Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes To War

[beccatoria]

Okay. Massive spoilers within, obviously. The non-spoilery version of this being, despite the fact there were many, many excellent things about that episode, one of the major twists really did not work for me much at all yet it seems to be best beloved by many excellent people on my flist whose opinions I respect, and I would really VERY MUCH like to love it to.



River Song = Melody Pond?

...eh.

I want to love it. I really, really want to love it. I get that it ties Amy and Rory into the mythology in a really powerful way. As much as it could potentially make Amy's relationship even with her own kid non-Bechdel-test-passing, it could equally create a Bechdel-test passing relationship between Amy and River where one did not previously exist.

I love found families and unconventional families. The idea, in theory, of a back-to-front nuclear family that raise each other in the wrong order and serve different roles at different times, is absolutely lovely. But there's an imbalance of power here.

Which brings us to the core of my disconcerting reaction to the revelation. The reason I could ship Doctor/River when I couldn't manage it for most other ships, was that her independence and the method through which they seemed to conduct their relationship, was a massive leveler for that imbalance. It's why I so strongly disliked the idea that he had met her as an "impressionable young girl".

It remains to be seen how it will all play out - admittedly, it seems she rather tragically spends the first seven or so years of her life stuck in a spacesuit, raised by creepy aliens she can't see, and I don't think that can be undone because of crossing timestreams. Which you know, in itself is pretty fucking tragic, but the point is, okay, we don't know how it'll play out, but the fact remains that...River grew up to marry her mother's best friend?

Amy once snogged her son-in-law?

A large part of River and the Doctor's epic timey-wimey romance occurs in front of her parents?

What does this herald for Amy and Rory? River gets an exciting, crazy, space-adventure life. But what about her parents? Do they get to raise her? If so OR if not, the fact that the Doctor will one day marry their child means that continuing to tote his future wife around near him as an infant is probably eventually going to get creepy, so...are they equipped to go off and have their own exciting lives, or is it a classic Who goodbye; sorry Amy, your daughter's the one who got the golden ticket?

There's a part of me that appreciates that Amy's first reaction to meeting her own kid back in the Angels episodes is, HOLY SHIT SHE'S AWESOME. And there's a part of me that likes that River is, much as Amy, inappropriately sexually forward in front of people such as parents. And there's a part of me that likes that Amy and Rory's kid is clearly gonna turn out to be pretty kickass. But there's also a part of me that dislikes stuff like the way River's caring and lack of rivalry with Amy that was so lovely is now probably going to be interpreted after the fact by some people not as "look, women don't always fight!" but rather as, "aaaah, so that's why they didn't catfight!"

Part of me likes the way River gets to be Timelordy and awesome (even though "cooking a Timelord" really, really DOES NOT make sense), but another part of me is like, wait, I liked River kind of because she was her own brand of awesome. I don't really need genetics to explain why she can pilot the TARDIS or keep up with the Doctor. Although equally on the flip side, it does level the playing field a little in terms of the way the Doctor's potentially exploitative status as an uncle figure is now shaping up. One thing I hadn't really considered until writing this (so hey, it's helped a little already!) is that if she is partly Time Lordish and with that has the ability to view time in that way and that intelligence and perspective, maybe the Doctor is the only other person who can keep up with her, and I guess it leaves space to have her as a big part of the show's continuing mythology in the decades to come if she can have earlier regenerations (although for serious, let's keep Alex Kingston AS LONG AS POSSIBLE), so there may have been a structural incentive for Moffat to give her that ability.

Though it also makes her death - which she specifically states the Tenth Doctor couldn't survive via regeneration - more tragic somehow. IDK, the motivations are the same - she was preserving her own life and experiences, but it seems like...I dunno. Loss. Even more than before, though I suppose that's the point. Stupid stuck-in-a-computer.

Finally, I really did like that the episode called out the way the Doctor's behaviour and where it would ultimately lead, and, in fact, where it did lead. Melody was specifically taken to get to the Doctor. River herself seeming genuinely angry with him, as much as she clearly also loves him, quite possibly for the loss of the life she could have had but now won't, although equally we know that she will die to keep her life from changing.

That River (as opposed to Melody - the girl who could have been), is a direct consequence of the Doctor's fuck up, and that she could not have been that person/that consequence, if she were not the child of people the Doctor loved already - if she were not someone the Doctor would have already loved - is at least preferable, to me, to her simply being their normal child who the Doctor later marries.

It doesn't exactly make it less weird, but it at least brings the weirdness more to the forefront and makes it more acknowledged.

But, I dunno.

All the excuses of, "but she's a great actress and knew she couldn't tell anyone!" doesn't really remove the fact that I'm upset she doesn't do more to acknowledge Amy and Rory when they don't know her. I do get that the Doctor already knows something's up there so she can tease him, whereas Amy and Rory don't. And River does try in the Library episodes, not to tease him where possible in places. And here, in an earlier version of her, perhaps the first time she has had to meet her father and call him "Rory" whereas later she's used to it. But even if it's practically explicable, it doesn't change the fact I feel shortchanged. It's gonna be weird watching older episodes now. It's just...gonna be weird. And creates a "my love life is allllll" feeling that I never used to get from her, because before she had this whole life, and right now it happened to be with the Doctor, but instead now, she's also kind of...ignoring her mum? IDK.

It's like, she's Melody AND Regenerating Girl AND the Doctor's Wife, and I kind of wish she'd just been two of those three things and it would have been better even?

As you can see I'm...not freaking out or declaring All To Be Fail.

But I am confused.

I feel like I'm on a ridge and on one side, I can fall over into, "I do not care, I am just going to love it on its own terms," and on the other side is, "Oh dear god what was that it's all weird and icky now and what did they do to her and why can't she just be River Song!" And right here on this ridge is an odd place of disconnected zen?

What I think I want is to be able to love it as deadly serious crack. But I'm not sure it's not just...crack.

SO PLEASE, MY FELLOW FANS, EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THIS IS AWESOME.

I'm deadly serious, here. I'm not being sarcastic or anything. I am genuinely confused about how I feel, and I would genuinely prefer to have my Come to Jesus River moment and get over this thing and make a shitload of vids and write meta and LAUGH about all this come September.

SAVE ME.

Comments

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm sorry. :(

I was actually semi-spoiled, in that I heard what the twist was, but not without some doubts that it wasn't a fakeout since there were false endings circulated, and I knew that. So I wasn't certain but I was at least prepared for the possibility and had thought about it a little, so that's part of why I'm being a bit more coherent than I otherwise would be. But I'm glad it helps somewhat.

Like you, I don't hate it, but it does feel...I don't know. As you say, lazier than I was expecting because we know Moffat is capable of pulling truly impressive twists at times. I mean, this is speculation I specifically recall from before season five started, when I didn't even think I was going to be watching, but someone sent me the leaked photos of Alex Kingston filming for the Angels episodes on that beach, and I clearly remember someone going, "Oh, Pond/River, I wonder if there's a connection! I mean...a River comes from a Pond!"

And in some ways that makes sense because Moffat does tend to telegraph his twists ahead of time so they don't come out of nowhere if you're paying attention, which in general - like with the romance aspect - I applaud. But I guess my issue is I don't feel this one was telegraphed enough. A few odd moments of profound connection between River and her parents in previous episodes, where she catches herself from saying something, or, well, like in this episode where I think it was the first time she'd met Rory as an adult when he didn't know who she was, and that's why it threw her - that was some quite lovely acting from Alex Kingston. The sort of uncertainty, the almost youthful desire to share with him her exciting date, but with a hint of...awkwardness and sorrow. But...if we could just have had some stuff like that, or some idea that she was keeping something secret from both of them and it was weird for her.

I mean, there'd still be the potential ick factor from other things, but I think narratively it would have been more robust, even if perhaps not so much thematically.

But yes, I will probably get over it. Moffat billed it as, "an impossible life begins," and thinking of it as her insane super hero origin story is...something that helps. But that could just be because I have a kink for Superheroines. ♥