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Doctor Who: Silence in the Library

David Tennant as The Doctor and Alex Kingston as River Song
  • Posted at 7:45pm
  • 31 May 2008
  • by WilliamGallagher-RT

Best story so far - and I'm not just saying that because writer Steven Moffat is taking over. No, I'm saying this next bit because writer Steven Moffat is taking over: you're the greatest writer in all the land, Doctor Who is in tremendous hands, we've all put the US version of Coupling behind us, now gimme a job.

I first met him on the set of Press Gang and in the last couple of years we have disagreed on countless things, every last one of which I now completely accept I was wrong about.

That's the creeping over with, here's the slamming criticism: Silence in the Library features monsters I can't spell. And the Library's 51st-century computers all have 21st-century Apple wireless keyboards (currently £49 apiece in the Apple Store, you heard it here first).

I can, however, fawn over Moffat's new character and what Professor River Song (played by guest star Alex Kingston) brought to the show.

She ought to have been a problem: because we're aware she's met the Doctor before, later in his life, that should be the end of all possible tension. Plainly, inevitably, he will survive whatever the Vashta Nerada (I just looked that up) throw at him next week.

But then we always know the Doctor will survive, we just choose to forget for the thrill of it. And instead of puncturing the tension, River added a pang to it: just imagine if she dies in next week's part two. Hopefully she won't - but if she did, we'd have her dying in the Doctor's arms when he's everything to her and he hardly knows her yet. And then when he does meet her some day, all the adventures we now know they'll have together will be painful because both we and he already know her fate.

'Course, if she doesn't die then none of this is true, but I offer it as a point about how Moffat can casually throw in arrestingly deep possibilities and how I can spot them in a see-I-should-be-hired kind of way. I'll work for chocolate.

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