Forest of the Dead (TV story)

"Spoilers"

- River Song

Plot
River Song uses her gun to blast a hole in the wall, enabling her, The Doctor and the others to escape the shadow-possessed Proper Dave.

Donna wakes up in an ambulance with no memories of her past life. She is treated in a facility by Doctor Moon and life quickly flies by. Before she knows it, she is married to her ideal man Lee, who has a stammer, and has two kids of her own. She is then approached by a hooded figure in a playground, who turns out to be Miss Evangelista. She warns Donna that the world is not real. Donna soon observes that all the children in the playground have the same face.

The Doctor squabbles with River Song, but is soon stunned when he learns that he tells her his true name at some stage in his future. The Time Lord tries to reason with the Vashta Nerada and finds out they came as microspores in millions and millions of books and then hatched.

The Doctor figures out that the library computer's hard drive - CAL - is the key to bringing Donna back, for it has literally saved her. The team travels to the core of the planet to locate the computer. It transpires that the little girl is in fact the hard drive, and was originally a relative of Strackman Lux.

River Song knocks The Doctor out to prevent him stopping her sacrificing herself to bring back Donna and the others. In order to restore those who have been saved, she has to provide memory to Cal, which burns out her mind. She dies, as the Doctor looks on, handcuffed to a wall.

Donna and the other saved people return, but she cannot find Lee and thinks that perhaps he didn't exist after all. Lee sees her but his stammer prevents him from calling out to her before he is teleported away.

The Doctor remembers in the nick of time that her conscience might be saved in her suit thanks to the data ghosts. River Song comes back to life in the fantasy world of the hard drive, meeting Miss Evangelista again.

Cast

 * The Doctor - David Tennant
 * Donna Noble - Catherine Tate
 * River Song - Alex Kingston
 * Doctor Moon - Colin Salmon
 * Lux - Steve Pemberton
 * Proper Dave - Harry Peacock
 * Other Dave - O.T Fagbenle
 * Charlotte Lux - Eve Newton
 * Anita - Jessika Williams
 * Miss Evangelista - Talulah Riley
 * Lee McAvey - Jason Pitt
 * Dad - Mark Dexter
 * Ella McAvey - Eloise Rakic-Platt
 * Joshua McAvey - Alex Midwood

Story notes

 * The working title for this story was: River's Run

Ratings
To be added

Myths
to be added

Filming locations
To be added

Continuity
The Doctor says that the auto destruct in The Library could 'crack the planet open like an egg' the Seventh Doctor said the same about what the Imperial Dalek mothership's weapons could do to the Earth (Rememberance of the Daleks)

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * It is never explained how the Doctor got out of the handcuffs as it was shown that he couldn't reach the sonic screwdriver and there is no evidence that anyone freed him. There were 4,022 people in the Library. There is a very high chance that one of them found him and handed him the screwdriver. This well may have been Donna as the Doctor knew straight away that she was looking for Lee the first time we see them properly together in this episode. However, these events must have happened off-camera, thus why we did not know about it. It is possible that this is a deleted scene.
 * What happened to Felman Lux? He probably just lived his life in the normal world as he was never infected with the Vashta Nerada.
 * What happened to the Vashta Nerada? The Vashta Nerada agreed to give the Doctor one day to free the saved souls in return for the planet itself. It will be interesting to see if the "recovery" of River crops up in a future season... Why do they do that? How can they survive on an empty planet? Remember, they survived an entire century without meat while the people were 'saved'

DVD and other releases

 * It will be released on the Series 4 boxset DVD in November 2008.
 * It will be released as Series 4 Volume 3 alongside Silence in the Library and Midnight in August 2008.