Empty Child vs Silence in the Library

I think it's a close one but the "Just this once..." speech closes it for Empty Child. Also has a better cliffhanger between eps, "Are you my Mummy?" is way more iconic than "Who turned out the lights?" and I think The Doctor has more agency in it, despite thinking he lost Donna in the library. Other parts like the "like I said...once" line are just tremendous, Jack was a kick up the arse mid-season, the "sister" was a terrific bit of casting. Richard Wilson is always welcome. And the gas mask transformation is still horrible.

Which isn't to put down Silence - it also does a lot exceptionally well. The scenes with Colin Salmon are very much a set up for Moffat stories that would question reality and be quite meta. Alex Kingston nails River from the start and the budget the BBC awarded the show by that point where it was their flagship and not a "we hope this works" like Series 1 which is looking very dated nearly 20 years on really shows. 

I personally woulda used Steve Pemberton as a big OTT villain at some point though rather than a bit of a dull part like the one he has. 

So a win for Eccleston but not by much..2-1 after extra time.

I never really saw the appeal of The Empty Child, myself. The opening scene was fun, but I didn't find the monsters or the mystery very engaging, and found Jack's debut to be his weakest story. I view it as a "just okay" story. It's fine, but doesn't particularly grab me one way or another.

The Silence in the Library, however, is a fantastic story. The Vashta Narmada are wonderfully threatening villains, clicking at a perfectly instinctual level; the secondary cast is generally pretty entertaining and fun to watch; River's whole character concept is brilliant and Alex Kingston has great, immediate chemistry with David Tennant; and it also gives us a really, really good character piece for Donna -- showing us, basically, her deepest desires -- to be loved and accepted -- and then having that torn away from her. Replaced with the lie that this fulfillment she briefly found... was false.

I wonder to what extent Moffat knew of RTD's plans for the series finale, or if perhaps RTD's plans were affected by what Moffat wrote here, because the parallels to Donna's final, tragic fate are so clear. At least Moffat allowed Donna the small gift of retaining those memories, but still, Jesus. It was a real gut punch.

And beautifully acted all around.

Though, granted, that one character has not aged well at all, thanks to IRL garbage.

EDIT: So, yeah, Silence gets my vote here, hands down. I think it's more interesting on every level -- setting, characters, plot, monsters, music, what have you. It's even got that lovely layer of timey-wimeyness that is conspicuously absent from the series outside of Moffat's run. Compared to that run in full, I think it demonstrates Moffat at his very best -- imaginative ideas and an evocative story grounded in strong characters tinged with mystery and melancholy. I think it still holds up as among his very best episodes.

Empty Child/Doctor Dances is probably one of the top 10 damn near perfect Doctor Who stories from start to finish. Silence in the Library has some wonderful set pieces but … it could have been a one parter, a creepy haunted house horror where survival is brought at the coat of a life intricately linked to the Doctor.
Empty Child though? Needed that beautiful cliffhanger and uniquely Who resolution. Needed that extra tension building. Needed space to pay off that one perfect day for the Doctor.
Both had lovely performances from the leads, but there is so little on screen Eccelston that this story by virtue of it’s virtues exceeds the virtuous aspects of Silence. Silence is the Doctor finding a mystery, Dances is the Doctor finding redemption.