Holy agency, Batman!

[sebastienne]

Oooh, yeah.

A few episodes ago - when the Doctor said "Amy Williams" - I was began to create a checklist of Things Moff Could Do To Make It OK Again.

He ticked most of the boxes in some way:

+ I wanted to see some of Amy's anger at losing her baby (I can only assume that it is piss-poor script-editing which caused that lack of character continuity).

~ I wanted to see Amy & Rory, dumped back in suburbia, sitting down and making sonic probes with household equipment to go and save the Doctor themselves.

+++ I wanted the women to get some fucking agency.

In addition, he also gave us:

+ Amy's RAGE and REVENGE at losing her baby. A chilling scene with Madame Kovarian and then a discussion of the morality of alternate-universe actions.

+ RORY. OH GOD RORY. I don't care how much of an obvious author-insert you are, ILU.

+ MOAR Amy in a suit. Plus eyepatch.

+ Speaking of eyepatches - OMG Brig! (Did feel a bit like shouting, "you've got a time machine, go and see him last week", but know that's not what they were doing) The progression really seems to go "I've got a time machine! I can put off my death for aaaages!" "BTW, the Brig is dead." "Ah, shit, maybe I'll just go get shot then." Really makes me think I was right about that dynamic all along: here, have some fic I wrote in 2008. (Note: it's over 3 years old, and contains some mawkishness and some ableism which on re-reading strikes me as plain bizarre. But I was right about the dynamic.)

However - let's not run off all into squee and self-congratulation. It is right to note that this does NOT address the Doctor's arbitrary choice to save young!Amy and not young!River. Which, in turn, I am forced to turn into a narrative decision to treat baby-River and older-Amy as being as "ersatz" and thus disposable as ganger-Doctor.

But, ultimately, we are stepping away from "Jesus-Doctor will SAAAAAVE US ALL, hallelujah" and back into "this funny little man in his blue box, buzzing around the universe - interfering, but trying not to make too much of a splash". A place where I am a lot more comfortable. [Not that the Doctor has to be a man - canonically now, we know that regenerations can cross "boundaries" of gender and race - so even if his reason is "going into deep cover", I have to expect that we won't have a white, male, 12th Doctor.]

And if "Doctor Who?", and the marriage (which did not serve any plot-purpose; anybody else notice that?), and the CONSEQUENCE of marriage in a pre-sex-education worldview (and the consequence of "ah, but her nights..." in an adult worldview) are leading up to what I think they're leading up to...

We could be heading for the Cartmel Masterplan, or some variation thereof.

We could be heading for New Gallifrey.

Comments

[happydork]

+++ I wanted the women to get some fucking agency.

:D:D:D

But, ultimately, we are stepping away from "Jesus-Doctor will SAAAAAVE US ALL, hallelujah" and back into "this funny little man in his blue box, buzzing around the universe - interfering, but trying not to make too much of a splash".

I really hope that's the direction it goes! Mainly, I think that's the set up, but I'm a little worried that the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything is centred around the Doctor.

[scifi-mel.livejournal.com]

I should have guessed that the Amy Williams thing pissed you off as much as me! But this was better and I agree with you. Finally seeing Amy express some of the loss of her child was great. The actress who played Madame Kovorkian was at the com today in a Ramones tshirt! She looked Really hot!

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Y'know, it's funny, I thought Amy Williams was much more about Rory than it was about Amy. The 'Rory Pond' joke was always about the fact that Rory was the lesser partner, the less able, less feisty, less sexy... just generally 'less'. If Amy very deliberately kept her maiden name*, then fair enough, although it being the Doctor is it any more of an insult calling her Amy Williams than him Rory Pond (important part: him being the Doctor and consequently not technically party to earth related male privilege necessarily).

*The only evidence for which that I can remember being her daughter's name.

[scifi-mel.livejournal.com]

I loved that he was trying to get her over her faith in him as that had been bothering me for most of the season and it was nice to see that addressed. But calling her Williams just seemed to be shifting her from one man to another which I didn't like.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

I think I'd turn the onus of proof around - did we ever see any evidence that she wanted to change her name?

I do take your point, though, that the use of "Rory Pond" was just as much about submission to control within a relationship (I'm not sure I accept "less" - but then I'm a massive Rory-fan), and therefore potentially just as icky; although we do at least see Rory considering and accepting this role.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm firmly in the Rory camp, too (the "Your [eye-thing] could start firing off at any moment!" "It already is, ma'am" bit caused much squee in the Hardee/Hannah household). I'm not saying he was less-than. Just that that was how he was being presented by the Doctor himself.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Indeed - Moffat has hinted John Simm's Master will be back at some point, and the Master's presence in time-locked Gallifrey will have changed the dynamics there...

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who? - saw that coming several episodes ago and was hoping I'd be wrong. I find it very disappointing, especially as it has turned what has essentially been an ongoing gag into a serious plot point.

Annoyed about the time travel inconsistency.

Also, the Doctor in Doctor-robot as escaping death made no sense to me, unless the fixed point was the observation of the Doctor's 'death', rather than the death per se.

On the other hand, there were many things I liked:

Live chess, simultaneous timelines, eyepatches, Amy and Rory and, of course, morally ambiguous Amy.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Also, the Doctor in Doctor-robot as escaping death made no sense to me, unless the fixed point was the observation of the Doctor's 'death', rather than the death per se.

I very much assumed that this was what was going on - although I realise that the show didn't actually tell us that...

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I prefer explanation/justification for these type of things. Still, at least we now know the cause of the cracks in time from the last season (I assume, at least).

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

I thought the cracks were caused by the tardis explosion?

The way I read the robot thing was that he A:Had to be there, in person and B: people had to observe his being shot, and the rest was his typical wriggleroom manipulation.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Do we know why the TARDIS exploded, though? (see my reply to subservient_son, below)

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

Sorry, should have been clearer. What I meant was that I assumed that the Tardis's explosion was due to the aftershock of the alteration of the fixed point.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

I think we're pretty sure that the TARDIS exploding caused the cracks; but we still don't know what caused the TARDIS to explode. I'd need to rewatch to be sure, but I seem to recall the doors locking shut on River as a booming voice proclaimed, "Silence Will Fall".

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

I assumed the fixed point was always the destruction of the Tesselector, and everyone just misinterpreted what exactly was being fixed.

[flippac.livejournal.com]

Likewise. The only fixable thing is the sum of everyone's observations, of which we see a subset. The alternative would be a perfectly trustworthy narrator, and there's no way in hell Doctor Who is ever going to give us that!

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Oh gods yes Cartmel Masterplan squee.

[ayaron.livejournal.com]

If you want a plot reason why the Doctor saved young Amy but would not save baby River...at some level he sensed that baby River's kidnapping and being raised by the Silence was part of a fixed event. In fact, by Demon's Run he knows he's going to die and has just worked out who was in suit. so he couldn't save baby River and give her back to her parents for the same reason he couldn't not be shot on that beach.

The fact that they needed the Doctor being shot to be a fixed point explains why the needed River in the suit, even though she wasn't in control for most of it. She's part Time Lord and I guess if you need to make a new fixed point in time, that's the way you do it.

I don't like the 'it was a robot all along' resolution though. I think it would have been better if River had come up with some way of changing the fixed point so it wasn't anymore, seeing as she was the one who 'made' it.

Lastly, are the Doctor and River married? I'm not sure. The ceromony obviously involved the binding of hands. But River's hands were bound to a robot, not the Doctor. Or if she is married to the Doctor, is she also married to all the other people in there?

:O)

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Thank you for helping me to rationalise!

And yes, I too wish that the thrust of the ep hadn't been, "silly River, breaking time; let the Doctor handle this".

To add to your marriage-confusion - did it even happen, as it was in a parallel universe? River tries to assure Amy that she didn't really kill Madame Kovarian, for the same reason...

But then, like I say, I don't think the marriage actually MATTERS except as a way to explain upcoming time-babies to small children...