Last Time: We visited The Library Planet—infested with a swarm of flesh eating microscopic aliens who live in the shadows—on which the Doctor meets his future girlfriend and Donna gets “saved,” but probably not by Jesus. Also, this Library. It’s in a Little Girl’s mind. Where did we leave off? Right. Possessed Skeletal Spacesuit and a shadow have cornered the Doctor, Professor River Song, Other Dave, Anita, and Mr. Lux in an aisle of bookshelves. River uses her sonic blaster to sonic a square doorway through one of the shelves. They RUN! through. Well, that was easy.
Next thing you know Donna is sitting on a bed in a pair of PJ’s. Dr. Moon enters. Donna doesn’t know him.
“You’ve done so much in seven years,” encourages
Dr. Moon pops back in the Doctor’s place and blames his absence on rhubarb. (Yumm. Rhubarb. Especially yummy if my mom mixes it with strawberries and a pie crust.) Donna is overcome from her brief reunion. She tells Dr. Moon she saw the Doctor. “Yes you did,” agrees Dr. Moon, “and then you forgot.” That seems to knock Donna back into her un-reality. She re-greets Dr. Moon and offers to make him a cup of tea.
On The Library planet. We get a nice shot of the moon. That could be important. And then the camera pans into another room with a round skylight. The Doctor and accompanying Spacesuits enter via sonic square hole. Under River’s direction, they rest for a bit in the fading daylight and check the room for Vashta Nerada. The Doctor uses his screwdriver but it keeps shorting out. River tries the lunch box method. “Who’s got a chicken leg?” she asks. Ooh! David Tennant. He’s got two of them. Sorry David, but seriously, I’ve seen pictures and behind the scenes footage and there’s a reason the Doctor always wears trousers. Other Dave doesn’t get my joke and hands River a chicken leg from an actual chicken. River throws it in a shadow and it gets gobbled up. Uh Oh.
The Doctor thinks the Vashta Nerada won’t attack until there are enough of them, but sadly, more are coming. River delivers some clumsy exposition for anyone who missed the last episode about how she trusts the Doctor, has traveled to the end of the universe with him (really? I thought that was with Jack and Martha), and yeah the Doctor doesn’t know her right now, but that’s only because he hasn’t met her yet.
River walks over to the Doctor to see what the hold-up with the screwdriver is. River bosses him to “try the red settings” and “use the dampers.” It doesn’t have that stuff, complains the Doctor. “It will do one day,” and she offers the one in her hand. “So sometime in the future I just give you my screwdriver?” confronts an indignant Doctor. River looks smug and happy: “Yeah.” “Why would I do that?” he says rudely. Obviously, River isn’t too familiar with the “rude and not ginger” Doctor, she blames his attitude on Donna being ostensibly dead, which is kind, but delusional of her. They keep arguing about their trust issues and Mr. Lux tells them to shut up and stop squabbling like an old married couple. Heh. That phrase really shuts them up. Makes the Doctor looked panicked too. Hee. To get the Doctor to cooperate River decides to tell him something that will prove how completely his future self trusts her. She apologizes as she stretches forward and whispers in his ear.
You can’t see what she says, but you can see the Doctor’s face when he hears and that is enough for this devoted viewer. She. Knows. Oh my goodness she Knows. She knows his. NAME!!! She knows his Name. She knows his effing name. No one knows that. Not Rose, not Reinette, not the Master. wow. woW. wOW. WOW! I’m out of capital letters. The Doctor is stunned. And afraid. And a little sad. “We good?” she asks. Quietly, the Doctor answers “Yeah. We’re good.” He looks resolute but still wary, and with a determined turn of the head he springs into distracting action.
He starts pacing and babble-brainstorming about what is interfering with his screwdriver and asking the Spacesuits what has changed. “It’s gettin’ dark,” offers Other Dave with a line reading that is not as hilarious as last episode’s. The Doctor doesn’t think a solar day is interfering with his sonic toy, but on second thought the moonlight may be doing something. The Doctor asks, and Mr. Lux elaborates that the moon is an artificially built Doctor Moon (Ah Ha!) that works as a virus checker and also supports and maintains the computer at the core of the planet.
The Doctor tries to tap into the Doctor Moon signal and accidentally brings up a hologram of Donna. “Donna!” he shouts with joy, again, because we are back to near the beginning where Donna kept shoving cups of tea on Dr. Moon. Donna disappears and the Doctor tries to bring the hologram back.
Uh Oh. Anita diverts attention to herself. She’s in trouble with a capital “T” that stands for Two Shadows. The Doctor again tries to seal the double shadow victim into her own suit and adds the extra ruse of tinting the helmet visor to lull the Vashta Nerada into thinking they’re already inside the suit. In the middle of this mini rescue operation the doctor notices there is one extra Spacesuit in the room. It’s Skeletal Suit. Time to run.
Little Girl watches on her television in the apartment, but she gets scared by Skeletal Suit and flips the channel to the Donna Noble show. Donna’s just made that cuppa for Dr. Moon, but Dr. Moon is gone. No matter, her kids are there and hubby Lee McAvoy is home. Still, she checks out the window for Dr. Moon, but only glimpses a retreating figure in black. It’s nothing important she decides. She’s tired. Seamless, quick camera cut. She and Lee are in the bedroom. Donna feels something is out of whack, but once again talks herself out of it.
Donna hears someone dropping off a letter and asks Lee to go to the door and get it. At the window, Donna again glimpses the dark figure clothed in a black, bustled Victorian dress with a black veil. Lee retrieves and reads the letter: “Dear Donna: The world is wrong. Meet me at your usual play park. Two o’clock tomorrow.” Little Girl is still watching the Donna Noble show on her television and begs Donna to not go.
Donna goes anyway (screw you Little Girl) with her son and daughter in tow. The kids play while Donna joins the dark figure on a park bench. Dark Figure dresses and talks like a woman. She corrects Donna that Donna didn’t just receive her note last night, but a few seconds ago and explains how time progresses like a dream in this reality. “How do you know me?” asks Donna. The Dark Figure claims they met in The Library where Donna was kind to her. Miss Evangelista? I thought we were well rid of you. Donna starts to recognize Miss E’s voice. The Dark Figure confirms she is what is left of Miss Evangelista.
On The Library planet, the Doctor and Spacesuits are still running, this time through adjoining, suspended breezeways. The Doctor, who is starting to act more himself now, finally pulls out his I’m-going-to-reason-with-the-alien shtick. He sends River, Anita and Mr. Lux ahead. River has Other Dave stay with the Doctor. Skeletal Spacesuit approaches, and the Doctor convinces the swarm inside it to try using the “ghosting” communicator to…well…communicate.
The Doctor wants to know why the Vashta Nerada are here hunting in The Library when they normally hunt in forests. “We did not come here,” answers the carnivorous Spacesuit, “We come from here. We hatched here.” The Doctor, not yet at his usual lightening level of intuition, still wonders what they are doing here since they hatch from spores in trees. “These are our forests,” and the Spacesuit speaks deliberately with small words, so I guess even the Vashta Nerada think the Doctor is slow on the up-take. “You’re nowhere near a forest,” says the Doctor still not getting it. “There are no trees in a libra—” Heh. Now he gets it. “Books!” The Vashta Nerada were in the trees that got pulped into books that spawned 1,000,000,000,000 micro-spores. Darn. So the books aren’t alive. Just the flesh eating midges inside them.
“We should go, Doctor,” repeats Dave. Oh Other Dave! We liked you. Now he’s Possessed Carnivorous Skeletal Spacesuit #2. The Doctor apologizes to dead Other Dave and then starts babbling about his escape route. It’s a trap door beneath his feet that opens up to the air below. The Doctor falls through, without a parachute.
Another camera angle shows us the Doctor, blessedly alive and hanging from an I-beam running beneath the suspended breezeway. He monkey-bars his way across. Little Girl sees this too, and she’s smiling because all little children with British accents love the Doctor.
Back on the Donna Noble show, Miss E is happy Donna remembers her and the Doctor and The Library. The memories are still there, Donna has just been programmed not to look. “Sorry, but you’re dead,” remembers Donna. Miss E explains that in a way they are all dead. They are the dead of The Library. And Donna’s children? They were never alive. Donna loves her virtual children! Don’t you say that Miss E. She loves those annoying children. Miss E asks her to look at the jungle gym where all the children are playing. Donna spots her pair of kids and several other identical pairs. The children are all the same. The same boy and the same girl, over and over again.
Mother Donna is upset at this revelation and in retaliation yanks off Miss E’s veil and screams. Because the features of Miss E’s face have been stretched and contorted to resemble some of the cosmetic and visual effects work from Pan’s Labyrinth. And since I’ve already seen and been freaked out by that film. I can handle Miss E’s face. Like the stuff in Pan it’s both disturbing and beautiful.
Uh Oh. Little Girl hasn’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth. She screams louder than Donna and ducks her face behind a pillow. Parents, this is why your children must never see Pan’s Labyrinth.
Night time on planet Library. Somehow, River, Anita and Mr. Lux have found a room with working artificial lights. River is still bummed that this Doctor sucks. She offloads her emotional baggage on Anita, describing the doctor as incomplete. “Yes, the Doctor’s here,” she whines, “but not my Doctor.” Oh, get over it. You think there aren’t certain episodes when I wish for Christopher Eccleston. Evidently, River’s Doctor is ten times more fantastic than Ten. She goes off on how he can repel entire armies with a swagger and open the TARDIS with a finger snap. Now, I don’t think River is being exactly fair here. Her appearance has thrown the Doctor on one of the biggest loops I’ve ever seen him stuck on. Sure, he’s been a little soft this season, but that’s only because he found so much forgiveness and humility at the end of last season, in which he’s still basking. “The Doctor in the TARDIS” romanticizes River, “next stop: everywhere.”
“Spoilers!” claims the Doctor who’s been eavesdropping off camera. “Nobody can open the TARDIS by snapping their fingers. It doesn’t work like that.” He’s right. It doesn’t work like that for him or for Nine. For them, the TARDIS only opens with a key. The key means love and trust. River doesn’t have a key. Maybe that’s why the Doctor didn’t trust her. “It does for the Doctor,” says a mournful, and frankly at this moment very annoying River. “I AM the Doctor,” he assures her. “Yeah, someday,” bitches River. Ooh, she’s pissing me off, and the Doctor too. But he lets it go.
The Doctor checks on Anita and relates the bad news about Other Dave. He counts her shadows. Still two, so the Doctor assumes Anita is still alive in there. (She probably is, but at this moment, in preparation for the awkward dialog she is about to spew, I’d like to think she is possessed by a Vashta Nerada swarm trying to worm information out of the Doctor.) The Doctor asks if he can get her anything. Anita claims she wants some word of comfort from the Doctor, and suggests whatever word River whispered in his ear. (What?? Shouldn’t you ask River instead? Also, that was a private moment. Finally, lady, he is not going to tell you his name. ) “Your secrets are safe with me,” she adds.
“Safe.” The Doctor gets stuck on that word and thinks how the Nodes and data extracted message said “saved” instead of “safe.” What if the 4,022 people (plus Donna!) weren’t “saved” as in rescued but “saved” as in to a hard drive?
Back on the Donna Noble show, she is walking with Miss E listening to her give some exposition. The children are all the same because they are the same pattern. It saves a lot of space. Cyberspace. Little Girl is very unhappy with Miss E’s exposition. She lunges for the television and begs: “No. Don’t tell. You mustn’t tell.”
Exposition in this show really is the Doctor’s job, so the camera lets him have a say. He stares at a kiosk screen and explains there was a massive power surge when the Vashta Nerada hit their hatching cycle. Someone hit the alarm and the computer tried to teleport everyone—all 4022 at once—and succeeded. But the entire world was infested and the computer had no place to which to teleport them. So, the computer saved their 4022 people patterns to its hard drive. These people are now stuck in the computer system waiting to be sent, like emails, like thought-mail.
On the Donna Noble show Miss E explains it to Donna: her physical self is stored in The Library index as an energy signature that can be actualized again. Donna starts some quick thinking. One, her face could have ended up on one of the Nodes. Revolting. Two, her virtual body isn’t real and she’s been dieting this whole time. Aggravating. Three, if the whole world is virtual reality why does Miss E look like that? Puzzling. Unlike Donna who teleported and is a perfect reproduction, Miss E was just a data ghost, a thought-mail, caught in The Library WiFi and automatically uploaded. Miss E got lucky in a way. In uploading her, the computer moved a decimal point, screwing up her face and amping up her intellect thereby giving her the two qualities necessary to see the absolute truth: she is brilliant and unloved. (Gee, that’s sad. Also, I don’t think I buy that logic.)
Little Girl watches and silently cries. If this is all a dream, wonders Donna, whose is it? Miss E is not sure about that, but there is a word, just one word:
Little Girl watches the TV and yells at Miss E to “Stop it!” She’s ruining everything and Little Girl hates her. Father hears Little Girl and wants to know what’s wrong. She turns on her dad and tells him to “Shut up!” and then pushes a remote control button to make him disappear. Oh man. That remote would have been real handy for me growing up. Does it work on little brothers? Little Girl realizes she just killed her Daddy. She’s sorry and very, very scared. She smashes the remote to the ground in frustrated anger.
In The Library an alarm goes off: “Auto destruct enabled in twenty minutes.” That’s not good.
Little Girl is crumpled on the living room floor, quietly sobbing and watching the Donna Noble show. Donna tells the kiddies they are going home. Seamless quick camera cut. They are home. Donna and the boy kid realize that was seamless and quick. Girl kid draws momma Donna’s attention to the suddenly red sky outside.
In The Library the Doctor worries that in twenty minutes the planet will crack like an egg. Mr Lux thinks the Doctor Moon will stop it, “it’s meant to protect
In the apartment, Dr. Moon kneels over Little Girl’s crumpled, sobbing body. He chides her to stop her emotional break-down. “You’ve forgotten again that it was you who saved all those people. And then. You remembered.” “Shut Up! Dr. Moon,” Little Girl and I shout. Little Girl picks up the remote and with a button click Dr. Moon disappears…
…and the information kiosks in The Library go offline. “We’ve got to save
Donna sits in her living room clutching her children as the sky continues to glow red outside the window and a siren alarm wails in the distance. “Is it bedtime?” asks fake girl kid. Seamless, quick camera cut. It is bedtime! Donna tucks the kiddies into a pair of twin beds. The kids really are catching on though. “Mummy,…we aren’t really real are we?” “’Course you are,” panics Donna. “But, Mummy, sometimes when you’re not here, it’s like we’re not here…even when you close your eyes.” Donna promises to never close her eyes again, but in the next instant the kids still disappear. Donna is panicked, heartbroken and sobbing as she tears at the unoccupied bed sheets. I think this motherhood gig will leave a lasting mark on our intrepid Donna.
Auto destruct in 15 minutes. Luckily, the Doctor and company have found the data core and the 4022 living minds (plus Donna!) trapped inside it.
In her apartment Little Girl is curled on the floor and crying for help. Patience, Little Girl, the Doctor is working on it. He finds a keyboard and monitor station, and now the group can hear Little Girl’s voice crying for help. The Doctor notices the computer is in sleep mode. He presses keys and tries to wake it up. In the apartment the toys strewn around Little Girl start moving and making noise. Papers blow across her body. Objects shake. She shelters her face and tries to ignore it all. The Doctor checks the readings on the computer screen. “You’d think it was dreaming,” he says.
“It is dreaming. Of a normal life, and of a lovely dad, and of every book ever written,” speechifies Mr. Lux. Mr. Lux pulls a lever and directs the group to an adjoining room where they find one last Node…with the face of Little Girl. “Please help me,” she asks. They recognize her as the girl they saw in the computer. “She’s not in the computer,” says Lux, “in a way she is the computer.” She’s the main Command Node and her name is
“I have to, I have to save,”
“So what do we do?” asks River. “Easy,” claims the Doctor. His brilliant plan is to wire his mind to Charlotte’s and create some extra hard drive space so Charlotte can stop self-destructing and start remembering how to keep her 4024 (I added Donna and Miss E) living minds safe. Tiny flaw in the plan. It will kill him. River flips out. “I’ll try my hardest not to die, honestly, it’s my main thing,” he assures her with sass. Hee. Your Doctor’s back River, get used to it. The Doctor keeps sassing and bossing her. He sends her and Mr. Lux on some (intentionally pointless) errand upstairs. Sending them away is also a plot device to get the Doctor alone with Anita.
“What about the Vashta Nerada?” Anita asks. The Doctor thinks he’ll just seal little
Oops. Skeletal Suit Anita missed the point in the episode where the Doctor remembered he’s a badass. He threatens the Vashta Nerada and then gives a helpful pointer. “I’m the Doctor, and you’re in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up.” The shadows do and start shrinking. Hee. We love you, awesome Doctor. The Vashta Nerada take the deal and disappear for the rest of the episode. (Question. Do you think nanogenes could combat Vashta Nerada spores?)
River’s back. She takes a moment to mourn over Anita’s no longer possessed skeleton. The Doctor sees her and reminds her to leave. You can’t manage without me, she says. And then she decks him. She hits him good. Tall skinny bit of nothing hits the floor cold. It’s pretty cool.
Auto destruct in two minutes. River calmly sits and wires herself to the computer. The Doctor awakes handcuffed to a pole, both screwdrivers lie beyond his reach. “Where do you even have handcuffs?” he asks. “Spoilers,” she sexy smiles. Oh my. The Doctor is flipping out, telling River to stop. This is going to kill her. He, at least has a chance of surviving. She doesn’t have any. “River, please, no,” he begs and uses her NAME for the first time. David is now playing it like he loves her, and it’s making me very sad.
“Funny,” River realizes. The Doctor, her Doctor, has always known how she was going to die. The last time she saw him he turned up with a new haircut and a suit (which I think means he turned up as Ten for the first time.) He took her to a planet with singing towers. The towers sang (singing, Jacob would be all over that) and he held her in his arms and cried. He must have known it was her time, time to come to The Library. And he even gave her his screwdriver.
The Doctor lunges, painfully for that screwdriver. It’s too far away. David Tennant’s performance is KILLING me here. “You can let me do this!” Let the angel do it? No, we humans have to do the regular stuff ourselves. Save the angels for miracles. River isn’t willing to live a life without the Doctor. If he dies today, she’ll never meet him. “Time can be rewritten!” he pleads. “Not those times,” her voice almost breaking and then ringing clear “not one line, don’t you dare.” Here’s where I think about crying. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’ll see me again. It’s not over for you. You’ve got all of that to come. You and me. Time and space. You watch us run!” Alex Kingston, now you are KILLING me.
One important bit before River kicks it. “River, you know my name,” says the Doctor. “There’s only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There’s only one time I could.” The Doctor’s face shows pain at the thought of this future certainty. (And I really want to know what stage direction David Tennant got for those lines. Also, this name deal, I don’t think we’ll ever know it, but it’s gonna be a really, really good story.) “Spoilers,” she soothes as she regretfully smiles and plugs herself in to death. The Doctor turns away from the flash of light, but tries to watch River’s final moments.
In Donna Noble world, Lee runs in the door to the house. Donna is on the stairs at the end of a long cry. She runs to his arms. She doesn’t know what’s happening but she knows the world isn’t real. “Am I real?” asks Lee. “Of course you’re real,” says Donna as she grasps his face. And he might be because everything except them is burning away in the bright light of River’s sacrifice. They are solid and real amid the storm. But they get pulled apart. “I know you’re real. I hope you’re real,” cries Donna. “D-d-d-donna,” stutters Lee. “I’ll find you!” promises Donna.
In The Library atrium Mr. Lux watches in joyful awe as a crowd of people appear. He hugs and feels them up. Really, he does. He runs to a balcony and sees a world full of people. “4022 saved!” 4023. Why do they keep forgetting Donna?
No joy in the core though. Sad, sad Doctor sits there staring mournfully at the last place River lived. He’s so sad. He is breaking my heart.
In a different Library room, the reanimated people quickly assemble on the teleports, trying to make it out before the shadow deadline. Donna wanders among them searching and hoping for Lee. “Any luck?” asks a still sad Doctor. “No, there wasn’t even anybody named Lee in The Library that day.” Donna accepts the likelihood that Lee wasn’t real. “I made up the perfect man: gorgeous, adores me, and hardly ever speaks a word,” she laments, “What does that say about me?” “Everything,” says the Doctor without missing a beat. Donna gives him a hey-you’re-supposed-to-lie-to-me look. He’s accidentally speaking the truth because most of his frontal cortex is occupied still thinking about River. “Sorry, Did I say ‘everything’? I meant nothing. I was aiming for nothing. I accidentally said ‘everything.’” He takes a deep breath. They share a moment. They’re both not alright, but they’ll keep going together. The Doctor takes her hand and they leave the room.
As they leave, Lee McAvoy steps into the teleport. He sees Donna leaving. He goes to shout her name: “D-d-d-.” He can’t get out her name, and both he and she are gone before he can say it.
On The Library balcony, the Doctor rests River’s blue diary on the railing. Donna is there. She brings up how River didn’t know her in the future. “What happens to me?” The Doctor offers to look Donna up in the diary. “Shall we peek at the end?” He knows she’ll say no, because he’s gonna say no too. No spoilers folks. Isn’t it enough that we know Rose Tyler is around the corner? The Doctor lays River’s screwdriver on top of the diary. And they leave.
Tag: Push-in on the diary and screwdriver. Voiceover of River reading a diary entry. When you run with the Doctor it feels like it will never end, and however hard you try, you can’t run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment…
The Doctor comes running back, wildly, breathless.
…accepted….
Why, why would he give her his screwdriver? He grabs it. His future self had all those years to think. He must have thought of a way to save her. Yet all he did was give her a screwdriver. Why? Why? He opens a panel on the screwdriver. Inside is a ghosting communicator. Hope. It’s a good emotion, and here. it. comes.
He saved her. Literally. The screwdriver downloaded River’s data ghost. The Doctor runs toward the data core. One last run with River, quickly, before the ghost fades away. He takes a shortcut ignoring the gravity platform and opting to fly down solo stretching the screwdriver before him, hopefully to soften the landing. (probably using those newly installed dampers) It looks exhilarating, and the Doctor looks dashing and fantastic. But also, during this flying bit through the blue lit tunnel of light, he sort of looks like Harry Potter playing quidditch.
…Everybody knows that everyone dies. But not every day…
The Doctor runs to the computer, plugs in the screwdriver and uploads River’s data ghost.
…not today…
The Doctor, out of breath but happy, looks at the CAL Node. Little Charlotte Abigail Lux smiles back at him. And on a stretch of green, green grass River appears in a white flowing dress.
…some days are special, some days are so, so blessed…
The Doctor strides, no, swaggers into The Library atrium.
…some days nobody dies at all…
The Doctor stands before his TARDIS. He holds his hand forward. Waits. And snaps his fingers. The TARDIS doors creak open. He smiles, beautifully. And strides inside.
…Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days…
He walks up and joins Donna inside. They stand and look back through the open doors and into the camera, into our eyes and past our eyes to the shadowed planet to which they will never return.
…when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call…
The Doctor snaps his fingers again, and the doors shut us out.
…everybody lives.
That’s right. Everybody lives, River. Just this once my ass! One more time, everybody lives, but this time with consequences. (I gotta say though, that I’m being kind. The data ghosting and ability to save a complete sentient being after someone dies…well, even within the logic of the story, it seems a stretch. But the emotions and character development are good, so I forgive). River closes the cover on her now virtual blue diary. She’s been reading it as a bedtime story to Charlotte whom she tucks into bed next to the sleeping figures of Donna’s fake children. “Sweet dreams, everyone,” she says as she turns out the light. You too River. I’ll be seeing you in 2010.
Next Time: Donna goes on vacation and the Doctor gets trapped in the movie Speed.
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