Doctor Who in Review: Season Four, Episode #9 – Forest of the Dead

Rick Marshall

Rick Marshall was Online Managing Editor for ComicMix before joining MTV's SplashPage. Previously, he was Online Content Manager for Wizard Entertainment. He has written for several daily newspapers, alternative weekly newspapers, trade magazines and online media, and was named "Writer of the Year" by the New York Press Association in 2005.

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2 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:

    It's not so much that he was concerned that she had *a* sonic screwdriver, but that she had what he recognized as *his* sonic screwdriver.

  2. Vinnie Bartilucci says:

    I was *this close* to tearing up at the end. The last utz with Donna's "husband" damn near did it to me. Will all the people who claimed that Catherine Tate was going to ruin the series with her mugging please apologize. Her acting in this episode was spectacular, and the scene with the kids in the bedroom was patently heartbreaking.It's not that The Doctor's surprised River has A sonic screwdrive, he's surprised she has HIS sonic screwdriver. River is a walking mystery – why would The Doctor give him his Screwdriver, why would he tell her his name, all these things that he could/would only do to someone he was massively close to. "The Doctor she meets in the future must have always known about her death"That sounds like a depressing thing, but it's exactly the opposite. In the same way that the Davison Doctor learns how to fix the problem in Time Crash by watching the Tennant Doctor do it, Tennant now knows that he has already saved Song, and has all that time to invent the technology that will ensure that happens. Just like in Blink, Moffat LOVES the way time can be used, with the end of the story setting up the start. Moffat once again sets up his rules, then follows them to a "T", resulting in not a cutesy ending, but a perfectly logical one. Things you expect are just window dressing turn out to be vitally important. I can only imagine how wonderful the next season will be with him in charge of setting up little tidbits to set up the seasonal arc. And once again, "Nobody dies" – Moffat has yet to kill a major character in any of his stories, save by natural causes. he promises that will change when he's running the show, however.Ironically, as I looked at Miss Evangelista's face, I thought to myself, "Oo, that looks very CGI". On more thought, I realized, "Of COURSE it looks CGI, you pillock, the whole damn REALITY'S CGI!"And like everyone else, I rewound that scene to check, and sure enough, they played perfectly fairly with the many kids running around the playground.First runner up for line of the episode: "I'm 'Alright' too."