Last night I started my second annual River-Song-chronology Doctor Who rewatch. If, after my last blog post about her, you doubt my love for River, I suspect that I’ll have proved my adoration after this. Last year it was a simple task–eight or so hours of television. This year it’s harder. River crosses her own timestream two and sometimes three times in an episode, which means I need to rewatch certain eps two or three times if I want to really grok her growth and development as a character.

That’s why I do this, by the way. I know that now I could just watch the BBC-approved video summarizing her life–but that wouldn’t really help me with her evolving character or the rich continuity that Moffat’s seeded through her episodes. Last year, already, I was able to understand the tragedy of her downfall and loss of the Doctor. But it was a little strange, like reading the last half of a tragic love story. I suspect this year will be strange, too; we have River’s origins, and her end, but we don’t have the middle third of her story yet, where she transforms from the impetuous psychopath from this season to the experienced, bad-ass, self-sacrificing woman she becomes.

Some viewers and bloggers are insisting that River’s story is over. After all, when she meets the Doctor in that diner in Utah before his death, he says that they’ve already done Easter Island and Jim the Fish together. Or does he? I suspected he was lying. He has the motivation for it–his death must look real, so it has to seem like he’s both at the end of his life and therefore at the end of his travels with River–but I didn’t have proof.

ETA: It’s been pointed out in the comments that he doesn’t need to lie to River, since she remembers what happens. He does, however, need to lie to Amy and Rory so that they accept his death. If he implies that he and River have travels to go, and then he dies, it makes his return self-evident.

This morning I rewatched “The Impossible Astronaut” (the second in my chronology–I’m still working out the order for later episodes, but this one is clearly the first episode where we see Melody Pond as a little girl). And I noticed something awesome.

A bootstrap paradox!

A bootstrap paradox is when an object or information exist without having been created, thanks to the slippery and circular nature of time travel. In this case, it enables the Doctor to talk about experiences he’s never had. Moffat’s played with these paradoxes before, like in last year’s finale, and in “Blink.” But this one is so subtle that you might miss it–and most people do. From our perspective, we first get this scene in the diner, and we take it at face value:

River: Right then, where are we. Have we done Easter Island yet?

Doctor: Um, YES! I’ve got Easter Island.

River: They WORSHIPPED you there! Have you seen the statues?

Doctor: Jim the Fish!

River: Oh, Jim the Fish! How is he?

Doctor: Still building his dam.

Later, to confirm that the Doctor they’re dealing with is a younger Doctor, River references the above conversation, and he has no idea what she’s talking about. This, she thinks, proves that this is a younger man, one who hasn’t traveled with her.

What you miss here in watching the interaction the way they laid it out in the episode (roughly from River’s perspective) is that the Doctor still doesn’t know what she’s talking about two hundred years later. “The Doctor lies” is easy enough to believe with his stuttering affirmation that they’ve “done” Easter Island, but how does he know about Jim the Fish?

He knows because River tells him! She drops a big shiny spoiler for him.

Here’s how this plays out from the Doctor’s perspective:

At age 909, he gets an invite to a Utah diner, pops out to get his special straw, and returns to find Amy, Rory and River there. And they’re inexplicably peeved at him. Amy asks how old he is, and then River completely loses her temper.

River: Where does that leave us? . . . Jim the Fish?! Have we done Jim the Fish yet?

Doctor: (smirking) Who’s ‘Jim the Fish’?

I believe this smile is meant to convey, "Sweetie, why the hell are you always lecturing ME about spoilers?"

Nearly two hundred years later, as he prepares to go to his [fake] death, he meets River in that same diner. It has to look real. It has to look like he’s really dying. He lets her rifle through her diary, throwing out experiences–like Easter Island. But he can’t contribute anything because he hasn’t experienced any  of this. So it doesn’t sound very legit. But then he remembers that he knows something! River’s given her a spoiler! “Jim the Fish!” he blurts out.

But then River wants details. How’s Jim doing?

Watching this scene from the Doctor’s perspective makes it pretty hilarious. Just look at this face and tell me it’s not the face of a man caught in a lie by his maybe-someday-wife. And he seems pretty relieved when River buys his jokey response (“still building his dam”) before their conversation is interrupted by Rory and Amy.

This means, of course, that Jim the Fish and Easter Island might still be to come for the Doctor. Sure, it doesn’t prove anything definitively, but evidence in the episode opens it to more than one interpretation–including the interpretation that River’s story isn’t done yet, not for us, not by a long shot.

Anyway, neat little nods like this one (and others–I’m noticing so many already from, “Time can be rewritten” to “We’re his friends. We do as we’re told” [my emphasis]) are what makes something like a River-order rewatch really powerful and worth undertaking. Watched from her perspective, with knowledge of the order of the events for both parties, River’s story becomes one of the most complex and interesting on television–and it’s not even finished yet! They’re also what gives me faith in Moffat’s ability to continue writing an awesome timey wimey story.

So yeah, I’ll report back to you if I notice anything else awesome, Gentle Reader, though again it might be awhile–by my reckoning I have fifteen more hours of River’s story to watch, an experience that will have to be interrupted when I go to Viable Paradise this week (because it’s not cool to stay holed up in your hotel watching Doctor Who on your laptop when surrounded by a bunch of kick ass sci-fi writers . . . at least, I don’t think it is). But I thought this self-contained little paradox was neat enough to share immediately.

ETA: Added a second River Rewatch post today! Come weigh in on her timeline. Before my head explodes.

You've been warned, sweetie.

As you probably know, I’ve been worried about Doctor Who this season. Many of my concerns focused on female characters. Despite some very well-written episodes, the sexual politics felt a bit feminist fail to me. Now that the season’s played out, I’m not sure if I can really revise my view of Amy. After all, one major plot resolution hinged on the Doctor deciding to call her by her married name–despite the fact that Amy herself has never stated a preference for that name Williams.

But after last night’s finale, I know I’ll keep watching. Why?

Because I fucking adore River Song.

As I’ve written about before, I wouldn’t be a Whovian if it weren’t for River. I’d seen a few episodes here and there before, but it was “Silence in the Library”/”The Forest of the Dead” that got me really, truly, and inextricably hooked. I loved the idea of a timey-wimey love story playing backwards–like Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, but more fundamentally science fictional. And in the place of a patient and passive artist, we got River–brilliant, iconic. It felt clear to me from the outset that she was a bad-ass meant to be the Doctor’s equal.

I think part of me has always been waiting for an anti-heroine to love, a sort of female Han Solo. But River is even better; she’s a female Indiana Jones. An academic! A professor! Be still, my heart!

I can't be the only one planning a River-in-academic-regalia cosplay, can I?

Initially, I wasn’t sure if I was happy with River’s story this season. She was pretty solidly fantastic through most of last season, but season 6 saw her Poochied in the form of Mels Pond and entering graduate studies “to find a good man.” And I could understand io9′s reaction to “The [squee!] Wedding of River Song”:

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 found those aspects of the episode difficult to watch. River seemed so dependent on the Doctor, so obsessive, so unhealthy. And selfish, too; the Doctor’s frustration with River centers on how magnanimous she isn’t. She’d sooner destroy the universe than deal with the loss of him.

“They ruined her this season,” my husband said, a sentiment that I’ve heard echoed across the Internet. But then I thought a little bit about timey wimey stuff and realized . . . that’s the point.

The River Song we saw in “Let’s Kill Hitler” and “The Wedding of River Song” is the youngest (non-infant) River we’ve ever seen. She acts like a petulant child with an unrequited crush because that’s precisely what she is.

One of my biggest complaints with Amy this season has been a lack of permanent growth. Every time she seems to develop as an independent woman, she gets retconned back to the status quo. Sure, there have been changes since Season 5 Amy, but they’ve been slight. Again and again, I’ve felt like her advancement was been thwarted or muddled.

But that’s not the case for River.

It feels, of course, like quite the opposite–it feels like we’re watching a strong woman unravel to a mentally unstable little girl. But that’s because her story is being told roughly backwards. Of course she’s a little unbearable now. She’s young, naive, and, worse, spent the first years of her life being brainwashed into a psychopathic killer.

The Doctor and Amy and Poochie Show

But every instance we’ve seen of later-era River has been awesome. She’s a femme fatale, a warrior, an academic. She’s got sex appeal (and I must admit that Alex Kingston’s chemistry with Matt Smith is some of the best on television ever) as well as depth. When we first–and finally–meet her, she’s mellowed. There’s a sadness to her. We know she’s a woman who has seen and experienced loads. But she’s still brilliant. And, more, her relationship with the Doctor seems to have touched her, changed her. Once she was selfish, destroying universes for her love-now she makes the ultimate sacrifice, not just for him, but for others, as well.

You know, I suspect the Doctor feels frustrated with young River, too. We see it in the episode, the way he loses his temper with her, the way he sneers about not wanting to marry her. But ultimately,  he realizes that he must trust her. She may be half-formed, but she’s still the woman he’ll come to know later–the woman he (and we) have come to love.

And it’s an injustice, sure, when we learn that River has taken the fall for not murdering the Doctor. But unlike Amy, whose decisions are often made for her by the men in her life, River chose this. Her wishes are stated explicitly, way back in “The Forest of the Dead,” when the Doctor offers to rewrite time to correct her death:

I don’t think River’s been perfectly written, of course. I think a lot of young River’s traits are ones that were problematic in Amy–traits that highlight the attitudes Steven Moffat revealed in that 2004 interview in The Scotsman:

 We don’t, as little boys, play at being married – we try to avoid it for as long as possible. Meanwhile women are out there hunting for husbands. …

So River enters academia in search of the “good man” that she loves. And she’s all for the wedding that the Doctor initially resists–she’s so desperate to marry him that she’ll risk losing him just to be wed.

But it’s difficult to read these traits as anything but youthful flaws, when held up to the River who we know comes later. She’ll inevitably grow into a strong, sharp, independent woman, even as she’s a woman motivated and moved by love. We know this is the case, of course, because we’ve already seen it happen.

This picture still makes me squee.

Some bloggers–like Charlie Jane Anders–are saying that River’s storyline is over, finished. After all, we know who she is now, and what she’s done. But there are still stories we haven’t seen (what? You actually believed the Doctor when he said he’d seen Easter Island and Jim the Fish? Pshaw. The Doctor lies), and we know that River and the Doctor spend their nights together (hot). And I’d be so sad to see her go now, just as she’s growing into herself, just as she’s finally found her husband, her match.

I want to see her go ice skating on the Thames. I want to see the singing towers of Darilium. I want to see the Doctor in a new haircut and suit (and body? after the fall of the Eleventh, perhaps?) come to her and cry and give her his screwdriver. I want to see the role she plays in the silence that must fall, and how she learns his name (my theory? she’s the one who asks the question, “Doctor who?” And the silence that falls is River‘s silence, the one we’ve already seen, in a certain library). Now that we’ve seen how her story begins and ends, I want to see all the fiddly middle bits, the romantic stuff, the meat. River’s too wonderful to give her up now–just as she’s getting good.

Remember when I said I’d be doing more real-life blogging? Apparently lately my real life involves lots of television. Sure, there’s been some other stuff: editing, socializing, reading, crock pot stews, Renaissance Festivals, rainboots. But nothing is nearly as pressing as talking about the fall line-up.

(Oh, autumn television premieres. I love you.)

I tried not to get my hopes up very high for Terra Nova. Not after LOST let me down in a big way. But television has, lately, been gently restoring my faith in small-screen sci-fi.  Okay, so Doctor Who has been inconsistent, and I don’t think Fringe maintained quite the same level of quality from the season 2 finale through season 3, but stuff has been unsucky enough that I let myself feel optimistic.

And Terra Nova, heavily hyped in commercials and online, looked damn promising. Dystopia! Dinosaurs! Time travel! A setting as lush as LOST‘s, but with more SFnal potential–despite what the producers and actors have been saying in interviews:

We’re trying to create something that’s a little bit bigger than that. It’s not just for a niche audience; this isn’t Battlestar Galactica; it’s not Star Trek. This is not for, necessarily for sci-fi fans out there even though I think sci-fi fans will get a lot out of it. This kind of has that all-inclusive look and feel of a true Steven Spielberg production where people are going to E.T. for the cinematic experience not because it’s just about a boy’s relationship with his alien who comes down from space. That’s kind of how the feeling is on Terra Nova. This isn’t just about time travel and dinosaurs; it’s about a lot more than that.

Man, I wish TV people would disabuse themselves of the notion that it’s a new idea to use science fiction to explore human relationships. Since, you know, that’s how it’s been used forever.

Anyway, watching the premiere tonight, I can’t exactly say I was pleasantly surprised–but I can’t say I was disappointed, either. Terra Nova is precisely what you think a Spielberg-produced television show about a colony in the land of the lost would be. There’s a macho dad with a temper and a dopey son and lots of long, meaningful looks and angsting and testing of boundaries. Characters seem to be more like archetypes than people for the most part. The special effects were pretty atrocious–one scene featured Jason O’Mara (copdude) and Stephen Lang (militarydude) gazing thoughtfully off a blue screen cliff and talking about how beautiful everything was.

But there were some nice touches, too; the core relationship and family are interracial. The oldest daughter of the central family is a nerd (even if she did spend the whole episode babysitting while her brother went on adventures–come on, television! I’m sick of this crud). And despite Jason O’Mara’s protests, there’s a lot of sci-fi in the sci-fi here. Not only was the initial dystopian society fairly well-developed, but the past-universe colony has been clearly thought-through, too. There’s even a statue of the initial probe used to–supposedly–definitively prove that our colonists are in an all new timeline.

The episode closes with some musing about mysterious equations drawn on cave walls, implying that there’s some other intelligent presence on the planet. The characters then state that these equations are proof that the real purpose of Terra Nova is to control the future, implying, perhaps, that the whole thing about the probe is poppycock. This is all pretty predictable stuff. I can safely say that nothing in Terra Nova surprised me.

But it wasn’t terribly written like, say, V. And if you’re going to do some Spielbergian, schmaltzy stuff, then you might as well make your show about the primacy of family rather than the American revolution or whatever the hell Falling Skies was supposedly about. I have a feeling that Terra Nova won’t break any new ground for sci-fi fans, but I don’t think it will particularly offend us, either.

All in all, I’m happy to have some big budget unabashed science fiction on network TV. Cautiously happy, sure–after LOST, I feel I can’t be too careful about these things. Still, it was a fairly solid debut, and I look forward to watching the rest of the first season.

Spoilers. Clearly. Also long and ranty. Probably also clearly.

I’m upset with Doctor Who. I wish I could say that this is solely for apolitical reasons. Oh, they figure into it. I think the storytelling lately has been painfully contrived and the plotlines largely don’t stand up to Fridge Scrutiny and why was Mels so awkwardly retconned into a show that’s usually so fantastic about continuity and why have River even regenerate if you’re only going to let her use that power once or twice and why tell the audience you’re going to kill Hitler then just leave him locked in a closet and does anyone really think the Doctor staring at screens over and over again is all that ominous? These things bother me. But I’m also bothered by the way River Song has been becoming less and less awesome, to the point now where she only became an archaeologist because she was ISO a “good man” (WTF? I guess we should count our blessings that she’s not a “PhT” as in “Putting Hubby Through”) and have been increasingly frustrated with Amy, too. So I can’t really deny it; I’m disappointed in Doctor Who as a woman, a feminist. I thought it was an awesome feminist show, and now I’m beginning to suspect that it’s not, and that makes me sad.

When Steven Moffat began his stint as show-runner, I was very, very optimistic. Like every other viewer of Doctor Who, I loved “Blink” and “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead.” In fact, I was particularly psyched about the introduction of River Song, a time traveler traveling in the reverse of the Doctor who seemed perhaps to be his equal romantically and intellectually. After several seasons of women pining after the Doctor–and one with a woman who didn’t, but who who had all of her character growth erased by the end of her run–I was ready for some wonderful, complex, capable ladies.*

Amelia I loooooove you.

And in the beginning, Moffat gave us one very promising girl: young Amelia Pond, adventurous, skeptical, brilliant.

And then Amelia grew up. And then Amelia became Amy.

For a long time, I clung to my optimism. After all, Amy looked awesome. And she was . . . impulsive! But I ignored the niggling feeling I had that I didn’t really know Amy. Because Amy was Amelia! And she looked awesome!  And she was . . . impulsive!

These concerns grew, unnamed, as I watched certain features of Amy develop. Namely, her passivity. She’s led blindly through a forest. She’s told that she must be “straightened out” to marry Rory by the Doctor. She’s locked in a box and guarded for two thousand years by her fiance. Hmm.

Sorry, Amy. I tried.

It took me a long time to finally pinpoint this discomfort. It wasn’t until we discovered that she’d been trapped and pregnant for half a season and was waiting for Rory and the Doctor to save her that I realized what it was: other than Amy’s propensity for getting herself into trouble, I felt like I had no sense of who she was at all.

I could go on about this, but this post by Lindsay Miller from Tigerbeatdown pretty much covers all of my thoughts about why Amy is a problematic character. On the rare occasions that she does save the day, she generally does it by thinking about a dude. Much more frequently, she’s a flighty damsel. Though we’re told that she’s the same person as Amelia, a bossy, demonstrably artistic, adventurous little girl, this isn’t often reflected in the woman she became. I’d say that she was sassy or adventurous, too, but these traits are treated like a bit of a joke by the men she travels with, her husband, and the Doctor, and so it’s not really very satisfying for me to watch, as a woman who was hoping explicitly for some awesome ladies.

This week’s episode, “The Girl Who Waited,” kind of got my hopes up. In it, Amy is stuck in different timestream from Rory and the Doctor. And it seems that in the time between her getting stuck, and her getting rescued–thirty-six years!–she does not just wait passively.

In fact, she becomes completely bad ass.

Eschewing the romantic ideal of just waiting for her man, she instead learns to battle her robot attackers. She grows as a warrior, and as an intellectual–she reprograms one robot and renames it after her husband; she builds a sonic screwdriver; she determines the rules of her world and then bends them to her will. She’s not happy, surely (she calls her life “hell”) but, God, she’s totally awesome.

I would love to cosplay Older!Amy. She’s the kind of lady for me–the kind of woman you could totally imagine little Amelia Pond growing into.

When she’s discovered by Rory and the Doctor, they find that she’s no longer so fond of the Doctor. In fact, she refers to him as a “raggedy man” and “the voice of God” and seems very ticked off about all of this waiting to be saved and waiting generally. Hey! Anger at being ditched! That’s not a response we’ve seen from Amy before–but definitely one that makes sense, given what little we know about her character.

We see Older!Amy wrestling with the return of her husband. Should she put on make-up or not? Should she open herself up to him, or is it too late for that? Then they share a laugh, and it seems that Amy makes a decision. When the Doctor suggests that they rescue Amy from her past, rewriting her out of existence, she says no–quite clearly and definitively:

He wants to rescue past me from thirty-six years back which means I cease to exist. Everything I’ve seen and done dissolves. Time is rewritten . . .. I’ll die, and another Amy will take my place, an Amy who never got trapped in two streams, an Amy who grew old with you, and she, in thirty six years, won’t be me . . .. Take me with you. You came to rescue me, so rescue me.

But her husband’s very first response to the discovery of Older!Amy–before they ever discuss, you know, saving her–is that he and the Doctor need to go back in time and stop her isolation from ever happening. Even after Amy’s impassioned advocacy for her own continued existence, the Doctor and Rory both insist that her isolation is “wrong.” Rory brings up the fact that he promised to protect her; apparently his guilt is worth more than Amy’s desire to continue existing. Younger!Amy is referred to as “our” Amy. Really, to these two men, there’s no choice between which woman is worth saving. No matter how much the woman who lived through these experiences wants to survive (to go travel, perhaps, through the universe), the younger woman must win.

It’s interesting to see how this plays out with Rory. He seems to feel some genuine conflict, though he’s disgusted, perhaps, that such an old woman (“Old enough to be my mother!” he exclaims in apparent disgust) would flirt with him–which I find odd for a series which has featured several romances between a 900-year-old man and various twenty-something women and since Rory himself has 2,000 years of life experience on his wife, albeit as a plastic Roman Centurion. This experience roughly parallels what Amy experiences in the Two Streams quarantine facility, ironically–but it’s yet to be suggested, even a season later, that Rory be “spared” this experience. It’s tragic, yes; it’s also irrefutably a part of who he is.

Early in the episode,  the Doctor says of the other inhabitants of the quarantine facility: “I think they’re happy to be alive. Better than the alternative.” Older!Amy’s actions are consistent with this. Even when she agrees to save her younger self (during a genuinely stirring and very well-acted scene) because of her love of her husband, she insists that she be taken along, too. She wants to survive, desperately, fiercely. The Doctor seems to realize that this will of hers to live is the only way to convince her to save her younger self. And because he’s never truly considered saving the old version of her, he lies. He tells Older!Amy that she has a chance of surviving so that she’ll help save her young doppelganger. Then, when she comes to board the TARDIS, he slams the door in her face. It’s only when the truth becomes apparent that she nobly sacrifices herself, but by then the choice isn’t simply between her survival, or the survival of her younger self, but rather between their mutual death or the survival of her younger self.

So much for respecting a woman’s right to choose. Every single aspect of this plot and every action of the Doctor conspire to invalidate Older!Amy’s choices, desires, and personhood. What matters is that she be spared, even if she doesn’t want to be spared–because the men, of course, know better than she do about her very life.

In this episode, the Doctor acts in a way that’s in keeping with his recent behavior, but is still insanely maddening. He’s paternalistic. He’s condescending. He lies. He rejects Amy’s right and autonomy over her experiences outright.

Younger!Amy and Rory’s actions aren’t much better. Near the end of the episode, despite the fact that we both have seen and been told that Amy already knows how to disable the robots via feedback, Younger!Amy is almost instantly incapacitated. Then she’s carried, unconscious, in Rory’s arms onto the TARDIS.

It’s only Older!Amy who is anything new. This is the first time we’ve seen concrete, verifiable growth in Amy-Pond-the-adult. It’s also the first time it’s been suggested that she’s a certifiable genius. Karen Gillan is able to stretch her acting chops like never before. She fights. She invents. She hacks. She flirts. Despite the fact that she’s been hurt, she’s still indisputably a whole, capable person–in precisely the way that our Amy has never been.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t agree with me, Gentle Reader. I’ve fought on metafilter about this already. My husband thinks I’m imaging things. I honestly think it’s difficult to recognize these aspects of “The Girl Who Waited” because this episode was so much better written than what we’ve seen recently. Other than a bit of idiot plotting at the beginning, and a reliance on a giant magnifying glass as a plot point throughout, the script and dialog feels sounder than most of what we’ve seen this season. But Amy’s storyline is really more of the same. The woman has to be saved. Worse, the woman doesn’t really know what’s good for her–to the point where she has to be manipulated and tricked into making the right decision.

I understand television’s need to protect the status quo. But Rory has been allowed to grow, from passive near-cuckold into a hero. In previous seasons, Donna, Martha, and Rose all underwent very palpable growth as their experiences changed their goals, lives, and desires (even if Donna was pretty much royally screwed over in the end). Now that I’ve had a more concrete vision of what Amy could be dangled in front of me–and then snatched away by male characters and writers who say they know better–damn it, I want a sign of that woman on the actual show. I want some sign that Amy can grow into a brilliant, kick ass person even as she stands by her husband’s side.

Because otherwise? If Amy stays as she is today–if the show continues to value damselship over competence, raw youth over experience, passivity over self-sufficiency–if Amy is always the problem and almost never the solution?

Then I’m done.

*On first viewing, I did not much like Rose, and while I highly respected Martha, I felt that the conclusion of Donna’s plotline diminished her. I still think Donna got screwed, but I now appreciate the previous companions much more as strongly drawn ladies with clearly defined motivations. Especially in comparison with Amy. Ugh.