Doctor Who: Forest of the Dead...

[fajrdrako]

I continue to love Steven Moffat's writing, and Euros Lyn's direction, and I thought the visuals were particularly superb.

I enjoyed it and was moved by it - but did I understand it? Not entirely. Especially what happened at the end: why did the Doctor keep River Song alive inside the computer? Did he think that was better than death for her?

1. I wish I had liked River Song (or, more to the point, Alex Kingston) more than I did. Her role was terrific; loved the way it was written. Loved it that she died in the Doctor's place to save the people who were in the library.
   
   
2. It was creepy. It scared me. In a good way.
   
   
3. I didn't understand the Doctor's deal with the Vashta Nerada. He gave them their forests - how? What did I miss there? Maybe I'll understand when I watch it again tomorrow.
   
   
4. I like the Doctor Moon pun and associated visuals.
   
   
5. Loved the moment when the little girl - Charlotte - 'turned off' her father.
   
   
6. I thought David Tennant's acting was particularly good.
   
   
7. Lee is Donna's ideal man? He wasn't much like Lance. If she had connected with the real Lee, whom she managed to just miss, would he have known her? Did he share her dream of marriage and kids?
   
   
8. Actually, it didn't ring true to me that Donna's dream life was so mundane: a husband, two children, a nice house, taking the kids to the park and putting them to bed ... The Donna we know wants to travel with the Doctor forever. Why wasn't that her dream? Was it because the dream was placed in her mind and shaped by Charlotte?
   
   
9. Loved the bit with the Doctor snapping his fingers to open the TARDIS doors. Liked the way he liked it, too.
   
   
10. Loved the time paradox involved: River Song is in the Doctor's future, he in her past.
    
    
11. Why were the people in the library dressed alike?
    
    
12. So the squareness gun was Jack's - cool!
    
    
13. I liked the way the Doctor left River Song's diary just... lying there. For anyone in the library int he 51st century to find and read. I suppose they'd think it was fiction?
    

Comments

[catslash.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Moffat's episodes are like that. Delicious and engaging storytelling - just don't think too hard about the details or they start to fall apart.

On point number eight, I kind of assumed it was a generic scenario that Donna only had a limited amount of power over. The implication at the beginning that she'd been in some kind of psych ward for delusions indicated to me that the computer needed her to join in its creation. Computers have limited resources, even ginormous ones. I got the impression that it just didn't have the space or what-have-you to create tailor-made lives for four thousand people, so it made a world and sort of gently pushed people in until they fit. But just because it wasn't Donna's dream life doesn't mean that she wouldn't be happy with a devoted husband and adorable kids, especially since she was able to skip over all the annoying parts of marriage and parenting. *g*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

just don't think too hard about the details or they start to fall apart

I didn't think there was anything in The Empty Child or The Doctor Dances that fell apart on close examination. Or Blink. The Girl in the Fireplace suffered from intriguing gaps and emotional discontinuity - which actually I rather like: it's food for thought, and fodder for fanfic.

especially since she was able to skip over all the annoying parts of marriage and parenting. *g*

Ah, if only we could all do that. Think "bed" and the kids are in bed, no muss, no fuss, no argument.

[catslash.livejournal.com]

There are a couple of Fridge Logic (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic) things that bug me a little. (I nitpick a lot at little details, but such is Moffat's storytelling that he makes me just overlook these things, so they only bug me a little instead of a LOT.)

* The big thing: the gasmasks. The nanogenes read DNA. Okay. So how is it that they can't tell the difference between a human being and a mask? And why just the mask and not Jamie's clothes as well? And why did they read his injuries? Those aren't encoded in his DNA. Possibly the only thing about this explanation that makes any sense is the woman whose leg grows back.

And if you try to fit it with Torchwood and what it's established about the afterlife, it just gets worse. What was animating the gasmask zombies? Had their own personalities been suppressed by something in the nanogenes' programming, to turn them into soldiers? Okay. That makes sense and was probably even explained and I forgot. But then, how do they bring Jamie back? Not just animating his body, I mean - the Doctor says life is "nature's way of keeping meat fresh" - but how do they bring back Jamie himself? (Mind you, I blame all this on Torchwood. This is possibly the least of the continuity problems it's caused. *g*)

* For "Blink," the big one for me is that the trapping of the angels is very stylish and symmetrical and poetic and all . . . but what happens when the light burns out? Or the power flickers? I can't remember if the room had windows, but even if it did, night time on a quiet estate like that gets pretty dark. Can the Weeping Angels see in the dark? If they can, no worries, but if they can't, then it all seems like a temporary solution at best.

And I'm just going to be nice and let go of the sorts of conveniences and inexplicable occurrences that happen in sci-fi and stories in general all the time (Rose's ride on the barrage balloon - that's some serious upper body strength she's got there!), or I'll never stop. Moffat's stories rely on emotional power, and he knows how to use that to capture an audience's attention and just force the story to work for us. I love his episodes. There are very few writers who could present me with the logical flaws above and NOT spoil the whole thing for me, but he pulls it off so gracefully that not only does it not wreck it, I don't really even mind. Much.

[cyberducks.livejournal.com]

It was directed by Euros Lyn.

I didn't think Donna's dream life was mundane - more very much idealized.

[meret.livejournal.com]

I didn't understand the Doctor's deal with the Vashta Nerada. He gave them their forests - how?

The forests were the books because the pages are made from wood pulp. All the people are going to teleport off the planet, and leave it to the shadows.

If she had connected with the real Lee, whom she managed to just miss, would he have known her?

Yes! :) He saw her and tried to call out to her, but his stutter prevented him from doing so before he was teleported.

The Donna we know wants to travel with the Doctor forever.

I saw it as the computer making her forget about the doctor.

I liked the way the Doctor left River Song's diary just... lying there.

In the ep I watched after he saves River he totally goes back and gets the diary before meeting up with Donna at the Tardis. That way the Doctor can save Donna so her husband in the computer can find her, and they can live happily ever after in the future. *fingers in ears* La, la, la! Can't hear you!

Why were the people in the library dressed alike?

LOL! Good question. :)

[dameruth.livejournal.com]

Some one on another list I belong to pointed out that in the Classic Series, a Time Lord's consciousness/memories were downloaded to the Matrix (a huge computer system that predated "that" series of movies by decades) as a way of saving and storing their knowledge and experience. For the Doctor to similarly download River's "self" into a computerized after life would thus be a very natural response for him.

Hey, as an explanation, I think it really works! :D

[lilithlotr.livejournal.com]

Haven't watched this one yet, but I must say I wasn't as impressed with Library as with Doctor Dances or Blink, but mind you - that's an incredible standard to live up to. I've liked Alex Kingston so far - but then I DO like her, generally.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I agree about the computer dictating it - it gave River the same children's bedroom (except I think there was an extra bed?) I saw it as a sort of basic Sims.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I also thought of the Happy Family scenario as being the computer's fantasy - she was, after all, only a child. It didn't seem so much that Donna wanted it deep down as that the computer caused her to want it, and the lingering after-effects were like those of an intense and vivid dream after you wake up.

[katkim.livejournal.com]

I think as Donna's dream world reflects her 'could have been life', if she hadn't met the Doctor. She's in her 30s, and that's the period in life when its conventional for people to meet husbands/wives, buy their first home, have a family etc. And, in a way, I see it has the life pre-Runaway Bride Donna would have had and wanted.

When we first met her, she she worked in admin in pretty standard office. She likes reading about celebrity gossip. She was about to get married. She missed the Sycorax Ship and the Battle of Canary Wharf because she was hungover and on scuba-diving holiday, respectively. From that, the Doctor takes her to task that she's blind to 'the bigger picture', but I think Donna didn't want to know or understanding 'the bigger picture'. Throughout Runaway Bride she only the bigger picture as obstacles to her life (getting to the church on time). When really faced with it, she's frightened of the Doctor and the out of the ordinary. It as only after Runaway Bride and a significant time to reflect that she became dissatisfied with regular life and more interested in travelling with the Doctor and seeing different worlds. So yeah, I think I see it as a life Donna would have had and wanted if she hadn't met the Doctor.

I don't have an argument as to why CAL chose that path rather then conjure up a dream world with the Doctor, but in a way I think it's a way of touching upon what Donna may have given up (for want of a better term) that maybe Rose or Martha, being in their 20s, hadn't to be with the Doctor. I don't think this is a new theme.

[gillo]

I loved it - wonderful direction and some superb lines - "It works in the dark. It's a screwdriver." sticks out particularly for me.

It was creepy. It scared me. In a good way.

Yes, though I was sorry the little girl didn't hide behind the sofa. That would have been as metatextual as the use of "Spoilers".

Lee is Donna's ideal man? He wasn't much like Lance. If she had connected with the real Lee, whom she managed to just miss, would he have known her? Did he share her dream of marriage and kids?

I think it's restricted memory space - the computer has a paradigm of what "ordinary life" is, pairs up library-users and makes them forget everything that would counteract the idea that this is an ideal life. Just as the children are all identical, so I imagine the houses, parks etc. are - which is why at the end River says goodnight to the children in the same bedroom Donna did. (Is the third child Charlotte? I couldn't see clearly enough. But that could work, as it's very much a child's ideal of security and happiness.)

The Donna we know wants to travel with the Doctor forever. Why wasn't that her dream? Was it because the dream was placed in her mind and shaped by Charlotte?

Dr Moon was working hard to get her to forget any wishes which were inconvenient - it was important for the smooth running of the computer-generated world that she accept a life broadly similar to that of the others in the memory. Sims don't start trying to leave their town, do they?

Loved the bit with the Doctor snapping his fingers to open the TARDIS doors. Liked the way he liked it, too.

Yes - nice time-loop there. He discovered he could do it because River had seen him doing it...

Why were the people in the library dressed alike?

Lack of computer memory to store what they were actually wearing at the point when they were saved. Inside the computer they were like Sims, dressed in pixels - the real clothes, with all their details would have required way more storage space.

And not at all keeping the BBC Wales costume budget down.

13. I liked the way the Doctor left River Song's diary just... lying there. For anyone in the library in the 51st century to find and read. I suppose they'd think it was fiction?

Or it could be found and used against him in eras to come.

I didn't understand the Doctor's deal with the Vashta Nerada. He gave them their forests - how? What did I miss there? Maybe I'll understand when I watch it again tomorrow.

Books are made of trees - even expensive ones are made of plant fibre (linen/cotton rags) so he was removing the people and giving back the books to the wild. I didn't quite get what they were supposed to eat, though. In the end "Look me up" was the most powerful argument he had - I think they were blustering and didn't really have a choice.

[ceindreadh.livejournal.com]

3. That confused me as well. He offered them a deal - putting them inside the computer, at least that was my reading of it - but I don't remember them accepting it.
And what people have commented about him giving them the Library, surely he can't make that sort of deal. All that knowledge and he's cutting it off from the population and giving it to the Vashta? THink I need a rewatch.

7. Lee must have shared at least some of the same memories as Donna, otherwise he wouldn't have recognized her later. I wonder if they'll cross paths again.

8. It did ring true for me. For one thing, that's not Donna's dream life, it was Cal's - mother, father, happy family. And Donna 'remembered' it as being her dream life. She had no memories left of the Doctor. So yes, I could see it happening.

11. The same reason all the children looked alike, it saved memory space by only keeping a copy of one type of clothing - although then Donna was in her own outfit, but either she had a spare outfit in the TARDIS, or maybe it was just her outfit had been the last one 'saved'.

13. I'm actually surprized he was just going to leave both it and the screwdriver there, especially the screwdriver. Did he think that his future self was going to show up and retrieve it a little time later?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

So how is it that they can't tell the difference between a human being and a mask?

They were confused. They only had the partial story, for whatever reason. We're probably lucky they didn't reshape Jamie in the form of a bacterium or a bit of pollen.

And why did they read his injuries? Those aren't encoded in his DNA.

I would guess that since the DNA was familar, they went beyond their usual parameters, replicating the situation they found in front of him.

I have no problem with the idea of confused and not very bright nanogenes getting things wrong and putting the jigsaw together improperly. The trick is: don't think of them as a computer or a mechanical process - think of them as a mind that's suddenly faced with something unfamiliar, and they have to make quick guesses with incomplete information.

What was animating the gasmask zombies?

Energy.

ad their own personalities been suppressed by something in the nanogenes' programming, to turn them into soldiers?

Yes. Or their own personalities were erased entirely and the only will was Jamie's, and he had been programmed as a soldier.

how do they bring back Jamie himself?

Just a matter of rearranging the cells and molecules to the way they should be - the way they originally were. Jamie's been dead, but they'd kept the meat fresh (so to speak) meanwhile.

I don't see your problem with the afterlife (such as it is) on Torchwood. People can come and go from that darkness, and Jamie presumably only experienced it for a very brief time. Which happens in real life, even without nanogenes.

what happens when the light burns out? Or the power flickers?

The angels win. Remember how the angel tried to turn out the light by going for the light bulb?

Can the Weeping Angels see in the dark?

Yes. They don't really have eyes anyway. They're stone.

Anyway, the solution of having them staring at each other works - it doesn't matter if there's light or not. The point is that they see each other. Unless someone moves them, that's permanent. (For that particular quartet of angels.)

The other point, made in the episode, is that it isn't a permanent solution. The threat remains, though not specifically for Sally and Lawrence. Even if that set of Angels doesn't get away fro their trap, there are statues all over the place. It isn't that they all could be Angels, but that any could be Angels.

Rose's ride on the barrage balloon - that's some serious upper body strength she's got there!

Gymnastics. I could have done that at 12; not at 19; but I was never a gymnast. Okay, it's stretching a little, but not impossible. It wasn't really very long that she was hanging. I haven't timed the screen time, but it's cut with scenes with the Doctor. Five minutes, maybe? With adrenalin pumping? That doesn't even strike me as improbable. Lucky, though, that Jack was around. (Which is the whole point...)

The thing about Moffat's writing, you can't approach it with unilateral thinking. Your mind has to be flexible. I have no problem with this - my mind is so flexible it glides - but I have trouble when characterization seems off or motives remain unexplained. This hasn't happened for me yet in a Steven Moffat script, but it's happened in Torchwood a few times.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It was mundane, but I'll grant you that it was both mundane and idealized. All the worse! - I know the unreality was the point, but it does make me wonder about the ending, with the Doctor putting River Song into that same unreality.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

All the people are going to teleport off the planet, and leave it to the shadows.

So only the Vashta Nerada get to read the books? That seems rather sad. I suppose the books can be replicated elsewhere. What do the Vashta Nerada then eat? I guess they aren't entirely carnivorous.

He saw her and tried to call out to her, but his stutter prevented him from doing so before he was teleported.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that the reality he knew was the same one she knew. I suppose we can only conclude that it was - as that fits the story we see.

I saw it as the computer making her forget about the doctor.

Yes, the computer made its own reality. But that means Donna had no free will at all there.

That way the Doctor can save Donna so her husband in the computer can find her, and they can live happily ever after in the future.

LOL! Since I didn't like that reality at all, I wouldn't wish such a thing on poor innocent Donna. I'd let her travel with the Doctor as long as she wants to!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

That does give a nice history and background to what he did. Interesting!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I must say I wasn't as impressed with Library as with Doctor Dances or Blink

Well... those are probably my favourite episodes ever. I liked them better than the library story, too. Which isn't to say I didn't love the library story.

What else have you seen Alex Kingston in? I didn't dislike her, I just didn't like her as much as I wanted to.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, very Sim-like.

Personally, I wouldn't want to live in a reality created by a computer that things it's a little girl. Not even for a short time!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I also thought of the Happy Family scenario as being the computer's fantasy

Well, it was. But that makes it even scarier. I wouldn't want to be stuck living in a child's fantasy with no choices of my own.

the lingering after-effects were like those of an intense and vivid dream after you wake up.

Makes sense! And if she had found Lee - would they both have been disappointed? Did she really want a man who didn't talk, didn't argue, and gave her everything she wanted? I doubt it! If that was what she wanted, she wouldn't be enjoying her adventures with the Doctor so much.

[meret.livejournal.com]

What do the Vashta Nerada then eat?

I thought about that too. There hadn't been anyone there for 100 years and they were still alive, so maybe they go into hibernation when there's no food source. That's my best guess anyway.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

it has the life pre-Runaway Bride Donna would have had and wanted.

True, though I find it difficult to reconcile the Runaway Bride Donna with the Series Four Donna. They're quite different, in the way they think, the things they like, the things they want, and their behaviour.

She missed the Sycorax Ship and the Battle of Canary Wharf because she was hungover and on scuba-diving holiday, respectively.

True, but by "Partners in Crime" she regrets her past decisions and wants somethign else. Her curiosity about the universe has been awakened. That's something I like about her: I don't want to see her regress to the Donna she might have been. I quite disliked her in "The Runaway Bride".

So: you're right, it's a good view of what Donna might once have wanted, but I don't need to like it!

And it makes sense that the little girl would relate more to that side of Donna rather than the newer, more adventurous side.

[ceindreadh.livejournal.com]

Rose's ride on the barrage balloon - that's some serious upper body strength she's got there!

Gymnastics. I could have done that at 12; not at 19; but I was never a gymnast.

And of course remember what Rose said in her very first episode, that she might not have A levels but she'd come second in Gymnastics "I can swing on a rope, me!"
It's a nice little tie in.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"It works in the dark. It's a screwdriver."

That was fun. Yes, lots of good lines, which I'll try to note next time through.

I didn't quite get what they were supposed to eat, though.

Since they are tiny, tiny creatures, presumably they can exist on other micro-organisms. Though I wondered about that too. They don't seem to be consuming the books.

In the end "Look me up" was the most powerful argument he had - I think they were blustering and didn't really have a choice.

They didn't call his bluff; it worked.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

He offered them a deal - putting them inside the computer, at least that was my reading of it

I like that - it makes more sense than just giving them the library. If they were inside the computer, they could feed all they wished, on an infinite number of dream people.

I wonder if they'll cross paths again.

It seems likely to me that they will. He is her Tom Milligan.

For one thing, that's not Donna's dream life, it was Cal's - mother, father, happy family

Yes. In that way, it makes sense. And makes it all a little creepier.

Did he think that his future self was going to show up and retrieve it a little time later?

Possibly. It might be the starting point of another story.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I figure it's microorganisms. If the planet has a normal subscructure - i.e., earth - there must be creatures under the soil, insects, bacteria, and so on.