Forest of the Dead (TV story)

Forest of the Dead was the ninth episode of the fourth series of Doctor Who. Its major impact on the mythos of Doctor Who was its depiction of the death of River Song. This narrative end point would be respected in future series that told River Song's out-of-sequence story.

Synopsis
Donna is gone, the Vashta Nerada are out for fresh meat and the Tenth Doctor is running out of options. Can he trust the mysterious Professor River Song, a woman who claims to be from his future? Why would his future self have given her his sonic screwdriver, or tell her his real name? Even if they do work together, can anyone stop the shadows from claiming them all as their next meal?

Plot
River Song uses her sonic blaster to create a hole in the wall. The Tenth Doctor and the others escape the Vashta Nerada-possessed Proper Dave down a corridor.

These events are watched on television by the girl. She switches channels to one showing Donna being taken out of the ambulance on a stretcher. Donna wakes up in a facility being treated by Doctor Moon. When she tries to remember reality, Doctor Moon quietly tells her that she has been in this facility being treated by him for years. She accepts the reality he presents to her. The way time progresses in her virtual world seems to be led by her thoughts; Doctor Moon suggests she walks by the river and she suddenly appears at the river. She occasionally finds this odd, but is reassured by Doctor Moon. He introduces her to another resident named Lee, who has a stammer. Before she knows it, she is married to her ideal man, and they have two children.

She is contacted by a hooded figure, who tells her the world is not real. They arrange to meet in a playground. The figure reveals herself to be Miss Evangelista, whose consciousness was copied when she was killed. In this reality however, she has become much more intelligent. She again warns Donna that the world is not real. Donna is stubborn and sceptical, but to her horror she sees that all the children in the playground – including hers – are identical.

This revelation drives the little girl into hysterics, making her father and Doctor Moon disappear with her TV remote. The Library starts to enter a meltdown, and is set to explode.

Meanwhile, the others in the Library have been on the run from the Vashta Nerada. The Doctor and River Song argue, so to gain his trust, she whispers something in his ear. He is stunned, and seems to trust her completely now. Unfortunately, Anita now has two shadows. She remains brave in the face of her impending death, as the Doctor darkens her visor in the hopes that it might trick the Vashta Nerada into thinking they have already infiltrated it. They then realise that "Proper Dave" has caught up with them again, and they flee. The Doctor stops to try to reason with the Vashta Nerada. River tells Other Dave to stay behind to help the Doctor, who teaches the Vashta Nerada to use the suit's communicator to speak to him. In doing so, he learns that they came as micro-spores in millions and millions of books, and then hatched. Other Dave, in the meantime, has also been killed by the Vashta Nerada, leaving the Doctor trapped between the two Daves. He escapes through a trap door hatch, and sets off after the other three.

Elswhere, River Song is telling Anita about the Doctor she knows. She has seen whole armies turn and run away from him in the future, and he can open the TARDIS by snapping his fingers. The Doctor arrives, and says that is impossible. As he returns his attention to the present, Anita asks him what River whispered in his ear earlier. She reminds him that she's about to die, and so his secret is "safe" with her. This prompts him to finally realise the significance of the oddly-worded "4022 saved" message. He figures out that the Library's computer hard drive – CAL – literally "saved" all of the four thousand twenty-two people in the Library to its hard drive a hundred years ago, and has done the same with Donna.

The team travel to the core of the planet to the computer. The little girl is in fact the hard drive. She was Strackman Lux's grandfather's youngest daughter, Charlotte Abigail Lux (aka "CAL"). She was dying of an incurable disease, so he made an imaginary world for her to live in and and every book ever written for her to enjoy. He also gave her a "Doctor Moon" to watch over her, but the stress of having so many minds integrated into her own is causing her to overload. She has initiated the self-destruct and is about to destroy the planet.

The Doctor realises that to restore the "saved" people, the Library needs extra memory. This can be achieved by linking himself to the core. River Song says that this will burn through both his hearts, and kill him without a chance of even being able to regenerate. He sends River and Lux upstairs to prepare for the restoration. As she exits, River tells Anita to watch him.

Anita asks the Doctor what he intends to do about the Vashta Nerada. He states he intends to materialise the people, get them off the planet, and then leave the world to the Vashta Nerada. When asked if he thinks the Vashta Nerada will take his offer, he reveals Anita has already been consumed by them. When they, using Anita's suit, threaten to consume him and everyone else, he reminds them he is the Doctor... They are in the biggest library in the universe, and he tells them to look him up. They pause after a moment of consideration, and then agree: they will give him one day to evacuate everyone. They then abandon the suit and withdraw.

River returns to find Anita dead, then knocks the Doctor unconscious. He wakes up, finding himself handcuffed to the wall. River has hooked her own mind up to the computer, planning to carry out the plan in his place. He tries desperately to persuade River to let him do this. He remind her that she whispered his real name into his ear, which he could only tell someone for one reason... She refuses, and sadly notes that during all the time they shared and will share together, he always knew this is where and when she dies. She links in when the countdown reaches zero and dies, as the Doctor looks on.

Donna and the other saved people return in the library, and begin to be evacuated. Donna cannot find Lee, and she and the Doctor conclude that perhaps he never really existed at all. The real Lee sees as he steps onto a teleport, but his stammer prevents him from calling out to her before he is teleported away. The Doctor and Donna briefly muse over River Song's diary, as it contains details of her life and their future. Ultimately, they decide not to look in it, and leave it behind on a shelf along with the sonic screwdriver his future self gave her.

Suddenly, the Doctor comes running back. He realises that since he knew River's fate all along, his future self would have had years to think of a way to save her. He knows that he wouldn't just give her a sonic screwdriver without a good reason. Opening it, he finds that it contains a hidden neural relay. As with the data ghosts, her consciousness has been saved there. However, it is fading. The Doctor takes River for "one last run", as he sprints back to the core. He uploads River's data ghost into the Library's computer, as the face of Charlotte looks on and smiles. River appears in a virtual reality created by Charlotte and is reunited with all of her team members for all eternity.

In the real world, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS. Standing before it and concentrating, he tries opening the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers and is able to do so. He goes inside to join Donna, and turns to look back outside with her. As he snaps his fingers to close the door of the TARDIS, River closes the blue TARDIS-shaped diary. River is sitting in the kids' bedroom of Donna's house in the virtual realm, and has been telling the story of the Doctor to Donna's two children, and Charlotte, who has moved to live with them. Charlotte has a real family now, human consciousnesses to keep her company in her "Dream". Smiling, River turns out the lights, saying "Sweet dreams everyone."

Cast

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

The Doctor

 * The Doctor says, "Who are you?", to River Song, a line which is often asked of him.
 * 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.
 * 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 in this instance is a circumstance after which he will likely not be able to regenerate.

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. The Radio Times also used this working title. According to REF: Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter, the title was changed not long before broadcast.
 * In River Song's voiceover, she mentions the "skies of all the worlds might 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 1987's Time And The Rani.
 * 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.
 * Moffat's recurring theme "everybody lives" returns again in this episode. (TV: The Doctor Dances) 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, proven to be true in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone.
 * The concept 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.
 * This is the last episode not written or co-written by Russell T Davies until The Eleventh Hour, and the last to not be written or co-written by the show's head writer until Victory of the Daleks.
 * The frantic music from TV: Midnight is heard during a scene where Donna Noble freaks out, having seen her "children", whom she had tucked in bed, disappear without a trace, while she was in the data core.
 * Excerpts of the TV: Turn Left theme (a remixed version of the Doctor's theme with echoing vocals) are heard when dialogue about the Doctor's future is brought up by River, foreshadowing events to come.
 * The phrase, "Time can be rewritten", is first uttered by the Doctor in this story and is a recurring phrase throughout Series 5 and 6.
 * The Doctor states to River that Time Lords can't open their TARDIS doors with a snap of their fingers. However, River tells him (and he finds out) that he can because of the TARDIS' affinity to him. This makes him unique among even the Time Lords.

Ratings
to be added

Myths

 * Following the broadcast of Silence in the Library there was much discussion in the Doctor Who fan community of the identity of River Song, with rampant speculation on various characters who she might "really" be. 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 could not be a past character.
 * In Planet of the Ood, the Doctor was told his "song may end soon", leading to speculation the "death" of River Song is what was being referred to. The End of Time shows that this prediction centred on the end of this incarnation of the Doctor. 
 * It had been rumoured that River Song was the Doctor's future wife. This was shown to be true in (The Wedding of River Song)
 * Before the official title was revealed to be Forest of the Dead, it was rumoured that the episode's title was Saved from the Books.

Studio

 * Upper Boat Studios, Trefforest

Location

 * Hensol Castle, Hensol
 * Victoria Park, Cardiff
 * Palace Road, Cardiff
 * Crwys Medical Centre, Cardiff
 * St Mary's Of Angels, Canton
 * Dyffryn Gardens, Vale Of Glamorgan
 * Brangwyn Hall, Swansea
 * Alcoa Emp Swansea, Swansea
 * Swansea Library, Swansea

Production errors

 * The two times we see the Doctor's sonic screwdriver project the image of Donna, the Doctor's tone of voice is different.
 * Several times when the Doctor handles River's sonic screwdriver, the camera changes do not match up his hand positions on the screwdriver.
 * When Anita gets two shadows after she says, "Didn't do Proper Dave any good", she only has one shadow. When they get away from the swarm she has two shadows again.
 * Shortly after Donna's children are taken to the playground, Ella runs by with a scraped left knee, long before she actually injures herself there.
 * When Charlotte throws the TV remote away in rage, it can be seen that the shot in which the remote hits the floor is archive footage from Silence in the Library; as before Charlotte throws the remote, the bottom of it is badly scratched, but when the remote hits the floor, the bottom is intact.
 * The Doctor's suit switches between his brown one and his blue one throughout the episode even during times when the Doctor wouldn't have had the time or the ability to change. But this could be due to the lighting, that the blue suit sometimes looks brown.
 * The diode on River's screwdriver is cosmetically switched out from a blue lens to a red lens to show it's signal interference countering "red setting", but isn't shown how it can actually change colours, failing to disguise the obvious swap of colour filters on the screwdriver prop between takes.

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. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
 * River Song says the Doctor has taken her to the "end of the universe". She's been to both the end and the beginning of the Universe. (TV: The Big Bang)
 * The question of the Doctor's real name dates back to the earliest days of the series, though more recent episodes have implied that his name is a terrible secret. (TV: An Unearthly Child, Silver Nemesis, The Girl in the Fireplace, The Shakespeare Code, The Fires of Pompeii, The Wedding of River Song)
 * At the end of this episode, River states that some days "Everybody lives!". This is very similar to what the Doctor says at the end of another of Steven Moffat's episodes. (TV: The Doctor Dances).
 * The Doctor says to River Song, "time can be rewritten", to which River replies, "not one line". (TV: The Aztecs)
 * The Doctor has previously spoken his name to others. (PROSE: Vanderdeken's Children, Interference, Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing)
 * The squareness gun used by River Song to blast a hole in the wall of the Library is just like the gun used by Jack Harkness when he first met the Doctor. (TV: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances)
 * Although the Doctor has never given away a sonic screwdriver exactly, Liz Shaw used a "door handle" device, and Sarah Jane Smith had her sonic lipstick. (TV: Inferno)
 * The Doctor wonders why River Song has handcuffs. (TV: Flesh and Stone)
 * The Doctor maintains that he is "always all right" in the wake of a great loss.(TV: The Girl in the Fireplace, Last of the Time Lords)
 * The Doctor says that having 4,022 minds talking inside one's mind (referring to CAL) is like being him. Time Lord minds were shown to be all interconnected through the Matrix. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
 * River Song mentions the crash of the Byzantium, an event that had not yet happened from the Doctor's perspective. (TV: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone)
 * River Song says, when talking about the Doctor, "I've seen whole armies turn and run away." (TV: The Pandorica Opens, A Good Man Goes to War)
 * This is one of the moments during the Doctor's timeline in which one incarnation of Clara Oswald comes across the Tenth Doctor while trying to undo the damage done by the Great Intelligence. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
 * River Song reveals to the Doctor that his future self can open the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers, presumably due to the affinity the ship has developed with him. While the Doctor doesn't believe this can be done, he tests it out at the end of the episode and is able to do so. The Eleventh Doctor later does the same thing when inviting Amy Pond to join him in The Eleventh Hour and also does it in Day of the Moon in front of River, which may in fact be how she learned he could do it. Clara Oswald also displays the ability in The Day of the Doctor though its unexplained why she can do it, particularly as the TARDIS is shown to dislike her.

Home video releases

 * This story was released in the Series 4 DVD box set in November 2008 along with the rest of the series.
 * It was released as Series 4 Volume 3 in a vanilla edition with Silence in the Library and Midnight.