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

• Accidental Innuendo: There's no hint of it in the script or the performances, but a line like Evangelista's "I'm Mr. Lux's personal everything," given her looks and relative lack of intelligence, would lead some to wonder.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Try rewatching the scene where River realizes the Doctor doesn't know her after seeing "The Impossible Astronaut". Even more so after "The Husbands of River Song".
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Doctor comments "I never land on Sundays. Sundays are boring." Ten years later, the Thirteenth Doctor's episodes would air on Sundays.
  • As described in the Trivia tab, David Tennant assumed that River was some future female incarnation of the Doctor, even though it "made no sense". It'd make a lot more sense a few regenerations later.
  • River's first episode having the word "Silence" in its title became this when a cult called the Silence were later revealed to be a major part of her arc, and that she was one of their agents once.
  • River asks the Doctor, "...picnic at Asgard. Have we done Asgard yet?" Josh Dallas, who appears as one of the library's info nodes, would later play the Asgardian Fandral in Thor and Talulah Riley, who appears as Miss Evangelista plays a Asgardian nurse in Thor: The Dark World.
  • River and the Doctor's relationship, usually meeting in the wrong order and using a diary to keep track, is reminiscent of the novel The Time Traveler's Wife. In 2022, Steven Moffat would actually produce a TV adaptation of The Time Traveler's Wife.
• Paranoia Fuel: On top of the idea of monsters hiding in the shadows just priming to eat you, the Doctor makes reference to the notion that the creatures exist on Earth as well. Though later Expanded Universe sources (including the Adventure Games) make a point that Earth's native Vashta Nerada are normally docile and mostly just eat roadkill, this episode still mentions that sometimes stray travelers at night never come out of the dark. Have fun next time you go out late at night.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • O-T Fagbenle has gone from being "that guy whose name is O-T Fagbenle" to headlining Marvel's Black Widow (2021) in just twelve years.
  • Node 1 is Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, while Node 2 is Prince Charming.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The scene of the magic-moniter and rotating human-sized head with Donna's blank face on it does not make fans comfortable.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion:"Vashta Nerada" is pronounced /ˈvæʃtə nəˈrɑːdə/ ("VASH-ta na-RAH-da") in the show, but some fans pronounce Vashta as /ˈvɑːʃtə/ ("VAHSH-ta") instead.

---