Honestly, the "Mary Sue" label means absolutely nothing to me anymore, since more often than not it's applied to any female character who's good at stuff (and it's probably been applied by someone, somewhere to every single female character ever). And anyway, the way I understand that issue is that a "Mary Sue" (adopting it for the sake of discussion!) is a [female] character who has special powers or knowledge *without rational explanation*. Sudden superhero powers! Whereas almost all of River's unique knowledge is explained by the fact that they are meeting out of order. I agree that their exact connection is a little mysterious, and meant to be, but it is clearly also meant to be an explanation for a lot of River's knowledge. Just because we don't know the full explanation yet doesn't mean it's unexplained. I guess she's a somewhat new character (though not by now) but, well, isn't that kind of part of this show? So I disagree that fandom is justified in calling her a Mary Sue.
I guess it just bugs me that people say she's smug apparently because she can do stuff that the Doctor can do. She can fly the Tardis because the Doctor taught her; she knows things about it that he doesn't because he [will have] taught her those things; she has a sonic screwdriver because he gave it to her. She does smart archeology stuff (and shows up in situations where those skills are needed and thus somewhat highlighted) because she's an archeologist and, you know, presumably is trained to do that. In almost all other instances I can think of, I don't see her having special powers or magically pulling stuff out of nowhere (she has fun gadgets but it's not like these are magic powers) so much as just jumping in and figuring stuff out because she's smart and confident and just dives in. Which IMO doesn't make her either a Mary Sue or smug. But it does make her a confident girl who thinks she's deserves to lead the way at least some of the time.
I do agree that she obviously likes to tease the Doctor a bit with her knowledge, so to speak, but it's clearly part of an ongoing [adorable] mutual banter-y relationship (she *very clearly* loves and respects him, romance or no) and not mean-spirited "haha" one-upmanship. I think he can take it. Also, I firmly like the Doctor better when she's around to remind him he doesn't know everything yet. In some ways, her knowledge makes her his *equal*, or she at least often *treats* him like one (how dare she?) and I love that. But I suspect this is probably an unpopular opinion in that fandom (which I am not in).
Though we do agree that Alex Kingston really sells it! She's amaaazing. And, I think, really sells the emotional mix of good-natured, flirtatious, smart, cunning and compassionate that makes me not see how people think it's fair to focus on the "smug." (It's like people are criticizing the *idea* of this character who knows stuff everyone else doesn't, without actually paying attention to the actual character?).
no subject
I guess it just bugs me that people say she's smug apparently because she can do stuff that the Doctor can do. She can fly the Tardis because the Doctor taught her; she knows things about it that he doesn't because he [will have] taught her those things; she has a sonic screwdriver because he gave it to her. She does smart archeology stuff (and shows up in situations where those skills are needed and thus somewhat highlighted) because she's an archeologist and, you know, presumably is trained to do that. In almost all other instances I can think of, I don't see her having special powers or magically pulling stuff out of nowhere (she has fun gadgets but it's not like these are magic powers) so much as just jumping in and figuring stuff out because she's smart and confident and just dives in. Which IMO doesn't make her either a Mary Sue or smug. But it does make her a confident girl who thinks she's deserves to lead the way at least some of the time.
I do agree that she obviously likes to tease the Doctor a bit with her knowledge, so to speak, but it's clearly part of an ongoing [adorable] mutual banter-y relationship (she *very clearly* loves and respects him, romance or no) and not mean-spirited "haha" one-upmanship. I think he can take it. Also, I firmly like the Doctor better when she's around to remind him he doesn't know everything yet. In some ways, her knowledge makes her his *equal*, or she at least often *treats* him like one (how dare she?) and I love that. But I suspect this is probably an unpopular opinion in that fandom (which I am not in).
Though we do agree that Alex Kingston really sells it! She's amaaazing. And, I think, really sells the emotional mix of good-natured, flirtatious, smart, cunning and compassionate that makes me not see how people think it's fair to focus on the "smug." (It's like people are criticizing the *idea* of this character who knows stuff everyone else doesn't, without actually paying attention to the actual character?).