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Everybody Knows that Everybody Dies...

Doctor Who
Forest of the Dead
Season Four Episode Nine

Right, so we're Right where we left off, between a node and a skeleton, the only way out is directly through the stacks.

And the Library has made it back onto the TV aparently.

but so has Donna.

She finds herself in a strange land. The same land the little girl is in because here is Doctor Moon trying to convince her that the library and the Doctor are not real.

This world is filled with jump cuts that would seem normal, except they keep happening and Donna starts to notice. Let us jump through Donna's imaginary life now:

She walks outside the mental hospital with a sign that says "CAL" out front when Doctor Moon suggests it. Donna is suspicious, so Moon tells her how it happened and she 'remembers".

Doctor Moon mentions the RIVER and they're at the river. Donna Meets Lee Macavoy. He has a pretty severe stuttering problem.

Doctor Moon and Donna are suddenly walking around again, and as it happens Moon tells her that Lee has asked her fishing.

and then they are fishing.

And then they are married.

and then they have babies.

Whoa, it's been seven years according to Doctor Moon. He congratulates her on becoming fully integrated.

Just when she's getting over this whole imaginary library and Doctor business...he shows up right in Doctor Moon's place.

Doctor Moon chalks up this Doctor business to a little heartburn, and tells Donna to forget all about it. So she does. (I promise this will make sense eventually.)

Back in the Library of doom, the space travellers have found a clear spot and the Doctor Sonics around for shadows. They're kind of in troube though, because this particular room has no lights...and the sun is setting.

The Doctor's screwdriver is totally fritzing out, so River just uses the old Chicken leg test, which Other Dave hands over reluctantly. And the shadow devours it quickly enough.

A Sonic here, and a sonic there. The rest of the companions are starting to doubt the Doctor. River tries to reassure them, but she doesn't do a very good job of it. She's still mad because he hasn't met her yet.

And River offer's some advice on how to get the screwdriver to work better...red settings and dampers, none of which are actually features on the Doctor's current screwdriver. He's still mad because he doesn't know why he would ever give his darn screwdriver away.

She reassures him that she didn't pilfer it from his dead body, but she doesn't do a very good job of it. He really doesn't trust her. She tells him to stop being so darn emotional.

Sorry, the Doctor can't turn the EMO off right now. Donna's disappeared into thin air, and there's some stranger claiming to know him, and his screwdriver is broken, and there's shadows after him, and Ten is already a little high strung to begin with anyway. He asks who she is for the bazillionth time...seriously, Gwen...chill.

Lux tells tells them to stop behaving like an Old Married couple

River decides that she needs him to know that she's trustworthy, so she says she's sorry for breaking his rules and then whispers in his ear.

Whatever she said has totally shut him up, and they're good all of a sudden.

Now that River has been deemed trustworthy it's time to solve the problem of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver interfereance, so he paces in circles around the group shouting at them to brain storm him some answers.

I'ts the Moon. It's a DOCTOR MOON which supports and maintains the MAIN CORE OF THE PLANET Hinty, hint, hint.

And it's still transmitting. Imagine that.

While the Doctor is listening to his screwdriver, Donna suddenly flashes up in front of them in hologram form.

He tries to get her back but the Screwdriver is being blocked...can't worry about that now though...Anita has a different problem.

Helmets on, fat lot of good that will do.

The Doctor shades her visor in hopes that this will fool the shadow into thinking it's already gotten inside. He has no flipping clue whether or not this is going to work. Good luck with that swarm, Anita.

The Doctor has to confer with River for a moment. There are five people left...so why is there six?

Skeltor here has caught up with them!

Back in Donna's imaginary land, the kids have made a statue of her that has no face. This has Donna a little disturbed.

Donna goes to the window, because Doctor Moon has disappeared and she sees a creepy figure shrouded in black walking by.

Donna says she's tired and all of a sudden she's ready for bed.

She sees the figure outside her window again, and Lee returns with a letter that has been slipped through the door.

It says the world is wrong and to meet at Donna's usal play park.

The little girl doesn't think Donna should go...

But Donna has decided to go anyway.

The shrouded figure is there waiting for her.

The Figure tells her that she didn't get the letter the night before...she just got the letter a few seconds ago and suddenly wound up in the park because she decided to go. Donna mulls this over...and the figure calls her name. So how does the lady in black know Donna?

It's Miss Evangelista!

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Co. are running away from the shadow swarm. He decides he needs to stay behind and try to reason with them.

River thinks this is the stupidest idea in the history of ideas, but he begs her for five minutes. She tells Other Dave to stay behind and keep an eye on the Doctor and rescue him if he does anything monumentaly dumb.

So the Doctor explains to skeletor how he can talk through the neural relay on the space suit.

The Doctor wants to know why the storms came to the library when they could be living it up in the forests of thier homeworlds...and the storm steadily creeps up on him.

Dave thinks now would be a good time to run like hell, but he only gets hand waved away for his troubles.

Skeletor finally gets the hang of the whole taking through poor dead proper Dave and tells the Doctor that the swarm didn't come to the library...it was born there.

The Doctor tries to argue the point as if the swarm doesn't know where it's born...there are no trees in a library after all...

Yes, the books. The forest was cut down and made into books and shipped to thelibrary.

Meanwhile, Other Dave keeps repeated warning the Doctor that they should go. Don't worry, he's not a horrible nag...he's only been eaten by a swarm and those are his last words.

So now the Doctor's caught between two skeletors and we get to learn the secret to the his long lasting life...I mean, other than the fact that if he's mortaly wounded he can just regenerate a new body.

It's to always stand near the door. He sonics the trap-door he's standing on and falls out of the building.

Haha, Skeletors! Take that!

In little girl land the little girl is watching Doctor Who...(aside, I keep typing double letters accidentally...This drink I'm having is going to do wonders for this recap. I can feel it already.)

I guess she thinks the Doctor being in mortal peril is great entertainment.

Meanwhile, in another place Donna is going to have a really long conversation with Miss Evangelista where she blatantly Explains What is going on

The Short story in this scene: Donna's been programed to forget the library and the Doctor, All the children are not even real. They're all the same kids. This revelation really puts Donna on edge.

Miss Evangelista is wearing a Viel because she's been photoshopped.

Back in the Library River is going to go on some long Tangent about how she misses her version of the Doctor.

#10 version of the Doctor is not quite as awesome as her Doctor, who can scare whole armies by his mere presence and open the TARDIS with only a snap of his fingers.

Well our spikey haired Doctor has returned and he's a little prickly about the spoilers River is dropping. He tells River that the TARDIS doesn't open for snaps, and that he IS the Doctor.

And River's all, 'yeah, someday.' Which is kind of bitchy.

Bad news, Other Dave is out of commision, Anita is still okay though. Scared but okay.

Anita's bummed because she's going to have to walk around with a shaded visor for the rest of her life...and she wants some words of encouragement, kind of like the ones that River whispered in the Doctor's ear earlier.

Yeah, that's not happening. She tells him that his secrets are safe with her since she basically has a death sentence. She doesn't get any words of encouragement, but the Doctor gets an ephiphany.

SAVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Computer meant SAVED!!! (literally)

Back in the land of exposition, Miss Evangelista is telling Donna that there were transcription errors that made her ugly and smart. She's about to tell Donna all the secrets...

The little girl, so doesn't like that idea.

The story: 100 years ago when the swarm hatched the library tried to teleport everybody in the library to safety, but there was nowhere to send them...so they got SAVED to the hard drive.

In case you didn't get that, the Doctor draws us a diagram.

Evangelista explains some more, and Donna remembers. She's mad because she might be a Node face and she's been dieting in a fake body.

Blabla, Evangelista is brilliant and unloved, so she can see the truth.

Donna wants to know: If she's living in a dream world, who's dream is it exactly? Well, Miss Smarty Pants Evangelista can't see it all...but she can see one word and the word is...

CAL. Forget it, the little girl is so many letters, CAL is upset now that the word is out so she presses some more buttons on the remote.

This causes Donna's fake child to fall, and Donna instinctively runs to her aid.

Donna is done with Miss Evangelista and here shrouded face when she is told that her children cannot be sustained once she doesn't believe in them anymore.

CAL is even more upset that Evangelista is going around telling all the secrets and ruining everything.

Her concerned dad comes over to see what's wrong with her, and she zaps him out of existence with the remote. Then she slams the remote to the ground.

Which enables the auto destruct! Good times!

Cal is weeping in the fetal position.

And Donna has magically transported directly home from the park. The Autodestruct has caused the entire world to go red!

The Doctor and River are a leeetle bit concerned about this whole thing, but Luxx is sure the Doctor Moon will stop it.

Here he comes to save the day?

Goodnight Moon. Seriously, who gave this kid the all powerful remote?

Bad news.

THey have to save Cal says Luxx...but it's in the core of the planet.

This is no problem for River Song.

Let's voyage to the center of the world than shall we?

Donna takes care of the kids. One of them wonders if it's bed time.

And they're suddenly in bed.

This one is having an existental crisis and now believes she's not real.

and this one thinks that when Donna isn't around they just stop being.

Donna tells them not to worry, because she's never closing her eyes again.

The kids are suddenly gone though, and Donna wails with despair.

So, Right. Cal is in a state over in exposition land and she's calling for help. Our space travellers can hear it and coincidentally the computer is in sleep mode and the doctor can't wake it.

As he whacks away at the keyboard all of Cal's little electronic toys go haywire.

Luxx explains that the computer is dreaming and Anita tells him that is silly because computers are not alive.

Little girls are though. Luxx throws a switch.

Cal is the computer!

Alright, so the short story is the kid was dying...she's a long lost relative of Luxx...and they saved her in the computer so she could live happily with all the toys and books she wanted...the the swarm came and she saved all the people.

See, he wasn't protecting a patent after all! He was only protecting a helpless little girl.

So what's the plan, Non-Awesome Doctor?

Easy as Pie. Just beam everybody out and something, something...for some reason the auto-destruct will be turned off...yeah! But there's not enough Memory space!

Easy also! The Doctor's going to use his own memory space to hook himself up to the computer. River replaces her previous idea of the Doctor's stupidest idea ever with this one because this one will certainly kill him.

SOnicy Sonics! Haha! River protests and he tells her to shut up. Ha! He says some techno-babble about her and Luxx going upstairs to do something technical that I'm too tipsy to make sense of at this point.

He tells her to shut-up again even though she hasn't spoken yet. It's a preemptive shut-up.

Sometimes she hates him, says River, and then she's off with Luxx threatening to put another end too the Doctor if he gets himself killed.

Now that they've gone and he's all alone with the swarm...I mean Anita...

Awww, we liked Anita! The Doctor tries to strike a deal with the swarm, but the skeletors are not to receptive to the idea of deals.

He wants the Swarm to let all the people in the computer pass.

Skeletor tells him that they are not nice and they're not going to be letting anybody go.

Right, so the Doctor's kind of pissed right now. He tells the swarm so, and if they don't believe he's dangerous they can look up all the tales of his awesomeness that are circulating around the library.

They give him one day to get all the people out of the computer and then disappear. River has come back to assist the Doctor.

He really has no intention of letting her do whatever she's come down there to do, she she punches his lights out and handcuffs him to the building.

When he comes to, River is busy hooking herself up to the computer.

Nooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, River's timed her death for the end of the countdown.

Oh, gosh, I'm too tired to even want to get into this. Let's just say that River speculates that the Doctor always knew how she was going to die and it's all sadness and remembering the good times. She tells him about the last time she sawy him and he cried and gave her his screwdriver.

The Doctor is sad. He tells her that they can rewrite history, but River doesn't want to loose the time they already shared together in the future or something. Does that make sense? He can't do anything but sit there and watch.

She tells him it's going to be okay. He's still going to meet her and have all the good times.

Anyway, he reveals what she whispered in his ear earlier. It was his name. There was only time would/could tell her. We don't really get to find out, because River "Spoiler" hushes him as she gets ready to fry herself.

3..2..1...

Donna and Lee share one last moment before they're ripped out of make believe land and thrown back into the real world. Donna tells him that none of it is real, and that she will find him on the outside.

And then all the people are back in the library! Oh, Happy day!

Except for the Doctor, who is still cuffed and now has to look at River's dead body (which we thankfully don't have to)

Donna's not feeling much better. She can't find Lee and decides that she imagined him...the perfect man for her, gorgeous and can't say a word.

The Doctor tells her he's already, which Donna speculates is Time Lord Code for Not alright at all. Which it is, and Donna is right there with him.

Lee spots Donna just as she's leaving and he tries to call out to her, but his stutter is back and it's as bad as ever! He can't make it back to her before he's teleported away! Waaah!

Ahh, it's the end of the episode now, and the Doctor is going to leave River's TARDIARY in the library.

And Donna wants to know what exactly it is that's going to happen to her in the future, since she's not going to be with for the rest of eternity...also, an explanation for the look of Doom River gave her earlier would be nice.

Just so happens, the Doctor has got his hand on a handy book of spoilers. He offers a peek.

But Donna's not too keen on Spoilers either! Good job, Donna.

Next time...

Or Not. The Doctor is still worried about his darn screwdriver. He doesn't understand why he would just give it away. There must have been a very clever reason for this, because nobody is more clever than the Doctor...except for future Doctors that is.

Aha! He saved her!

He saved her and now he has to run to upload her into the computer so she can her conscious mind can live on forever...body or no.

He makes it just in the nick of time!

Cal is pleased. The Doctor is very pleased.

Cal explains that the Doctor fixed the data core and dream land is all candy and roses now.

And River even has some friends in her new imaginary world! Awww! It's a good thing the Doctor never gives up, River can't believe he did it, but she's not exactly complaining.