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Tag: River Song

On Silence and Silencing

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Review of Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead / Midnight

I feel I should reiterate right off the top that I have never been a big River Song fan. From this first time we met her, when I found her foreknowledge of the Doctor off-putting rather than intriguing, through the entirety of her on-screen adventures with the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, she just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. That is not least due to the fact that I have always hated the idea of the Doctor having a spouse, someone who is just so extra special to them, even more so than any of the dear friends they take along on their travels.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2008 BBC

But I have to say, I can see why the Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead two-parter rates so highly with so many fans—especially once the audience can share some of River’s perspective. Everything hits just a little bit differently than it did the first time.

Obviously, when these episodes first aired, it was all a clever conceit, leaning heavily on the idea of “nostalgia for the future.” What if the Good Old Days weren’t really the best ever? What if the Doctor was even more awesome in a future incarnation?

It does make for some interesting character dynamics. While the Doctor still gets to be the cleverest person in the room, he doesn’t have a monopoly on knowing best how to take charge of a dangerous situation or to problem solve, because River is there. And, of course, the fact that River recognizes Donna—but only by name—hints at a departure the effects of which we are still feeling to this day.

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Nu-View #22: Taking Satisfaction

The Angels Take Manhattan (Series 7, Ep 5; 2012)
Viewed 16 Apr 2018

Doctor/Companion: Eleven, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song
Stars: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, Alex Kingston
Preceding Story: The Power of Three (Eleven, Amy, Rory)
Succeeding Story: The Snowmen (Eleven, Clara)

This coming weekend, I get to take my daughters to their first Doctor Who con—in fact, their first con of any sort since becoming fans of the show. As you may recall, the three members of the Paternoster Gang were slated to be the guests of honor, and I was trying to figure out how to give the girls enough background to appreciate said guests.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

Since then, Neve McIntosh (Madame Vastra)—the first of those guests to have been announced, as I recall—has had to cancel, and my kids have blown through so much Doctor Who that they’ve now seen not just one, but every extant episode in which the Paternoster Gang appears. I’m no longer worrying about their excitement for meeting these actors; now it’s a matter of which Doctor do we watch next (and next, and next…).

Not only are we watching lots of episodes together, but it’s also been a ridiculously long time since the Ladies have gotten together to watch anything other than the most recent series (scheduling can be a real bear). And since a commenter suggested it might be fun to read more about what my daughters think about these new-to-them stories, I thought I’d choose a few during which to record their reactions and reboot the NuViews section of the blog in earnest.

At the time I made that decision, we were in the middle of Series 7A. A Companion departure story seemed like a really good one to capture, so when it was time to watch The Angels Take Manhattan, I got out my clipboard and—with the girls’ permission—started taking notes.

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A Song of Comfort

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Review of The Husbands of River Song
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Christmas episodes are unusual creatures, trying to be all things to all viewers. There is the expectation that a large number of families, including those who don’t regularly watch the show, will be tuning in. Thus, the episode should be easy to follow for those with little or no knowledge of the characters and ongoing storyline(s), and fun and cheerful for those making it part of their holiday celebrations.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2015 BBC

At the same time, it has to be satisfying for those of us who follow the show regularly. If it’s a complete toss-off, the production team risks alienating its core audience, which is also bad. Thus a Christmas special is a weird hybrid (see what I did there?) of fluff and substance that can be very difficult to execute.

As one might expect, then, there were parts of The Husbands of River Song (THORS—Ha! What an acronym!) that made me really happy and others that made me cringe a little. It’s difficult even to generalize which was which. Most of the interpersonal bits were good, though some were not; most of the guest artist bits were pants, though some were not; most of the plot points were eyeroll-y, though some were not. You get the idea: par for the course.

On first viewing, though, I found the good bits outweighed the bad. Moffat’s dialog was mostly rich in quotable one-liners, with the occasional battle-of-the-sexes comments that he seems to think are funny (but as far as I’m concerned almost never are). I took the lighthearted feel of a “romp” at face value that first time through, too, which meant that the guest cast (Greg Davies as King Hydroflax, Matt Lucas as Nardole (whom I kept mentally calling Unstoffe at first), and Phillip Rhys as Ramone) were all played at a just-right-for-the-occasion “panto” level of off-the-wall.

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What’s in a ‘Name’?

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Review of The Name of the Doctor
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

So many conflicting emotions. Parts of this finale were brilliant, and I really wanted to love the whole thing. I’m afraid I’m going to have to admit that I’m turning into something of a curmudgeon, though; this show is not entirely for me anymore.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

I’m betting there are few Moffat fans (perhaps more specifically “River fans”) who didn’t adore this episode. For my part, as someone who has been a Doctor/River denialist rather than a shipper, the otherwise lovely bits of the story were somewhat tarnished by the saccharine (Brits would say “twee,” I suppose) farewell between them.

I’ll admit the way River was used through the rest of the episode was clever, and overall I like her. I’ve just never bought that there was a strong, romantic love between them (at least, not reciprocated by the Doctor), so while I was completely caught up in the “you can see me?” conversation, as it ground inexorably toward a big, wet smoochie, I found myself thinking, “Oh, no. Please don’t. He’s gonna – aw, damn!”

One thing that really gets me about this new, post-Library River (who knew that was even possible?) is the fact that we’re left to conclude that she has literally been haunting him for years. I’m not sure I care for that idea. Makes him rather a jerk to ignore her that whole time, doesn’t it? Is she less “real” – does she “count” less – because she’s in the mainframe, and so it’s OK for him not to think about her feelings at all? Way to respect the person you supposedly love, Doctor.

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A Farewell to Aims*

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Review of The Angels Take Manhattan
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

It all makes sense now. Well, I say “all”… Clearly, some of it is still utter nonsense, but at least one of the things that’s been bugging me all series is finally obviously and satisfactorily resolved, at least in my head. But I’ll get to that.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

Let me start by talking about how this – this – is finally the kind of episode I’ve been looking for all series. At long last, here’s one I can get behind wholeheartedly because there’s so much right with it, I can ignore just about everything that isn’t.

I really liked the gumshoe detective novel feel to the 1938 portion of the episode (aside from “bouncing off 1938” – wtf?), though I didn’t cotton on till the second time through that Mr. Grayle was deliberately feeding the Angels, nor that it wasn’t necessarily Mr. Garner himself typing up the chapter on “The Dying Detective.”

Even better, though, the Angels have gone back to the basics and once again become the kill-you-by-letting-you-live-to-death monsters we fell in love with in Blink. Somehow, the insidious nature of this particular mechanism makes them creepier and more interesting to me than the sheer monster in the dark we saw back in The Time of Angels. It’s made even more horrific by the way both Garner and Rory are confronted with their future selves (loved the age makeup, too!). It’s good to have the “original” Weeping Angels back.

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The Impossible Series Plot

Review of The Complete Sixth Series
DVD Release Date:  22 Nov 11
Original Air Date:  25 Dec 2010 – 01 Oct 2011
Doctor/Companion:  Eleven, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song
Stars:  Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, Alex Kingston
Preceding Story:  The Big Bang (Eleven, Amy, Rory, River)
Succeeding Story:  The Doctor, the Widow & the Wardrobe (Eleven)

Since the blog began with a review of the first episode included in this boxed set (A Christmas Carol), I won’t go into details about my views on each one. As a reminder, though, I’ll list for you the thirteen regular episodes of the series here, with links to the associated reviews:

Look back over that list and take a moment to think about what this series was. There was some great stuff (as The Doctor’s Wife), some stinkers (I’m looking at you, Rebel Flesh/Almost People), and some mixed bags (Good Man gave us both the scintillating Mdme. Vastra and the regrettable “kitchen sink approach to cameos”). Mostly, though, it was about something “inevitable” (the Doctor’s death) that we all knew was never going to happen. I’m not sure why Moffat decided to go that route. As I’ve said before, no one over the age of eight ever believed the Doctor was really and truly dead – or at least that he would really and truly remain so. That takes a heck of a lot of suspense right out the window along with your credibility. So I suppose in the end, it was all a question of how he’d get out of it, rather than of whether.

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Much Ado About Nothing

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Review of The Wedding of River Song
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

While I will admit that I rather enjoyed (most of) the Series Six finale, and there were plenty of moments that felt epic, when you stop and think about it for a while, not much really got resolved. Moffat is a master at smoke-and-mirrors scriptwriting, like last year when the universe got “rebooted,” yet we didn’t learn anything about why the TARDIS blew up in the first place. In fact, we still don’t know the answer to that particular little puzzle.

Now we do have the answers to a couple of big questions: no, the Doctor didn’t really die on that beach (was anyone surprised by that?); and yes, River Song is his wife. Sort of. Actually, that wasn’t clearly answered, either, thank-you-very-much. I can’t imagine the Doctor actually taking that kind of thing seriously (especially since it was clearly used as a device to gain River’s cooperation). Perhaps that’s why they did a handfasting ceremony instead of an actual wedding. Are they really “married”? How binding/lasting is a handfast marriage? How did the Time Lords (does the Doctor) view such an interpersonal contract? Frankly, I was terribly disappointed to see these two get “married”; not only does it go counter to how I think of the Doctor, but it made River’s story overly predictable (“Of course she’s the Doctor’s wife! What else could she possibly be to him?” Yuck.). My own personal canon will look on this as a non-binding contract-of-convenience, and leave it at that.

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Same Song, Different ‘Verse

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Review of Let’s Kill Hitler
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

There was a lot going on in this episode. People (aka “fans,” aka “bloggers”) complain a lot about the sense of pacing in Moffat’s writing – how he seems to cram too much into the second half of a two-parter, for example – and I don’t see that changing in regards to Hitler. But for the front end of River Song’s story – from her perspective, anyway – we can hardly expect anything else.

I’ll admit it: by the time the opening credits rolled, I was thinking, “oh, god… this one’s going to be rubbish.” I certainly didn’t buy into the best-friend-we’ve-never-come-across-before thing, either. Before I could get too cranky about that, though, Moffat threw a bone to fandom with the temporal grace comment. “Hmmm…” I thought. “Maybe there’s hope for the episode yet.”

Once Rory got not only to punch Hitler but also to tell him to shut up, I was ready to roll with it. Anything that allows me to see Rory the Badass Roman lurking under that modern exterior is going to earn a few squee!‘s from me (e.g., tricking an officer into saluting long enough to deck him and steal his bike, or even just taking the mickey out of his wife a bit by mimicking her accent back at her (“‘Clues‘? What kind of ‘clues‘?”)). I like that the character development we’ve seen has been kept and expanded, so that he’s really a full-on, capable Companion now.

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The Cat’s (Partly) Out of the Bag

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Review of A Good Man Goes to War
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

This one was a real mixed bag for me. Sure, it was a huge-scale production, with epic tie-ins where the Doctor called in favors from across time and space. But it all felt a bit too much. Also – the Spitfires? I ~edit~ hate the Spitfires-in-Space (…which you’d already know if I’d been blogging last year and had published the scathing review I wrote of Victory of the Daleks)! So take out a few of those called-in favors to make it feel less cobbled together (seriously, it has the kitchen sink feel of some of RTD’s most egregious I’m-trying-too-hard ventures), and the story will drive it just fine.

There is, after all, plenty of drama. Will our heroes recover the baby? What is the real motivation behind her abduction? How far will the Doctor go down the path to the Dark Side? (How far can Moffat take a religious order created via an off-the-cuff text message?) Oh, yeah – and who’s River Song?

The episode started out on a wonderful high. I thought it was a lovely twist how Amy talked up the man who was coming for Melody, making the viewers think she was referring to the Doctor (“he’s the last of his kind”; “he looks young, but he’s lived for hundreds and hundreds of years”). That misdirection made for a wonderful skip-a-beat moment when she said that man was Melody’s father, and in turn gave a slightly different meaning to the episode’s title, if one cares to interpret it that way. Not only that, but it bolsters our view of the Amy/Rory relationship and gives the ring of truth to his assertion that “she always knows that I am coming for her!” in Day of the Moon. God, how I love Rory the Badass Roman!

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A Pregnant Silence

Review of Day of the Moon
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.  It also contains profanity.  Proceed at your own risk.

This being the first story of the series, I wasn’t expecting resolution for many of the dangling plot threads in the second half of the two-parter. However, I don’t think I expected as many new ones to be woven in, either. And frankly, I’m not convinced that the threads that seemed to get tied up really are. Oh, what a tangled web Moff weaves…

Starting things off in style with a beautifully wrought mind-fuck allows the production team to squeeze in a few more shots of the good ol’ US of A (I have to say, it’s slightly amusing in Confidential to watch the Brits wax poetic about the American landscape; I suppose it’s a grass-is-always-greener situation, since I find the backdrops here beautiful but almost blasé in their familiarity, while I’d be walking around London and surrounds like a slack-jawed yokel, myself), and puts the viewer off-kilter for a beat.

But soon we’re back to the more familiar, with the Doctor having done something incredibly clever (watch him *snap* the TARDIS open), and River having trusted him with her life yet again. A little bit of exposition later, and it’s on to a truly hide-behind-the-sofa-worthy haunted house. I have to say this is one of the creepiest (darkest, if you will – that seems to be the adjective the production team is using) episodes I’ve ever seen, from any era.

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