Trivia / Doctor Who S30 E8 "Silence in the Library"

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• Acting in the Dark: David Tennant had absolutely no idea who River Song was supposed to be.
• Completely Different Title: The French title is "Bibliothèque des ombres, première partie" (The Library of Shadows, Part 1).
• Enforced Method Acting: Steven Moffat didn't tell any of the actors (except Alex Kingston and only very few of the crew) just who River Song is. David Tennant had no idea how to act opposite her, to great effect. On the DVD commentary, he says that he had the Doctor assume she's a future regeneration of him, because even though that made no sense, it made more sense than anything else he could come up with.
• First Appearance: Of River Song.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The little girl was originally a boy. It was felt that a young female character would be seen as more vulnerable.
  • Michael Gambon and Ian McKellen were offered the part of Doctor Moon.
  • Kate Winslet was considered for the role of River Song.
• Word of God: While writing the two-parter, Steven Moffat had an email exchange with Russell T Davies where he explained to him not just who River was, but that he considered the character of Dr. Moon to be a future version of the Doctor (and, by extent, the first on-screen incarnation of the Doctor to be played by a nonwhite actor, Colin Salmon):
  "In my head (and ONLY in my head, this will probably never appear on screen, or be confirmed in any way) River's not just his wife — she's his widow. Somewhere in the terrible future, on a battlefield, the 45th Doctor dies in her arms and makes her the same promise she once made him — it's not over for you, you'll see me again. So River buries her husband and off she goes to have lots of adventures with his younger selves and confuse the hell out of them. Until, of course, she ends up in the data core of the Library Planet, and realises she'll never see him again. And then she starts to wonder why anyone would call a moon 'Doctor.' Ahhh... Yeah, some version of that could still work. The Doctor worrying that she'll get lonely in the library, and popping his dying mind inside a moon. God, look at those words. I actually typed those words!"

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