Doctor Who 4x09 "Forest of the Dead"

[kerravonsen]

So we get part 2 of the Library... Hmmm, lots of stuff. (smiles)

Okay, hooray for Moffatt, everyone lives.

I was right, I was right! River Song did die (sort of), and so the Doctor is going to go back to actually get to know her.
So, she knows his name, and "there's only one way I'd have told you my name"... ah, more mystery. I suspect that some people will take that as "they got married". Especially with the "sweetheart" thing that she greeted him with when they first met.
So she did travel with the Doctor, after all. I thought she hadn't. But it still seems like she went with him on trips and then home again.
I liked her analogy of looking at photographs. I've always felt that... you have this image of someone in your head, an image of them "now". And if you see a photograph of them much younger, even if you did know them then, you get a dissonance, because suddenly, even though, when you knew them then, they didn't look young, suddenly that same image looks so young. So she had a different image in her mind, her "now" Doctor, and seeing him younger, it wasn't him, even though it was him.
I'm liking her a bit better now, because yeah, she knocked out the Doctor and sacrificed her life for him. And that's enough to make her Special, without me resenting it.

I was right also in that, yes, it was VR, and yes the Little Girl was the computer. I was wondering at one point whether Doctor Moon was sort of a villain, but it/he was just trying to do his best with this difficult situation.
I liked it that the Corporate Guy was actually not an asshole, and that the whole Library had actually been built out of love, not pride.

"I have what I need to see the perfect truth: a high IQ and being unloved." I know that isn't the exact line, but it's such a good one. Sharp.

It's ironic that everything the Doctor did to try to get the computer to cooperate, just made things worse. And yes, that's probably due to the fact that Corporate Guy didn't tell him that the computer was a person, not just a computer. Because if the Doctor had known that, he would probably have tried to talk to her, not just make loud noises to "wake up" the computer... Ah, the surreality of the whole "controlling everything with a remote control" thing, I liked that. And it was fun seeing the Little Girl's reactions to what was showing on her telly. Very meta, I suppose.

I think the twist of "the Vashta-Nerada live in forests, this isn't a forest" didn't quite come as a twist, because the Doctor hadn't actually mentioned that they lived in forests until that bit. But as soon as he mentioned it, I thought, "wake up Doctor, books are made of trees!" Well, he did twig to it a minute later. And he didn't have the advantage of knowing the title of the episode. (grin)
I like the title, because "Forest of the Dead" has a double meaning, as well as being spooky and evocative.

"I'm the Doctor. This is the biggest library in the universe: look me up."
And they do!
Mind you, he didn't actually defeat them. They're still there, swarming away, with nothing to eat. Will they die of starvation? Will the Library be forever quarantined? Would it be possible to sterilize the Library?

Aw, Donna, and her stuttering man. This actually gives a bit of hope that she's not actually going to die at the end of the season; maybe she finds her man and gets married. But I still think she's probably going to die.

Snapping the fingers and opening the TARDIS door. The fact that it worked straight away, makes me think that (a) it never worked before because it had never occurred to him to try, and (b) it probably worked because his TARDIS knows him so well, is a bit more self-aware than one usually thinks of.
But it's a bit melodramatic and corny, though. Oh well.

I assume that the three children in the beds that River Song told the bedtime stories to were:
1. CAL herself
2. the template boy
3. the template girl

Now to see what others have said...

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I still think it's a bit weird to put a child in a library that contains all literature. Maybe she only had access to part of it, or she'd be a much more unbalanced little girl.

I think Donna's going to die too, and I don't want her to. OTOH they may be setting us up for that so they can do something quite different.

I think the TARDIS got the intent of the finger snap and reacted to that; it's definitely telepathic, and also telepathic through time because it always knows where it and the Doctor are needed.

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

I still think it's a bit weird to put a child in a library that contains all literature.
Yeah, that would be like letting her loose on the internet...

Love your Donna icon!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I like that one of them both too.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I still think it's a bit weird to put a child in a library that contains all literature. Maybe she only had access to part of it, or she'd be a much more unbalanced little girl.

I disagree with this, actually. In my experience, kids can be remarkably good at choosing books they're ready for and abandoning ones they're not as confusing or dull or "icky." At least, as long as nobody -- whether a taunting kid or a well-meaning adult -- is standing there implying that they're still too much of a baby to handle it. The only books I read all the way through as a kid that I really shouldn't have I finished because my mother told me not to read them, and by that point I was reading a lot of books aimed at adults. Anyway, kids are capable of handling a lot more than adults like to give them credit for, IMHO. I don't see that having full library access is necessarily going to result in anybody becoming "unbalanced."

But maybe I'm over-projecting here. I'm imagining being that kid, having a near-infinite lifetime of access to the universe's biggest library and being told I couldn't go into parts of it and the thought makes Inner Kid Me as fire-spittingly indignant as I was that time my mother threatened to punish me for something by taking away my library card. :)

Ahem.

Anyway, on a completely different subject, I agree with both of you, and with everybody else who's suggested it, that the snapping thing works thanks to the TARDIS' telepathic semi-sentience. It would be an unbearably cheesy moment, really, if I couldn't interpret it that way and thus get a nice Doctor/TARDIS OTP! kind of glow from it. (Of course, I feel the same about the climax of "Parting of the Ways." :))

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I started reading adult books at 10 or so, and I know some of them were too much to cope with: the Holocaust, graphic violence, puzzling sex scenes. My mother used to find me sobbing and demand why I read books that were too old for me (though she never stopped me). I still remember some of those Holocaust books though the other have faded (except for me asking her what a whore was, pronouncing it 'war').

But then you don't find tragedy and misery hard to deal with like I do. Perhaps CAL found it as easy as I did skipping sex scenes, and she seemed happiest in a child's environment.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I suppose it probably does depend a lot on the individual kid... And I'm sure I would have been upset by books about things like the Holocaust which went into any strong detail, but I don't honestly recall reading any. I think I instinctively avoided books about horrifying real-life violence. Come to think of it, most of the things I remember being really traumatized by hearing about as a kid came from the classroom, not from anything I read on my own. Which isn't to say that I never read anything that disturbed me, but most of the time I think they did so in ways that were ultimately good for me and helped me be more balanced, rather than less.

(except for me asking her what a whore was, pronouncing it 'war').

I remember once looking up from a book and asking my mother what a "dance hall girl" was. I got a very strange look and a "What kind of book are you reading?" :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

:-D My mother said, "You know what a war is."
"But it's spelled W H O R E."
"In that case it's a sort of woman I'm not sure I want you reading about. What are you reading?"
"James Bond."
"Oh, all right then." And she went back to cooking soup on the stove.

You know, I could draw that memory, the kitchen, what she was doing, the lot. It was even a sunny day though I couldn't give you the time of day or year, but it must have been a weekend or school holiday.

I suppose if CAL could read as we do, and not create virtual realities of each book, it wouldn't be so bad; she'd stay with what she liked., But if each time someone in the library accessed a book, she had to read it too, that wouldn't be pleasant. Perhaps she could keep herself quite separate in her house and just relegate that to a TV program she wasn't watching.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall my mother refusing to let me watch James Bond. I never did pick up any of the books, though.

But if each time someone in the library accessed a book, she had to read it too, that wouldn't be pleasant.

Well, no, that would suck, but I don't see any reason whatsoever to assume that would be the case.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I think the twist of "the Vashta-Nerada live in forests, this isn't a forest" didn't quite come as a twist, because the Doctor hadn't actually mentioned that they lived in forests until that bit.

I thought that it had been mentioned in passing somwhere in the firsdt part of the story, but I could be wrong.

[kerravonsen]

I, also, could be wrong... 8-)