The Forest of the Dead
written by Steven Moffat
directed by Geoffrey Sax
Broadcast - 4th October 1997-25th October 1997
Steven Moffat has a lot to live up to. First he’s written two of the best stories in the last few seasons – Hatred of the Daleks and Blink – so he's set himself a high standard. And if that weren't enough, just before The Forest of the Dead screened he was announced as Who's future Script Editor, an event guaranteed to have fans looking viciously at the episode for a glimpse of the shows new direction with him and Sanderman. That's a heavy weight to carry. Does The Forest Of The Dead live up to the hype?
Not quite. I’m not saying it's bad: it's certainly a great Season Opener and I’m not sure Moffat has it in him to churn out a bad story. But unfortunately the really good stuff that's here is also undermined by some nasty flaws.
The Forest of the Dead starts fantastically well. The little girl catches you completely off balance and you have no clue what the hell's happening: always an excellent beginning. And the Library, as well as being an inspired idea, is just gorgeous: the location shooting works a treat.
Then the Doctor and Grace drop in. I was astonished to find that this bit has been criticised as being too slow: I think the pacing is perfect. The intrigue is at full throttle, having just the two of them draws the maximum possible attention to the location and underlines the creepiness of the situation, and they turn in a wonderful two-hander. We were hoping it was going to be just the two of them, plus the little girl, as the Library gradually gave up its secrets.
No such luck. Instead, Generic Bunch Of Victims waltz in and trample all over the atmosphere, and in an instant the plot goes from the highly-desirable Could Be Anything to the rather less unpredictable Pick 'Em Off One By One. Boo.
The consolation, of course, is the wonderful Maggie Stables as Professor Evelyn Smythe. She’s a wonderful character who is great fun and isn’t just the generic expedition leader as we saw in something like Tomb of the Cybermen.
The trouble is, though, that the reason for all the racing around and pronouncing of doom falls a bit flat. As with a lot of stuff in here, the development of the Vashta Nerada isn't taken far enough. Are they dead scary, or aren't they? They seem pretty scary to us, but apparently the space-suited ones don't seem to think so. Why bother setting up all the stuff about not crossing the shadows when three seconds after the Doctor delivers his dire warning they're all tromping over each other's shadows like mad? Why, after the Doctor tells them to set up a circle of lights, don't they ever actually get round to doing it, even after they start getting munched? (And why don't they grab the lights and make a run for the TARDIS/their spaceship?) How come staying out of the shadows doesn't seem to matter when they're standing round waiting for Miss Evangelista's ghost to die?
Ah yes, Miss Evangelista. Ugh. First, there's the hideously clichéd setup, with her trying to make a point and being ignored, then she trots off to her doom, completely ignoring the Doctor's warnings about avoiding the shadows as she goes. After this unsympathetic beginning, we're then apparently supposed to be all choked up at the pathos of it all as her voice falters to a stop in the gathering darkness. Well, sorry. Unlike Grac e, who cries yet again, we don't think Moffat works anywhere near hard enough to justify the emotion he's trying to wring out of us. Even with the Music from Dennis McCarthy being full-on wistful.
That's the problem with the swarm lurching along in Proper Dave's suit as well. Probably meant to be scary; in fact, especially when teamed with Grace repeating herself in the giant spoon. But we weren't too busy laughing not to wonder why, if the Vashta Nerada are such efficient hunters in the shadows, why they'd bother standing on each other's shoulders in a spacesuit, or how a spacesuit moving at the speed of frozen is supposed to be a danger in the first place.
The bits with the little girl, in contrast, hit all the right notes. They do give the game away a bit by having her thrashing around on a rug that's the same shape as the logo on the Access Denied screen, but other than that, the suspense is excellent. We haven't a clue whether the girl, her Dad, Ulysses or none of them are evil or what, and that's exactly how it should be. The Doctor appearing on the girl's TV is a little too Blinkish, but this is made up for by her interacting with the Library.
By the time we get to Grace inside the computer the story really picks up with a bang. The jump cuts we take for granted as a device to show the passage of time are here really all of Grace's new life. It's a terrific wheeze and we take our hats off to Moffat and director, Geoffrey Sax.
Meanwhile, though, it's more of the same with the Vashta Nerada. And half the ime they seem to have forgotten all about them anyway. They know Anita is infected, but Evelyn is turning her back on her half the time.
Then comes the big revelation about everyone being saved in the database. Now we say revelation, because the Doctor shouts it out, waves his hands around and draws on the table, and Miss Evangelista explains it all over again. Myself, on the other hand, was dumbfounded, because it had been obvious to me (and we seriously doubt it was just me) ever since they mentioned people being saved in the first part. Why else would the Doctor go on about the giant database, and then follow it up with Grace's pattern being lost during the transport and then recreated?
Meanwhile, as with the Vashta Nerada something else scary is being thrown away: Miss Evangelista. The figure in her black dress and veil is utterly chilling: it gave us the creeps more than anything else in these episodes. But hey, it turns out that she's not actually scary at all: she's trying to do Grace a favour. Or is she? Let's be charitable and go that way instead, shall we? Then we can pontificate about whether Grace's ideal life with the perfect man and the perfect kids is, even if not real, worth more to her than her real life. If so, the figure in black really is a figure of doom.
Unfortunately, though, Moffat takes this line of inquiry in a direction that's even more stickily sentimental than Miss Evangelista's ghost. Grace clinging desperately to her fake children ladles on so much slush we were going down for the third time. Sentimentality is frequently Moffat's Achilles heel, and this trips the episode up and lands it face down in a pool of treacle.
That scene earlier on with Ulysses and Grace in her house as he tells her not to go to the park is nice and chilling but goes absolutely nowhere as she does go to the park and is just blatant filler.
Having left the two spacesuit swarms behind, despite the fact that the Vashta Nerada are everywhere including clinging onto Anita, it appears they're no longer scary. Emergency! Better hit the worst panic button in the world: the completely gratuitous autodestruct sequence! Why would a library even have one? I remarked: "This story's going nowhere: better put in a ticking clock." Honestly, this is so dumb and so random that it's utterly unforgivable. Big slap on the hand. It isn't even consistent: one minute the remote control's broken, signifying the destruction of the library, and the next it's magically working again to zap Ulysses.
Oops, back to scary again, as the Vashta Nerada finally get around to chomping up Anita and picking their teeth with her bones. Aaaand…not scary. All it takes is a quick cross-reference in the card catalogue, and they're off for a nap. So much for that. Why didn’t the Doctor try that a few skeletons ago? Of course, they seem a bit gullible, considering that they used to have an ecosystem with things to eat in it and all the Doctor's giving them back is a few dead trees which they seem to be in possession of already, but hey. They're a swarm, what can you do?
And on we go to the happy ending. Everybody lives? We don’t think so. "Trapped in a living death" is more how we'd put it, which made the ending as far as we're concerned rather more horrific than Moffat was probably aiming for. (We'd like to think there's meant to be some ambiguity about that, but with the huggings and the sunny voiceover we're not so sure.) We particularly like the way she rushes up and enthusiastically hugs her former crew (not to mention Miss Evangelista, who nobody liked anyway). How would you like to spend eternity with your workmates?
So who is Ulysses anyway? Moffat sprinkled us with another clues for us to have a pretty confident guess. The ‘I’m so proud of him’ line is a bit on the nose. I’m saying the Doctor’s Father. Anyway, I’m sure he’ll turn up again sometime.
It's got a lot of problems but there's a lot good stuff in here, with an original if not well-developed adversary, terrific exploration of some of the implications of time travel and virtual reality and some genuinely surprising turns. It's not Moffat's best, but it's still a win. Let’s see what Russell T Davies brings us with the Return of Nimon brings us next week… I have a feeling it won’t be as good as this.
