot new stuff.

Other things:        

• “People never really stop loving books!” is a neat link to the end of the Unicorn. (Though, wasn’t Century House/Midnight meant to be in the way?) Also, when the Doctor says, “You need a good death – dying gives us size” he’s a) being a massive hypocrite, again, and b) telling us how the story will end.

• It’s an amazing cast. Kingston, Salmon and Pemberton, obviously, but Tallulah Riley briefly had a moment of being quite famous, and O-T Fagbenle (Other Dave) has gone off to the states to be quite big since. Even Harry Peacock is sort of in everything.

• When exactly was the library meant to be open? Can only have been for five minutes, if Cal is Strackman Lux’s aunt and it’s been closed for 100 years. I’m not sure the timescales add up. Not that it matters.

• The first node face is the psychologist from Ted Lasso season 2.

• Donna instinctively sympathises with the girl everyone thinks is stupid.    

• River doesn’t remember which Doctor is in Time of Angels, which is oddly pleasing. (I did have a whole bit here about how she thinks the picnic at Asgard was very early days rather than “his last story with her”, but I’d confused Asgard with Darillium.)

• River has the same kind of gun Jack has in the Doctor Dances, which feels oddly telling.

• A continuity error: the positions of the cast on Cal’s TV don’t match those back in the library.

• The dad calls Cal “sweetie”: River’s catchphrase is just a word Moffat happened to be saying a lot that week.