beccatoria (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccatoria) wrote2010-07-15 09:21 pm
beccatoria) wrote2010-07-15 09:21 pm
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HELLO SWEETIE, I THINK I WOULD RATHER HAVE DIED. [River Song]
So, it turns out there's only so much Fringe I can vid before I reach critical gross science mass of dear god stop with the eyeballs already, so in order to take a break, I am, instead, going to talk about River Song and the only thing in the entire world I wish was different about her.
Namely, the very end of the Library episodes. And since I love River Song with the fire of a thousand burning suns, yet don't really like the end of her story (technically, if not narratively, but we'll get to that), and since usually that's like...a dealbreaker for me, I thought I should ARCHIVE MY THOUGHTS.
First, some background. No matter what I say here about how I interpret River's fate in order to become okay with it, or how it's not as bad as [insert example], as I said, it is the one thing in the world about her that I wish were different. I wish it was different. I don't really like it. I'm not trying to convince anyone they should be cool with it if they're not. Also, I think everything else ever about River it totally fucking awesome. I may later be proven wrong (it's happened before, and about similar topics), but currently, I do not believe this is in spite of Steven Moffat. His current score of Deliberate Awesome > his current score of Accidental Failure. You know, in my head.
So, let's talk about why I don't like it. Basically I don't like it because it's limiting. It's static. Putting her in such an explicitly maternal, domestic setting is kinda thoughtless and gender stereotypical, sure, and that does bug me some, but oddly it's not the thing that irks me most. I think this is partly cus my brain's initial reaction is to point and laugh and say at least River had the common sense to die first so getting lumped with a bunch of kids can't slowly kill her social life, but um, that's me being amused and making snarky jokes (considering I'm not actually in any way anti-children) and not really germane to the very valid criticism one can level at it. Like I said, it bugs.
But I think beyond that it's that - as I said - it's the stasis and lack of choice that really bothers me. The method of imposing that - the idyllic domestic setting - for whatever reason, strikes me as just a lazy pasteded on happy ever after. It's not the underlying point that makes me go, "Oh, River." Because, like with Miss Evangelista, like with the sympathy for Donna Noble who she had never met but whose story she already knew, she'll take care of Cal. That makes sense, even if it makes for a skeezy happy ever after. For whatever reason, I didn't really feel it suddenly turned her character into someone who secretly wanted kids all along, it was just...where she ended up at. And I assume she's happy to go along with because any minute now, she'll be getting back out of there (but I'm jumping ahead of myself: we should not meet the points of this essay in the wrong order).
I don't believe the monomyth is applicable to everything. But it is, in itself an intriguing story, and Moffat writes fairytales when he's writing for Who. So to use it as a point of comparison - the enemy is not death. A hero moves through death, and learns, and returns from it master of both worlds. The enemy is stasis. The enemy is the Nimue trapping Merlin in a dreamworld. Or the Dream Lord trapping Amy. Or the TARDIS - the magic box that takes you anywhen - inverting to a time-looped prison. The magic box designed to trap the Doctor - so static he couldn't die, because death is his power, because death is not the enemy - is turned from a trap into the instrument of victory, by turning it into something explosive, something metamorphic, something that will literally un-and-remake every part of the universe, leaving nothing static. A moment of absolute revolution.
And here, at her end, we have River, trapped in a box. Unchanging. Static.
I would have preferred her to die, gloriously, I think.
However, in the face of this, I choose to think of her ending not as her ultimate, unchanging fate - not as her metaphorical ascension to creepy, creepy heaven - but rather as the beginning of her journey through the lands of the dead. Death is not the enemy.
The Tenth Doctor was all about saving people for himself, not really for them (again, we'll get to that; we'll get to it). He doesn't think about the girl in the paving slab and he doesn't think about his wife in a computer, he thinks about how he saved them and he leaves. (And the Eleventh Doctor is all about time being rewritten: I wonder if he'll try that?)
One day, though, after the Vashta Narada leave, or before then, if their fear of the Doctor is any indication, and if he loads up on Super Batteries for his torch, one of the many doctors after Ten - all of whom have had years to think about it, who gave her a screwdriver rather than telling her not to go - will know exactly where she is. One day, River's going to get out of that computer, into a brand new robot/cloned/magic body. It'll be just like regeneration, and death will be her power too.
Not that I expect to see this on film, because, really, I think it's probably not something most people think about. I'd love to be surprised, but probably the people involved think it's a happy ending. But I like it better my way.
I do think it's interesting to note the context in which the episode was written, which helps me at least understand why the ending feels a fair bit different to the rest of the episode. Moffat has been very honest about the fact that he never expected to get the chance to tell all of River's story.
In some ways, in the Library episodes, she's not River yet. She's an idea - a gimmick. A fantastic, wonderful one with a strong character and a beautiful throughline and a powerful idea - this once and future enigma. The one the man who knows everything knows nothing about.
The point of the story is that she dies. The point is this last/first meeting and honestly, it's amazing and heartbreaking and fantastic. (And pretty much the first time I've ever argued for fridging, if that's what this is - but again, we'll get to that).
But...it's a story for children. Not that those always need happy endings but it's nice when they get them. So she gets one. A slightly thoughtless one for her character, but at this point, she's still an idea. She's the woman the Doctor can't stand not to save even though he barely knows her. And so she gets the guest-star end. The not-entirely-thought-through end. The end that was perhaps not quite so rigorously put through the Don't Be Sexist filter as it should have been.
I'm disappointed by it, but I can't find it in me to take it as a sign that Moffat is a failure of a writer, simply based on his accumulated successes. He just...dropped the ball here. Privileged the protagonist's emotional needs over that of the guest star in a way that was only way awkward once she became this FORCE OF FREAKING NATURE in later episodes, and other than that was a little disappointingly gender essentialist.
(I keep seeing Sam Anders watching Starbuck leave in the heavy raider: Is that who River Song is to this fandom? I find that inappropriately entertaining).
So I suppose that begs the question; if, judged in isolation, I think the Library episodes are fantastic with a slightly disappointing final few scenes, what do I think of them in the context of her whole story? If, as I've said, I find it more disappointing the more I know about her, to the point I start using LITERARY MYTHIC WRITINGS as justifications for why she'll escape it one day, why am I still so awesomely in love with her and not simultaneously raging at Moffat as I was known to do at both RTD and RDM (what is it with three-letter showrunners that start with R and me?)
It's a good question. Mostly I think it's quick to answer:
1) He's making up for it. Now that she's a real, recurring, important character, she has been nothing short of marvelous, and while narratively we already know the end, in realworld chronology, he's been improving her with every appearance.
2) The pall that a bad ending might otherwise cast over her character it mitigated by the fact she's not actually dead. Which means there is space for interpretation and continuation.
3) I have an odd ability to kind of not think about it and just act like she kind of did die in truly awesome, glorious fashion, the very first time the Doctor ever met her, while simultaneously knowing that she's sort of still alive and will one day continue her conquest of the universe through sheer awesome. I do not know how I manage to hold onto these conflicting beliefs, yet somehow I do. I BLAME THE MAGIC OF RIVER.
The last thing I want to talk about requires looping back a bit (again, with the essay points in the wrong order). And that's another issue of clarification, really. Which is that, superficially, there are a lot of similarities between Donna's end and River's. Especially since above, I flat out said, and, in fact, even partially excused River's end based on focusing more on the main character's emotions when that pretty much represents everything awful about Donna's ending.
So, let's see - they're both basically saved against their wills and forced into a static existence rather than dying under their own control, arguably to indulge the Doctor's need to save everyone no matter the cost and to provide him with MOAR EMO.
Here are some reasons I think they are different, and why one of them made me actually quit the show (okay for the second time and clearly it didn't stick, but, I DIDN'T WATCH ANY OTHER RTD EPISODES EXCEPT BY ACCIDENT CUS I WAS IN A PUB), but the other kind of makes me sadly shrug my shoulders and pull out my meta-bat and hit it until I'm okay with it again.
1) River loses her body but keeps her mind, her intelligence, her brilliance and her memories. Donna, on the other hand, is reduced to her body, her thoughts stolen from her, her desires erased, not just ignored.
2) Donna wanted to die specifically rather than being saved in the way the Doctor saved her. River simply didn't know it was an option. While I'm not sure how she'll feel about it long-term, at least the Doctor wasn't ignoring her express wishes.
3) Donna had her status and power and agency reduced in order to provide the Doctor with manpain. "Saving" her was a reductive act. Since River would otherwise be dead, saving her actually preserved more of her agency and independence than otherwise. I'm not saying life at any cost, but I am saying that at least it was about saving her, not metaphorically killing her as it was with Donna.
4) Yes, in both cases the Doctor's desires were prioritised over Donna's/River's. However, I think it's worse to see this happen to the other series regular rather than the guest star the writer has no reason to believe is coming back. I'm not saying it's laudable but it's less awful. Especially since River's ending wasn't as horrifying as the paving slab and was, on a fundamental level, at least about her being too awesome and important to the Doctor to let die, rather than being another human sloppily saved and forgotten.
5) Unusually, I don't actually have a problem with "fridging" River in this capacity because unlike Donna, her unusual chronological relationship with the Doctor means we get all the benefits of Tragic Death Sealing Her Importance Forever without actually having to lose River in any way. In fact, it's kind of made her narratively immortal in the ongoing series.
THUS END MY EPIC THOUGHTS OF THINKING. :)
Namely, the very end of the Library episodes. And since I love River Song with the fire of a thousand burning suns, yet don't really like the end of her story (technically, if not narratively, but we'll get to that), and since usually that's like...a dealbreaker for me, I thought I should ARCHIVE MY THOUGHTS.
First, some background. No matter what I say here about how I interpret River's fate in order to become okay with it, or how it's not as bad as [insert example], as I said, it is the one thing in the world about her that I wish were different. I wish it was different. I don't really like it. I'm not trying to convince anyone they should be cool with it if they're not. Also, I think everything else ever about River it totally fucking awesome. I may later be proven wrong (it's happened before, and about similar topics), but currently, I do not believe this is in spite of Steven Moffat. His current score of Deliberate Awesome > his current score of Accidental Failure. You know, in my head.
So, let's talk about why I don't like it. Basically I don't like it because it's limiting. It's static. Putting her in such an explicitly maternal, domestic setting is kinda thoughtless and gender stereotypical, sure, and that does bug me some, but oddly it's not the thing that irks me most. I think this is partly cus my brain's initial reaction is to point and laugh and say at least River had the common sense to die first so getting lumped with a bunch of kids can't slowly kill her social life, but um, that's me being amused and making snarky jokes (considering I'm not actually in any way anti-children) and not really germane to the very valid criticism one can level at it. Like I said, it bugs.
But I think beyond that it's that - as I said - it's the stasis and lack of choice that really bothers me. The method of imposing that - the idyllic domestic setting - for whatever reason, strikes me as just a lazy pasteded on happy ever after. It's not the underlying point that makes me go, "Oh, River." Because, like with Miss Evangelista, like with the sympathy for Donna Noble who she had never met but whose story she already knew, she'll take care of Cal. That makes sense, even if it makes for a skeezy happy ever after. For whatever reason, I didn't really feel it suddenly turned her character into someone who secretly wanted kids all along, it was just...where she ended up at. And I assume she's happy to go along with because any minute now, she'll be getting back out of there (but I'm jumping ahead of myself: we should not meet the points of this essay in the wrong order).
I don't believe the monomyth is applicable to everything. But it is, in itself an intriguing story, and Moffat writes fairytales when he's writing for Who. So to use it as a point of comparison - the enemy is not death. A hero moves through death, and learns, and returns from it master of both worlds. The enemy is stasis. The enemy is the Nimue trapping Merlin in a dreamworld. Or the Dream Lord trapping Amy. Or the TARDIS - the magic box that takes you anywhen - inverting to a time-looped prison. The magic box designed to trap the Doctor - so static he couldn't die, because death is his power, because death is not the enemy - is turned from a trap into the instrument of victory, by turning it into something explosive, something metamorphic, something that will literally un-and-remake every part of the universe, leaving nothing static. A moment of absolute revolution.
And here, at her end, we have River, trapped in a box. Unchanging. Static.
I would have preferred her to die, gloriously, I think.
However, in the face of this, I choose to think of her ending not as her ultimate, unchanging fate - not as her metaphorical ascension to creepy, creepy heaven - but rather as the beginning of her journey through the lands of the dead. Death is not the enemy.
The Tenth Doctor was all about saving people for himself, not really for them (again, we'll get to that; we'll get to it). He doesn't think about the girl in the paving slab and he doesn't think about his wife in a computer, he thinks about how he saved them and he leaves. (And the Eleventh Doctor is all about time being rewritten: I wonder if he'll try that?)
One day, though, after the Vashta Narada leave, or before then, if their fear of the Doctor is any indication, and if he loads up on Super Batteries for his torch, one of the many doctors after Ten - all of whom have had years to think about it, who gave her a screwdriver rather than telling her not to go - will know exactly where she is. One day, River's going to get out of that computer, into a brand new robot/cloned/magic body. It'll be just like regeneration, and death will be her power too.
Not that I expect to see this on film, because, really, I think it's probably not something most people think about. I'd love to be surprised, but probably the people involved think it's a happy ending. But I like it better my way.
I do think it's interesting to note the context in which the episode was written, which helps me at least understand why the ending feels a fair bit different to the rest of the episode. Moffat has been very honest about the fact that he never expected to get the chance to tell all of River's story.
In some ways, in the Library episodes, she's not River yet. She's an idea - a gimmick. A fantastic, wonderful one with a strong character and a beautiful throughline and a powerful idea - this once and future enigma. The one the man who knows everything knows nothing about.
The point of the story is that she dies. The point is this last/first meeting and honestly, it's amazing and heartbreaking and fantastic. (And pretty much the first time I've ever argued for fridging, if that's what this is - but again, we'll get to that).
But...it's a story for children. Not that those always need happy endings but it's nice when they get them. So she gets one. A slightly thoughtless one for her character, but at this point, she's still an idea. She's the woman the Doctor can't stand not to save even though he barely knows her. And so she gets the guest-star end. The not-entirely-thought-through end. The end that was perhaps not quite so rigorously put through the Don't Be Sexist filter as it should have been.
I'm disappointed by it, but I can't find it in me to take it as a sign that Moffat is a failure of a writer, simply based on his accumulated successes. He just...dropped the ball here. Privileged the protagonist's emotional needs over that of the guest star in a way that was only way awkward once she became this FORCE OF FREAKING NATURE in later episodes, and other than that was a little disappointingly gender essentialist.
(I keep seeing Sam Anders watching Starbuck leave in the heavy raider: Is that who River Song is to this fandom? I find that inappropriately entertaining).
So I suppose that begs the question; if, judged in isolation, I think the Library episodes are fantastic with a slightly disappointing final few scenes, what do I think of them in the context of her whole story? If, as I've said, I find it more disappointing the more I know about her, to the point I start using LITERARY MYTHIC WRITINGS as justifications for why she'll escape it one day, why am I still so awesomely in love with her and not simultaneously raging at Moffat as I was known to do at both RTD and RDM (what is it with three-letter showrunners that start with R and me?)
It's a good question. Mostly I think it's quick to answer:
1) He's making up for it. Now that she's a real, recurring, important character, she has been nothing short of marvelous, and while narratively we already know the end, in realworld chronology, he's been improving her with every appearance.
2) The pall that a bad ending might otherwise cast over her character it mitigated by the fact she's not actually dead. Which means there is space for interpretation and continuation.
3) I have an odd ability to kind of not think about it and just act like she kind of did die in truly awesome, glorious fashion, the very first time the Doctor ever met her, while simultaneously knowing that she's sort of still alive and will one day continue her conquest of the universe through sheer awesome. I do not know how I manage to hold onto these conflicting beliefs, yet somehow I do. I BLAME THE MAGIC OF RIVER.
The last thing I want to talk about requires looping back a bit (again, with the essay points in the wrong order). And that's another issue of clarification, really. Which is that, superficially, there are a lot of similarities between Donna's end and River's. Especially since above, I flat out said, and, in fact, even partially excused River's end based on focusing more on the main character's emotions when that pretty much represents everything awful about Donna's ending.
So, let's see - they're both basically saved against their wills and forced into a static existence rather than dying under their own control, arguably to indulge the Doctor's need to save everyone no matter the cost and to provide him with MOAR EMO.
Here are some reasons I think they are different, and why one of them made me actually quit the show (okay for the second time and clearly it didn't stick, but, I DIDN'T WATCH ANY OTHER RTD EPISODES EXCEPT BY ACCIDENT CUS I WAS IN A PUB), but the other kind of makes me sadly shrug my shoulders and pull out my meta-bat and hit it until I'm okay with it again.
1) River loses her body but keeps her mind, her intelligence, her brilliance and her memories. Donna, on the other hand, is reduced to her body, her thoughts stolen from her, her desires erased, not just ignored.
2) Donna wanted to die specifically rather than being saved in the way the Doctor saved her. River simply didn't know it was an option. While I'm not sure how she'll feel about it long-term, at least the Doctor wasn't ignoring her express wishes.
3) Donna had her status and power and agency reduced in order to provide the Doctor with manpain. "Saving" her was a reductive act. Since River would otherwise be dead, saving her actually preserved more of her agency and independence than otherwise. I'm not saying life at any cost, but I am saying that at least it was about saving her, not metaphorically killing her as it was with Donna.
4) Yes, in both cases the Doctor's desires were prioritised over Donna's/River's. However, I think it's worse to see this happen to the other series regular rather than the guest star the writer has no reason to believe is coming back. I'm not saying it's laudable but it's less awful. Especially since River's ending wasn't as horrifying as the paving slab and was, on a fundamental level, at least about her being too awesome and important to the Doctor to let die, rather than being another human sloppily saved and forgotten.
5) Unusually, I don't actually have a problem with "fridging" River in this capacity because unlike Donna, her unusual chronological relationship with the Doctor means we get all the benefits of Tragic Death Sealing Her Importance Forever without actually having to lose River in any way. In fact, it's kind of made her narratively immortal in the ongoing series.
THUS END MY EPIC THOUGHTS OF THINKING. :)
no subject
See, I get what you're saying about how much the show loves the Doctor there, but again I think my perspective is different because of the fact I do actually know more about it in general terms and I was just so shocked by how much I didn't hate him it was a pleasant surprise. Also I was so caught up in Alex Kingston selling it, I kind of missed that part. BUT YES TO GLORIOUS DEATH.
I absolutely think you put it more succinctly than me when you said that Donna's story is erased by her "death" while River's is saved.
YOU WOULDN'T ANSWER YOUR PHONE.