A Love Letter to Libraries and Books
Silence in the Library by Vivienne Dunstan
I’ve always loved libraries. When I’d go on childhood summer holidays to St Andrews I used to spend long afternoons in the public library’s local history collection—so much for enjoying the sea side! And easily the highlight for me of a recent trip to Dublin was seeing the stunning Long Room library at Trinity College, which many people would recognise as the inspiration for the Jedi Temple Library in the Star Wars prequel films. It’s not surprising that I stumbled onto book history as a research topic for doctoral studies, researching reading habits in the past. So it’s always a delight for me to see good depictions of libraries and reading on screen, particularly in Doctor Who, my favourite TV series. And there are arguably few better Doctor Who stories that do this than the two partSilence in the Library.
In this story the Doctor and his companion Donna visit the greatest library in the universe. This happens in the future, in the 51st century, and a whole planet has been transformed by a wealthy philanthropist into The Library. As a book historian watching it’s remarkable how much this futuristic library is focused on physical print books. At the moment, in the early 21st century, publishing is very much in a transitionary phase, between print and digital, with them somewhat overlapping, and it is currently unclear which will prosper, and what form books will take in the future. Nevertheless the vision shown in this story focuses primarily on print books. This isn’t unique to this episode of Doctor Who: in The Unicorn and the Wasp the Doctor speaks of facsimile copies of Agatha Christie stories being printed off on demand, which again is very topical in contemporary publishing. Having said that a core part of the plot is the ability of The Library to save information onto its central storage system, so there could be a digital element to the books it contains as well, albeit one that we don’t see portrayed on screen. And The Library can save more than just books, as we find out watching.
The episodes were filmed in a real-life library: the Old Swansea Central Library. Sadly, and somewhat ironically, it had recently closed at the time of filming. On the plus side this provided the production crew with a perfect setting they could rearrange and fill with fake books as much as they wanted. They could also make those fake books fly out of the shelves without worrying about damaging real valuable books. On the downside it’s rather sad that such a glorious on-screen depiction of a library was filmed in a library that was no longer fulfilling that role.
In terms of the plot the books aren’t used very much, and certainly don’t take any sort of central role. This is somewhat different from, for example, their use in Tooth and Claw, where the Tenth Doctor says“We’re in a library! Books! The best weapons in the world! This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have—arm yourselves!”. Though he does tell the Vashta Nerada in Silence in the Library to look him up in The Library’s books, and they do, and are suitably intimidated, and stop trying to defeat him.
What I like more, and this ties in with the intricacies of time travel and timey-wimey-ness, which I think should be used more than they are in Doctor Who, is the way that books can contain spoilers. Donna’s told not to read about the future, lest she learn things she shouldn’t know. Even more crucial is River Song’s diary, not a printed book admittedly, rather a handwritten notebook looking somewhat like the TARDIS, but one that the Doctor mustn’t look at unless he risks finding out his own future history. Of course this links back to Tooth and Claw’s implications about books as a source of knowledge. There are also earlier examples in Doctor Who, for example Sarah Jane’s researches in the castle library in Terror of the Zygons. But it’s with this story, and the start of the long-running River Song arc, that the spoilers angle, created by the timey-wimey-ness running through the story, first appears.
Ultimately the best thing for me watching this two-part story is that it’s a story that celebrates libraries and books, and whether those books be in the form of print or digital it really doesn’t matter. And it’s a glorious depiction. As a setting for action-packed adventures, being chased around by invisible flesh-gobbling creatures, The Library works really well. Libraries are shown as fun places where adventures can happen, and reading books can open up all sorts of possibilities, not all of them safe and nice. And for a young audience watching and getting that message it’s fantastic. Thank you very much Steven Moffat.
In this story the Doctor and his companion Donna visit the greatest library in the universe. This happens in the future, in the 51st century, and a whole planet has been transformed by a wealthy philanthropist into The Library. As a book historian watching it’s remarkable how much this futuristic library is focused on physical print books. At the moment, in the early 21st century, publishing is very much in a transitionary phase, between print and digital, with them somewhat overlapping, and it is currently unclear which will prosper, and what form books will take in the future. Nevertheless the vision shown in this story focuses primarily on print books. This isn’t unique to this episode of Doctor Who: in The Unicorn and the Wasp the Doctor speaks of facsimile copies of Agatha Christie stories being printed off on demand, which again is very topical in contemporary publishing. Having said that a core part of the plot is the ability of The Library to save information onto its central storage system, so there could be a digital element to the books it contains as well, albeit one that we don’t see portrayed on screen. And The Library can save more than just books, as we find out watching.
The episodes were filmed in a real-life library: the Old Swansea Central Library. Sadly, and somewhat ironically, it had recently closed at the time of filming. On the plus side this provided the production crew with a perfect setting they could rearrange and fill with fake books as much as they wanted. They could also make those fake books fly out of the shelves without worrying about damaging real valuable books. On the downside it’s rather sad that such a glorious on-screen depiction of a library was filmed in a library that was no longer fulfilling that role.
In terms of the plot the books aren’t used very much, and certainly don’t take any sort of central role. This is somewhat different from, for example, their use in Tooth and Claw, where the Tenth Doctor says“We’re in a library! Books! The best weapons in the world! This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have—arm yourselves!”. Though he does tell the Vashta Nerada in Silence in the Library to look him up in The Library’s books, and they do, and are suitably intimidated, and stop trying to defeat him.
What I like more, and this ties in with the intricacies of time travel and timey-wimey-ness, which I think should be used more than they are in Doctor Who, is the way that books can contain spoilers. Donna’s told not to read about the future, lest she learn things she shouldn’t know. Even more crucial is River Song’s diary, not a printed book admittedly, rather a handwritten notebook looking somewhat like the TARDIS, but one that the Doctor mustn’t look at unless he risks finding out his own future history. Of course this links back to Tooth and Claw’s implications about books as a source of knowledge. There are also earlier examples in Doctor Who, for example Sarah Jane’s researches in the castle library in Terror of the Zygons. But it’s with this story, and the start of the long-running River Song arc, that the spoilers angle, created by the timey-wimey-ness running through the story, first appears.
Ultimately the best thing for me watching this two-part story is that it’s a story that celebrates libraries and books, and whether those books be in the form of print or digital it really doesn’t matter. And it’s a glorious depiction. As a setting for action-packed adventures, being chased around by invisible flesh-gobbling creatures, The Library works really well. Libraries are shown as fun places where adventures can happen, and reading books can open up all sorts of possibilities, not all of them safe and nice. And for a young audience watching and getting that message it’s fantastic. Thank you very much Steven Moffat.
