apparently this is an all-Rory, all-the-time blog now

[sadcypress]

So here I am, sitting in the box office and kicking back during Act I of tonight's show, keeping on with my rewatch of Doctor Who. I just finished the second Flesh episode and started "A Good Man Goes to War," and two thoughts IMMEDIATELY popped to mind

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[sadcypress]

I think River Song is an almost impossible role to play- it can be hard to track her arc with all the leaping around in time, and her blithe self-assurance becomes smug very easily. I liked her best when Eleven first met her, just because they played up how much she made him feel uncomfortable. But every now and then, I really love River, and so I try and remember those times as much as I can.

When I rewatched the last S6 episode, I got to thinking....

One of my very favorite things about Harry Potter is that the essence of the story can be boiled down (from one perspective) into: a child who grows up believing himself to be unloved is so massively loved that it breaks all the rules again and again. His mother's love was so deep it repelled the death curse, and he just goes on from there to meet more and more people who will love him just as steadfastly. He goes from being entirely unloved and unwanted to someone utterly surrounded and suffused and supported by love, and that's an absolutely incredible and beautiful story.

So along comes self-hating Eleven and what does River prove to him? He has touched SO MANY people and he is so, so loved. I think she knew, ultimately, he might have to die to set the universe right, but by god, she will do this thing for him first (which is exactly what she tells him). I was just floored by that the first time I saw it, and it continues to deeply move me.

It's one of the things that drives me batty about how people respond to Moffat's Who and Eleven himself (who are, of course, absolutely intertwined). In the 50th anniversary special, Ten rants at Eleven and says that he's forgotten all the devastation he caused and Matt's EYES in that moment.... It's all the things I liked least about Ten and most about Eleven wrapped up together. Ten has the arrogance to judge this later version of himself and Eleven hates himself so strongly that he won't speak up in his own defense. I can see quite clearly in Matt's Doctor how much he remembers EVERY BIT OF IT- he's just more resigned now to living with that pain, which makes sense after an extra hundred years or more. Ten assumes that his pain and regret trumps Eleven's... and then I saw then a lot of people assuming he was right.

It's been said before but I'll say it again- DO WE WATCH THE SAME SHOW, REST OF FANDOM? *headdesk* Matt's Doctor is so old and regrets SO MUCH, that these moments when someone proves to him that he doesn't have to give in and be less than he is, that he IS loved, even and especially by the people who know him and all his faults the best- I am Here for This.

[arcadiaego]

Urg the idea that Eleven has forgotten is just...I mean Ten deals with it by either moaning or doing terrible things like torturing The Family of Blood for all eternity. Just because Eleven decided to stop whining about how it's so awful for him all the time!

[sadcypress]

UGHHHH, TOO RIGHT. I saw a headline that Moffat regretted bringing Gallifrey back and I hope it's a dirty lie- it's such a precious gift to have it back in play, to have that horrible weight off of the Doctor's shoulders after so long.

[arcadiaego]

Welllll I have a lot of issues with how he handled Gallifrey, because the Doctor really does not like the Time Lords, and the Time Lords really do not like him. At all. So the Christmas special stuff before Eleven died was weird - there hadn't been enough to justify why the Time Lords would act like that, regardless if the Doctor had saved them or not. (Because they are massive arseholes.) But in terms of it being back, yeah I like that, I like that it brings us back to the universe of Classic Who, and relieves us of the Lonely God plot device. Not knowing where it is, and feeling isolated but it still being out there somewhere is a lot better. I'm just not quite sure if Moffat is trying to have his cake and eat it because actually finding it again raises a whole load of new problems. Idk if it's the Doctor or the writer avoiding that!

(Though, and I know I keep doing this, it is exactly the same as what happened in the Eighth Doctor novels - we thought Eight had destroyed it to save the universe, he was horribly traumatised, it then turned out Gallifrey was actually there after all, just not accessible in time so he was relieved of all that guilt...and then the books ended and the Time War canonically happened soooo. Sucks to be him.)