Meta: The God Complex.
This week’s Doctor Who is without a doubt one of my favourite things ever. It was beautiful and heartbreaking and hit one of my major, major kinks and it also - miracles of miracles - treated religion with intelligence, rather than just steal some imagery and then sneer. Basically it was [metaphorically, and literally] 1 Corinthians 13, 11-12 in
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Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a 'character', is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor, and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem.
Moffat, in many ways, does the same. He tackles the general through the mundane. In telling the specific story of Amy and Rory, he is making points about couples and love generally. (Which makes the Doctor (and/or River) Tiresias I guess. Storytellers...)
In "The Eleventh Hour," "Amy Pond" is the adult identity she chooses for herself. By using Pond/Williams instead of Amelia/Amy as the childhood/adult distinction, it essentially says to me that "Amy Pond" is--well, not a false identity, but--only temporary, if that makes sense. Like she's caught somewhere in between "Amelia Pond" and "Amy Williams", and at some point she must cease to exist. This really bothers me on some deep level.
Hmmm. My immediate reaction is that 'Amy Pond' grew as a reaction against the Doctor. She was Amelia to him, so she chose something else, something *not* Amelia, *not* a fairy tale, in order to define herself. Looked at from another angle (and I was going to include this, but forgot), there was always that Pond/Williams split - the tension between the mundane and the extraordinary:
DOCTOR: Melody! Hello, Melody Pond!
RORY: Melody Williams.
AMY: ..is a geography teacher. Melody Pond is a superhero!
How very right she turned out to be.
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And this whole "Pond" business, a body of water, a reflective surface, "nature's mirror," as it was put in the pirate episode... it made the Ponds mirrors to the Doctor. Both of them, both of them become like the Doctor. Revoking "Pond" breaks the mirror.
Williams, that's a name that derives from "will-helm," literally "protection of the will." It's a good name, not because it's Rory's, but in the fairy-tale sense that it implies the protection of one's ability to choose.
What did you think of the Doctor's claim that he stole her childhood?
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That's what I was trying to say, yes. :)
And this whole "Pond" business, a body of water, a reflective surface, "nature's mirror," as it was put in the pirate episode... it made the Ponds mirrors to the Doctor. Both of them, both of them become like the Doctor. Revoking "Pond" breaks the mirror.
*nods* Pond = River = water = time... All Doctor.
What did you think of the Doctor's claim that he stole her childhood?
He certainly did originally. The Amy he found 12 years later was angry and brittle and unable to trust anyone, certainly not him. He fixed it, in th end, but he is taking responsibility for everything in that moment, so he reminds her of his broken promises, since that's at the heart of everything.
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Ooo, perfect <3
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Except Amy Pond turns into a fairy tale herself, which is well symbolized in "Flesh and Stone." In a sense she becomes Amelia again, in all but name. But in universe 2.0 (at least as described in "The Big Bang" and setting aside "Let's Kill Hitler" for a moment), at the wedding she's forgotten the Doctor. Theoretically, marriage marks the step into adulthood, and she's "Amy Pond" in the new universe too. Which means, to me anyway, that "Amy Pond" should have been her "adult" identity in the new universe as well.
I thought of Melody Williams/geography teacher vs Melody Pond/superhero as well. Then Melody Pond becomes River Song, and now Amy Pond becomes Amy Williams. (While Rory is oft referred to "Rory Pond", the very fact he calls Melody "Melody Williams" means that he doesn't see himself as a "Pond" at all.) Anything related to "Amy Pond" has been symbolically erased from existence.
I do agree with what's being said here, about identity and mirroring and such. That said, I really don't like the subtext that's developed in S5 and S6, which essentially says "Amy Pond" is wrong.
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Remember The Sonic Probe? That, too, was about looking at the harsh reality, but once that had been accepted and acknowledged, the naming went straight back to fairy tale land... Except older Amy still died, because the harsh reality didn't go away. Part of Amy will now always be Amy Williams, because she's left Amelia behind, but she'll still be Amy Pond.
(And by now I am 99% sure [all my own speculation, I am COMPLETELY unspoiled] that she's the one who kills the Doctor, and let no one say that it's 'Amy Williams' who does that deed...)
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Hmmm. I'm not looking at her character, but rather I'm looking at "Amy Pond" as a theoretical construct, if that makes sense. As I see it, "Amy Pond" has been defined in terms of the Doctor and Rory since "Amy's Choice". "Amy Pond" is balanced in both imagination (Doctor) and reality (Rory). Remove either from the equation, and she can't really be "Amy Pond" anymore.
I wish the breaking of faith had been accomplished by using Amelia Pond/Amy Pond, rather than Amy Pond/Amy Williams. (Or perhaps Amelia Pond/Amy Williams would have been more correct, because Amy Pond is a balance between the two.) Mainly because there's the whole symbolic issue of taking the husband's last name vs keeping your own.
Remember The Sonic Probe? That, too, was about looking at the harsh reality, but once that had been accepted and acknowledged, the naming went straight back to fairy tale land... Except older Amy still died, because the harsh reality didn't go away. Part of Amy will now always be Amy Williams, because she's left Amelia behind, but she'll still be Amy Pond.
I re-watched TGWW today, and for me, the paradox was never that there were 2 Amys in the same time stream. The real paradox was that an Amy who can survive without Rory couldn't exist. After 36 years of solitude she'd passed from fairy tale to reality, and she earned the right to survive. (And I was thrilled she defended it.) The narrative didn't allow it, because it has stated time and again since S5 that an Amy without Rory is "wrong". (Where "wrong" is again in terms of a theoretical construct, *not* her character--Mature!Amy was fabulous, and Karen Gillan was fantastic!) That's the harsh reality for me.
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Not entirely sure about your points re. TGWW (or maybe I'm not awake). Although re. Amy surviving 'without' Rory, then she had her Rory bot, so it wasn't like she forgot him.
Anyway, Closing Time (as I suspected) is a lovely counterpoint to a lot of this. (As in: the Doctor being a danger to those around him etc.)
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