Silence in the Library

[happydalek]

Meh. 

The dark wasn't dark enough, for starters.  It was all shades of deep blue and you could still see your way around.  The whole reason the dark is scary is because you can't see anything.  So fail on that point.

Also, I wish the Doctor hadn't immediately identified the shadow things and told us everything about them.  Far scarier when you don't know what it is, which is why The Empty Child worked so much better at holding my interest and creeping me out. 

More importantly, why hasn't everybody already been eaten?  Clearly the shadow things don't have a problem with light, all they need is something to attach to, and as we saw, they are quite capable of stretching themselves towards prey.  So how come only Evangelista (and now Proper Dave) has bitten the dust?  After 100 years of no food, you'd think this swarm would have been all over everybody in seconds. 

Speaking of Evangelista, the ghost thing is kind of a neat idea, but the scene felt gratuitous and unnecessary.  If it's just an echo in the technology, why was everybody acting like it was still her and trying to placate it?  If that was my loved one, I'd be turning that thing off in a heartbeat.  Just...ick, no.  Pointless.  However, Skeletor-with-the-broken-record was pretty cool.  It'd be neat if the shadows figure out how to use it to communicate so the Doctor can Reason With Them. 

The only really effective part of that cliffhanger was the Donna-face on the statue.  It was pretty obvious the "saved" feature meant the library was processing and storing people like CDs.  Question is, why?

The little girl is Cal.  She's the data core.  Why she seems to be living as a human in contemporary England...lots of interesting potential here.  I'd love there to be some kind of timey-wimey weirdness involved, but more likely it'll be something more conventional like the 21st century "reality" is really the dream, and the computer is suffering some kind of "brain damage" like the one in "Girl in the Fireplace." 

Afterall, it is a Moff script, and it's also set in the 51st Century. 

Again.  Not that I'm complaining...it's just funny to me that Moff keeps picking on that century. 

River Song gets points for that nifty cover design on her TARDIS book, but overall I just don't like her.  Weird Name + Goo-goo-eyes for the Doctor + "I'm so special that you gave me a sonic screwdriver" + knows the Doctor's future = Mary Sue.  And she's an archaeologist.  *facepalm*  Sorry, Moff, but Paul Cornell already did that, and her name's  Bernice "Benny" Summerfield. 

I was gagging through her whole "I know that man" talk with Donna.  WHY ARE THEY ALL IN LOVE WITH HIM??  EXCEPT FOR DONNA.  Please, RTD&Moff, don't boil Donna's entire character down to, "You know, the one who wasn't in love with him."  She has lots of way cooler attributes.  But this nasty trend of women who wuv teh Doctor is really, really wearing thin, and if you're only doing it to appeal to the Moms out there, guess what?  You've got it totally backwards. 

...Although, considering the character of the Doctor is essentially a giant Gary Stu for the poor women-shy sci-fi nerds out there (See?  I can stereotype, too!), I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that every human with a pair of ovaries is depicted falling head-over-heels for him.  *shudder* 

Heh, didn't mean to get so ranty.

But Moff, I have certain expectations from you, and this time, you rather failed.  Which isn't a terrible thing.  I'd have started getting suspicious that you were some kind of Script God or android if you didn't pen a mediocre episode now and then. 

Comments

[leoniedelt.livejournal.com]

I am so glad you and I are on the same wavelength... i though Teh Moff kinda failed on this one too :/

[happydalek.livejournal.com]

Me, too! It was very perplexing, after seeing the episode and being so underwhelmed, to find the majority of reaction posts were so full of love. I wanted to like this one, really I did, but Teh Moff did not deliver the goods. He is still made of awesome, but SitL, not so much. *shrugs*

[leoniedelt.livejournal.com]

I also wanted to like it, but was decidedly meh.

[leoniedelt.livejournal.com]

Oh and umm, as a mom, damn right they've got it backwards. I want my asexual Doctor back, damnit! (i want him for myself in my fan fiction / dreams, lol)

[happydalek.livejournal.com]

Amen!! That's what fanfiction is for (especially in my case, as my dreams totally Do Not Cooperate. hmphf!). Subtlety and subtext are so much more versatile to play around with. It allows room for endless "did they or didn't they" debate. Overt romance just kills the creativity. There's a reason the show lasted 26 years the first time around.

[leoniedelt.livejournal.com]

Bingo! sigh.

[naushika.livejournal.com]

Wow.. I'm surprised you didn't like it! I wasn't entirely impressed by Benny River, but I liked the episode otherwise.

I loved the scene with Evangalista, personally. I especially loved it because it showed the depth of Donna's character.

But I agree overall the episode wasn't as scary as some of Moff's previous episodes. I'm still looking forward to next week though! Sorry you were disappointed. :(

[happydalek.livejournal.com]

Hehe, I do seem to be kind of alone on the "didn't really like it" front, but there isn't much I can do about that. The ghosting scene with Evangelista is particularly odd, because I don't think it really did anything for Donna's character that we haven't already seen. She got lots of depth with the Ood, and in "Fires of Pompeii," and Evangelista was just such a footnote character that spending so much time on her death scene seemed like much ado about nothing. Morbid, even, like when the Doctor tried to reconstitute Astrid.

But then again, it could just be that I'm feeling prickly and short on patience for that emotional stuff right now.

Either way, I'm not usually on the fandom fringe like this. I think I'll explore a little. ;-)