River Song: Totally Space-Married.
Jun. 30th, 2010 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaI really loved the final episode. It was big, and slightly nonsensical and very fairytale and they were all beautiful. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaila43 has a much longer, much better description of all the wonderful things about it here. I really feel it says pretty much everything emotional that needs to be said about the episode.
I am left with one piece of confusion, though. And okay, I'm not seriously expecting anyone to answer this for me, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway. As I understand it, the TARDIS explosion ended the universe but (due to time travel, putting the Pandorica in it, etc.) it also recreated that universe identically (minus the Doctor) at that same moment. Because Amy had to use her special crack-addled brain to remember her parents, that leads me to believe that all the other stuff eaten by the cracks didn't magically return (or why would Amy need to try and remember?) so the light from the Pandorica recreated the cracks too, it's just that they all closed at the moment of the explosion? Like, it's the cause of and end of those cracks? So okay, that all makes sense. And Rory's still alive not because he got remembered by Amy but because the Doctor never had his adventures and thus Rory never went on the adventure that got him killed. But when Amy does remember, she also brings back (it seems) all the Doctor's adventures too. So, um, why isn't Rory dead again? Or at least an Auton? Cus like...Amy can't un-crackify him since he died first and then his corpse got eaten. I guess she could work really hard and remember his corpse if she wanted... Probably I'm just overthinking it but...it bugs me.
THAT OUT OF THE WAY, LET'S MOVE ON TO MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS LIKE RIVER SONG.
I am also completely and utterly convinced that River and the Doctor are married. I know, I know, Moffat said that we should think outside the box, or something, or that she wasn't what we were all expecting her to be. And I honestly do have some concerns that he could easily overplay this and piss off the parts of the audience who are not me if he teases it too long and what could have been nicely understated might become a big let down as everyone's like, "What? Just his wife?" as if that's not really a revelation, or interesting, just because it's been dragged out for so long everyone's expecting a big twist.
But... I have a fairly large amount of trust for Moffat's ability to tell a satisfying story. And frankly, at the moment, speculation that she's not his wife seems to be motivated either by dislike of the character (where clearly I do not agree), or a belief that it's "too obvious". So essentially it's suspecting a twist simply for the sake of a twist, which is fine if the twist also delivers a better story but...I can't see how that works in this instance.
And there's the double-bind. If you drag out the revelation too long, you get too cute about it, you begin wondering what the point in dragging it out is if everyone already guessed. But equally putting in a twist just so people are wrong can go horribly badly too and leave everyone feeling cheated. They have hinted at marriage or at least an analogous romantic relationship so much and so often now that backing out of that will feel like backpedaling of the worst kind.
SO. Because I'm bored, I'm going to lay out all the reasons I think that she has to be his wife and why I really don't think that the whole final "everything changes" line actually pertains to their relationship specifically.
BECKA'S BIG ARGUMENT THAT THEY ARE TOTALLY SPACE-MARRIED
And if this doesn't convince you, I'm good for round two, but I might have to bring a baseball bat...
1. What can we verify about their relationship?
So the cynical answer is absolutely nothing, but frankly, I think there's too much care that's gone into the character and her reactions to suggest that every time she waxes lyrical about the Doctor (or declares her love for him) when he's not even in the vicinity is because she's some crazy method actor playing a long con. So I'm not going to go there and I'm gonna say that we can take at face value the fact that she and the Doctor have an incredibly close and trusting relationship. She knows his name.
She's posited as an extraordinarily important figure in the Doctor's life. So first point is, if the retcon is that she's anything other than that, I'll be disappointed, because that's promising something and then creating a twist that delivers something smaller.
2. What explanations are there for such a close relationship?
So, given that I'm working on the assumption that the promises of River's importance and closeness to the Doctor aren't empty ones, are there any ways other than marriage (or equivalent srs romantic relationship) to explain this?
I'll step right out there and say while I'm usually a powerful advocate of platonic friendships not being portrayed as "lesser" than romantic ones in terms of interpersonal importance or power, in this instance, I don't think that "best friends" can work. Basically because that's what every companion is supposed to be for the Doctor. If you make River another companion, another fellow traveler, just the one he likes best and teaches most, you retrospectively insult all the other people he traveled with and didn't teach to fly the TARDIS or tell his name. Obviously there are companions who stayed longer or were more trusted by the Doctor, but I don't think you can straight up elevate one of them to that kind of status without it making his friendships with these other people seem somewhat callous. It highlights the fact that eventually he'll leave them behind, rather than the fact he took them in the first place.
In addition, and as I'll get to later, it's fairly obvious that River is in love with the Doctor and making her "just" a companion would add to the rather skeezy tradition of having the companions fall in unrequited love with the Doctor. In addition to being skeezy, I honestly believe it would be totally out of character for River to put up with that situation. I just cannot see her being so cheerfully in love with someone who isn't going to return her affections. I don't think it's in her character to get aggressive or angry about it either, or hate the Doctor; heck she would probably stay friends with him. But...she'd be off dating androids and Nestene duplicates with swappable heads. River Song and unrequited love are two ideas that seem incompatible to me. (Err, unrequited love on her part; I imagine there are swathes of people unrequitedly in love with her!)
So, I don't think she can be a platonic friend.
Another answer would be family. This I could also handle as a reason for the trust and closeness - they could even somehow explain how the Doctor has previously been able to recognise other Time Lords but not this one - but it only works along broad lines, like trust and some sort of love and closeness. As soon as you start looking at the way they shamelessly flirt with each other it gets weeeeeird. Even without the very private declaration of (romantic) love on River's part, when the TARDIS is about to explode, if she's his mother/sister/daughter she really oughtn't be flirting about how she'll kiss him when he's older or winding Amy up about how they're probably married. (In addition, while by no means impossible, I think immediate family would make it a little harder to explain the fact that he doesn't know who she is yet and apparently they don't have any common history at any time).
And I honestly can't think of anything outside the friend/relative/wife axis that really fulfills the criteria of point 1.
3. Setting aside my personal opinion that being married is the best resolution, here are some things I honestly don't know how they could explain any other way.
In the last two episodes there have been a few moments that have gone beyond banter and into an area that, if explained as something other than them being space-married, make no sense.
Firstly, "I'm sorry, my love." SEE ICON.
I've seen speculation that she's speaking to the TARDIS. I mean, like, some serious speculation. I'm not even sure how to respond to it because it seems so surreal an idea to me. Why would she declare her love to someone else's property, no matter how sentient? Plus she's looking out at the rock and says it before she turns back to look at the TARDIS exploding. And yes, okay, sometimes people say "love" to a friend or a child, but not "my love" and certainly not with that inflection.
It's also an intriguing, surprising and very underplayed moment that the Doctor hears her say this via the satellite. That feels like a very deliberate choice in terms of dialogue and who hears it. I mean, she was saying it on loop for two thousand years.
Secondly, there's the conversation she has at the end with the Doctor about whether she's married. Most reaction I've seen on this point tends to be overshadowed by speculation about how "everything changes", which I'll get to later and which is also a shame as it overlooks the reasons that conversation is taking place.
The Doctor flat out asks her, in a very quiet, absolutely fascinated and almost flirtatious way, if she's married. The only reason I can possibly fathom that he's asking her that question is because he thinks she's probably married to him. "Are you married, River? To some random other bloke?"
River can't answer outright, because of spoilers, and because River finds life delightful and teasing the doctor delightful, and sees no reason to rush because now there's a universe to live in again. But the tone of her voice.
She's leading him on. She knows he's asking because he thinks she is probably his wife. And even though she can't answer directly, her answer is yes, her answer is always yes. "River - " "Yes." Again, I think it's not blind luck that this is the word she chooses to evade his questions. THAT R THEMATICSES!11!1!
If River has this conversation knowing that he thinks the wrong thing - knowing that they're not married - that's...a take on River I can't understand. That's the fandom myth of the River who's smug and apparently has nothing better to do with her life than chase the Doctor around in order to lie to him about who she will one day be in order to feel some power over him. I just can't buy that. She so obviously loves him - why knowingly lead him into a lie through suggestion and omission?
4. Everything changes?
Okay, so here's the final line that people seem to be going nuts over. The prevailing wisdom appears to be (and granted, I'm talking discussions IRL and on forums where I lurk more than LJ fandom which I have barely set foot in) that this heralds some change in their relationship which makes River sorrowful. Theories on this are varied, but all essentially suggest that River is going to go bad, or be bad when the Doctor first meets her or something, and sometimes include the idea that he will need to "redeem" her and set her on the right course again.
So first off, I'm not a fan of that idea just because I think it sounds a bit...faily. Like, I would watch before judging because stories can always surprise but I think it would be very easy to interpret a story like that along the lines of needing to put River back in her place and have the Doctor restored to his messianic saviour role. I'm just...not feeling that since one of the things I love best about the story is their equality. I have no issue with River doing all manner of morally dubious things but I don't want the Doctor flying in to "save" her. Similarly while I love the implication she eventually kills him, I don't want it to be some kind deal where she does it when she's young and evil and then spending the rest of her life trying to make up for it deal as has been suggested from some quarters. If nothing else, that doesn't really tally with her sombre but in many ways unapologetic treatment of the issue at the end of Flesh and Stone.
However, even setting aside personal concerns about the direction of the story, I flat out don't think it can work, if we accept point 1. - that the only verifiable thing about their relationship is that it is primarily characterised by extraordinary trust.
There are several reasons for this:
Firstly, if there is ever a point at which River and the Doctor become enemies, it cannot last very long - because if it did, River wouldn't be able to leave him notes all over the place asking him for help if she wasn't sure whether she'd get a Doctor who was willing to help her or one who felt they were enemies. "Everything changes," suggests a large scale event to me, not a rough patch.
Secondly, what changes? This is said in the same episode where she acknowledges that the Doctor doesn't really know her yet. They barely have a relationship to change. And while, - even setting aside the issue of her confidence that he'll pull her from the vacuum of space on nothing more than a "Hello Sweetie," - it's possible that they meet, aren't sure of each other, go through this hypothetical rough patch and then come to trust each other, "everything changes" seems a bit melodramatic for three encounters where he's still circling her with trepidation.
Thirdly, at the start of the Library and Byzantium episodes, River isn't sure where in his timeline the Doctor is. In fact, on both occasions, she assumes he knows who she is. When she clarifies where in his timeline he is, and that he doesn't know this, her demeanour doesn't really change except she starts hiding certain bits of information. If his discovering who she is really did herald a big change in their relationship...surely that would be reflected in her behaviour? At least to a degree? (Which, as an aside, is part of what leads me to believe that whatever Father Octavian knew about her is something that, in context will not upset the Doctor, since River seemed genuinely surprised that she got him so early on in his timeline and therefore couldn't have planned that. Again, see her comments at the end that the story has to be lived, not told).
Personally I think "everything changes," probably refers to something else she knows will happen - like maybe the Silence or...something. Something she is sad about for the Doctor. I guess we'll see, and we'll see if I'm proven wrong?
ANYWAY. THERE IS MY MANIFESTO. *takes off shipper hat*
I love River Song so much. It's weird cus usually when I fall hard for a character, I have to love the whole show to a degree. I mean there are shows I watch casually with a few awesome characters or ships in them - shows I only really watch for a character or ship (Irina Derevko springs to mind), but normally the fact that the show-love is casual keeps the character love reasonably casual too. So like, I have no burning desire to make an Irina vid but, um, there will be a TERRIBLY SINCERE RIVER VID TO DANCE MUSIC. *facepalm* Cus, like, I do like this show, but it's only when River shows up I want to...post ridiculously long essays like this one.
I AM AWESOME. AND TOTALLY EMBRACING MY INNER CRAZY SHIPPER. AT LEAST ONE HILARIOUSLY SINCERE VID TO DANCE MUSIC WILL FOLLOW. FLEE IF YOU VALUE YOUR SANITY, OR AT LEAST PUT ON A FEZ.
chaila43 has a much longer, much better description of all the wonderful things about it here. I really feel it says pretty much everything emotional that needs to be said about the episode. I am left with one piece of confusion, though. And okay, I'm not seriously expecting anyone to answer this for me, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway. As I understand it, the TARDIS explosion ended the universe but (due to time travel, putting the Pandorica in it, etc.) it also recreated that universe identically (minus the Doctor) at that same moment. Because Amy had to use her special crack-addled brain to remember her parents, that leads me to believe that all the other stuff eaten by the cracks didn't magically return (or why would Amy need to try and remember?) so the light from the Pandorica recreated the cracks too, it's just that they all closed at the moment of the explosion? Like, it's the cause of and end of those cracks? So okay, that all makes sense. And Rory's still alive not because he got remembered by Amy but because the Doctor never had his adventures and thus Rory never went on the adventure that got him killed. But when Amy does remember, she also brings back (it seems) all the Doctor's adventures too. So, um, why isn't Rory dead again? Or at least an Auton? Cus like...Amy can't un-crackify him since he died first and then his corpse got eaten. I guess she could work really hard and remember his corpse if she wanted... Probably I'm just overthinking it but...it bugs me.
THAT OUT OF THE WAY, LET'S MOVE ON TO MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS LIKE RIVER SONG.
I am also completely and utterly convinced that River and the Doctor are married. I know, I know, Moffat said that we should think outside the box, or something, or that she wasn't what we were all expecting her to be. And I honestly do have some concerns that he could easily overplay this and piss off the parts of the audience who are not me if he teases it too long and what could have been nicely understated might become a big let down as everyone's like, "What? Just his wife?" as if that's not really a revelation, or interesting, just because it's been dragged out for so long everyone's expecting a big twist.
But... I have a fairly large amount of trust for Moffat's ability to tell a satisfying story. And frankly, at the moment, speculation that she's not his wife seems to be motivated either by dislike of the character (where clearly I do not agree), or a belief that it's "too obvious". So essentially it's suspecting a twist simply for the sake of a twist, which is fine if the twist also delivers a better story but...I can't see how that works in this instance.
And there's the double-bind. If you drag out the revelation too long, you get too cute about it, you begin wondering what the point in dragging it out is if everyone already guessed. But equally putting in a twist just so people are wrong can go horribly badly too and leave everyone feeling cheated. They have hinted at marriage or at least an analogous romantic relationship so much and so often now that backing out of that will feel like backpedaling of the worst kind.
SO. Because I'm bored, I'm going to lay out all the reasons I think that she has to be his wife and why I really don't think that the whole final "everything changes" line actually pertains to their relationship specifically.
BECKA'S BIG ARGUMENT THAT THEY ARE TOTALLY SPACE-MARRIED
And if this doesn't convince you, I'm good for round two, but I might have to bring a baseball bat...
1. What can we verify about their relationship?
So the cynical answer is absolutely nothing, but frankly, I think there's too much care that's gone into the character and her reactions to suggest that every time she waxes lyrical about the Doctor (or declares her love for him) when he's not even in the vicinity is because she's some crazy method actor playing a long con. So I'm not going to go there and I'm gonna say that we can take at face value the fact that she and the Doctor have an incredibly close and trusting relationship. She knows his name.
She's posited as an extraordinarily important figure in the Doctor's life. So first point is, if the retcon is that she's anything other than that, I'll be disappointed, because that's promising something and then creating a twist that delivers something smaller.
2. What explanations are there for such a close relationship?
So, given that I'm working on the assumption that the promises of River's importance and closeness to the Doctor aren't empty ones, are there any ways other than marriage (or equivalent srs romantic relationship) to explain this?
I'll step right out there and say while I'm usually a powerful advocate of platonic friendships not being portrayed as "lesser" than romantic ones in terms of interpersonal importance or power, in this instance, I don't think that "best friends" can work. Basically because that's what every companion is supposed to be for the Doctor. If you make River another companion, another fellow traveler, just the one he likes best and teaches most, you retrospectively insult all the other people he traveled with and didn't teach to fly the TARDIS or tell his name. Obviously there are companions who stayed longer or were more trusted by the Doctor, but I don't think you can straight up elevate one of them to that kind of status without it making his friendships with these other people seem somewhat callous. It highlights the fact that eventually he'll leave them behind, rather than the fact he took them in the first place.
In addition, and as I'll get to later, it's fairly obvious that River is in love with the Doctor and making her "just" a companion would add to the rather skeezy tradition of having the companions fall in unrequited love with the Doctor. In addition to being skeezy, I honestly believe it would be totally out of character for River to put up with that situation. I just cannot see her being so cheerfully in love with someone who isn't going to return her affections. I don't think it's in her character to get aggressive or angry about it either, or hate the Doctor; heck she would probably stay friends with him. But...she'd be off dating androids and Nestene duplicates with swappable heads. River Song and unrequited love are two ideas that seem incompatible to me. (Err, unrequited love on her part; I imagine there are swathes of people unrequitedly in love with her!)
So, I don't think she can be a platonic friend.
Another answer would be family. This I could also handle as a reason for the trust and closeness - they could even somehow explain how the Doctor has previously been able to recognise other Time Lords but not this one - but it only works along broad lines, like trust and some sort of love and closeness. As soon as you start looking at the way they shamelessly flirt with each other it gets weeeeeird. Even without the very private declaration of (romantic) love on River's part, when the TARDIS is about to explode, if she's his mother/sister/daughter she really oughtn't be flirting about how she'll kiss him when he's older or winding Amy up about how they're probably married. (In addition, while by no means impossible, I think immediate family would make it a little harder to explain the fact that he doesn't know who she is yet and apparently they don't have any common history at any time).
And I honestly can't think of anything outside the friend/relative/wife axis that really fulfills the criteria of point 1.
3. Setting aside my personal opinion that being married is the best resolution, here are some things I honestly don't know how they could explain any other way.
In the last two episodes there have been a few moments that have gone beyond banter and into an area that, if explained as something other than them being space-married, make no sense.
Firstly, "I'm sorry, my love." SEE ICON.
I've seen speculation that she's speaking to the TARDIS. I mean, like, some serious speculation. I'm not even sure how to respond to it because it seems so surreal an idea to me. Why would she declare her love to someone else's property, no matter how sentient? Plus she's looking out at the rock and says it before she turns back to look at the TARDIS exploding. And yes, okay, sometimes people say "love" to a friend or a child, but not "my love" and certainly not with that inflection.
It's also an intriguing, surprising and very underplayed moment that the Doctor hears her say this via the satellite. That feels like a very deliberate choice in terms of dialogue and who hears it. I mean, she was saying it on loop for two thousand years.
Secondly, there's the conversation she has at the end with the Doctor about whether she's married. Most reaction I've seen on this point tends to be overshadowed by speculation about how "everything changes", which I'll get to later and which is also a shame as it overlooks the reasons that conversation is taking place.
The Doctor flat out asks her, in a very quiet, absolutely fascinated and almost flirtatious way, if she's married. The only reason I can possibly fathom that he's asking her that question is because he thinks she's probably married to him. "Are you married, River? To some random other bloke?"
River can't answer outright, because of spoilers, and because River finds life delightful and teasing the doctor delightful, and sees no reason to rush because now there's a universe to live in again. But the tone of her voice.
She's leading him on. She knows he's asking because he thinks she is probably his wife. And even though she can't answer directly, her answer is yes, her answer is always yes. "River - " "Yes." Again, I think it's not blind luck that this is the word she chooses to evade his questions. THAT R THEMATICSES!11!1!
If River has this conversation knowing that he thinks the wrong thing - knowing that they're not married - that's...a take on River I can't understand. That's the fandom myth of the River who's smug and apparently has nothing better to do with her life than chase the Doctor around in order to lie to him about who she will one day be in order to feel some power over him. I just can't buy that. She so obviously loves him - why knowingly lead him into a lie through suggestion and omission?
4. Everything changes?
Okay, so here's the final line that people seem to be going nuts over. The prevailing wisdom appears to be (and granted, I'm talking discussions IRL and on forums where I lurk more than LJ fandom which I have barely set foot in) that this heralds some change in their relationship which makes River sorrowful. Theories on this are varied, but all essentially suggest that River is going to go bad, or be bad when the Doctor first meets her or something, and sometimes include the idea that he will need to "redeem" her and set her on the right course again.
So first off, I'm not a fan of that idea just because I think it sounds a bit...faily. Like, I would watch before judging because stories can always surprise but I think it would be very easy to interpret a story like that along the lines of needing to put River back in her place and have the Doctor restored to his messianic saviour role. I'm just...not feeling that since one of the things I love best about the story is their equality. I have no issue with River doing all manner of morally dubious things but I don't want the Doctor flying in to "save" her. Similarly while I love the implication she eventually kills him, I don't want it to be some kind deal where she does it when she's young and evil and then spending the rest of her life trying to make up for it deal as has been suggested from some quarters. If nothing else, that doesn't really tally with her sombre but in many ways unapologetic treatment of the issue at the end of Flesh and Stone.
However, even setting aside personal concerns about the direction of the story, I flat out don't think it can work, if we accept point 1. - that the only verifiable thing about their relationship is that it is primarily characterised by extraordinary trust.
There are several reasons for this:
Firstly, if there is ever a point at which River and the Doctor become enemies, it cannot last very long - because if it did, River wouldn't be able to leave him notes all over the place asking him for help if she wasn't sure whether she'd get a Doctor who was willing to help her or one who felt they were enemies. "Everything changes," suggests a large scale event to me, not a rough patch.
Secondly, what changes? This is said in the same episode where she acknowledges that the Doctor doesn't really know her yet. They barely have a relationship to change. And while, - even setting aside the issue of her confidence that he'll pull her from the vacuum of space on nothing more than a "Hello Sweetie," - it's possible that they meet, aren't sure of each other, go through this hypothetical rough patch and then come to trust each other, "everything changes" seems a bit melodramatic for three encounters where he's still circling her with trepidation.
Thirdly, at the start of the Library and Byzantium episodes, River isn't sure where in his timeline the Doctor is. In fact, on both occasions, she assumes he knows who she is. When she clarifies where in his timeline he is, and that he doesn't know this, her demeanour doesn't really change except she starts hiding certain bits of information. If his discovering who she is really did herald a big change in their relationship...surely that would be reflected in her behaviour? At least to a degree? (Which, as an aside, is part of what leads me to believe that whatever Father Octavian knew about her is something that, in context will not upset the Doctor, since River seemed genuinely surprised that she got him so early on in his timeline and therefore couldn't have planned that. Again, see her comments at the end that the story has to be lived, not told).
Personally I think "everything changes," probably refers to something else she knows will happen - like maybe the Silence or...something. Something she is sad about for the Doctor. I guess we'll see, and we'll see if I'm proven wrong?
ANYWAY. THERE IS MY MANIFESTO. *takes off shipper hat*
I love River Song so much. It's weird cus usually when I fall hard for a character, I have to love the whole show to a degree. I mean there are shows I watch casually with a few awesome characters or ships in them - shows I only really watch for a character or ship (Irina Derevko springs to mind), but normally the fact that the show-love is casual keeps the character love reasonably casual too. So like, I have no burning desire to make an Irina vid but, um, there will be a TERRIBLY SINCERE RIVER VID TO DANCE MUSIC. *facepalm* Cus, like, I do like this show, but it's only when River shows up I want to...post ridiculously long essays like this one.
I AM AWESOME. AND TOTALLY EMBRACING MY INNER CRAZY SHIPPER. AT LEAST ONE HILARIOUSLY SINCERE VID TO DANCE MUSIC WILL FOLLOW. FLEE IF YOU VALUE YOUR SANITY, OR AT LEAST PUT ON A FEZ.
