tv thoughts
Okay, so this is going to be a "stating the obvious about Amy Pond" update, but one of the things I really like about her story, broadly speaking, is how much it's about memory. And no matter how many times the universe gets rewritten or paralleled, Amy keeps those memories, and *fights* for them - because she's Amy, because she's a time traveler, because on her first day she looks at the things she was told not to see, and remembering them saves her *and* the whole planet. She's stubborn enough to remember everyone she loves back into the world. And what we *don't* get, with Amy, is the sense that she's not *allowed* to remember - that knowledge that is learned in the Doctor's world is too dangerous for her to keep. This is what happens with Rose and Donna: if they remember, they will die. All Amy needs to do is make a bit more room in her head for a couple of extra lives.
Which is - again with the obvious - the opposite of how the Silence operate. Madame Kovarian tells River not to even bother remembering, because they've done too good a job of making her forget. I think this gives extra meaning to her blue journal: it's not just about keeping tabs on when and where she meets up with the Doctor, but about writing things down, keeping memories. So much of her life has been taken from her; small wonder that she holds on so fiercely to the memories she goes on to create. (And it's why River-as-archaeologist makes so much thematic sense, because that work is all about recovering what has been forgotten.)
It'll be interesting to see what (if anything) happens with Clara in this regard, because there does seem to be the suggestion of "knowledge = danger" in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS," that Clara learns something in the library that she isn't allowed to keep...but the episode ends with the suggestion that memory is still possible if you look, if you feel it - that memory ripples out, even backwards into time, even when you don't know that it has.
...in other TV news, I've spent a lot of time over the last week or so re-watching S1 Joan of Arcadia and weeping. I always felt like this show had a bad reputation with people who had never actually bothered to watch it, but what I was thinking this time was that I wanted more books like this show: not the "girl talks to God" part, but the part where we're looking at a loving family trying to do their best for one another (instead of the estrangement and coldness that fills so many novels), and people rise to the occasion of being the good parts of humanity even though they make mistakes and hurt others, and people are earnest and trying and gloriously messy instead of disaffected and cynical and closed-off. This is the stuff that makes books like The Bean Trees and I Capture the Castle (and yes, Tamsin) my favorites, and one of the reasons that I have a hard time finding historical fiction not written by Gillian Bradshaw (so much of the stuff that isn't about famous people - my kingdom for a Tudor-era book that doesn't involve solving a mystery and is *not* about the Henrician or Elizabethan court! - seems to be of the "life in the past was terrible and nothing ever went well for anyone" school, which is probably why I tend to read YA historical fiction instead).
(I mean, Code Name Verity was easily the best new book I read in 2012, and it's not like it was all rainbows and kittens, but it was about love, you know? Not romance - not that there's anything wrong with romance - or the kind of passion that takes you away from yourself, which is what stands in for love in so much fiction, but the kind of love that lets you and *helps* you be who you are. I feel like my childhood devotion to Madeleine L'Engle is showing through here - "she could stand there and she could love Charles Wallace" is probably the only-recently-realized secret anthem to nearly every story I've tried to write - but that's what I want more of.)
Which is - again with the obvious - the opposite of how the Silence operate. Madame Kovarian tells River not to even bother remembering, because they've done too good a job of making her forget. I think this gives extra meaning to her blue journal: it's not just about keeping tabs on when and where she meets up with the Doctor, but about writing things down, keeping memories. So much of her life has been taken from her; small wonder that she holds on so fiercely to the memories she goes on to create. (And it's why River-as-archaeologist makes so much thematic sense, because that work is all about recovering what has been forgotten.)
It'll be interesting to see what (if anything) happens with Clara in this regard, because there does seem to be the suggestion of "knowledge = danger" in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS," that Clara learns something in the library that she isn't allowed to keep...but the episode ends with the suggestion that memory is still possible if you look, if you feel it - that memory ripples out, even backwards into time, even when you don't know that it has.
...in other TV news, I've spent a lot of time over the last week or so re-watching S1 Joan of Arcadia and weeping. I always felt like this show had a bad reputation with people who had never actually bothered to watch it, but what I was thinking this time was that I wanted more books like this show: not the "girl talks to God" part, but the part where we're looking at a loving family trying to do their best for one another (instead of the estrangement and coldness that fills so many novels), and people rise to the occasion of being the good parts of humanity even though they make mistakes and hurt others, and people are earnest and trying and gloriously messy instead of disaffected and cynical and closed-off. This is the stuff that makes books like The Bean Trees and I Capture the Castle (and yes, Tamsin) my favorites, and one of the reasons that I have a hard time finding historical fiction not written by Gillian Bradshaw (so much of the stuff that isn't about famous people - my kingdom for a Tudor-era book that doesn't involve solving a mystery and is *not* about the Henrician or Elizabethan court! - seems to be of the "life in the past was terrible and nothing ever went well for anyone" school, which is probably why I tend to read YA historical fiction instead).
(I mean, Code Name Verity was easily the best new book I read in 2012, and it's not like it was all rainbows and kittens, but it was about love, you know? Not romance - not that there's anything wrong with romance - or the kind of passion that takes you away from yourself, which is what stands in for love in so much fiction, but the kind of love that lets you and *helps* you be who you are. I feel like my childhood devotion to Madeleine L'Engle is showing through here - "she could stand there and she could love Charles Wallace" is probably the only-recently-realized secret anthem to nearly every story I've tried to write - but that's what I want more of.)