History Recap / DoctorWhoS30E8SilenceInTheLibrary

-->"My dad told me I had the IQ of plankton and I was pleased.

** The Doctor says that if he doesn't get back to the TARDIS after five hours, Emergency Program One will activate and send Donna back home for her safety. This is the same TARDIS feature that the Ninth Doctor used to send Rose back home to protect her from the incoming Dalek fleet in Satellite Five in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays The Parting of the Ways]]''.

** The Doctor says that if he doesn't get back to the TARDIS after five hours, Emergency Program One will activate and send Donna back home for her safety. This is the same TARDIS feature that the Ninth Doctor used to send Rose back home to protect her from the incoming Dalek fleet in Satellite Five in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays]]''.

River pulls the Doctor aside to catch up and compare diaries, to see how their personal timelines are at the moment. The Doctor just stares at her blankly. Actually, Creator/DavidTennant just stares at her blankly, because Creator/StevenMoffat [[EnforcedMethodActing refused to tell him what was going on]]. River is appropriately horrified when she realises that the Doctor has never met ''her''. To him, this is their very first meeting. To her, he looks too young, too inexperienced, too happy. He's not ''her'' Doctor yet. She also realises that, due to their timelines, the first time the Doctor meets her will be the last time she meets him.[[invoked]]

->''"Daleks — aim for the eyestalk. Sontarans — back of the neck. Vashta Nerada...'' '''''run'''''''. Just run."''

* DaylightHorror: It's a lovely day in the completely and utterly abandoned Library.

Moffat wrote the story after being promoted to head writer of ''Series/DoctorWho'' from series 5 onwards. An early version of the Library itself was introduced by Moffat in his 1996 short story "Literature/ContinuityErrors", the first ''Doctor Who'' story he ever wrote.

"Silence in the Library" was broadcast with a special warning to parents: don't let your kids watch it late at night.

True to Moffat form, the episodes were nominated for a Hugo award, but they lost out to [[WebVideo/DoctorHorriblesSingAlongBlog a certain sing-along blog]].

The one with ''[[Creator/MontyPython Monty Python's Big Red Book]]'', the first appearance of "{{Spoiler}}s", and the one where hiding behind the sofa stops being an effective deterrent.

* SundayIsBoring: The Doctor says, "I never land [the Tardis] on Sundays. Sundays are boring."

** Of course, she then says she also didn't sign it.

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: The Universe's largest library, home to every written work ever and run by a powerful computer... can't count past one million million (or a trillion). A 64-bit integer in a modern computer can exceed that by a factor of about ''18.5 million''. Possibly it's the life-scanner's sensitivity, not the Library's counting ability, which hit its limit at that point.

[[caption-width-right:350:Wouldn't be the first time the Doctor [[BreakingTheFourthWall broke that wall]]...]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Wouldn't be the ''first'' time the Doctor [[BreakingTheFourthWall broke that wall]]...]]

** River's reaction when she discovers Donna's identity, and Donna's sense of alarm that River is from the Doctor's future but doesn't know ''her''.

** The Doctor gets one when River pulls out [[spoiler:her own sonic screwdriver.]]

* ILied: River. "I lied. I'm always lying."

No time to dwell on that, though, as the Library is infested with flesh-eating shadows; Vashta Nerada. They're not every shadow... [[PrimalFear but they could be any shadow]]. They live on any planet that provides meat. Yes, [[ParanoiaFuel including Earth]].

River Song turns out to have a sonic, much to the Doctor's surprise.

* ApocalypseHow: An interesting case in that the Library is a planet which is technically an entirely-artificial futuristic building, and all 4,022 of its immediate (and obviously non-native) visitors disappeared off its surface in a sort-of ApocalypseHow/Class3A absolute DepopulationBomb, leaving only the swarms of Vashta Nerada while the planet was sealed off. The next episode explains how and why the Depopulation Bomb happened and [[spoiler:sees it get a total ResetButton with essentially no lasting damage to the affected]].