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Doctor Who 4/30.08 Silence in the Library
In which I get to use my default icon, and there is praise and frowning alike.
Okay, complaint first, because I always like to get these out of the way before I move on to the praise, and it's not really a complaint in the sense of "this is badly written", it's more an observation about long term implications. If you look at all the episodes Stephen Moffat has written for New Who - The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink and now Silence in the Library and (presumably) its second part, there is one element they share beyond being clever and scary and award material. They're all decidedly lite on a) Doctor/Companion interaction and b) companion on her own doing things. This is a bit unfair in regards to Blink, which was designed to be the Doctor-lite episode of the season and hasn't much more of him than of Martha, either, but it stands as an observation in regards to the others. The memorable stuff in EC/DD is given to Nancy, Jack and the Doctor, with good minor characters like Dr. Constantine added, and of course scary, scary monsters; Rose gets to dance and be rescued. GiFP, which is one of my favourites, again has Rose being rescued (along with Mickey) in the only scene she really interacts with the Doctor, and her most memorable scene in the episode is probably her conversation with Reinette... about the Doctor. Blink, well, see above - minimal Doctor and companion content was the pre-condition. And now Silence in the Library has minimal Donna and next to no Donna-Doctor interaction. I can't help but suspect a pattern there, which is that Moffat is basically more comfortable with putting the companion du jour aside in a holding pattern (this time literally) while he creates his own (excellent) characters. This is no problem if a writer just contributes one or two episodes per season - the format is flexible enough, and there are all the other episodes written and plotted by other writers in which the Doctor and his companion interact a lot more. But it might be a problem if the headwriter of the season, responsible for coming up with the basic plots for all episodes, still continues with said pattern. Otoh, this worry of mine might be redundant if it's just that Moffat isn't that interested in the RTD-created companions - Rose, Martha and Donna alike - but would be in his own. Still, I couldn't help but notice.
Now, on to the praise. Firstly, like Girl in the Fireplace, which works wonderfully as metafiction on several levels (the Doctor meeting, having a relationship with and losing Reinette again in a short space of time being the quintessence of how all his relationships with short-lived humans must be to him; also, the way he interacts with her, watching selected emotionally charged moments of her life until he becomes involved steps into the narrative is very much what tv viewers do when falling in love with particular characters and then starting to write for them), Silence in the Library is a story about stories, both Doctor Who as a story and in general. Biographies needing to end with death, no skipping forward to the end, spoilers, spoilers, it's all there, and I'll probably have more thoughts when I rewatch later. And there are two levels, and the question of who is the story and who is the teller - the little girl or the Doctor? Great twists with usual conventions: the Doctor and Donna show up as basically the monsters at first; the little girl, which by now tv viewers are pre-conditioned (thank you, Life on Mars) to see as creepy, is actually more likely the heroine; similarly, we're pre conditioned to see the psychiatrist/doctor (DOCTOR!) as creepy, and he's the one who tells the girl at the end her nightmares are real, he's the truthteller, not the preventer. Then there is the library level of the narration, and timey-wimey stuff strikes again as the Doctor meets someone for the first time who has long since met him. (Technically, this was also true about the first time he met Sally Sparrow from his pov, but that was the resolution of the narrative, not part of the set-up.) And she doesn't let him read/fast forward to the end of the book. Spoilers!
Speaking of that enterprising lady, several possibilities (other than the obvious, that she and the Doctor are intimate friends/lovers in his future and her past):
a) She's still hiding something other than that, and we're not supposed to completely trust her, or
b) She might be not a one (or two) episodes character but an actual future companion. (There is a precedent, I think; Mel as the Sixth Doctor's companion, whom the audience met at a point in her timeline when she already had met and travelled with him.)
At any rate, her being an archaeologist and the whole archaeology versus time-traveller concept is great. Also, without already having read other reviews, may I speculate that something I said more than once about Jack Harkness will turn out to be true? That if Jack had been female, and all other things equal - time traveller like the Doctor, has sonic instrument, is sexually magnetic, instantly hits it off with one of our two regulars and before the end of his introduction two-parter becomes accepted and embraced (if one counts dancing as that) by the other - a lot of the audience would have cried "Mary Sue!!!!" and hated him, or rather, her.
Donna didn't get much in this episode, but the scenes she had - kicking open the door, her sympathy for the ridiculed Miss Evangelista (that must have reminded her about Lance's scornful words about how stupid she, Donna, was), - were memorable. And then the Doctor seeing her as a disembodied face was just gutwrenching. The phrase "Donna Noble has been saved" was terribly creepy before (trust Moffat to turn something banal - "saving" in the computer sense - into something scaaaaary, again), but the moment he sees her, despite the knowledge this is a two parter, not the season ending, and Donna will indeed be saved in a different sense - the horrible realisation and the way he touches her cheek.... It slayed me. (Also, great, great acting from David Tennant.)
The data ghost business: horribly sad and efficiently scary at the same time. I suspect it might also be crucial to the solution later. And note it, like the books everywhere, is about phrases, storytelling even in this brief and elliptic form.
So, on to the next part, even though it presumably will have minimal Donna as well. I do hope the one after that will be a Donna extravaganza!
Okay, complaint first, because I always like to get these out of the way before I move on to the praise, and it's not really a complaint in the sense of "this is badly written", it's more an observation about long term implications. If you look at all the episodes Stephen Moffat has written for New Who - The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink and now Silence in the Library and (presumably) its second part, there is one element they share beyond being clever and scary and award material. They're all decidedly lite on a) Doctor/Companion interaction and b) companion on her own doing things. This is a bit unfair in regards to Blink, which was designed to be the Doctor-lite episode of the season and hasn't much more of him than of Martha, either, but it stands as an observation in regards to the others. The memorable stuff in EC/DD is given to Nancy, Jack and the Doctor, with good minor characters like Dr. Constantine added, and of course scary, scary monsters; Rose gets to dance and be rescued. GiFP, which is one of my favourites, again has Rose being rescued (along with Mickey) in the only scene she really interacts with the Doctor, and her most memorable scene in the episode is probably her conversation with Reinette... about the Doctor. Blink, well, see above - minimal Doctor and companion content was the pre-condition. And now Silence in the Library has minimal Donna and next to no Donna-Doctor interaction. I can't help but suspect a pattern there, which is that Moffat is basically more comfortable with putting the companion du jour aside in a holding pattern (this time literally) while he creates his own (excellent) characters. This is no problem if a writer just contributes one or two episodes per season - the format is flexible enough, and there are all the other episodes written and plotted by other writers in which the Doctor and his companion interact a lot more. But it might be a problem if the headwriter of the season, responsible for coming up with the basic plots for all episodes, still continues with said pattern. Otoh, this worry of mine might be redundant if it's just that Moffat isn't that interested in the RTD-created companions - Rose, Martha and Donna alike - but would be in his own. Still, I couldn't help but notice.
Now, on to the praise. Firstly, like Girl in the Fireplace, which works wonderfully as metafiction on several levels (the Doctor meeting, having a relationship with and losing Reinette again in a short space of time being the quintessence of how all his relationships with short-lived humans must be to him; also, the way he interacts with her, watching selected emotionally charged moments of her life until he becomes involved steps into the narrative is very much what tv viewers do when falling in love with particular characters and then starting to write for them), Silence in the Library is a story about stories, both Doctor Who as a story and in general. Biographies needing to end with death, no skipping forward to the end, spoilers, spoilers, it's all there, and I'll probably have more thoughts when I rewatch later. And there are two levels, and the question of who is the story and who is the teller - the little girl or the Doctor? Great twists with usual conventions: the Doctor and Donna show up as basically the monsters at first; the little girl, which by now tv viewers are pre-conditioned (thank you, Life on Mars) to see as creepy, is actually more likely the heroine; similarly, we're pre conditioned to see the psychiatrist/doctor (DOCTOR!) as creepy, and he's the one who tells the girl at the end her nightmares are real, he's the truthteller, not the preventer. Then there is the library level of the narration, and timey-wimey stuff strikes again as the Doctor meets someone for the first time who has long since met him. (Technically, this was also true about the first time he met Sally Sparrow from his pov, but that was the resolution of the narrative, not part of the set-up.) And she doesn't let him read/fast forward to the end of the book. Spoilers!
Speaking of that enterprising lady, several possibilities (other than the obvious, that she and the Doctor are intimate friends/lovers in his future and her past):
a) She's still hiding something other than that, and we're not supposed to completely trust her, or
b) She might be not a one (or two) episodes character but an actual future companion. (There is a precedent, I think; Mel as the Sixth Doctor's companion, whom the audience met at a point in her timeline when she already had met and travelled with him.)
At any rate, her being an archaeologist and the whole archaeology versus time-traveller concept is great. Also, without already having read other reviews, may I speculate that something I said more than once about Jack Harkness will turn out to be true? That if Jack had been female, and all other things equal - time traveller like the Doctor, has sonic instrument, is sexually magnetic, instantly hits it off with one of our two regulars and before the end of his introduction two-parter becomes accepted and embraced (if one counts dancing as that) by the other - a lot of the audience would have cried "Mary Sue!!!!" and hated him, or rather, her.
Donna didn't get much in this episode, but the scenes she had - kicking open the door, her sympathy for the ridiculed Miss Evangelista (that must have reminded her about Lance's scornful words about how stupid she, Donna, was), - were memorable. And then the Doctor seeing her as a disembodied face was just gutwrenching. The phrase "Donna Noble has been saved" was terribly creepy before (trust Moffat to turn something banal - "saving" in the computer sense - into something scaaaaary, again), but the moment he sees her, despite the knowledge this is a two parter, not the season ending, and Donna will indeed be saved in a different sense - the horrible realisation and the way he touches her cheek.... It slayed me. (Also, great, great acting from David Tennant.)
The data ghost business: horribly sad and efficiently scary at the same time. I suspect it might also be crucial to the solution later. And note it, like the books everywhere, is about phrases, storytelling even in this brief and elliptic form.
So, on to the next part, even though it presumably will have minimal Donna as well. I do hope the one after that will be a Donna extravaganza!
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