Let the Reader Beware
The Rantings and Ramblings of a retired student president of the Carleton College Science Fiction and Fantasy Alliance who is also studying to become a medievalist. Home for this year, but hopefully resuming my M.A. Program in York next year if all goes well.
Martinus (RL: Ross). 23. Male. Massive geek and nerd of many descriptions. Singer (but can't read music). Writer (fanfic). Chronic meta writer. Catelyn Stark/Samwell Tarly hybrid and proud of it. Callsign: Stan.
Resolute and stubborn stan of cerebral protagonists (and antagonists at times), honor-bound soldiers, flawlessly flawed 'righteous' warriors living in fear, walking identity crises (often of the morally-grey variety), children-at-heart, lost souls looking for somewhere to belong, lost souls who keep running, and those characters who take 'working inside the system' as a challenge, not a limitation.
This is not a spoiler-free blog for anything not currently airing.
I love nothing more than when characters reveal themselves while talking about someone else. And there is nothing more innately human than hypocrisy born of fear.
{ wear }
{ GAME OF THRONES }
So I had a conversation with my Whovian enthusiast bestie last night after re-watching ‘The Doctor’s Wife,’ which sort of brought up a number of the issues that I felt plagued S6 - she’s generally less critical of it than I am (her love for Rory is undiminished, for example) but there were some things we could definitely agree on.
heavenisalibrary replied to your post: #the anti-Moffat if you will - you just hit the nail on the head; THAT’S what felt so off to me about the latest series of DW. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger while I think the smaller scale episodes like The Doctor’s Wife and The Lodger are the ones that work best.
Mm, what do you mean about turning women into plot devices? I’ve heard this ad nauseum but I’m curious about your thoughts.
I can defend and justify a lot of controversial character dynamics and developments. My ‘Doctor Who Series 6 Ramblings’ tag is basically entirely composed of that. But Amy got inevitably shunted to the side because she was made into a mother by undeniably icky means and the focus was shifted to her daughter. Her daughter, who, on screen at least, has been basically a walking breathing player in a tragedy centered around the Doctor. And honestly both of those characters deserved better than that. Moffat had a lot of good ideas, and I will defend him on a lot of points. But he got lazy, and made the show about the Doctor when it should have been about the companions - especially the female ones, the dreamers that so many in the audience identify with. RTD also sometimes made everything and everyone (JUST. DONNA. AND. JOURNEY’S. END.) ancillary to Ten’s trauma, and a lot of my least favorite episodes reflect that. Russell just gets called on it less frequently.
Moffat found a winning formula with S5 and ‘The Big Bang’, which is in my opinion the best that NuWho has ever been, both in terms of characterization and plot (which was driven by characterization - specifically, Amy’s). He then tried to top it with S6, and between giving in to some of his more problematic writing habits (turning women into plot devices, mostly) and trying to top something he shouldn’t have tried to top, he made a complete mess of things.
WARNING: (PRO-)MOFFAT WHO RANT UPCOMING
That wretched quote. Ugh, first of all, Moffat claims he was badly misquoted, and being he’s really, well, a troll, it would not shock me in the least if some members of the British press really didn’t like him. I imagine him being a fun friend, but a guy that would be a real ass if you annoyed him too much. I think his humour can be immature and very ‘snickersnicker Schoolboy.’ Look, I do see some grounds for feminist complaint with the handling of both River and Amy’s storylines, though I really reject most of the criticism of ‘The Girl in the Fireplace,’ one of my favorite Who episodes either, as usually coming from either Moffat haters or Rose stans who can’t stand to see their kind of unremarkable heroine upstaged by a fabulous one-off character.
I feel like Rose stans, of all of Who fandom, are the ones who most often forget that the Doctor is 900 years old and 11 people in one he can’t have one love of his life. I only ship Eleven/River. I don’t ship Doctor/River. The only Doctor/anything ship I like is Doctor/TARDIS, because they are pretty much eternal and ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ was the best thing ever and Neil Gaiman deserves all the awards.
I’m sorry, but I have no trouble (and don’t call me classist or ablelist or such nonsense) believing that no ordinary human being could ever truly relate to the Doctor because he. isn’t. human. He’s nine-hundred freaking years old. He sees the universe, time and space even, differently. I ship two women and one man with the Doctor (well, and acknowledge the inevitability of one more). The women are Romana, a Time Lady (from Classic Who) who commonly outshone the Doctor when she wasn’t stuck in the damsel-in-distress role that the 1970s kept trying to box her in, River, because she is a child of the TARDIS and lives life out of order and understands what Eleven has gone through because she has mostly already lived it. And then Jack, who is not a normal human being from 20th century earth, understands the realities of Time Travel, has suffered the loss of his home and his identity in the same way the Doctor has, and, well, it’s Jack. (I ship Nine and Jack the most, I think - the semi-suppressed PTSD of both - especially knowing Jack’s backstory from Torchwood - is kind of irresistible). That’s pretty much it. There’s also the Master, and I kind of consider Master/Ten pretty much canon and it makes sense in a fucked up way (because this is the Master we’re talking about).
Anyway, this turned into an unexpected Who shipping manifesto. Sorry about that.
Moffat seems to have a very similar conception of who the Doctor is, and what he would be like, and how he should behave. Or alternatively his Doctor, Eleven, feels the most genuine and interesting and complex to me, though I do love the others, Old and New. Basically why I’m not always sure that Moffat gets the companions right, I think he gets the Doctor as a character and I love him for it.
Getting back to the companions - I wish that Amy had been able to deal with her trauma from being abducted and made to carry a baby unknowingly and then suddenly having a child and losing her on-screen before ‘The Wedding of River Song.’ I accept that Amy tends to suppress her emotions, even after she grew up with parents (which did wonders for her trust and intimacy issues). But it was unrealistic that she was not visibly thinking of River.
Now, I find the criticism that Amy and Rory should have insisted that they chase after their daughter following ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’…well, idiotic. Because it turns out they grew up with their daughter. That happened. Mels was Melody. You can take issue with Moffat’s method of resolution, but you can’t change the canon. And except in cases of extreme emergency (which given that they know River becomes a good person and not a crazy assassin - or at least more than just that - this doesn’t qualify) you cannot cross your own timeline. Mels grew up with Amy and Rory. It cannot be averted. To try to avert it would have devastating consequences and risk making things worse.
And there’s one more thing. Amy knows Eleven. She understands him at a level that no one else except River does. And she knows he feels like a horrendous failure for losing their daughter, for getting Amy into this horrible mess in the first place, and he knows that the Ponds are in pain and he hates that because they are his Ponds. So what kind of friend would Amy be if she took out her anger and frustration on the Doctor, who has always tried to do right by her and has given her experiences that cannot be given a value. When you run with the Doctor, bad things are inevitably going to happen. But as Reinette says, ‘The Doctor is worth the monsters.’ That’s not always true, and I thought it was good they recognized this by having Amy and Rory leave the TARDIS in ‘The God Complex’ because things had gone too far. But for how the fuck does it help anyone if Amy takes out her aggression on the Doctor for failing to do the impossible? She’s not being demure and submissive, she’s being intelligent and thoughtful. I’m sure she talks to Rory, which is one of the reasons he is so cynical and unhappy by the events of ‘The God Complex.’ I don’t get how Amy throwing a hissy-fit at the Doctor makes her a stronger character, more palatable for angry feminists. It makes her a child. Because life sucks sometimes. And the Doctor didn’t mean for any of this to happen and he’s clearly heartbroken over it.
When she had her chance at revenge at the one person who was unquestionably at fault for her ordeal, she fucking killed her. Amy had never killed another human being. And she killed her in cold blood. Because unlike the Doctor, Madam Kovarian deserved it for making Amy and River pawns in her game.
I wish River had more backstory that didn’t involve the Doctor, and I do think she has more than some fans (mostly the anti-Moffat variety) give her credit for. I think it’s demonstrated that she’s pretty beloved and trusted by her students in ‘Silence in the Library,’ (indicating that she probably spent years as a professor of archeology after she was released from prison, probably seeing the Doctor sporadically and very much having her own life) and even though she might have become an archaeologist because she wanted to find the Doctor, I think it suited her because (generally) you don’t earn a degree in something that you don’t enjoy doing and aren’t good at. So that whole swath of her life probably had nothing to do with the Doctor except at the very beginning (and its implied in ‘Closing Time’ that River had forgotten her history with the Doctor was due to the effects of the Silence and was researching him and seeking to understand him in a manner no different than I research Gregory of Tours). There’s also throw-away lines indicating she dated an Auton and kissed Cleopatra. I wish this was more explicit. I wish that River wasn’t completely obsessed with the Doctor from birth until death, or at least that this was shown to be unhealthy and her fate more tragic than romantic. Because I think River’s story is in no small part a cautionary tale of what can happen when people get wrapped up in the Doctor’s life. I wish River’s awesome wasn’t entirely wrapped up in things that were done to her, instead of her own accomplishments (though I’m not counting her Time Lord-y nature as a Child of the TARDIS). But all that said, I think there’s an awful lot to like about the character and her crazy demented life. I would say the same of Amy and her arc, which I think is fabulous and I loved going from her faith in the Doctor saving the universe to her faith in the Doctor becoming a liability and a danger (even if it was perhaps overstated by an over-emotional Eleven).
Oh dear god that was long.
Below is a nicely even-handed look at some of the admitted shortcomings of Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat’s treatment and use of the Doctor’s female companions throughout NuWho.
I don’t agree with everything said here. I think it trivializes some of the significant problems with RTD’s companions, and as I’ve probably made abundantly clear, I think that subtextually Amy and River are much more fully realized characters than many in the fandom tend to believe. I think Moffat’s ‘schoolboy humor’ is very tongue-in-cheek and not meant to be taken seriously at all. But I like this analysis because it allows for subjectivity in the reading of the show and its characters, and is not overly judgmental. While Series 5 and 6 have caused a lot of strong feelings, positive and negative, from various sectors of the fandom, and those reactions are as valid as any other, it is difficult to enjoy a discourse with those types of reactions and the reasons for them if you don’t happen to share those opinions. There’s also an idea that people that fail to see the horrific problems with Moffat’s Who are reading it wrong, and that’s just something I’ve never seen as very helpful.
The other thing that has become obvious is that there is one thing I do agree with in Moffat’s vision of Doctor Who that a fair number of other’s don’t - I view it as ultimately a show about a mad Time Lord travelling the universe, his adventures and the consequences of his actions. The companions add textures of humanity and human interest, making the Doctor’s magical world more accessible to the audience. The show isn’t about the companions - the companions are us, and while having living, viable characters, male or female, makes the show more interesting, ultimately I care a lot less about us. I don’t mind that they are archetypes to some extent because I have never really been as invested in any character in Who more than the Doctor. I don’t view him as a man, though I understand why others do. His gender identity is much less significant to me than his species identity, and his past experiences, his triumphs and failures.
What it comes down to is that I don’t really want to look at Rose’s family dynamics in a show I’ve always liked best as a Sci-Fi/Fantasy fairy tale. Classic Who was many things, but I’ve always appreciated the new incarnation the most when the show was about stories, which was one of the reasons that I found it difficult to dislike ‘The Wedding of River Song’ because I was fascinated by the idea of the Doctor’s ‘death’ being a story rather than a fixed event. I loved the themes of memory and the power of belief in Series 5 as well.
I’m not saying that Moffat could not or should not have done a better job representing female characters even as secondary parts of the story - there are significant shortcomings in the writing of Amy after her uterus is essentially used as a plot point (which I don’t view as Moffat being a misogynist so much as him failing to consider Amy’s situation as much as he should have; being more invested in the Doctor’s (and River’s) story and not leaving time for the rest - as well as the serialized nature of the show and the use of multiple writers and stand-alone episodes) and failing to deliver on the promise and hints of River being a character who though shaped by the Doctor had evolved and grown independently.
I suppose I’ve always loved Who as something lighter than other programs that actively take on the issues facing society - like Battlestar, for example. When RTD’s Who was spending more time on housing estates than on the TARDIS, I was significantly less interested. Maybe that says something about me and my male white privilege, but I’d really rather not get into that.
Little thoughts below - since clearly you are all waiting with bated breath to know what I think.
Oh god I can’t believe I just wrote that, even in jest.
Anyway…
The problems of being the Doctor…
Episode 1: Bad Night
This is a great little moment in the relationship between the TARDIS three. First of all, especially since the Doctor basically doesn’t sleep and in Gaiman’s episode Rory ended up asking if the Doctor had a bedroom, which I tend to think he doesn’t, I love the idea of him sneaking out for further adventures while Rory and Amy fulfill the human need for sleep. And obviously this calls for a premise that is completely ludicrous and so convoluted that it could only have come from the brain of Moffat.
Also, damn it, I think the idea of the Doctor’s ‘system’ for managing his friendship with Amy “Rory, she’s having an emotion!” is just precious. Eleven’s complete inability to consistently understand human emotions/his desire to avoid them all together in favor of zany shenanigans is one of my favorite character traits. It makes him alien, an old and ancient and distracted being who is also a cosmic nine-year old. I suspect Rory is far more capable of talking to Amy than Eleven is (which is partly why Amy is married to him and not the Doctor - he is capable of being an emotional anchor when she needs him in the way Eleven isn’t - Eleven runs away, as he always has) - if still awkward in the way boys often are, but the Doctor sees him as a kindred spirit managing this strange creature called a girl. Yes, it’s childish, but the Doctor is. It doesn’t mean he has any less respect for her.
And Amy is totally on to the Doctor’s dalliances with her daughter, which is also great. You have to admit that Amy Pond could be a pretty terrifying mother-in-law.
Best friends…in space.
Episode 2: Good Night
“You’re trying to conceal a Euphonium…guiltily. Has that ever been attempted before?”
“Amy, you are enormous parts of my life. And you are all I ever remember.”
“Amy, time and space is never ever going to make any kind of sense.”
“Okay, okay, so I ask a big important question about life and you’re basically telling me to go buy myself an ice cream.”
Sometimes Moffat really is a remarkably talented, but also very self-aware writer. And these minisodes are very much him saying ‘look, I know that some things in this last series don’t make any sense, but that’s the point.” It’s not the only way to write Doctor Who, and perhaps it will be nice to see if eventually a show-runner takes these matters a bit more seriously. But that’s not this Doctor and this showrunner, and that’s fine. Moffat likes to poke at big, gradiose, serious, adult concepts to show he’s aware of them and then go back to making a show that his inner seven-year old will relish. It’s not everything I wanted out of this show, but it doesn’t mean I can’t still enjoy it and meta the hell out of what is between the lines.
Here, Moffat shows he is very aware of the consequences of what he does to the companions and the Doctor, he just doesn’t have time to show it because there is always too much else going on. It’s one of the weaknesses of the short seasons and serialized nature of Who, even when episodes are pulled together with a long plot arc - they are still written at different times by different writers and have to tell a story, such that we can’t always see the emotional fallout of previous events. It’s not Battlestar, it’s something very different. Moffat’s Who is a show that can be a whole lot of things to a whole lot of people but in the end is meant for the kids and the kids at heart.
As for the episode itself, it captures Amy and the Doctor’s relationship wonderfully. The Doctor is the sensitive experienced figure of the end of Vincent and the Doctor while still maintaining a sense of perspective and simply accepting the absurdity of it all. Again, it’s not the only way to write NuWho, and I hope for a very different approach with the next showrunner so that this show can continue to explore new approaches and not stagnate. But this is why ‘The Wedding of River Song’ and ‘The Big Bang’ happened as they did.
The universe can be a difficult place to live in. So sometime you need to cheer up and buy yourself an ice cream.
(of course, sometimes a point can be reached where the universe is too difficult and trying to pretend that everything is just fine doesn’t work anymore - that’s what happened in ‘The God Complex.’ And ‘The Last of the Time Lords.’)
Obviously not mine.
Episodes 3&4: ‘The First Night’ and ‘The Last Night’
“Doctor, you and your secrets. You’ll be the death of me.”
“…but I haven’t changed!” “And you never will.”
Moffat somehow managed to capture the comic absurdity and heartbreaking tragedy that is Eleven’s timey-wimey relationship with River Song in the course of less than ten minutes. Matt Smith and Alex Kingston showed off their ridiculous chemistry and absolutely stunning acting abilities as they played multiple versions of themselves at different points along their own timelines and I bought every single second of it. And The Moff provided himself with an out in case the River Song storyline really is over.
I love these two, I really do. There’s not much more to say about that that I haven’t said ad nauseum. River’s trick with playing dead was great and so very in-character - she’s not a damsel in distress in the least, but it is fun to play around with things once in a while. River is extremely sexual while the Doctor runs around wanting to explore and thinking he’ll get to the kissing stuff later. No matter how their relationship may have started, they are equal partners in this now, and that was the whole point of their getting married. It’s a binding contract that prevents River from being another Girl Who Waited, because with all she’s done for the Doctor, she deserves better than that and he knows it.
That Rivers were running around all over the place establishes canonically that River is not dependent on the Doctor to get out of Stormcage - she is not trapped anymore than she wishes to be. As I saw someone else put it, Stormcage is basically a crappy apartment for which she doesn’t have to pay rent.
And then Moffat just rips your heart out and sets it on fire, but that’s nothing new.
I hope we haven’t seen the last of River - a few more stand-alone adventures tying in to the 50th aniversary story this next series seems to be leading to would be a lot of fun, especially now that Moffat has so much backstory to play with. But that’s dependent on Alex Kingston and what Moffat has planned for Series 7, of which I really have no idea. I’m assuming at this point that there is no primary companion, which would certainly leave the door open for Martha Season 4-like appearances by the members of the family Pond. And Moffat still has the characters from ‘A Good Man Goes To War’ for us to meet.
Episode 5: Up All Night
“This is when I look into his eyes and see all the things I’m going to do wrong in the next 60 years reflected back at me!”
Not exactly the same as the last ones, really more of a ‘prequel’ in the style of the little bits we saw before some of the stories this year. But a very cute little portrait of Craig’s insecurities as a father. Yes, the issues that Moffat tends to highlight are male-related ones, and he could be held at fault for that. But again, it is what it is. And again, hopefully the next showrunner will be less fixated on father-son relationships (though to be fair, it’s been the other writers on the staff that wrote those episodes, not Moffat). But’s adorable, and it’s relevant, and it’s harmless. Moffat did give us that lovely scene between Amy and River in ‘the Wedding of River Song,’ which was pretty much everything I wanted.
In total, I really loved these as additions to the Who canon. They capture a lot of Moffat’s Who, and provide valuable insights into the relationships between Moffat’s characters. Moffat isn’t apologizing to anyone - that’s not how he operates, for better or worse. But again, he’s probably only going to be around for a few more years. So those of us that love him can enjoy it while it lasts, and those of us that don’t can eagerly await a new vision of our favorite program about a Mad Man and his Box (or is it the other way round?).
Spoilers: Series 6, obviously
I have been getting a lot of questions about the Wedding of River Song, and I realized they were all pretty much boiling down to the same types of questions. So, instead of answering the same question 20 times, I decided to write this, and answer the major questions from that episode in a single sitting. Of course, this is in no way official and most of these answers are my best guesses.
1. If The Doctor on the beach was a Teselecta the whole time, how did it regenerate?
It’s a shape-shifting, time traveling, vigilante robot powered by tiny people inside. The ability to glow and shoot light out of its hands seems pretty simple after all of the other stuff. If Pink Floyd has the technology, I bet they do, too. Even if they didn’t, The Doctor, with the TARDIS, is with them, I’m sure he could figure out how to make the Teselecta shine some light.
2. If The Doctor’s death is a fixed point, how did faking it resolve everything?
Because The Doctor’s death wasn’t a fixed point. The Doctor faking his death was the actual fixed point. This is because of the massive ripple around the fake death rather than the death itself. Everyone believes The Doctor is dead at that moment. The only people who talked about it being fixed were The Doctor (who wants people to believe it was fixed) and The Teselecta (who helped The Doctor fake his death, which explains why their records indicated that he died and it was fixed, it helps the Doctor in the cover up).
Some people think that if The Silence learn that he faked his death that the universe will unravel again, but this isn’t the case. All that matters is that the fake death was carried out and at that moment everyone believed him to be dead.
4. Why did The Doctor and River have to get married?
“The Doctor’s entire plan was to fake his own death. He was more than willing to carry out this plan alone, but River wouldn’t let him. He married River because he needed River to trust him, but he also needed to trust her with one of his greatest secrets. He created a bond with her that no one else has. She no longer became someone standing in his way, a mere chess piece to be moved around in his plan (I hope you saw the “live chess match” with a member of The Silence as a metaphor), she became an equal partner and accomplice. Because she refused to be a pawn, it required her to be a partner. And I think the importance of this moment to River allows The Doctor to know she is for sure with him the entire way.
Does this mean it didn’t matter for The Doctor or that he doesn’t love her? No. The Doctor isn’ really the marrying type, and neither is the older River, for that matter. I think The Doctor loves River (what else did he whisper to her in Let’s Kill Hitler?) and the partnership means something to him, too.”
YES. YES. EXACTLY. It wasn’t a marriage in the conventional sense, a marriage like Amy and Rory’s. It was a promise, sealed in something that mattered, that meant that River would not be another ‘Girl Who Waited’ and would remain important to him. Each of them loved the other deeply, but at opposing points in their timelines, with some meeting at the middle. This marriage meant a whole lot different thing to both of them than a marriage ever would to us.
It’s really a brilliant and unconventional narrative structure that actually subverts a lot of the marriage/wedding tropes that I feared Moffat might play straight as he did with Amy and Rory. When you look at River’s entire arc, in the ‘correct’ order, the level of precision and path of character development is absolutely remarkable.
5. Why did River have to be the one to kill The Doctor?
“My guess is that The Silence, like all religious groups, have a series of traditions, beliefs and mythologies. It is possible that one of those mythologies included River. Also, it’s possible Madame Kovarian is just stubborn and didn’t want River to think she escaped. Also, they are evil, and knew River didn’t want to do it. They wanted to show how powerful they were by making her.”
I’ll take a crack at this. I think that the Silence and Kovarian don’t know nearly as much about the Doctor and Time Lords as we might assume. Time Lords have been gone from the universe for a long time, to the point where they are repeatedly said to be more legend that fact.
With this in mind, is it possible that Kovarian and her allies honestly believed that the only way to kill a Time Lord was with another Time Lord? Hence they learned of Melody Pond, and discovered she had Time Lord DNA. Time Lords do seem to have more than just regenerative capabilities - they seem to have more impressive mental capacities especially in their ability to naturally see time in a non-linear fashion which eludes most human beings. River has never seemed to have these troubles, has always seemed extremely intelligent, and had an instant and remarkable bond with the TARDIS, the last living machine created by the Time Lords. She’s not just more than human because she can regenerate. This not only explains why she might make a more effective assassin, it also explains to no small degree the Doctor’s fascination with her - she is quite literally the closest thing he will ever encounter to another Time Lord (well, assuming the Master stays dead, but he has no reason to believe otherwise).
When they married, the Doctor was in love with what River had become, which was no small reason why he was so visibly exasperated with her fouling up the universe because she cared so much. River was helplessly in love with the Doctor more an an idea. The beauty of their relationship, in many ways, is that by being married, and having that unbreakable (if entirely temporary) bond between them, they were able to, on different timelines, live to love and appreciate the other completely.
Am I sure that Moffat should have gone so far as to actually wed them, even bearing in mind the very convincing argument that by showing this committment, the Doctor was making River an equal partner in his mad scheme to trick the Silence and not just another pawn? Not really. I was happier with their relationship being less defined and more mysterious. Does it make sense in-story? Yes, a lot more than I thought it did at first. Should Moffat have made all of this more explicit? Absolutely.
Hello, sweetie.
#she looks so pleased with herself #ah River #so young and foolish #but her doing this was really kind of necessary #because it taught her that you can’t always re-write time #and some things have to happen #it taught her that she and the Doctor have to happen in the order they are supposed to #and oh god remember that scene when Amy is like ‘LOL LET’S KILL THAT ASTRONAUT’ and River is like ‘not all time can be rewritten’ and she knows Amy BECAUSE SHE TRIED ALREADY
This really does need to be taken in account. Moffat is writing both River’s character and her relationship with the Doctor backwards. She’s more naive and selfish and reckless because it makes sense. Because by the time she reaches the Library she is a fundamentally different and more mature person.
This is why the Doctor got so upset with her. I still don’t understand why exactly the Doctor couldn’t have explained before they were married than it was him in a Tessalecta Doctor suit, or if there was some sort of timey-wimey change of heart. Weirdly it’s not a plot hole that bothers me the most about ‘The Wedding of River Song’, but a ‘motivation’ hole. The parellels with her impatient treatment of him when he first met her in the Library are pretty obvious on further thought. ‘
River grows and develops as a character. She goes from burgeoning psychopath/selfish and naive young person (saying young girl is strictly unnecessary) to a mature, responsible, and confident adult. But this is where she starts from, post ‘Let’s Kill Hitler.’ And any analysis, positive or negative, of River’s character arc simply must take this into account.
All the promise that Raiver’s narrative implicitly carried has now been destroyed: the idea that she had killed a “good man” because she believed it was the right thing to do, because she believed she was killing a war criminal, and…
Just jumping in a bit here:
So I saw your back and forth on River’s necessity to the whole Astronaut plot, and had to wonder: doesn’t the fact that River was *able* to drain the weapons system and avert the assassination of the Doctor demonstrate that more was required than an empty suit? I’ll admit it’s still not explicitly clear why *River* was necessary, although my own theory is that Kovarian wanted a Time Lord (or the next closest thing) in order to kill a Time Lord (Melody is the ultimate weapon in the endless bitter war against the Doctor - Kovarian says that straight out). But clearly River had to be committed, or not at least resisting. Based on all we’ve seen, she was not trained just as an occupant of the astronaut suit - she’s absolutely devastating with a gun (the whole point of the Day of the Moon sequence was to show that River’s not just an awesome chick who shoots hats - there’s a whole lot more going on here) - in hindsight, I’d also argue her ruthlessness towards the Silence makes a whole lot more sense - they tormented her parents, kidnapped her, stole her child hood, and then tried to make her kill the man she loved. Like mother, like daughter, it seems.
(I also think Moffat very heavily implied that at least some of her subconscious training involved seduction - it’s unlikely she developed a penchant for special lipstick entirely on her own.)
It’s possible, really, that Madam Kovarian and her employers did not know as much as we thought she did. While she was very good at outwitting the Doctor, her knowledge of Time Lords (who are legendary, mystical beings - and he most of all) might have been somewhat haphazard. There is some logic in thinking that only an assassin that possesses the mind and powers of a Gallifreyan would be a match for the Doctor. And they very clearly completely failed to anticipate that by creating River’s obsession with the Doctor, they might lead her to love, rather than hate him.
And cheesy as it has been as times, one of the overriding themes of this series is that love can overcome all kinds of attempts to turn loved ones against each other (i.e. Craig and the Cyberman the episode previous, Rory winning back the compassion of old!Amy after her ordeal, the whole point of ‘Night Terrors’). The Silence certainly seem a bit blind to that notion, and that seems to have been their downfall this time around. Madam Kovarian was utterly confident that River’s programming and the astronaut suit would make her unable to do anything but carry out her mission. And she was wrong, and in one timeline, at least, she died for it.
Also, I think the Tesselecta experienced the events of ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ first and ‘The Wedding of River Song’ second so at that point they knew the Doctor - there did seem to be some familiarity. Might be wrong.
The Doctor realizes that he can’t use River as a pawn in his plan to fake his own death. Her refusal to play her part necessitates that she be an equal partner: more than just a companion, a wife. It’s the moment when the Doctor finally realizes that he has to trust River, and the two are bonded together not just by love but also by complicity in the Lake Silencio lie. So the Doctor’s death may not be real, but it is significant, because it marks a new chapter in his life and the event which cements the bond between him and River. It will be interesting to see how the Doctor’s decision to lay low will affect the show going forward, and what role (if any) in-laws will play in his life now that they’re in on the secret. (PhantomChief)
I think I rather like this idea. I suppose it is a bit of an exchange. They do love one another, but River won’t let the Doctor get away without making a commitment for once.
Mind, I’m still not sure I like the idea of the wedding being a result of an exchange, but I think it does give River a bit of self-respect she might not have otherwise had.
This article “Why This Year’s Doctor Who Finale Was (Mostly) Better than Last Year’s” by Charlie Jane Anders (io9) has some interesting thoughts about River and Amy’s characters.
SPOILERS
“River Song was such a shiny character, full of endless possibility, and she hit her high point in some of the early Matt Smith stories. Jumping out of spaceships in flight, carving messages in ancient cliffs, and generally being badass and mysterious. Now, it seems like her mystery is gone, and it’s been replaced by… I can hardly bear to type the words.”
“So in order to get River to restart the universe and set things right, the Doctor has to marry her — you’ll notice the Doctor never says he loves her, and he makes fun of her for saying she loves him. Soon afterwards, the Doctor tells River, “I don’t want to marry you.” And then, right before he does marry her, he tells her, “You embarrass me,” and he genuinely seems to be full of loathing for her in that moment. During the actual quickie wedding ceremony, River asks, “What am I doing?” and the Doctor replies, “as you’re told.” Awwww… so romantic. Finally, the Doctor tells her, “Now you’re the woman who marries me,” as if she’s won the jackpot.”
I can understand the disappointment that River’s backstory ended up being so conventional (well, sort of, she was a psychopathic assassin after all) when her introduction was so unconventional.
That said, there are two major problems with this analysis. The first is that it completely fails to take into account that we are going backwards in River’s timeline. She’s a young girl, full of enthusiasm and romantic notions and absolutely infatuated with this man. She grows. She learns. The character who we meet in the Library, even the character we see in Flesh and Stone, is far more mature and confident and independent than this River, because she is that much further away from the interference of the Silence in her life. She’s a different character. Moffat hasn’t ruined River - the worst you could say is that she has regressed. Which, you know, kind of makes sense.
Second, this idea that River blackmailed the Doctor into marrying her. Why do you think he says that he doesn’t want to marry her? Could it be, possibly, because he thinks he’s about to die and she will be the one to do it?* Eleven loves her. He’s fascinated and puzzled and thrilled by her. (Did Ten ever say he loved Rose until the fanfic-like ending of Series 4? Did anyone doubt the Doctor then?) Beyond that, River never said ‘you should marry me.’ She never expressed an explicit verbal desire to be his wife. He made that decision. He married her because he wanted to. Because he wanted a little bit of happiness in this dark period in his life. He knew it wasn’t permanent - he knows how she dies, and River, smart girl she is, probably knows that is a possibility.
*The thing that bothers me the most is that I simply don’t understand the Doctor’s state of mind (and the progression of it) in this episode. He starts out in a self-loathing fatalistic quest to know why he is going to die but he has little desire to actually avert it. And then he doesn’t want to marry River, and he tells her he is embarassed by her selfishness and desire to save him at all costs. While the earlier bit where he desperately tries to revisit his death against the will of his companions could have been an act for Madam Kovarian, since it is vital that the Silence believe the Doctor dead, this part happens when he is alone with his friends. But at some point outside this timeline, he decided that he wasn’t ready to die yet, and he put on the ‘Doctor suit’ of the Tesselecta?
Is something timey-wimey going on here? Is it all just an act? (if that’s the case, it really needs to be made more clear) Is the break in the first timeline simply a way of putting off the reveal or did the Doctor have a genuine change of heart when he first walked out that door, a change of heart that originated from the different timeline? I honestly do not understand this, and more thought has only made it worse. Moffat messed up there. If I’m confused, and I do my best to give his writing a chance, something’s wrong.
——
I’m also still not sure Moffat should have had an actual wedding. I’m not sure about a lot of things in this series, to be honest. I think I did prefer River and the Doctor’s relationship when it was more mad and unconventional. But he chose to do what he did, and he executed it relatively well. It’s very fairytale. It’s a bit of a nod to Shakespearian comedy. I don’t know if it was really the best way to play River’s storyline - I think her sacrifice in ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ makes her agreeing to stay in prison feel like she is giving up too much. But she loves this mad man, and it’s not as though she can’t escape without the Doctor’s help. So let’s not pretend that River is either helpless or manipulating. She’s neither.
It was an entertaining episode, but it wasn’t a truly great one. I would agree with those who said it didn’t feel like a finale. It does set up a very different approach to series seven, for a plot-relevant purpose, and I like that a whole lot.
I don’t know. I have mixed feelings, especially because as much as I loved individual moments in this episode, the whole series did not meet my very lofty expectations. Finally knowing what Moffat intended, I cannot say it was badly constructed or written. It just wasn’t as good as it could have been.
But honestly, I don’t watch this show because I want something that pushes the boundary of what television can be. I watch it because it is fun, and I love the characters, and I love the universe. I had fun watching the last episode, and I suspect I will enjoy this series a great deal when I buy the whole thing on DVD.
Den of Geek has a rather good summation of what I’m feeling:
It all sounds like I’m being grumble-y here, and I suppose I am a little. Whilst occasionally brilliant, I didn’t find The Wedding Of River Song (the title, or the actual act) immensely satisfying. As a showcase for brilliant writing, excellent direction and moments of genius, it couldn’t be faulted. But as a series finale (which it didn’t feel like it was for the most part), and as a complete episode in its own right, I found it bumpy. At the end of a series run as strong as this one, that’s a disappointment.There’s no denying, though, that the episode was full of lovely, lovely touches. No Doctor Who fan with any semblance of a heart can fail to have been moved by the fact that time was set aside to send the Brigadier off with real dignity. If you needed proof that those behind Doctor Who really care about the legacy of the show, then there it was (see also: the mentions of Rose and Captain Jack).
Then there were some of the smaller, yet brilliant, moments. Amy’s realisation that she was the Doctor’s mother-in-law (and her continuing evolution into a full-on bad-ass). Her explanation to Rory as to the situation with River (and the fact that even The Silence were taunting Rory about how often he dies). The texting and scones. Churchill’s downloads. And the confirmation that River knew everything, always.
I also warmed a lot to the big emotional moment, that tends to leave a chunk of Doctor Who’s audience cold (although I’m not always sure why). In a way, the series has played out like It’s A Wonderful Life, where an important, clever and vital man feels lonelier and lonelier, only to find, when the chips are really down, that he’s loved, and with no shortage of friends.
So yeah. This episode did a lot of things wells, a few things not so well. The arc-based series was fun, but I am glad to be moving towards a more traditional construction of Series 7 (with the threat of the Silence still lingering in the background).
#This is fucking heartbreaking #Because she knows the Doctor is dead at this point and there’s nothing she can do about it #But it’s more than that. It’s the fact that she is still looking at the stars waiting for him to crash into her life but knowing that it will never happen again. The girl who has to stop waiting because she has no other choice. So she looks at the stars and thinks about her Doctor and how she has really never learned to exist without waiting for him. He has been such a large part of Amelia Pond’s tiny Leadworth life that to imagine a world without the Doctor is to simply imagine an empty world. The Doctor affects every person he’s ever met. He changes their lives for better or worse. In so many ways Amy’s life IS the Doctor. It’s Rory and it’s River but inside of this larger timey-wimey beautiful impossible world that she has shaped out of her life with the Doctor. Amelia Pond and her Raggedy Doctor forever and ever until death do them part.
In so many ways, Amy Pond is a stand-in for the audience in Moffat’s Who. This is the normal role of a companion, and has been since Ian and Barbara - to provide a character the audience can relate to and understand when the Doctor is so strange and alien, to give the Doctor someone to explain complex plot points or technobabble, etc. But I think more than ever before, Amy’s character is meant to be a mirror for the audience that Moffat is writing for. She’s a young woman who has seen and done a lot, but in her heart of hearts, she is still a young girl full of dreams and hope who believes in magic, and heroes, and the triumph of good over evil. Despite being one, Moffat does not write for old Who fans who want episodes that set up at a frankly agonizing pace and labor to introduce secondary characters that we will never see again, and then bash Moffat as someone who ‘forgets to tell a good story’ when he writes episodes that consist of a fusion of plot points, emotional beats, some twists and clever developments, and overarching threat that makes it all go. It’s very fast-paced and lively instead of laying everything out there and overcommiting to any one element. It’s not the only way to write Who, but it’s as legitimate as anything else, especially given that it’s written for kids and not forum junkies who hyperventilate and speculate that Omega or the Rani is hiding behind every curtain. Moffat does want to explore the lighter and darker sides of the magic that Doctor Who has always had. This show can get quite dark at times, but in the end, it’s mean for kids and kids at heart.
Maybe that isn’t your vision of Doctor Who. Maybe you wish it was something else. Well, the good news is that this show changes every few years, and Steven Moffat is not going to be around for more than another 2-3 years. Someone else will replace him, someone who almost certainly has a new vision, a new ideal of the Doctor and the companions and the Doctor-companion relationship.
To be fair, it does seem that Moffat is looking at a new direction, with a Doctor more engaged in self-contained adventures with an overriding arc lingering in the background, but not overly pressing. That has quite a bit of potential. The arc-based series experiment was a worthwhile experiment, but not the template the series should follow in the long-term. And I don’t doubt that Steven Moffat understands that.
He’s a fan, just like the rest of us. I don’t think ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ or ‘The Wedding of River Song’ were his best writing. I preferred the opening two-parter in a lot of ways. And the really stand-out episodes (Gaiman’s ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ and MacRae’s ‘The Girl Who Waited’) played within the arc without explicitly involving it. So it wasn’t perfect. River’s story was executed relatively well, but not without it’s problems. The multi-writer format of the show led to inconsistent characterization for Amy and Rory. But I had a whole lot of fun watching this series, especially when I was able to get away from the relentless negativity of the fandom (not to say there was not a bit to complain about, but this is the definition of an Unpleasable Fanbase).
- The point was that the Doctor only knew about his alleged death because it spawned legends. If he or River did anything to prevent these legends from existing, they wouldn’t know there was a death to prevent, which in turn, would lead to them not preventing it… but if he manages to make it out alive while still leaving legends of his death there’s no problem: We all know the Whoniverse allows for StableTimeLoops.
That actually makes sense. It wasn’t the Doctor’s death that was the linchpin. It was the legends spawned by it.
And this entire. bloody. season. (and a good chunk of last season) has. been. about. the. power. of. stories.
From Colonel Runaway, to the fear of the Doctor, to the fame of the Apollo 11 landings making Earth permanently inhospitable for the Silence, to the ‘Tick Tock’ song (clearly a later creation referring to the way these events were believed to be played out).
It’s about the consequences. Not the event.
The episode (and arc) story still isn’t perfect. But suddenly a whole lot less fanwanking feels necessary. This explanation was right in the show, even if it wasn’t entirely explicit.
It was the whole point of the ‘Tick Tock’ song.
I’ll admit to still being confused by the Doctor’s apparent shift in emotional states and will to live between being brought into the pyramid and the wedding itself. I don’t know if timey-wimey was happening or it was just another case of Rule 1: The Doctor Lies.
It’s a bit cheap, yes, but Moffat could never actually kill the main character of the show. And I think he just didn’t want to have a bitter and tearjerking finale - he wanted excitement, and absurdity, and pumping-your-fist-in-the-air moments as the good guys triumph over the baddies. It’s not Battlestar Galatica, it’s not even Torchwood. But it’s not meant to be. And I don’t think it’s that different from Davies’ era. While perhaps it featured more council housing estates and current events themes (at least more explicitly) and appealed a lot to late teens and twenty-something looking for meaning in their lives, if you look at the finales, and how RTD solved them, it was, with the exception of ‘The Parting of the Ways’ (which I rank just behind ‘The Big Bang’ as my favorite finale), a case of the Doctor (in one way or another, so including the Doctor-Donna) doing something clever to defeat the baddies.
The other thing is that while I admit to be slightly unsure on this point, Time wasn’t fooled by the ‘death’ of the Tesselecta Doctor. The Silence were. The fixed point was that the Doctor would be present on the shores of Lake Silencio on the proper date at the proper time and River would shoot him. He was, and she did. But everything we assumed about why the universe went out of whack was informed by the Doctor’s guesswork and the assumptions of the Silence (who apparently can’t even translate their own scriptures properly). There’s no reason why it has to be completely accurate.
Also, I’m damned sick of seeing people complain that we still don’t know why the Silence want the Doctor dead. Were you listening? The Silence believe that the Doctor will answer the Question truthfully at the prophesized time and place, and that will have some yet to be fully explained cataclysmic effect on them or the universe as a whole. They believe that the best way for this to be averted is for the Doctor to die. So they tried to blow up his TARDIS and destroyed the universe (it’s possibly they didn’t know that was going to happen, after all). And they created Melody Pond as a perfect assassin.
Moffat used a Prophecy Twist. He didn’t fool Time. Time is a force, a power within the universe, but there’s no indication that it is sentient (as cool as that idea is). It’s a system that seeks to correct imbalances and errors.
Moffat also pressed a very different kind of reset button, bringing the Time Lord Victorious/Lonely God arc he inherited from RTD and then explored in his own way to a gentle end. The Doctor must resume his identity as a time-traveling vagabond else he will have to deal with the Silence all over again. That’s what a lot of fans have been clamoring for for a while, and I can’t wait to see how Moffat approaches it.
I’m also hoping for a completely different type of companion. Forwhatever reasons, I’m hoping for something like Evelyn, an EU companion of Six who was an elderly school teacher but all-round sarcastic badass. Let’s get away from the companion mold of ‘impressionable young girl’ for a little while, eh?
