In this strange complex of time and space anything can happen

3. You didn't watch Confidential, then?

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I did, and I guess what you're referring to is Moffat at the end saying how great it is that she effectively free to roam the library for all eternity. That bit was playing just as I added in that edit, actually. But Donna's experience of that virtual reality was a lot more like a TV show than eternity in a library - so I'm afraid I didn't buy what he was saying. It still looked a lot like books were losing out to more passive forms of entertainment to me.

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Overall, it was fine, and actually I thought Donna's storyline in it was pretty good. But between them, the things I've complained about above just made me so angry (especially the bit about Evangelista) that they completely tainted the rest of the episode for me.

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Donna was imagining her perfect life - perfect husband, kids etc. For River it would be "perfect life" (apart from the Doctor, but then they've had a lifetime in her timeline) plus all the books, history etc she could want, plus her team. The choice between that and oblivion, as he said.

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primitivepeople.livejournal.com

I can see what you mean...but generally I thought it was clever and gripping stuff, and a good sign of things to come.

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Well, OK. But a) it would still have been much more powerful to just leave her dead, rather than have him wave his magic wand and send her to Never-Never-Land. And b) that incredible library still becomes a no-go zone to the whole of the rest of the Universe. I didn't like the implications of that at all.

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b) does suck, unless the Vashta Nerada have a finite spore cycle or something.

Still, at least it will piss off the batchippers, the ones who don't handwave River away, anyway. Rose never knew his name and hopefully never will. Someone else was with him near the end, which I'm guessing is the only time he would tell anyone his name, when he was dying for the last time.

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ms-siobhan.livejournal.com

Bits of it I found quite moving but bits really annoyed me too, like why did the Doctor get to save River but Donna missed seeing her perfect man in the library again, them not appearing to bother about staying out of shadows en route to the hard drive, also Mr Pops thought the gravity platform bit was a bit bollocks and convenient*.

Completely agree about Evangelista too, though I did think in her black lace victoriana she'd fit right in at Whitby.

*there are some who would argue that all of Dr Who is a bit bollocks and convenient ;-)

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Yeah, that was deliciously intriguing, about his name, wasn't it?! That there's only one time when he could tell anyone - and I think you're right about when, too. I also loved RTD speculating about it being Keith or Mr. Dvoratrelundar! Made me splorfle on my sofa. :-)

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Donna's experience of that virtual reality was a lot more like a TV show than eternity in a library.

I agree completely with this point, the jump cuts were exactly like normal television and nothing at all like a book - although it could be argued that this is only being presented that way because it is a television episode. (I tend to imagine that the whole series is being presented from the point of view of the Tardis and translated into a format that we can understand - there's a whole heap of errors that can be forgiven if you buy into this conceit.)

Whatever, there would appear to be a lot of books about British domestic life in that library.

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Yes, poor Donna! Though I guess it had to happen, because if she actually had found that guy, that would have been the end of her wandering around with the Doctor, wouldn't it? I'd like to hope she will find him in the final episode, and go off and have her perfect life with him... but I kinda doubt it, given the way New Who likes to go for the angst. Martha already had her happy ending - and I don't think that's going to happen two seasons in a row.

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Ah, I like the TARDIS-cam theory! I'm buying that.

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1. That may be the way that Evangelista has rationalised the errors, but I didn't see that being presented as a choice.

2. Doctor will never see her again, and it's the end of her life in the real world, so it's still fairly poignant. True, white outfits weren't subtle; I prefered Donna's jim-jams. The "saved you and sent you to heaven" can be seen as yet another Christ allegory.

3. To be fair, the biggest library in the Universe is a no-go zone at the *start* of the episode, and at the end retains its real purpose which is somewhere for the little girl to live. Just now she has a woman reading a new book of stories to her. In that respect it's a shame it's Her Off ER* rather than Donna's grandad, as Bernard Cribbins was ace on Jackanory.

Someone should tell Google that storing all the world's information in one place leads to the breeding of evil - which almost directly contradicts last week's Confidential "books is good" montage.

*I am vaguely aware that Alex Kingston may have other things on her CV but I'd be hard pressed to name them.

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Did you ever hear the podcast commentary for GITF with Moff and Noel Clarke? They do a lot of name speculating. Noel decides it's Curtis, which cracks me up.

(I have all the podcast and DVD commentaries on my iPod.)

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I think like that too. Everything is the TARDIS as unreliable narrator, and anything else can be wanked away by the Time War.

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1. I didn't really mean the episode was presenting that as a choice for the character. Rather, I mean those are apparently the two options in Steven Moffat's head: that women can either be intelligent or sexually attractive, but not both.

2. Again, I still say it would be even more poignant if she'd just stayed dead in the ordinary sense. I get very annoyed by fantasy stories of any kind which present death as negotiable, or in some sense less brutal and final than it actually is - and the ending here just really triggered that switch in me.

3. True about the start of the story. But then again, before that, it was a functioning library, full of people enjoying its books and accessing its information, as well as a home for the little girl. I'd have liked the Doctor to reinstate that.

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No, I don't bother with the podcasts, I'm afraid. For all that I am supposedly introducing podcasting into our teaching delivery methods at work, I'm not actually much into them myself.

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Glad you both like it, I shall get round to checking if anyone's published the theory before - and if not, writing it up.

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The only ones worth a second listen tend to be the A team ones - anything involving RTD, Moff, Tennant, Barrowman (Collinson and Gardner only work if they're with A team members, otherwise it's all "marvellous" and "let's explain this bit for the plebs"). The smugness is occasionally hard work, but worth it for the extra info and the LOLZ. Less exciting when it's bland writer plus B list actor plus visual effects person, especially as they forget that not everyone is using it as a commentary with the visuals so there are big dull gaps.

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Those sound a lot like the rules for the commentary tracks on the old-school DVDs, too. After the Key to Time box set, I actually sought out and bought all the other DVDs I could find on Amazon which had Tom Baker commentaries on them (and which also generally tend to have at least the relevant companion, if not also the script writer and script editor from the time). But some of them also have 'secondary' commentaries, with (as you say) B-list actors etc. - and they really aren't worth bothering with.

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If you want a best of 1-4 at the end of this series slinging on an MP3 CD or similar, let me know. This series' podcast ones (which have differed from the DVD ones since they started podcasting on series 2) are only being kept on the Beeb site for a week, so it's made a bit more difficult for latecomers.

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nalsa.livejournal.com

Thing that hacked me off? If constructs and real "saved" people can share the same virtual world, and the saved people can be rewritten back into the library, why couldn't the people saved by Cal via the neural green-lighty thing also be rewritten? Because their energy signatures were gone? Rubbish.

I'm really quite disappointed in how this two-parter was polished off, especially after how top-notch last week's was.

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3. I agree. One thing I'm not clear on is whether all Vashta Nerada come from this library and then travel through time and space to other planets or whether Vashta Nerada can originate from multiple origin points (like the Cybermen).

1. Given that Moffat's head will actually be shaping the contents of the Blue Book Of Spoilers, it is worth considering how he sees the world.

I tend to find intelligent women sexually attractive, so it's difficult for me to really see a split. Your original terms of pretty/ugly, bright/dumb work better as they suggest a simple universal unarguable acceptance. In these factors there possibly is a balancing out of strengths within his women. Madame du Pompadour (sp?) ticked both boxes, but on reflection maybe that fact is what made her so "amazing".

Have you seen Press Gang or Coupling?

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