"Donna Noble has left the library...."

Just who the hell is River Song?

One of the things that Doctor Who does really well is take something normal and everyday and make it utterly terrifying. Steven Moffat has become the poster boy for such a practice, playing on the idea of monsters under the bed in his Season 2 episode Girl in the Fireplace, making statues scary in the peerless Blink, and now he takes darkness, shadows and those flecks of dust you see in sunbeams and turns them into something truly terrifying. Put that man in charge! Oh...right...yeah.


So, after a message on the Psychic Paper, the Doctor takes Donna to the biggest library in the universe which is a whole planet of books. However the library is abandoned and they're warned to stay out of the shadows. All sounds simple enough, but in the hands of Steven Moffat it becomes much more complicated and exciting. As if the pirahnas of the air and the multiplying shadows weren't bad enough, we have 4,000 missing people (The answer to that probably lies in the fate of Donna...) the relationship of River Song to the Doctor, (So far the messageboards are arguing over whether she's the TARDIS, Captain Jack, A future regeneration of the Doctor, The Doctor's wife, the wife of a duplicate version of the 10th Doctor, Rose (!!!!), and Martha (!!!!!!!)) and exactly who the little girl is and how she's controlling the library from modern day England. All these questions will no doubt be answered in the second part on Saturday and I simply cannot wait after that cracker of a cliffhanger. Surrounded by darkness, the Vashta Nerada closing in and the Doctor realises exactly what's happened to Donna.

Face? Bothered?

Good cast, Steve Pemberton as the unlikeable (and surely the next casualty?) rich man in charge of the expedition to the library, Colin Salmon being pretty damned enigmatic and the little girl are all excellent. Not entirely sure about Alex Kingston, she isn't demanding my attention as much as she probably should seeing as she's one of the many mysteries in the Library.

Moffat's done it again basically, no doubt scaring kids across the country with a multi-layered tale that bodes extremely well for the future of the show. Doctor Who is in very very safe hands.

The Geeky:

Once again there's a reference to the last Classic Doctor Who serial Survival: "Don't go out on Sundays, Sundays are boring..." Not sure where these Survival references are going, Cheetah People in the finale? Rona Munro writing an episode? People looking too much into things?

River Song has a squareness gun, the gun that Captain Jack uses in The Empty Child.