Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

The Shadow-Nose

Gah.  This coming home from work exhaustedly at four in the morning and then stupidly deciding to get a couple hours of sleep before I finish my review thing isn't working.  I keep, you know, sleeping.  The tornado-klaxons are probably warning me that I probably shouldn't be on my computer for reasons of inclement weather, but I have to hurry if I want to get this review finished before Stuart posts his review of the next episode (and I have to go back to work this evening anyway).  Unfortunately it'll still probably be late enough to annoy that one guy who was annoyed last week.  One of these weeks my schedule will quiet down and I'll be able to finish it during one of my theoretical "days off" in the midweek.

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

From the moment in the pre-Eurovision trailer when the Doctor intones "Almost every species has an irrational fear of the dark...but they're wrong. It's not irrational." (a "shadow proclamation", if you will...), I was hooked.  I have to hand it to Moffat (again)...the Vashta Nerada were sort of brilliant, especially the idea that they're already everywhere, including the earth, flitting about merrily in our sunbeams.  The demonstration with the box-lunch made me particularly happy.  The whole concept of the deadly flesh-melting plague lurking in the darkness creates an ominous sense of dread far more effectively than the Daleks have since at least "Dalek" and than the Cybermen probably ever have.  The "Not every shadow...but any shadow!" ought to have the children spooked for months to come.

I can only assume it was a century-long orgy of cannibalism.

Not that there aren't plenty of unanswered questions that crop up: What did they eat in the intervening 100 years since the Library's been empty? I'm guessing they haven't gone vegetarian. I can only assume it was a century-long orgy of cannibalism.

They seem to have some level of intelligence, for a swarm of wee piranhas.  If they've had a hundred years to turn the lights off...why did they leave them on?  And, for that matter, why, prey tell, do they turn them off in order, starting with those farthest from the Doctor and Donna? Is it just for dramatic effect?  Or do they just want to be sporting?

If light slows them down so much, why can they eat someone if they form an extra "shadow"?  What are the mechanics of this?

Okay, so as a species there are a few not-perfect, unexplainey things about them, but that's okay with me.  As a threat, they're bloody excellent.  And, for all their theoretical implausibilities, at least they aren't carrying their brains around in their bloody hand.

Who's Afraid of the Dark?

Once again, Moffat has decided that the loyal viewers deserve to have the living shit scared out of them, and for the most part The Silence in the Library is bang on.  A number of elements work in concert to help create the appropriate state-of-mind, from the leisurely tension-building pace to the claustrophobic atmosphere (in a planet-sized library!)

Aside from the thoroughly effective wee beasties, a lot of what makes The Silence In the Library work is the setting. I'm not talking so much about concept of a planet-sized library (which I also think is brilliant) or The Mill's flashy spectacle of design (which is spectacular), but about the rooms in the library.  There's just something about the musty old rooms, the vast shadow-filled spaces, the sunbeams, the tall narrow stacks of books...maybe there's just something naturally creepy about libraries, but the location shooting on the episode is one of the best things about a mostly-excellent whole.

...screaming in sonic-screwdriver-induced pain (I know what that's like)...

If I hadn't already been hooked by that line from the trailer and the words "Stephen" and "Moffat" being attached to The Silence In The Library, I would have been by the pre-credits sequence.  Yet another one of the brilliant things about the episode is the parallel between the scenes set in the library and those with The Girl.  The danger faced by the people in the Library stands in stark contrast to the seeming domestic bliss of Eve Newton and her crayons watching cartoons.  While The Girl is screaming in sonic-screwdriver-induced pain (I know what that's like), the Doctor and Donna have a pleasant little conversation about her "nice door skills."  Newton even delivers a quite respectable performance...and exceedingly rare and wondrous thing in a world that produced Problem Child 2.

The "ghosting" is one of the more dramatically-effective tech-support problems I've ever seen, both when we first encounter it and at the end as Proper Dave stalks the rest of the party.  It's just as horrible as Donna says it is.

Even Tennant's more-fearful-than-usual performance keeps things where they should be.  Imagine if he were gurning about the entire episode with a big grin on his face.  Not chilling at all.  Well, at least not in the same way.  Lines like "If you understand me look very, very scared.", while quite funny, he even manages to carry off with considerably disturbing aplomb.  This is certainly one of Tennant's best performances, and much better than the over-emoted drivel we got at the end of The Doctor's Daughter, and a less pummeling score by Murray Gold certainly doesn't hurt matters.

Dimmer Switch

Not quite everything about Silence in the Library comes together like a clockwork android in its inexhorable march toward scaring the bejeebus out of us.  The most significant stumbling block: the slack-jawed Miss Evangelista.  I probably can't blame Talulah Riley for the problems with Stackman Lux's "personal everything", as the role was far more caricature than character.  The idea that she is literally so stupid she can't tell the bathroom from the escape pod (twice!) is just absurd, and hearkens back to the sort of broadly low comic portrayal ("Can't find germany on a map!") that loused up The Runaway Bride.  Her stupidity is compounded by shallowness "They think I'm stupid because I'm pretty!"  Did she really just say that?  At least her stay was brief; I for one was relieved when she wandered vacantly off to her doom.

Absurdity is a fine thing sometimes.  Honest.  I'm a big fan of absurdity.  Unfortunately, the absurdity of Miss Evangelista (and of the scene where the team is being attacked by flying books accompanied by music that seems like something out of a wackier moment in some Harry Potter movie) was somewhat incongruous with the atmosphere that every single item in the remainder of the episode was working to create.  Think of the amount of actual dread/horror/fear you felt watching, say, any episode of Red Dwarf, or reading books by Douglas Adams. Were you genuinely scared when Agrajag cornered Arthur Dent in that-place-where-Agrajag-cornered-Arthur-Dent?  (It's been a long time...I think they were in a mountain or something.)  I wasn't.  Absurdity is the sort of thing that may also affect our ability to take anything in those abominable Star Wars prequels with any shred of seriousness...though that's probably actually more attributable to preposterousness.  Artists who can manage to combine absurdity with actual chills are few and far between (Hello, Jan Svankmajer!)

That isn't to say there isn't room for levity in an episode such as this.  The bit where Donna and the Doctor shred the bullshit intellectual-property contract without missing a beat was handled brilliantly, though I have to wonder how the Beeb feels about that.  The Other Dave vs. Proper Dave thing.  Time travelers pointing and laughing at archaeologists.  Donna's bypassing of the Sonic Screwdriver to get through wooden doors.  All quite clever.  It's just a problem when something is so ridiculous that it taxes my ability to suspend my disbelief (like, say, nearly everything in The Last of the Time Lords) that it gets in the way of the mood, and in an episode like Silence In The Library, the mood is everything.

Nobody Node The Troubles I've Seen

If there's one other element of the story that didn't agree with me, it's those goddamned "courtesy nodes".  You have to wonder what sort of future design specialist would decide to model their information terminals after some sort of safety silverware for the handicapped.  Come to think of it, you also have to wonder what sort of production designer on a 2008 BBC science fiction programme would think that's a good idea.  While I can't wait for my local public library to obtain "extensive flesh banks", I have difficulty thinking that even Russell-T.-Davies years into the future most library patrons wouldn't  be creeped out by a real dead-person's face spouting "the restrooms are on your left" in a flat monotone.

...if you don't mind shutting up for a a bit, I've got a shuffling space zombie after me, and its repeated meme is decidedly more threatening.

As if the concept of a fleshy human face on some sort of ergonomic, space-age feminine hygiene product isn't enough of a questionably annoying design choice, the courtesy nodes are apparently also designed to be verbally annoying.  Sure, the decency filters editing the messages of abject fear for tone and content was kind of enjoyable, but do they have to repeat everything ad bloody nauseum?  "Donna Noble has left the Library.  Donna Noble has been saved.  Donna Noble has left the Library.  Donna Noble has been saved.  Donna Noble has left the Library.  Donna Noble has been saved."  Yes, yes...got it already!  Now if you don't mind shutting up for a bit, I've a shuffling space zombie after me, and its repeated meme is decidedly more threatening.

Fore-Shadowing

For once I have to forgo my usual four or so paragraphs about how amazingly brilliant Catherine Tate's performance was as Donna.  This isn't because she wasn't wonderful (she was), but because she was sort of sidelined through most of the episode, at least in part by a similarly brilliant Alex Kingston.  I'm worried that this will be compounded in the next episode, since once Donna was digitized all we get is her face on a kiosk chanting a mantra.  I can only assume that she's currently battling the sinister Master Control Program in a series of crudely animated live-action video games.

Unfortunately, we also get another bit of vague, ominous foreshadowing that seems to indicate an imminent bad end for my favourite Doctor Who character.  This would be a bad thing, as Donna Noble should "travel with that man forever."  I'm hoping this is all just an elaborate red herring (and no, I don't mean one of the Hath).  I'm tired of the revolving door.

Heather Has Two Shadows

Probably the peak of the tension comes, appropriately, as we approach the cliffhanger, with Proper Dave suffering from a particularly bad case of consumption.  Proper Dave's fate is particularly well executed, with the "who turned off the lights", the reveal of Dave in blackface (I wonder if Other Dave found this offensive?), and the chilling "I'm fine. I'm okay. I'm...I'm fine.", and then Zombie Dave is off after the rest of them with some fine shuffling action.  The following bit with the running (love the running!) is the one part of the episode where I think the pacing is a bit off; everyone seems like they're shuffling.  I'm sure real spacesuits aren't exactly designed for running in, but this is one of the points in the episode where perhaps the leisurely pace should have been dispensed with.

...Properly Digested Dave...

I can't help but think the cliffhanger may have worked better just after Properly Digested Dave starts after them, or perhaps when Colin Salmon tells Eve Newton that the real world is a lie and "Only you can save them.  Only you."  The actual version seems a little drawn out as they crowbar the "saving of Donna" section into it.  Nonetheless, it sets up a whole raft of tantalizing ambiguities that I'm hoping Forest of the Dead manages to deliver on: What's the deal with Professor Song?  What's the deal with The Girl?  What about that dead guy?  How will Donna get out of the extensive flesh bank?  Why haven't the V.N. eaten the extensive flesh bank already?  They made me wait agonizingly all week for this...it better be as good as the first part.

Library of the Lost

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

It was Thursday 21 May 2008 at 11:00 PM Eastern Standard Time that I stood from my chair and shouted "no!" at the top of my lungs. My sister had done the same. There were two reasons for this. The first was that I had just watched the picture on my television screen pan from the image of Benjamin Linus standing next to a bearded Jack Shepherd over to the big reveal of who was in the coffin next to them. The other reason was because I knew that it would be another seven months before I would see another episode of Lost. My Lost obsession had reached such a feverish height that I was immediately thrown into a funk from which I thought there was no recovery.

But I was wrong, wasn't I? As my sister pointed out, in my grief I had entirely forgotten the treat that was soon to follow: A new episode of Doctor Who by Grand Moff Steven himself, or as I affectionately refer to such an episode, a "Moffisode." There was of course the trepidation that everyone's aware of, the announcement of the new Moffat Era of Doctor Who and the fear that Moffat might drop the ball right now and the fandom would have egg on its face. But we should have known better. It's no mistake that the news was released just before this episode: It kept the fans and the media excited about Doctor Who in spite of a week-long hiatus and stiff ratings competition. And those who tuned in got a treat, because, as I gleefully exclaimed after seeing this episode, Moffat pulled a Lost. And while I could spend this review talking about how great this episode was, it would be a waste of your time and mine, so I'm going to spend the bulk of this review exactly what I mean and why that's a healthy thing.

Those who are familiar with Lost or don't care all that much can skip to the pull quote, which is a good bit and has Marvin in it. For those unfamiliar with Lost, the show deals with the survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious uncharted (but inhabited) Island, a place full of weird science experiments, unusual wildlife, and a monster made of black smoke. The show's first season was brilliant, telling the story of the survivors on the island and revealing their background through frequent flashbacks. In the second and third seasons, the show continued to explore interesting territory, but it lost its way and the flashback device became stale--Until the game was changed entirely in the finale of Season Three when the viewers were presented with a flashback that was quite puzzling, until it clicked into place: it wasn't a flashback at all, but a flash forward. Suddenly it was revealed that several characters (including the leader, Jack) had gotten off the island--and one of them ended up in a coffin. And Jack shouted to fellow survivor, "we have to go back!" From then on, the storytelling was a matter of showing how we progressed from Jack on the island, to Jack off the island, to Jack needing to get back to the island. The upcoming season promises a similar arc: We now know who's in the coffin, we just have to see how he died.

Life. Don't talk to me about Life.

Okay, so it's not exactly the same as where Doctor Who is at the moment. But there are similarities. Although it's wonderful to have Doctor Who back and all, it is already showing signs of staleness. I don't think that the program is failing, but I do think that if things continue as they have then it will begin to within the next three years. There is no more mileage to be gained from reviving classic series villains; if the rumors are true then we'll have sucked that well dry by the end of this year. The Daleks have been done to death. The "Last of the Time Lords" shtick is old hat. And how many more times can we watch the domestic issues involved when a London female travels with the Doctor before they begin to induce furious yawns? It was fresh in 2005. It was still fresh in 2007. It's getting a bit stale in 2008. Will it still be worth our time in 2010 or 2011?

It seems to me that Steven Moffat has changed the game entirely. It's true that "wibbly wobbly timey wimey" is nothing new. It's something he's been giving us since The Curse of Fatal Death. But this is on an entirely different scale. We're looking deep into the Doctor's future, if the fact that River Song calls the 903-year-old Doctor "young" is any indication. And River Song is no mere companion, judging from the way in which she seems to interact with the Doctor. She meets him at different points in his life and monitors his activities through a logbook. So the Doctor is being accounted for, and monitored by this woman?  If Moffat is truly giving us a hint of what's to come in the Moffat Era, then his new direction may just be the breath of fresh air that the franchise needs. And if anyone is going to throw of the linearity of the Doctor’s personal timeline, it’s Steven Moffat.

Or perhaps I'm just imagining it. Perhaps my brain was addled by the sudden surge of Lost fandom that was inspired by the finale. Or perhaps I was fooled by the use of Lost's famous "dramatic sound effect" cue in this episode (see just before the "I'm thick! Look at me, I'm old and thick! Head's too full of stuff, I need a bigger head!" moment). But even if I'm wrong, this was a hell of a good episode, so it's not a total loss, and it's renewed my confidence that the show is in good hands for next few years. Meanwhile, I simply cannot wait for the conclusion to this story

Vote Result: Silence in the Library

Here are the results for the eighth blog poll, for Silence in the Library:

• 95%: Superb - The Darkness
• 5%: Not Good - Cliff Richard and the Shadows

The ninth Doctor Who poll, for Forest of the Dead, will be online later tonight following the broadcast of the episode.

Britain's Got Tennant

Doctor Who: Silence In The Library

So ITV’s singing dogs and lapdancing grannies were all set to give the opposition a pasting on Saturday, but don’t worry – the Beeb’s continuity announcer had it covered: “New initiatives to bring down waiting times - and Charlie’s not happy, in Casualty” he promised tantalisingly, as if daring us to so much as think about touching that dial.

But before Holby General’s preternaturally reasonable head nurse could come along to apply his patented “scratching head while looking bemused” shtick (imagine Stan Laurel being told his entire family has just been wiped out in a freak bobsledding accident, and you’ll get the general idea) to the NHS apparatchiks’ latest Kafkaesque machinations, there were 45 minutes of Steven Moffat-penned Doctor Who to get through.  How ever would we stand the suspense?

JobCentre Plus! Under the sea!

It’s getting pretty boring to say Moffat is Who’s best writer, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Even without his reputation and groaning trophy shelf, though, this story would apparently still have been a shoo-in because, in the never knowingly under-effusive words of Russell the T himself: “Space! Library! How can that not be commissioned? It’s a must!” (Blimey - if I’d known that was all it took, I’d have sent in my own one-line pitch - “JobCentre Plus! Under the sea!” years ago.)

But I guess Rusty has a point: Libraries are kinda cool. And, as Moffat pointed out on this week’s Confidential, being a bit of bookish, nerdy sort does set the Doctor apart from the alpha male Bonds and Bourne’s of this world, and is thus officially considered by champions of public service broadcasting to be a good role model for The Kids.

Having said that, it’s difficult to see how turning libraries into terrifying temples of doom where, even if you manage to avoid an overdue fine, you're still in danger of having the flesh stripped from your bones, is exactly going to help the nation’s child literacy crisis. But then, as Who’s scarifier in chief, Moffat brings a wonderfully unrepentant zeal to his mission to leave no bed un-wet, delighting in poking about in the corners of our primal, atavistic fears, be they creepy statues, monsters under the bed or, erm, gas masks.

Giant pink brain! It's A Knockout! Mr Sheen!

This time, of course, he’s taken the plunge and gone straight for the biggie – chapter one, page one of the Big Book of Scary Things: darkness itself. "Almost every sentient species in the universe has an irrational fear of the dark,” says the Doctor, who has developed a habit of speaking in movie tag lines. “But they're all wrong. It's not irrational..." Oh, and just for luck, it turns out the dust in sunbeams could quite happily have your face off as well. Who's writing this - Mr Sheen?

In many ways, Moffat would have been an ideal writer for the budget-stretching “classic” series, sticking as he does to the edict that it’s the things unseen that inspire the most dread. After all, why pay The Mill a fortune to produce a giant pink brain, or go to the effort of stitching Peter Kay into a comedy It’s A Knockout suit, when all you have to do is position a few lamps to throw some spooky shadows around the place?

Mr! Whippy!

The absurdity of screening this journey into Who’s heart of darkness while the sun was melting ice creams on the pavements has been noted elsewhere in this forum, but this was still pretty scary stuff for 7pm – and no less so for the terrors being as much psychological as physical. After all, would seeing Miss Evangelista being eaten alive have been any more disturbing than being confronted with her disembodied, final thoughts? This wasn’t fear of death, this was the fears of the dead (from BEYOND THE GRAVE) – a pretty chilling concept, even if did have to compete with Mr Whippy nosily plying his trade outside.

And then, because nothing in a Moffat script is ever wasted, minutes later the newly-minted terror of “ghosting” came back at us in the most trouser-browning manner imaginable. From his multiplying shadows to his eerily uplit skull, Proper Dave’s slow surrender to the Vashta Nerada was truly horrifying – even if The Sun did dedicate a full page to its similarities to a 40-year-old Scooby Doo ’toon (and how surreal was that? They’ll be asking Lawrence Miles to write the TV Biz column soon).

Again, the most unnerving element was not what had been taken, but what was left behind: Dave’s casual insistence that “I’m fine, I’m okay, I’m fine…” and his confused, halting “I can’t, why can’t I…?” were positively haunting, like one of those car crash victims who walks from the wreckage without a scratch on them and then drops dead a few minutes later. (Did I mention that this stuff is for kids?) “Who turned out the lights?”, meanwhile, is clearly intended to join “Don’t blink” and “Are You My Mummy?” in Moffat’s ever-expanding playground glossary.

Oh, and if all that wasn’t enough darkness for you, Catherine Tate gave us what most rank as the most blood-curdling scream in the series’ history (yeah, beat that, Langford) before being forcibly turned into what appeared to be this season's must-have Apple accessory; the iGob, perhaps?

Harold Pinter! Fighting robots!

Some have been quick to criticise the talky nature of this episode, but that’s a bit like dismissing the works of Harold Pinter on the basis it doesn’t have any good fights between robots. It’s not a question of whether you’re talking, it’s what you’re saying, and you could hardly accuse dialogue like this of being time-filling verbiage. A few choice examples:

“The real world is a lie, and your nightmares are real.” “I’ve dated androids – they’re rubbish.” “If you understand me, look very, very scared.” “I never land on Sundays. Sundays are boring.” “She’s a footprint in the sand and the tide is coming in…” and, my personal favourite, “We go way back, that man and me. Just not this far back” (which has definite shades of last year’s killer “They send you back in time and let you live to death”). And I loved the Doctor hacking into a sophisticated piece of alien tech, only to be confronted with the question: “Would you like to speak to my dad?”

All this, and I haven’t even touched on Professor River Song (more on her next time, no doubt), the classy production design, Euros Lyn’s assured direction and Other Dave’s frankly magnificent hair.

But you get the idea: Simon Cowell may have won the day, but people will still be watching Silence In The Library (probably in “classic flat-o-vision” or some such) in a hundred years’ time, which is approximately 99 and a half years after anyone outside his immediate friends and family will give more than a passing thought to breakdancing “sensation” George Sampson.

Britain’s got talent? You bet your life it has.

Improper Dave

It's nice to see the media keeping us scared of, well, everything. As if our night terrors weren't bad enough there's always plenty in the real world to make life seem like an unending procession of perilous Indiana Jones set pieces. Thanks to 24 hour rolling news every single minor occurrence is played up into a cataclysmic event of apocalyptic proportions. Currently everything is made of knives: the car you drive, the panini you bought for lunch, that little old lady you've just passed - it was a knife in a cardigan and a hat. They'd have us believe that even the little pleasures in life, like stopping to tickle a neighbourhood tabby, usually end in a stabbing. Take an aerial shot of the British Isles at the moment and it'd look like a meat cleaver. Thanks to modern media, you're never more than 15 minutes away from fresh, unrelenting, primal terror.

Kids, of course, usually don't tune into things like News24. Their bedroom walls aren't often papered in copies of the Daily Mail. So, to prepare them for the adult world of unrelenting horror, it's down to Steven Moffat.

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

In the adult world there are any number of daily events, each of which are enough to trigger a lifetime in therapy (depending upon how messed up your outlook on life is to begin with). In even the most innocuous of situations, terror lurks. Take dinner parties, for example. Fumbling around in social darkness attempting to connect with someone who you a) don't know, b) quite possibly don't like and c) will never, ever see again can be a terrifying prospect. Much worse than a recurring nightmare where a roadside Bavarian dentist attempts to feed spam to a turtle.

I'm driving a 1.8 litre Vashta Nerada.

Few of us, if any have the bottle to say what we really mean in these situations and instead proceed to Peep Show a torrent of internal abuse whilst externally we come out with all time classics like "So, how do you know Jeff?" and "What line are you in?". The air becomes so thick with pointless inanity from the mundane end of the Universe. And then it's not long before weapons grade level small talk is mobilised and comes out with the classic "What are you driving these days?".

And I'd not be very surprised if the answer to that was, "I'm driving a 1.8 litre Vashta Nerada."

It does, doesn't it? It's a car. Not that I know a vast amount about them but it's the sort of thing I think I could see Jeremy Clarkson in speeding past any number of roadside Bavarian dentists. It's either a small and sporty number from an eastern European country that doesn't exist any more or a people carrier, the sort of vast pantechnicon that young mothers use to transport their single offspring the 20 yards down the road to the school gates (the car, that is, not Jeremy Clarkson). The size of vehicle that - every time the ignition key is turned - another 17 acres of rain forest sighs and withers. Takes longer to climb into and out again that it would take to walk to the school gates. But mummy thinks it's safer driving her little darling to school in her upholstered tank, despite the fact that it straddles pavements on opposite sides of the road and is actually classed as a combat-ready vehicle by the US Army. All the while Little Johnny clings on for dear life to a small area of the billowing expanse of tanned leather, trying desperately not fall into the crevasse at the base of the seat back.

A bleak Battlestar Galactica style reimagining of Minipops.

This, if nothing else, could be exploited as a new childhood terror. Just imaging if you made them scared of sitting on a vast back seat of a car because it might rear up and eat you whole. Using a device like this in Doctor Who, Moffat could probably finish off the country's obesity epidemic and make drastic inroads into stopping global warming in one fell swoop.

Cos at the rate he's going through them Moffat's going to have to start inventing brand new ways of terrifying children. And it's either that or a bleak Battlestar Galactica style reimagining of Minipops to set the next generation off on the right path.

And for the sake of the future of mankind, I know which one I'd go for...

Nobody in the Library

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

I didn’t know whether or not to feel sorry for Steven Moffat going into Silence in the Library. 

Three series of rightly lauded, enuresis-inducing stories had ramped his reputation up to Bob Holmes levels.  When even critics of the stature of Charlie Brooker are praising Blink as “simultaneously the best piece of sci-fi AND horror the BBC has produced in a decade”, you start to worry if he can live up to the hype. 

And then came the big announcement.

So suddenly Silence in the Library takes on new, unprecedented levels of importance.  This is his template, the chattering classes murmur.  This is what we can expect from his forthcoming tenure as producer.  This is what Doctor Who will be for years to come.

Throwaway lines come under greater scrutiny than BBC taxi receipts

Whether it is, or it isn’t, is academic.  We won’t really know what Steven Moffat’s vision of Doctor Who will ultimately turn out to be like for another couple of years yet, and we’ve a quarter of a season plus all next year’s specials to get through before then.  So let’s not put Silence in the Library under any more of a microscope than normal.

But, that said... the thing is with Moffat’s scripts that their reputation proceeds them now.  Throwaway lines come under greater scrutiny than BBC taxi receipts.  You can’t help but see things in the shadows, as it were, where there may not be anything. 

That said, I can’t help but think that having a main character called Mr Lux, who’s family founded a library currently plagued by darkness, is just asking for trouble.  It puts me in mind of the old gag about Charles Dickens’ Cluedo.  “I think it was Professor Plum in the Library with the lead pipe, in the library, with the lead pipe.”

Anyway, lame gags aside, I loved this.  This is what Doctor Who does best.  Creepy, quirky, funny, charming and occasionally downright terrifying.   

It turns out the Holmes comparison was on the money after all, because Moffat’s approach to Who has been very much like his predecessor - take horror/sci-fi clichés, give them a slightly quirky twist, ramp up the fear factor as much as is acceptable in a family viewing slot, then let them loose.  We’ve had healers that take things too literally - to the point of death, monsters living under the bed, statues that hunt and kill, and now something deadly living in the dark.

Oh, and space piranhas.  Which makes it all the more incredible that he can get away with this.

But from this borderline genius/ludicrous premise came one of the most chilling, charming and downright Doctor Who-ish scripts the new series ever produced.

There’s something with Tennant where he clicks with 40-something redheads - sorry Kylie

And even better, the two leads were genuinely brilliant in this.  And by two leads, I mean David Tennant and Alex Kingston.  We don’t yet know what the significance of River Song’s relationship with the Doctor is, but what we do know is that Kingston and Tennant have a fantastic on-screen chemistry with each other.  Obviously there’s something with Tennant where he clicks with 40-something redheads.

Sorry Kylie.

In fact, this was Tennant’s best turn as the Doctor, for me.  A hugely restrained yet energetic performance that was Doctorish without being a cliché.  Much as with the Sontaran two-parter, this seemed a distillation of the best bits of the Doctor, where the clowning around is a cover for unease, menace and hidden danger as in the best moments of Troughton and Baker T.

And let’s not forget Catherine Tate.  By and large sidelined in this action-wise, she got the proper emotive stuff to do and carried it off with aplomb.  The sense of gutwrenching horror and disgust as Donna tries to reassure the dead PA’s dataghost, underplayed perfectly, was as powerful a moment as anything in the show’s current run.  She’s still rubbish at screaming, but otherwise Tate’s ticking all the boxes as a proper, classic companion, and who’d ever have thought that a year ago?

The guest cast were all superb too, if slightly undeserved so far - although, distractingly, Other Dave looks disturbingly like Carlito from the WWE.  And that’s not cool.

And visually, it was gorgeous.  Absolutely gorgeous.  All the stuff in the library, thanks to the location shoot... just sumptuous.  With the best will in the world to set designers and construction teams, there’s no substitute - especially on Doctor Who’s budget - for a real life location that looks just so perfect as the Library did.  Meanwhile the CG shots of the planet were breathtaking.  The one thing, more than anything else, the Mill have got right since the start of the new series is being able to create wonderful rip-offs of Coruscant.

Meanwhile the side-plot stuff, with Doctor Moon and the little girl, seemingly in a normal little suburban world (although wonderfully, a normal little suburban world with a Robbie the Robot on the telephone table) is as intriguing as it is baffling.  Moffat and the directors have left just enough clues to make you think you know what’s going on, without actually being sure.

I was wracking my brains, writing this, trying to think of criticisms of the episode.  And eventually I had to stop.  Not because I couldn’t think of any - there’s loads.  The dialogue’s occasionally too knowing.  Donna’s too sidelined.  The archaeologist team just too clichéd.  The folders on the book shelves just too obviously folders.  That sodding psychic paper again.  Slightly dodgy compositing on the Nodes’ face.  There’s dozens of niggles when you stop and analyse it too much

No, the reason I stopped trying to think of criticism is that it felt like I was looking for criticism.  It felt like I was trying to balance out the love that this episode left me feeling, to be a cynical snarky fanboy.  Which I am, don’t get me wrong. 

But much as I knew I should have loved The Wasp and the Unicorn, but couldn’t, there were things here that should have stopped me loving Silence in the Library but didn’t.

Of course, this Saturday that's subject to change.  The last two parter started brightly, with an almost retro feeling of quality, then in episode two went off a cliff and never stopped falling.  But until then, the future’s bright...

Library Fine

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

Let's get one thing out the way - Silence in the Library suffers from a fatal - and wholly avoidable - flaw: its time slot.

I'm not talking about it having the temerity to take on Britain's Got Talent (Gin was robbed), I'm talking about the BBC's determination to transmit this show in the spring and summer months. It's gone beyond stupid now.

The entire episode was an exercise in making the kids (and maybe even some of the adults) terrified of the dark. Great. Except as soon as the programme ends the kids will be out playing Frisbee in the garden or torturing sticklebacks down the park. When I was a wee lad and I'd been subjected to some Hinchcliffe I begged my parents to let me sleep with the light on. These days the kids can just leave their curtains open a bit. It's rubbish. You may as well try to make kids feel uneasy about the thought of snow in the middle of July.

The five million viewers who watched this go out on Saturday at 7pm must be clinically insane. Either that or they've blacked out their windows as if they're preparing for a Blitz. I've tried watching this stuff go out live and I spend most of my time squinting at my TV set, even with my extra thick curtains that I bought especially to combat the increasingly insane scheduling of Doctor Who. And nothing - nothing - makes tension evaporate quicker than the sound of someone mowing their lawn outside your window. Sorry, but it's a fact.

If Moffat doesn't fix this when he takes over the reins he should at least make an effort to incorporate scary, yet summery objects into the scripts. Maybe he could make a monster made of pollen, evil ice cream, man eating deckchairs, or perhaps he can make kids wet themselves at the mere suggestion of people mowing their lawns outside. That might just work.

nothing makes tension evaporate quicker than the sound of someone mowing their lawn outside...

Aside from that - and when watched in the middle of the night - Silence in the Library is the best episode of this season by a very wide margin. Quelle surprise. It's crammed full of interesting and unsettling ideas, it posits several bizarre and completely unfathomable mysteries, it features an unstoppable alien force that can not be merchandised, a base under siege, witticisms by the bucket load, and some good, old-fashioned scares. A skeleton is a spacesuit, fer christsake! If you thought that was scary in 1983 then 25 years later it's practically orgasmic.

Most interesting of all was Moffat's subversion of a subversion. When I first saw the airhead PA (sorry, can't even remember her name) I was certain that she would survive to the very end. I have been trained to expect that she'll win through and save the day because she starts off being so thick and harmless and put-upon. The original subversion of the cliche has become a cliche itself. The fact that she's so unbelievably thick and pouty that she wanders off into a dark passage as if she's in a dainty version of a stalk-n-slash film was not only very retro but also remarkably surprising. Next thing you know Steve Pemberton will turn out to be the baddie.

The PA's sudden death also allows Moffat to introduce one of his most chilling inventions yet: the data-ghost. I thought this scene was superb - not because I was moved by it (what was her name again?), but because I was morbidly fascinated by it. It's just a brilliant idea: the last embers of consciousness trapped in the technology (probably sold as a feature rather than a bug) and instead of making any profound final statements the poor bastards are so confused they just babble on in a faintly embarrassing and banal way about sod all. How horrific is that? Even Proper Dave - who seems quite bright - can't work out that he's been eaten by the Vashta Nerada even know he's seen it happen ten minutes earlier to somebody else.

It helps that Moffat's been given a two-parter as the plot is given some much needed room to breathe, and while some goldfish in the audience might feel that people standing around in a room talking is inherently boring (even when they're talking about escaping from certain death), I prefer to think of it as character building and a masterclass in escalating tension. And the mysteries are pretty damn fascinating too; if the so-called surprise that the Doctor is knocking around with a future companion is so screamingly obvious that you can't believe the Doctor hasn't caught on yet, at least you entertain yourself by attempting to get your head around the role of the Girl and Dr. Moon. I have absolutely no idea how this will pan out and I can't wait to find out.

an unstoppable alien force that can not be merchandised...

But I can't let Moffat off the hook completely. Not when he's become obsessed with pointless bloody catchphrases. What's better: "Who turned out the lights?" or "Donna Noble has left the library, Donna Noble has been saved"? There's only one way to find out - FIGHT!!!!!

And that's exactly what we get. A fight between two equally annoying catchphrases - which is about as much fun as it sounds. And sadly, once again, the show proves that it has lost its ability to do a proper cliffhanger (Utopia being the exception that proves the rule). There's a obvious place to give us the money shot if you ask me - as soon as Donna is revealed as a data node and she says her eerie line we cut to the Doctor looking well stressed and then - BOOM! - into the credits. But no, we get another 2 minutes of the same repetitious catchphrases layering over each other as we are reminded, from a variety of different angles, that OUR HEROES ARE IN TROUBLE. OK, we get it!

Doesn't mean I won't be tuning in next week though. At about 1am, thanks.

Cooking The Books

Doctor Who: Silence In The Library

'C'mon, give me the remote. There's a dancing dog on the other side and it's got to be better than this shit set in a library.' One would be forgiven to think that this might well be the reaction in quite a number of households up and down the land tonight during the transmission of Silence In The Library. It's a terribly brave thing to face off against Cowell's vacuous freak show any night of the week but trust Doctor Who to decide to be at its most atypical when most people aren't looking.

Moffat gets out his clipboard and once again runs through his checklist. Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff - check, recognisable everyday fear or phobia - check, catchphrases - check, fan-baiting - check, and technology running amok - and, check. You could almost accuse him of being a one trick pony...well, a five trick pony to be specific...but he does this stuff so well that you tend to allow him some room to manoeuvre. Such is the case here. For the first ten minutes you simply have the Doctor and Donna wandering around a deserted library, slowly teasing out the narrative. It looks spectacular, atmospheric and odd but moves at a snail's pace. Once the expedition arrives, things do perk up a bit but again there are quite a number of scenes where all the characters are simply standing in the middle of the library...erm...chatting, arguing, debating with each other. All adequately performed, complete with superb production values and a slowly building tension. Slowly. And then the narrative is stopped stone cold dead for a long sequence in which the rest of the characters watch the death throes of Miss Evangelista. It's just not on. Those other writers and directors fairly rattle through 45 minutes with lots of short scenes punctuated by explosions, with cameras often doing a St. Vitus dance and the Murray Gold dial turned up to maximum plus. Not this week. Not by a long chalk. They'll be switching over in droves to Britain's Got Bugger All Talent when in fact all the real talent is busting its balls on Doctor Who.

And if you didn't turn over? You can count on Moffat to riff on a number of proper science fiction ideas, everything from Jorges Luis Borges story The Library Of Babel, where a vast library contains all of the secrets of the universe, to Vonda McIntyre's Starfarers which takes the internet beyond computer access to symbiosis with the human brain where data storage and human memory allow experiences to be recorded and reshaped as a form of living art.  I suspect Moffat's thesis here is to argue that the human brain is like a library or a computer memory where information is organised into some accessible form. The first library was the human brain and still is the source of information we rely on the most, but it's got a fair amount of flaws: variable capacity, potential memory loss or alteration, and access issues. Mix into that ideas about books telling the stories of lives lived, hence the Doctor's comment on biographies being his favourite, and the idea that the Doctor's future is written down in a book that he isn't allowed to see. Everyone can be turned into information that can be 'saved' but data can be corrupted and infected so that consciousness and reality can often become nightmares, as Dr. Moon so eloquently, and frighteningly, explains to the girl. Technology gone awry is something of a motif in Moffat's scripts and the ideas expressed so far, including data ghosts and nodes with living/dead faces, seem to chime with the misdirected nanogenes of The Empty Child and the self-repair droids of The Girl In The Fireplace.

Moffat makes no concessions and sets out to tell his story in such an idiosyncratic way that it sometimes bashes up against the televisuality that Euros Lyn lavishly applies to it.

There are problems with the pacing early on, despite Euros Lyn's lyrical direction, and the slowness, whilst building the story in a magical, atmospheric way, as the Doctor and Donna enter the labyrinth of the library, is perhaps taking too far the episode's determination to entirely misdirect its audience. The pre-titles sequence of the girl and Dr. Moon is intriguing and later cleverly loops back into the main narrative after the Doctor's initial arrival in the library and the episode keeps switching back to these scenes, suggesting that the bits in the library are happening in the girl's head. This meshing between the human brain and technology is further compounded when the Doctor establishes a link through a security camera and, later, the television set, to talk to her. Moffat makes no concessions and sets out to tell his story in such an idiosyncratic way that it sometimes bashes up against the televisuality that Euros Lyn lavishly applies to it. For most of the episode they are working hand in hand but just occasionally there are too many static scenes and no amount of visual flair can force life into them. The core of the episode is most certainly the death of Miss Evangelista. It is rather heavily signposted that she's the air head who will get bumped off and then make everyone feel guilty for them being so rotten to her but it is an astonishingly powerful scene, brilliantly played and again highlighting Catherine Tate's acting chops. It's heartbreaking as Donna tries desperately to deal with the "Data Ghosting", where a copy of Evangelista's conscience cries out temporarily from the suit's communication device. Tate does get slightly sidelined in the rest of the episode simply because Alex Kingston arrives as River Song and blousily charms her way through the episode, particularly evident in her lively chemistry with Tennant. And watch that great scene between her and Tate when Donna asks about her future because it's a masterclass in the 'less is more' school of television acting.

I'm not sure if the resulting zombie skeleton in the space suit does work, coming across as a bit of pulp 'Monster Of The Week' nonsense

The other risk here is in trying to make shadows that eat flesh translate into the truly scary concept, for a child, of not being able to sleep with the lights off. It only gets a genuine pay-off when Proper Dave gets gobbled by the microscopic Vashta Nerada and the Doctor spots his double shadow on the floor. Again, it's a scene with a genuine frisson to it that just about manages to get the concept over well enough. It isn't quite as potent as Weeping Angels and kids wearing gas masks but it works. I'm not sure if the resulting zombie skeleton in the space suit does work, coming across as a bit of pulp 'Monster Of The Week' nonsense amidst the dream-like, surreal and esoteric quality of much of the episode. The triple whammy of the cliffhanger not only develops out of the lurking skeleton and the closing shadows but also from the far more chilling fate that befalls Donna. She's teleported to the TARDIS but it goes horribly wrong and her blood curdling scream as she 'dies' is one more powerful moment to savour. Lyn does rather over-egg the pudding though and dwells for far too long on the Node, now with Donna's face, constantly intoning one of the episode's many catch-phrases, " Donna Noble has left the library; Donna Noble has been saved". Frankly, it got a bit annoying.

It's also Murray Gold's best score in ages and he goes for a very appropriately subtle palette of sounds here, including a rhythmic piece that echoes some of the tonalities of Martin Slavin's 'Space Adventure' stock music from The Tenth Planet. And did my ears deceive me but did some of the crescendos sound very similar to those by Michael Giacchino in his scores for Lost?  He balances the music in much the same way that Euros Lyn manages to provide more than enough space to air Moffat's weirder ideas and concepts.

Overall then, it isn't as immediately striking or likeable as Blink or The Girl In The Fireplace and it's the sum of the glorious parts that just about make it work. It is too slow to begin with and some of the expedition crew are slightly lazy caricatures that flatten out the drama when it cries out to be allowed to hitch up its skirts and get running but then it seems a bit churlish when this is so leftfield compared to the majority of the episodes this season by virtue of the ideas Moffat is toying with. Difficult to grasp how all this fits together just by the first part alone, which is another thing in its favour, and I eagerly await the conclusion and hopefully Moffat's cleverness at arranging the layers of the narrative to provide a satisfying pay-off.

Reading Between the Lines...

The Doctor Who News Page reports that unofficial overnight figures show that Silence in the Library got 5.4 million viewers (a 25.4% share) and lost its timeslot thanks to a celestial alignment of the weather and the final of Opportunity's Knockers (which was watched by 11 million beached sea cows).

Darkness Falls

Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

Blimey.  Last week’s strategic announcement that the writer of this episode Stephen Moffat would be taking over the stewardship of the franchise was perfectly timed to keep the series in the public mindscape during the Eurovision stink and add to our expectations for his next story.  All eyes would be on this opening episode, perhaps with some viewers not wanting to watch the dancers, acrobats and jugglers on the other side tuning in to see how good a writer this new producer is.  It’s a disappointment to report then that at just the moment when the franchise had to produce one of its best stories ever we were presented with Moffat’s worst script, a cloggy, poorly written disappointing dirge that all seemed to take place in the same room, lacked mystery or excitement and frankly if any of his writing for the fifth series is this bad then there’s unlikely to be a sixth.

David Tennant in particular was at his most expressively annoying, Catherine Tate undid all of the depth she’s brought to her character in the past seven weeks, Alex Kingston brought in a career worst performance, Steve Pemberton reran all of his old League of Gentleman ticks, Euros Lynn showed that he'd lost his touch and couldn’t direct traffic let alone television these days, the crashy  version of Murray Gold returned and just layered sound all over the visuals in a desperate attempt to have them make sense and The Mill brought some unintelligable excesses proving the point made before the revival was a glimmer which said it’s logic would be ruined by special effects.

It's a Doctor Who episode set in a library.  Yawn.

Yes, this episode was rubbish and I’m not sure what else I can say.  Except that it clearly wasn’t.  Everything written in the first two paragraphs is a lie and I just wanted to see what I felt like to write a thrashing review of a Steven Moffat episode because the man’s a genius who can’t do wrong (expect fake pull quotes).  From the opening teaser in which we were introduced to a mysterious girl in a bedroom rather than the formulaic Tardis dematerialisation onwards it simply feels like a different series, like Douglas Adams pitching up and writing an episode for Season 24 with Bob Holmes as his script editor, a wholly new, expressive way of presenting the status quo.  At heart, the Silence in the Library was a fairly classic base under siege story but trust Moffat to set it within a library the size of a planet, literally with a kind of hush all over the world (with thanks to Karen and Richard). 

In a perfect bit of timing, the script was also doing many of the things which are anathema in Davies written and rewritten version of the franchise, perhaps reflecting the future.  The one character who’d clearly survive a Russell T Davies script, the cute, cuddly, likeably dim one with the low self esteem is killed first and then (like Astrid) when she lingers on its to a certain death not to live on as stardust (sigh).  Presumably because in this episode, the stardust will kill you.  The aliens of the piece are mute, and live in many shadows which means that no one is safe (although expect them to be living in the cracks in the pavement in the next series), especially those of us on Earth since they’re living here too.   I've already seen criticism of the Doctor immediately knowing and telling us who the enemy is, but Daleks In Manhattan demonstrates what an first episode looks like with the timelord spending most of the duration discovering who the enemy is and its not fun.  Moffat wants us to be scared of the shadows as soon as possible and he wouldn't get that if the Doctor was spending most of his time testing everything.

It just wasn't funny.  Where was the Moffat of the screwdriver envy, the horse, Nightingale and Sparrow?

On top of that to runs a parallel, dayglo story about a little girl, which though echoing The Matrix, the Buffy episode Normal Again, the odd episode of Star Trek, and probably a bunch of stuff I'm too tired to remember it feels fresh because it just doesn’t fit with anything else and is so unexpected.  The Girl (who like Marwood in Withnail and I lacks for a name unless like Marwood in Withnail and I it’s in the script and/or will be revealed next week) and the Morbeus-a-like Dr Moon and the reality they are living is just one of the mysteries set to explode next week (or whatever). 

Doctor Who Confidential rather stole my thunder on this, but Moffat understands more than most that in information rich, media intensive, Prozac scoffing times, a ‘How do they get out of that?’ type cliffhanger simply isn’t enough to hook the audience in to watch the following week because we know he will.  There have to be greater mysteries at hand and here the writer includes a raft full.  How did those travellers land in the library and what does the symbolically surnamed Strackman Lux want with the place?  And just who is Professor River Song, a question which is bound to fill up the discussion on a fair few blogs and discussion boards in the next week until some ming-mong who knows more than we do gives it away and spoils it.

We’ll probably find out next week just how good Alex Kingston’s performance is but so far I’d say it’s one of the best of the series simply because in this dvd/iplayer/illegal download world when such stories will be watched in one block in this first half she simply couldn’t give too much away, but just enough that in the next episode everything matches up.  Hopefully.  To offer some random speculation, she’s either (just) a companion from the Doctor’s future, Bernice Summerfield made flesh and giving a false name for some reason, adult Jenny or my favourite, since some timelords apparently survived the suck, would be Romana or the Rani or another timelady with a name beginning with R.  As I said in the previous paragraph, we didn’t see how she arrived at the planet (there was talk of a ship but that could mean anything) so she could have her own Tardis too.  Much of her text was redolent of Lalla’s Romana but if Moffat’s being devilish it could simply be that Rani’s either turned over a new leaf or pretending to.  The diary (or merchandising opportunity) could just as well be his as hers for all he and we know.

Catherine Tate's back to not being bovvered.  Fail.

Until one or two of them became stiffs, none of rest of the cast were, well, stiffs either.  To an extent, Moffat underwrites these characters and only provides enough information about them for us to have an idea of what they’re like.  He understands that with a limited screen time there’s probably little point in building up the part of someone whose going to die horribly and quickly.  When I was in call centres there were always multiple Daves and they would be called things like old Dave, new Dave, blonde Dave or probably Dave Dave (because he was the Daviest) – that’s a very real bit of scripting and the explanation was played with sitcom brilliance by O.T. Fagbenle channelling someone from The Office or The IT Crowd, but none of them stunk the place up and like the Briggsian ensemble which turned up on The Impossible Planet and 42 seemed like a group which had been travelling together for some time rather than having just met at the read-through.

I appreciate that with the exception of the shocking opening couple of paragraphs this has been a rather bland set of plaudits masquerading as a review but I do tend to get very wigged out when Moffat’s episode’s scroll around.  I didn’t even bother to write about The Empty Child, The Girl In The Fireplace merited but two paragraphs, and my reaction to Blink was deliberately more of a personal journey than anything else.  So if I note that David was flawless, Cathy was clever, Euros took full advantage of the massive interiors at his disposal and The Mill produced some of the best landscape special effects yet seen in the series it’s simply because I wish the show was this straight down the line entertaining and clever and everything I’d want to be, all of the time.  When the only thing you can find to criticise is that the location used is going to be demolished or turned into flats and we need to start a campaign to save it and have it turned back into a library if only so that there’s somewhere for tourists to go, it means my critical faculties have failed.  Now back to thrashing mode for people who only read the first two paragraphs, the pull quotes and the final paragraph.  That'll learn them.

This was so bad it made The Long Game look like the work of Dennis Potter.

What now then for the future of Doctor Who.  For all we know, next week’s episode might be a work of genius and Moffat might have saved all of his imagination for his second script.  But I’ve the desperate feeling that the cliffhanger’s going to be resolved in seconds and once again we’ll have to sit through another forty-five minutes of boredom, distracted only now and then by the colour of the décor in the alternate reality which looks like it was saved from the skip of an old Big Brother house.  Moffat needs to get away from employing so many clichés and return to the good honest scares of gas masks and statues and the depthful characterisation of a Sally Sparrow.  Otherwise 2009 is going to be a very long wait to see how quickly the show is decommissioned and he'll be asked to return his Hugos and Baftas.

Next Week:  More of the same presumably.