Forest of the Dead (TV story)

"Shh... spoilers!"

- River Song

Synopsis
As the shadows rise, the Doctor forges an alliance with the mysterious River Song. But can anyone stop the Vashta Nerada?

Plot
Continuing on from Silence in the Library, River Song uses her blaster to create a hole in the wall--enabling her, the Doctor and the others to escape the shadow-possessed Proper Dave down a corridor.

All this is being watched on TV by the girl. She switches channels and eventually finds a channel showing Donna being taken out of the ambulance on a stretcher. She wakes up in an ambulance with no memories of her past life. She is treated in a facility by Doctor Moon. She soon spots something; she seems to jump from one place to another in an instant, which is how time progresses in her virtual world. 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 are copies of one another.

Meanwhile, the Doctor squabbles with River Song, but is soon stunned when she whispers something in his ear to prove that he comes to trust her completely. However, Anita now has two shadows. They are then forced to flee as the Vashta Nerada suit creature has caught them up again. The Time Lord tries to reason with the Vashta Nerada as it takes over more of the team, and finds out they came as microspores in millions and millions of books and then hatched. Other Dave stays behind, but is then killed by the Vashta Nerada, leaving the Doctor inbetween the two Daves. He escapes and sets off after the other three.

Further ahead, River Song is telling Anita about the Doctor she knows and tells her that in the future the Doctor can open the TARDIS by snapping is fingers. The Doctor overhears this, but then switches his attention back to the present. He then figures out that the library's computer hard drive - CAL - is the key to bringing Donna back, for it has literally 'saved' her and all of the 4022 people in the Library 100 years ago to its hard drive. 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 Strackman Lux's grandfather's youngest daughter. She was dying so he made an imaginary world and a Doctor Moon to watch over her and any book ever written.

River Song knocks the Doctor out to prevent him stopping her sacrificing herself to bring back Donna and the others. The Doctor tries to persuade River to let him do this, and reveals that she had whispered his real name into his ear, which apparently he could only tell someone this one time. 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 realizes in the nick of time that, knowing River's fate and having years to think of a way to save her, his future self must have given her the sonic screwdriver for a reason. He finds that, like the Data Ghosts, her consciousness has been saved in the screwdriver. The Doctor manages to upload River's data ghost into the Library's computer-- where she is reunited with the rest of her team, in the alternate reality with Dr. Moon and the girl.

Cast

 * The Doctor - David Tennant
 * Donna Noble - Catherine Tate
 * River Song - Alex Kingston
 * Doctor Moon - Colin Salmon
 * Strackman 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
 * Jelivia Lux - Mark Dexter
 * Ella McAvey - Eloise Rakic-Platt
 * Joshua McAvey - Alex Midwood

The Doctor

 * The Doctor says "Who are you?" to River Song, ironic because he is always the one being asked that.
 * River Song whispers the Doctor's name in his ear to convince him to trust her. Later, the Doctor states that there is only one reason why he would have told anyone his name and only one time when he could; the reason nor the time it can be revealed is not explained.
 * River Song indicates that "her Doctor" is a future version of the Tenth Doctor. It remains to be seen how this will reconcile with later adventures of the Tenth Doctor up to and including his eventual death and regeneration. It may just be that she is able to recognize the Doctor through telepathy. Being capable of summoning the Doctor via his psychic paper would indicate that prior to her physical death she did have some sort of telepathic abilities. Jack Harkness was also able to recognize the Doctor after his regeneration. However, it took her a while to realize that the Doctor hadn't met her yet in his personal timeline. If he didn't meet her until a future incarnation, this should have been obvious to her immediately (unless she just assumes this version of the doctor is later than her doctor). Jack was able to recognize the Doctor because of the TARDIS and, presumably, the Doctor's hand. He also would have known of the Doctor's regeneration and appearance in the Christmas Invasion via UNIT and the British government, otherwise he wouldn't have known about the arm. Additionally, it is also possible that River Song's Doctor is in fact a later incarnation who happens to physically resemble the Tenth Doctor, in much the way the Eighth Doctor has been noted as having similar features to the First Doctor. However initially she was puzzled why he didn't seem to know her, presuming it to be an act and that they had at least already met in his personal time line, before realising he was younger than her Doctor by looking in his eyes. This would seem to indicate they meet while he is still in his tenth incarnation, though how far in his future they meet is unclear as it would seem he still looks almost the same and it is unclear how fast the Doctor, or at least this incarnation, ages.
 * The Doctor learns the fate of River Song, and retains this memory through to their "first" meeting in the future. The future Doctor will adjust his sonic screwdriver in order to preserve Song's consciousness so his younger self will be able to preserve her within Cal.
 * If you look closely at the wall in Charlotte's house you will see three of her drawings are of a blonde girl, a wolf and what looks like a dalek.
 * Song appears to have knowledge of Time Lord anatomy, including knowledge of regeneration. She also indicates that destruction of both of the Doctor's hearts is a circumstance after which regeneration is not possible.

Story Notes

 * The working title for this story was: River's Run. When BBC Video announced the North American release of the Series 4 DVD box set, this title was used in the episode list and not Forest of the Dead.
 * In River Song's voice over, she mentions the "skies of all the world may just turn dark", a possible reference to The Darkness, a story arc element that plays out in the series 4 finale.
 * CAL was also the name of the computer graphics company that created the title sequence used between 1987 and 1989 for the Seventh Doctor's TV adventures. A result of this work was the creation of the first photo-realistic CGI TARDIS, featured in DW: Bad Wolf (TV story).
 * In the girl's house, on a drawing on the wall, there is a picture of a blonde haired girl and a wolf. This may be a reference to Rose and Bad Wolf as they are one and the same
 * This is the second episode in this series to have a character share the name of a character from the Joss Whedon show Firefly, with River. the first was Cobb in The Doctor's Daughter.
 * Moffat's recurring theme "everybody lives" returns again in this episode. In the BBC podcast associated with this episode, Moffat and Davies point out that so far in the four major storylines that he has contributed to the series, the only "final" deaths that have occurred have been due to old age (such as Billy Shipton and Kathy Nightingale) or illness (Madame de Pompadour). Moffat consequently promises (in the podcast) that he will kill people off in more dramatic fashion in future stories.
 * Although Moffat's story is science fiction, the idea of downloading human consciousness as data - even after physical death - and the philosophical issues surrounding this is an issue being addressed by futurists in real-life, with scientists such as Ray Kurzweil speculating that technology will allow the uploading of consciousness to computers within a generation in his book, The Age of Spiritual Machines.
 * A recurring theme in this and the preceding episode is "spoilers"; this is a term that was coined in the 1990s by science fiction fandom to address the circulation of information revealing the plots and endings of TV shows and movies. Interestingly, the fourth series of Doctor Who contains several examples of plot twists and cameos that were successfully protected from "spoilers". Other examples of successful spoiler protection include the appearance of Catherine Tate at the end of Doomsday. Examples of plot twists that were not successfully protected from "spoilers" included the return of Rose in Series 4 - spoiled in part by people witnessing the filming - and the regeneration of Christopher Eccleston at the end of Series 1 - spoiled by the BBC publicity office itself.

Ratings
to be added

Myths

 * Following the broadcast of Silence in the Library there was much discussion in the Doctor Who fan community over the identity of River Song, with speculation that she might be a future incarnation of Romana or an alias of Bernice Summerfield being two of the ideas put forth. The episode, ultimately, leaves her origin ambiguous although it does establish several times that this was the first time the Doctor met River, meaning she cannot be a past character.
 * In Planet of the Ood, the Doctor is told his "song may end soon", leading to speculation the "death" of River Song is what is being referred to.
 * Given Song's knowledge of the Doctor's true name, coupled with various references in dialogue in this and the preceding episode, additional speculation has included the possibility that she is the Doctor's future wife, or that the Doctor revealed his name to her just prior to his own death ("the only time I could," he says). It's unlikely the Doctor told her his name before his own death since Song clearly expected to meet the Doctor from a time after their relationship; she wouldn't have had this expectation if he was dead in her timeframe. However, given Davies' own comments that they have prepared to ensure this series continues long after the upcoming final regeneration, it is possible that his final death brings on a resurrection of some form.
 * Another idea put forth is that River Song is actually the Doctor's mother. This is based on a joke that Steven Moffat said in the pod cast. Although it would explain how she knows his name it does not explain why she constantly states he hasn't met her yet or her forwardness towards him. That said, it was Moffat who invented the phrase "wibbly wobbly, timey wimey"... This theory does not explain why she was so forward towards him (for example the playfully flirtatious tone of her retort "spoilers" when the Doctor asked her why she had handcuffs).

Filming Locations

 * The Library halls were filmed in Swansea Library.
 * The Area where everybody was returned was filmed in the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea
 * The control room where River sacrificed herself was filmed in ALCOA industries, in Fforestfach, Swansea.

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. Or perchance he simply reached for it with his foot.
 * 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.
 * When River Song says goodnight to her "children" there are three beds in the room, but when Donna is in the bedroom there are 2 beds. An extra bed was put in the room for Charlotte. As seen many times in the episode, the world in the data core can be changed drastically and spontaneously.
 * If the Vashta Nerada are now living on the planet, does that not mean that CAL and its hardrive will be destroyed? Even assuming they could destroy the computer without physical bodies, they have no reason to - they cannot feed on CAL.
 * It is curious how in this episode, a click of the fingers opens the TARDIS doors whilst in The Long Game, when the Doctor and Rose clicked in close proximity to the TARDIS, nothing happened to the TARDIS. The Doctor himself says "It doesn't work like that", referring to clicking to open the TARDIS. Presumably with the TARDIS being telepathic, it has to do with the intent the Doctor has in mind when snapping as well. Perhaps after all his travels with the same TARDIS, he has developed a closer telepathic connection with it than even he realizes, allowing him to command parts of it with his will. The Doctor also had the incentive to attempt opening the TARDIS doors; he had been told that his future self could do it. So, even if he failed when he attempted it this time, he could be sure that that it was possible later on. Possibly, when the Doctor absorbed the heart of the Tardis, he gained the telepathic link needed to open the door
 * The Vashta Nerada gave the humans a day to leave the planet after they were retrieved from CAL. They were last seen being teleported -- but teleported to where? It's unlikely River Song's ship, then crewless, would have been large enough to hold more than 4,000 people. It is likely that the range of the teleporter is great enough to reach the nearest planet or space station. The computer did not transport them to this place because either it did not exist yet or had not been programmed to select a valid destination at random. It is also possible that the doctor enhanced the range of the teleporter to allow this.
 * When the Doctor opens the trap door to escape, we see him fall and there is no ledge beneath him, but when we see him again he is hanging on to one. (We only see the trapdoor door fall. (This is more visible in HD, where it is clear that only the door falls.(Doctor Who isn't filmed in high definition.))
 * During the scene when everything goes white, when Lee bursts through the door - he shouts Donna! But Lee could not say her name properly because he had a stammer.He doesn't have it all the time. It seems to come and go, as there were several scenes in which he spoke without the stammer.
 * The future Doctor apparently places one of the communicator links in the sonic screwdriver to save River's mind, yet the suit she is wearing when she dies also has one of the links. ''We don't know if the communicator on her suit was intact after her death. If the transfer fried her brain, it may also have fried the communicator (which mirrors her brain activity).
 * It seemed to be that 4,022 people who were saved left CAL's world when River Song wired herself up. But if so, why when the Doctor 'saved' River Song, the rest of her crew were still there and hadn't been brought back with the masses.  Furthermore, Miss Evangelista's face has somehow been miraculously fixed. CAL was only able to reconstruct those that had been in suspended transport, since their entire bodies were stored within the computer as teleport patterns. (River's crew's bodies had already been consumed and could not be brought back - only their consciousness remained and their Data Ghosts were automatically uploaded via the Library's wi-fi system - this is what Miss Evangelista ascribes her continued existence to. Miss Evangelista's communicator was the only one broken, not just left to continue degrading, possibly causing her "incomplete" transfer into the computer. Her data is corrupted and she exists as "a poor copy of [her]self" until CAL is repaired and can properly reconstruct her digital image. The 4022 people had not died, they had been teleported but with no destination and so had been saved onto the hard-drive - they could just be "teleported" back from the hard-drive back to the library. The dead crew, though, could only be put somewhere happy in virtual reality because they had no physical bodies, just data.
 * As in the previous episode, there are many inconsistencies with the communicator lights between close-ups and wider shots (how many are lit, blinking/not blinking), particularly with the suit creatures. In the suit creatures, this could be seen as the data ghost, or soul flickering in and out of consciousness repeatedly, as the Vashta Nerada can manipulate the Data Ghosts to keep them around longer than they should be.
 * Similarly to a scene in the previous episode, soon after Anita notices she has two shadows, there is a shot in which she only has one shadow again, and then her two shadows return in the next shot. The episode establishes that the shadows can expand and withdraw. Depending on when this happens with Anita -- i.e. before or after her visor is darkened -- it may indicate when the Doctor became aware that she had been eaten.
 * Why does CAL's virtual world so closely resemble 21st century Earth? What's wrong with 21st century earth? Maybe CAL preferred 21st century earth as a place to exist because of all the alien encounters.
 * When exactly was Anita devoured? When the Doctor catches up with the team, she still has two shadows. However, soon after that, when they have descended to the core, it is revealed she is "Almost gone," With her com links Data ghost meter only having one light left, blinking weakly.
 * Additionally, how did the swarm inhabiting her suit know to manipulate her consciousness? Unless the Vashta Nerada is a collective consciousness, it should not know how to manipulate and control Anita's comunicator link. Perhaps this is a sign that the Vastha Nerada are gaining more control over their hosts, due to experience


 * When the shadows are stretching from Anita to the Doctor, the shadows of the equipment move away. When creating the shadows, the Doctor Who crew would have needed to shine 3 lights, causing all the shadows in the room to move, but this is right as an error)
 * How many people were killed when the Vashda Nerada first attacked, 100 years ago? There were exactly 4022 people in the library, those were all "saved" and there were no bodies found. Does that mean they could all flee to the teleporters before a single person got killed? Then why were they fleeing, if nobody had been killed yet? CAL is stated to have locked down the Library. Presumably part of the lockdown procedure was evacuation. She could find nowhere to evacuate them to, so she saved them instead. They did not choose to be teleported or saved, it was done automatically by CAL. CAL could probably detect the Vashta Nerada before they had gathered into any dangerous-size.

Continuity

 * At the end of Planet of the Ood, Ood Sigma says to The Doctor "I think your song must end soon". This likely is a foretelling of the death of River Song, who clearly had a close relationship to the future Doctor.
 * 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 (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks).
 * River Song says the Doctor has taken her to the "end of the universe", suggesting the Doctor at some point returns to the general time period seen in Utopia which is also described as being at the end of the universe. She could also mean "end of the universe" as a location, supposing that the area of the universe is finite, however the paradoxes that the toclafane caused may have averted the end of the universe to an even further date.
 * The question of the Doctor's real name dates back to the earliest days of the series (DW: An Unearthly Child, Silver Nemesis), though in more recent episodes (DW: The Girl in the Fireplace, The Shakespeare Code, The Fires of Pompeii, etc.) the fact his name is a mystery has been amplified. An earlier Moffat-written episode The Girl in the Fireplace, directly addressed this issue when Madame de Pompadour reads the Doctor's mind and discovers that the Doctor's true name is hidden (it is not, however, indicated whether she actually learns his true name).
 * At the end of this episode, River shouts that "Everybody lives!". This is very similar to what the Doctor says at the end of another of Steven Moffat's episodes, The Doctor Dances ("Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once — everybody lives!").
 * The Doctor says to River Song "history can be rewritten" to which Song replies "not one line" a reference to DW: The Aztecs.
 * The Doctor has previously spoken his name in EDA: Vanderdeken's Children and also EDA: Interference
 * The teleport system is similar to that used in DW: The Ark in Space in that it is limited to three at one time.
 * The squareness gun used by River Song to blast a hole in the wall of the Library is the same gun used by Jack Harkness when he first met the Doctor. It was left behind in the TARDIS when Jack Harkness was teleported out with the Doctor & Rose into the game shows on Station Five. (DW: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances/Bad Wolf) (Per Steven Moffat, Doctor Who Confidential: "River Runs Deep")
 * Despite his explicit statement to the contrary, the Doctor has given away a sonic screwdriver or two. Liz Shaw has one in Inferno, and Sarah Jane Smith has her sonic lipstick. Although he could be referring to never giving away his screwdriver.
 * Just as in The Girl in the Fireplace and Last of the Time Lords the Doctor maintains that he is "always all right" in the wake of a great loss.

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 on 4th August 2008.