Doctor Who: 14 Cool Details In Steven Moffat & David Tennant's Silence In The Library Commentary

6. Why Moffat Chose The Name "Vashta Nerada"

Doctor Who Silence In The Library Vashta Nerada
BBC Studios

When naming the various creatures, characters and locations in their stories, a lot of writers will try and get really clever by giving these made-up-monikers some sort of hidden meaning.

We've seen this in Doctor Who lots of times before - probably the most famous example is that the letters in "Doctor Who" can be rearranged to spell out "Torchwood" - but sometimes, names are just... names.

Case in point: the Vashta Nerada. During the commentary, Moffat is asked where the idea for that name came from, and - even though you might assume that there's some sort of nifty secret behind it - he states that "it's completely made up", and that he actually went out of his way to check that it didn't have a deeper meaning.

Hilariously, he also adds that he thought Tennant would "sound cool" saying it (he's not wrong!), which is mainly what made him settle on this particular name.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!