Silence In The Library

********Spoiler Warning********

Wow!

I could just leave it at that. "Wow!" sums up this latest episode of Dr Who quite nicely. It is a real, back to basics, hide behind the sofa (with a torch) episode that will scare the buggery out of your kids and leave you with sleepless nights yourselves as you pacify you crying children when it's time for them to go to bed! And it is a two-parter which leaves you with a fantastic cliff-hanging moment at the end of this episode.

As the Doctor explains in the story, every culture expresses an irrational fear of the dark. Everyone has, at some point even if it was just fleetingly, been a bit scared when the lights have gone out. This story explains that we do indeed need to be scared of the dark because the darkness can kill you.

The casting of Alex Kingston as Professor River Song is a stroke of genius. When she is first introduced I found her a bit sinister, as she had a constant creepy grin on her face the whole time. But this is explained as the story progresses as being because she knows the Doctor, probably quite intimately, but from some point in his own personal future. If only this could be because she will become his new companion after Donna dies. Sorry, she's already dead as of the end of this episode, isn't she? Probably not, but I have heard rumours that she does die at some point in this series, but I would imagine that they will leave that until the last episode, wouldn't they? Or would that be too obvious? The great thing about the revamped Dr Who is that the "obvious" isn't often the way the story develops. Which is why we love it.

If I found River Song sinister initially, I can't say how I feel about Dr Moon, played by Colin Salmon (of the impossibly deep voice). By the end of the episode we still have no idea if he is good or evil, but he does reveal to the girl (who has no name apparently) that her nightmares are real and her "reality" is false. So, who (or what) is she and who is Dr Moon really? I heard the character name mentioned before somewhere, but I can't think where. Wikipedia states that he is in just 2 episodes of Dr Who (this episode and its second part presumably) but is that just because subsequent appearances are under wraps? I guess, like everyone else, I will have to wait and see. You would think that having a friend working on the series would mean that I would be privy to certain privileged information, but Tim is always tight-lipped about anything to do with future story lines. "I couldn't possibly say" is his off-pat reply, which gets a tad annoying, yet still I keep asking questions in the hope that he may let something slip.

Sinister could be the byword of this episode as there are so many "sinister" things and people. Along with my feelings toward River Song initially and to Dr Moon, there is obviously the darkness itself (the Vashta Nerada to give it its proper name), the little girl is, in a way, a bit sinister, Steve Pemberton, of League of Gentlemen fame, is sinister (in the same way that most self-important jumped-up little businessmen are), and so too are the Nodes. The Nodes are information booths, 51st century stylee. Basically a statue with a real human face, donated by dead people. They have a library (I had to say it) of faces stored in their data banks and, as Donna explained in disgust, "It chose me a dead face it thought I'd like!" Nice.

Silence in the Library leaves you with more questions than you could possibly have imagined before you watch it. Who exactly is Dr Moon? What relevance does the girl have? Is Donna really dead? Are the other people "saved" from the library really dead? How well exactly does Professor River Song really know the Doctor? Are we going to be seeing a lot more of her? And does the Doctor really "never land on a Sunday"? Written by Steven Moffat, who also penned one of my other favourite episodes, Blink, this was a fantastic episode of classic-style Dr Who. This is a stunning episode not to be missed and I am counting the days until I can watch Forest of the Dead next week. It fills me with confidence knowing that he is to take over the reigns from Russell T Davies in 2010.