In the Library with the Screwdriver

Doctor Who – Forest of the Dead

[WATCH OUT FOR THE SPOILERS]

 Part two of this story saw the Doctor and his companions escape the inescapable by blasting a hole through the shelves. Somewhat cheating, I felt, but I’ll let it pass as the rest of the episode was still so good.

While the Doctor, River and the remainder of the team were dashing about in the library trying to avoid the Vashta Nerada, we found out what was happening to Donna. She was living a different life, one where she didn’t know the Doctor and was doing ‘normal’ things like getting married and having children. Was she really dead and this was some kind of afterlife? Or was it a virtual reality? She started to spot strange things, like in dreams where one scene jumps to another. This was highlighted to her by Miss Evangelista, but even when she was aware that it wasn’t real, she couldn’t do anything about it.

 The Doctor was eventually told by Lux that CAL was the computer with a little girl wired in to it, that looked after the library (Doctor Moon was to look after her). All the people who had tried to teleport at once to escape the Vashta Nerada had overloaded the system and had been ’saved’ onto the computer and were all living in the virtual world with the little girl and Doctor Moon. The Doctor figured out a way to save them, but it would mean sacrificing his own life. River stopped him and sacrificed herself instead.

We still didn’t find out who River Song was, although she knew the Doctor’s name and whispered it to him to prove she was someone he could trust. As the Doctor pointed out, he never tells anyone his name, apart from under one circumstance. What that circumstance was we weren’t told. But the Doctor worked out that by giving her his sonic screwdriver he managed to save her, so downloaded her into the library computer so she could ‘live’.

The one problem I had with the episode was how the Doctor overcame the Vashta Nerada. They had been this terrorising force over two episodes when suddenly the doctor confronted them and told them to check the books for who he was. They did and suddenly became fearful of him, so allowed 24 hours for everyone to be evacuated from the library before they reclaimed it. Now the Doctor has been held as someone of power who is to be feared in the past (Fenric, Morgaine), but why didn’t he confront the Vashta Nerada sooner? Very frustrating.