just our hands clasped so tight

doctor who 4.09
"the forest of the dead"

its something to do with rose. i didnt notice it myself, until the music at the end. when the doc leaves river's notebook on the ledge, rose's theme is sighed out by that choral voice. and then he sends her into an alternate life. she is gone, but she's fine.

perhaps it is only the parallel plot that is the reason for the unboxing of the theme, but then looking closely at the pictures that CAL has plastered around her living room, you can see only wolves and daleks and an angelic blonde girl.

rose.

maybe, and i hate to say it, but maybe the best parts of this double ep are not the disappearing children or donna's husband, or even that everybody lives. Maybe the best parts of this episode do not belong to steven moffat. river, the bad wolf, season-long story arcs, past experience tells us they are the provence of one rtd.

we're so used to moffat giving us stand-alone episodes, that nevertheless give us characters that know far more about the doctor than anyone else can. captain jack, sally sparrow, that girl in that fireplace, they all knew more of the doctor than any companion ever has. maybe he and rtd are luring us in to the finale, into next year and the next season after that. because when he takes over, the episodes won't be stand-alones. the whole season will be his plaything. the whole thing will stand alone. but if what has passed shows us what will come, every part will be important to the whole.

are we really yet to meet river? she approached the doctor and told him her name before she asked if he remembered her. does she look different to how she will? or how she did? and if ten is her doctor, how will we find the time to meet her, to take her to drillion, before tennant decides to walk out of this suit and out of this world? can you even imagine him with a haircut?

how does charlotte, the girl in the computer, the girl in the library, in the forest of shadows, how does she know about rose? how can she? and why would the bad wolf leave her trace in a simulation world that the doctor never gets to see? the episode contains so much that the characters know but we do not. the reason you may hate river is because she contains spoilers. she is a spoiler. but they have given us something that the characters cannot know - that rose is returning. that somehow, she is mixed up in all of this. the doctor is a time traveller, but its not one line. he cannot escape the finale, the bad wolf, that everybody dies.