Forest of the Dead (TV story)

	[[doctor::Tenth Doctor]]
	Donna Noble
	Vashta Nerada
	51st century, The Library
	51st century, The Library
	Steven Moffat
	Euros Lyn
	4
	7th June 2008
	4.9

SpoilersRiver Song

Plot

River Song uses her gun to blast a hole in the wall, enabling her, The Doctor and the others to escape the shadow-possessed Proper Dave.

Donna wakes up in an ambulance with no memories of her past life. She is treated in a facility by Doctor Moon and life quickly flies by. Before she knows it, she is married to her ideal man Lee, who has a stammer, and has two kids of her own. She is then approached by a hooded figure in a playground, who turns out to be Miss Evangelista. She warns Donna that the world is not real. Donna soon observes that all the children in the playground have the same face.

The Doctor squabbles with River Song, but is soon stunned when he learns that he tells her his true name at some stage in his future. The Time Lord tries to reason with the Vashta Nerada and finds out they came as microspores in millions and millions of books and then hatched.

The Doctor figures out that the library computer's hard drive - CAL - is the key to bringing Donna back, for it has literally saved her to its hard drive. The team travels to the core of the planet to locate the computer. It transpires that the little girl is in fact the hard drive, and was originally a relative of Strackman Lux.

River Song knocks The Doctor out to prevent him stopping her sacrificing herself to bring back Donna and the others. In order to restore those who have been saved, she has to provide memory to Cal, which burns out her mind. She dies, as the Doctor looks on, handcuffed to a wall.

Donna and the other saved people return, but she cannot find Lee and thinks that perhaps he didn't exist after all. Lee sees her but his stammer prevents him from calling out to her before he is teleported away.

The Doctor remembers in the nick of time that her consciousness might be saved in her suit thanks to the data ghosts. River Song comes back to life in the fantasy world of the hard drive, meeting Miss Evangelista and the rest of her team again.

Cast

• The Doctor - David Tennant
• Donna Noble - Catherine Tate
• River Song - Alex Kingston
• Doctor Moon - Colin Salmon
• Lux - Steve Pemberton
• Proper Dave - Harry Peacock
• Other Dave - O.T Fagbenle
• Charlotte Lux - Eve Newton
• Anita - Jessika Williams
• Miss Evangelista - Talulah Riley
• Lee McAvey - Jason Pitt
• Dad - Mark Dexter
• Ella McAvey - Eloise Rakic-Platt
• Joshua McAvey - Alex Midwood

References

• The Doctor says "Who are you?" to River Song, ironic because he is always the one being asked that.
• River Song whispers the Doctor's name in his ear to convince him to trust her.
• At the end of Planet of the Ood, Ood Sigma says that the "Doctor's song" may soon end.
• At the end of this episode, the Doctor shouts that "Everybody lives!". This is very similar to what he says at the end of another of Steven Moffat's episodes, The Doctor Dances ("Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once — everybody lives!"

Story notes

• The working title for this story was: River's Run

Ratings

To be added

Myths

Following the broadcast of Silence in the Library there was much discussion in the Doctor Who fan community over the identity of River Song, with speculation that she might be a future incarnation of Romana or an alias of Bernice Summerfield being two of the ideas put forth. The episode, ultimately, leaves her origin ambiguous.

Filming locations

To be added

Continuity

• The Doctor says that the auto destruct in The Library could 'crack the planet open like an egg' the Seventh Doctor said the same about what the Imperial Dalek mothership's weapons could do to the Earth (Remembrance of the Daleks).
• River Song says the Doctor has taken her to the "end of the universe", suggesting the Doctor at some point returns to the general time period seen in Utopia which is also described as being at the end of the universe.
• In both this episode and the one preceding, River Song indicates that "her Doctor" is a future version of the Tenth Doctor. It remains to be seen how this will reconcile with later adventures of the Tenth Doctor up to and including his eventual death and regeneration.
• The Doctor learns the fate of River Song, and retains this memory through to their "first" meeting in the future. The future Doctor will adjust his sonic screwdriver in order to preserve Song's consciousness so his younger self will be able to preserve her within Cal.
• The question of the Doctor's real name dates back to the earliest days of the series, though in more recent episodes (i.e. The Girl in the Fireplace, The Shakespeare Code, The Fires of Pompeii, etc.) the fact his name is a mystery has been amplified. When River reveals that she knows his true name, this marks the first time anyone in the series has shown this knowledge, although it's possible that Susan, being his granddaughter and Romana and The Master, being fellow Time Lords may have been aware of it.
• In River Song's voice over, she mentions the "skies of all the world may just turn dark" in another mention of the new series' recurring reminder about darkness.

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

• A causality loop is created as the Doctor retains the enhanced screwdriver at the end of this episode, which River leaves for him, which the Doctor gives to her, etc. It is possible that the Doctor improves his present-day screwdriver to meet the same specifications and gives that one to her while retaining this version, but a causality loop would occur in this case as well.
• It is never explained how the Doctor got out of the handcuffs as it was shown that he couldn't reach the sonic screwdriver and there is no evidence that anyone freed him. There were 4,022 people in the Library. There is a very high chance that one of them found him and handed him the screwdriver. This well may have been Donna as the Doctor knew straight away that she was looking for Lee the first time we see them properly together in this episode. However, these events must have happened off-camera, thus why we did not know about it. It is possible that this is a deleted scene. It seems unlikely that this would be the case because The Doctor was at the core of the planet and it looked like all the recovered people appeared at the planet surface. The Doctor always has things in his pockets, he probably picked the lock with a paperclip or something.
• What happened to Felman Lux? He didn't die, unlike the other four. He was shown initiating the program to bring back the 4402 people.
• What happened to the Vashta Nerada? The Vashta Nerada agreed to give the Doctor one day to free the saved souls in return for the planet itself. It will be interesting to see if the "recovery" of River crops up in a future season... Why do they do that? How can they survive on an empty planet? Remember, they survived an entire century without meat while the people were 'saved'
• Although we know the origin of Cal's personality, who are the two children who continually appear and, later, are seen being put to bed (along with Cal) by River? These other two children are the ones that Donna Noble took care of in her 'saved' state
• When River Song says goodnight to her "children" there are three beds in the room, but when Donna is in the bedroom there are 2 beds. An extra bed was put in the room for Cal.
• If the Vashta Nerada are now living on the planet, does that not mean that CAL and its hardrive will be destroyed?

DVD and other releases

• It will be released on the Series 4 boxset DVD in November 2008.
• It will be released as Series 4 Volume 3 alongside Silence in the Library and Midnight in August 2008.