Essay (not mine): Understanding/Analysing the ultimate fate of River Song
So, I guess most people have lurkers. And sometimes they de-lurk, and it's great. However, I think my most recently de-lurked lurker is in a category entirely of their own: They wrote me an essay.
Well - they wrote an essay, I should say. I was just fortunate enough to be the person they first showed it to. Although it is - at various points - addressed to me. I was going to edit those parts out, but I like them and they add a nice personal touch, so I've left them in. :)
ANYWAY - then they allowed me to post it here for all of you to see, so that's what I'm doing.
Their name is BasiliskRules and can be found under that name on DeviantArt and FF.Net.
Here, however, is their essay. Enjoy. And please leave feedback!
Understanding/Analysing the ultimate fate of River Song
I like to try and figure out the spiritual/afterlife/metaphysics whatever of various fictional universes, generally speaking. I have actually been trying to write a coherent analysis on this one (I love doing those), and that is really difficult, because canonically, the Whovian afterlife is an understandable mess: Like how the fuck is any human being going to be able to reconcile 52 years of canon of varying degrees, Buddhist show-runners, atheist show-runners, Christian symbolism, the simultaneous existence of Santa Claus and Lovecraftian monsters, the Guardians of Time, the (possible) Devil, loads of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who claim to be Gods but are eeeeevil, fake afterlives, Greek Gods and the Elysian Fields, whatever the hell was happening in Torchwood, the quite Platonic idea of the N-Space and Null-Space in which N-forms enter a higher plane of existence once an individual dies and the Doctor has fought evil parts of beings who couldn't do it, brain uploading, ghosts, visions, Limbo, the Eternals, Iris Wildthyme winning the Ark of the Covenant from Archangel Gabriel in a three week-long game of gin rummy, and writers simply not giving a fuck and going "Hey, you know what? This character is cool, let's bring him back from the dead! How? Meh, who cares…"?
I *did* like that this season's was a *fake* afterlife, leaving the real one, if it exists, open to interpretation. The viewer can imagine whatever he likes or believes. So since the "official" stance right now seems to be "we don't know, let's be vague and mysterious about it, the show doesn't go there, we don't care" (plus anything concrete they might show could result in huge amounts of backlash), I go with: "There is no canon in Who and you know it. There can't be, there are 4 different versions about why the 1st Doctor left Gallifrey, for God's sake! You choose what to consider canon, and since they are currently leaving it vague, the Whovian afterlife is whatever you want it to be. You want a Heaven made of cheese, you get a Heaven made of cheese, buddy".
~~~
So, about River:
Moffat has explicitly said in the Confidential of the episode: "If you believe in a soul, then you will say that she's not in the computer, that's just a copy of her, that's just her mind, her memories; if you don't believe in a soul -like me-, then you think that is her, that's everything about her, that’s all, that’s the crucial mental data preserved perfectly within that computer". Have your cake and eat it too. The interpretation is left to the audience’s discretion, he lets us choose according to our beliefs. (Cheeeese Heaven! Okay, joking).
Therefore, examining this from a spiritual perspective, but it works anyway:
I don't think that River's 'saving' makes any difference in the end. See it like this: I would not call her experience there "post life". If something is post life, it has to be the "proper" one, if it exists, and technology can't change that, the most it can do is record brain patterns. And if it isn't, well, it's life, if we say that the *soul* stays there for some reason, it is a life *extension* and it has to end at some point, no matter how distant, like everything does.
The general consensus at this point from what I've found, is that: a) she *is* just an echo, not "her", and/or b) that she fades anyway here like you say and I agree:
a) I'm of the school of thought that River's data ghost in the Library is just a copy. For example, even the original Matrix -which was super-duper Time Lord technology nonetheless, CAL isn’t- stored the *memories* of dead Time Lords and their DNA code, not souls. How do you capture a *soul* with technology? It is not a scientific, it is a metaphysical concept. (So, again, if you are religious like me, SHE “PROPERLY” DIED IN FOTD, SHE PASSED ON, MOFFAT AGREES, CASE CLOSED.) And you are still making a copy anyway, in my opinion, regardless of the soul issue. Imagine that the person in question was still alive: He wouldn’t lose his memories, his self. It’s not cut-paste, it’s copy-paste. (For instance, “Bells of Saint John” *did* have that. People’s minds were forcefully *extracted* from their bodies). And then you lose the original. The copy’s just as good as the first, and if the first doesn’t exist anymore, you can still edit, add new things to the copy; but it’s separate.
There are many quotes that support the 'not her', the copy viewpoint, both from many websites of varying ‘officiality’:
First of all, the data ghost is defined as a "digital *impression* of a living consciousness that sometimes remained in the Neural relay of a 51 century communications systems after its occupant had died".
And we have the descriptions: 'In turn he is able to upload a copy of her consciousness into a computer'.
‘The Doctor uses his future sonic screwdriver to save River Song's *neural pattern* within CAL.’
'Still living on as a fragment of memory in the Library'
‘He preserved her memory at the Library’.
'This data echo desired a true goodbye from the Doctor, and persisted for some time.'
'River also reveals that she died saving the Doctor, and is now only the echo saved by his tenth incarnation in "Forest of the Dead".'
“The 'River' we saw in 'Name of the Doctor' is a 'downloaded' copy that the Doctor saved in the Library, and was not the 'real River'”
‘The Doctor's managed to transfer the *personalities* of everyone who died into the library's computer’.
And in the episodes themselves:
'Sometimes it can hold an *impression* of a living consciousness for a short time after death. Like an afterimage.'
'I am *what is left *of Miss Evangelista. You teleported. You're a perfect reproduction. I was just a data ghost caught in the Wi-Fi and automatically uploaded. We're only strings of numbers in here'.
"I made a backup". Yes, he's just making a bad joke to defuse the tension but it still reinforces the idea of "copy" River.
RIVER: The time winds will tear you into a million pieces. A million versions of you, living and dying all over time and space, like echoes.
CLARA: But the echoes could save the Doctor, right?
RIVER: But they won't be you. The real you will die. They'll just be copies.
CLARA: But they'll be real enough to save him. It's like my mum said. The soufflé isn't the soufflé, the soufflé is the recipe.'
And consequently: "You are an echo, River. Like Clara…etc"
A soul has nothing to do with technology, it passes on to its proper resting place. Of course, the saving is still meaningful, because we have the Almost People Argument: a copy is just as real as the original. And metaphysically, if you are a conscious thinking and feeling entity, no matter its form, you *have*, you acquire a soul in my opinion, even if the original dies. End of story. I mean, the Time Lords were able to resurrect the Master and Rassilon, probably using the Matrix, no problem. And we are obviously meant to see it that way. Oswin Oswald and Victorian!Clara are distinct from the original, and "like River" only echoes. Does that make their accomplishments and fate any less sad or meaningful?
(So I do have the slightly controversial belief that what basically happens, is that you do kind of remember it in Heaven or wherever, once both you and the “copy” cease to be; because it's a part of you, the two sort of merge.)
I have this complicated opinion, because consciousness and souls are complicated things in Who. Basically, a person is not limited to one version of himself. We have clones, parallel universes, alternate universes, alternative timelines (even canon ones, the 7th Doctor for example dies for good in "Death Comes to Time") and negated timelines that still have an impact on the main one, or are at least remembered, so they should exist metaphysically as well in my opinion in some form, and multiple versions of the same character and alternate Doctors in audio plays (I mean the timeline afterwards should diverge completely) and you get what I'm saying. Take 'Human Nature'. As evidenced by the dreams and various accidental slips, the 10th Doctor still exists inside John Smith, he is just suppressed. But John Smith *is* a separate person. The Doctor remembers being him, shares many of his feelings but *he* doesn't and he doesn't remember being the Doctor and he dies in every sense of the word when the Doctor comes back (Hey, no offence John, but we need him). He should exist metaphysically as a separate entity, despite coming from the same person, because he *has* an independent soul and he has existed.
In any case, whatever you consider River to be in TNOTD, she is no less deserving of closure is what I'm saying. And if you think that it is indeed her, her "original" soul, it's cool, technology in the Whoniverse is basically magic, one *can* make it fit.
b) Now, about the whole fading away, final death issue.
She is just there because she still has a psychic link with Clara. And I don't think that the Doctor regrets saving her. But I think that by now he realises that her 'saving' wasn't a proper 'everybody lives'-only an echo and that not forever, plus they are separated anyway and he has a much greater emotional attachment to her than 10, who was just happy that he managed to save everyone for once, even in such a way. And he's just sad about her death which he has to accept and acknowledge, and he doesn’t want to, he hates endings, as we well know. (Finally doing so in TNOTD “hurts [him] too much” like he says; a bit selfish perhaps, but *so* understandable. She has to help him through it, poor man.)
But he *had* to do *something*. *Everything* he could possibly do. The Doctor can’t just stand by. (Which is why I consider River's speech from FOTD to be something like the Doctor Who Manifesto. I consider it especially poignant, in that in that episode 'everybody' doesn't really live. River and her team *are* dead. But the thing is that he *still* saves her data echo, 11 still constructs the screwdriver. So, is River dead? Yes. Is something meaningful of her left behind? Also yes. Because that's what the Doctor does, he will preserve any sort of life for as long as he possibly can. It’s very symbolic. (It's basically what he does on Christmas: he knows, he has seen that in the end his enemies will win). Because he considers every form of life precious and worth living. And like I said, the audience is usually meant to do so too.)
That said, like you, I do think that it's implied that she is gone now -whatever you think that she is, the "real" her or just a digital memory, that her echo fades away there or will do so shortly after . (If you say that is indeed her soul, original or not, “fading away", not as in "winking out of existence", it has nothing to do with technology, if you say that we have those they are inherently immortal, in that she "passes on" as we say, it’s Cool Proper Afterlife Time, bitch).
After all, 'everybody lives' doesn't mean they live or have to live forever. It just indicates present survival. 'Not today' like River says.
And actually, like you had suggested in the past, I don't see why she couldn't just "un-make" herself if she wanted to, even if there was no NOTD. She knows she is in a simulation and the computer does not try to hide this from her. I see no reason to believe that, if she decided to, the computer would not let her 'die', ask to be wiped from the system if that's what she wanted. And knowing her, I don't think that River would choose to stay *anywhere* forever, no matter how nice a place it is.
However, I do think that various quotes from the episode indicate that River and the saved consciousnesses in general too, wouldn't and couldn't last forever, would eventually fade anyway:
"You should've faded by now." (Well, that does raise the question of how does he know how long her echo has lasted, the 'by now'. I mean they are both time travelling. Well, to that I say, he's a Time Lord, presumably he can sense her "age").
And "There is a time to live and a time to sleep" so he's not just referring to her presence there. (Interestingly, if you notice, death is likened to sleep many times in 11th's era.)
To which she doesn't disagree but says that: "It's hard to leave when you haven't said goodbye". (Well now she has, she is free to fade).
And after he grants her that (and she teases the hell out of him), she is gone with a "goodbye, sweetie", the opposite of her usual catchphrase.
And I believe that is meaningful, because she *would* choose to say that at her death, plus narrative-wise: remember 10's catchphrase and *his* last words? Same principle, I think. One must not forget that these characters "are all stories in the end" anyway. “Goodbye, sweetie” *are* listed as her last words.
Descriptions from various websites again agree too that this is her final appearance (chronologically):
After the pair kiss, River feels closure and fades away.’
'The eleventh doctor is giving the proper goodbye she never got to have before he lost her. So he gives her one last kiss and she fades away forever, and gives him closure and acceptance to move on and find peace.'
'Her echo faded at the end of The Name of The Doctor. River is no more.'
'This earlier version of her character before her final death in 2013's The Name of the Doctor”.
'With a final goodbye from the Doctor, River is able to end her story.'
'After telling the Doctor this, River ended the "call" and faded away for a final time.'
I suppose that the "saving" of the data ghost is less effective than the saving of full blooded people, like Donna and the 4022. A corrupted file might eventually fail, and what is left of River and the gang would die. Plus, maybe life expectancy depends on how well the data ghost was saved. She was just one green bar, well, she’d fade eventually and both she and the Doctor expect this. (But goodbye first!)
Moreover, I have the theory that they may last about as long as they would have normally lived, as long as their real, natural lifespan, they are not inherently "part of the system" like Charlotte. River being part Time Lord would outlive the rest by a little, (not that she’d be alone -plus not for long anyway- CAL, Donna’s children, other children her team might have chosen to have, and she can enter any book and have *excellent* company anyway).
But maybe they would all fade at a general distant point, together more or less, irrespective of their natural lifespan and my theory is wrong; but I also think in any of the two cases, her words and the Doctor's reaction indicate that she is just stubbornly holding on anyway, because happy with her life or not - and she *is* clearly happy and grateful that she was saved in the FOTD, her team’s there, place is awesome, think of the possibilities, cue best speech ever etc, I really don’t understand those who view it as tragic and bad, that she would hate it there, it is regarded as something good *in universe*, it’s not just the author’s and the obsessed fanboys’ weird opinion - she wants a proper goodbye, and 10 couldn't give it to her, and she’s just a copy but fuck you, you will say it. Because she is that awesome. Hey, in Who we have instances of willpower and emotion overriding technology all the time, and River is an extremely strong-willed person, she has done similar things in the past.
So (perhaps unexpectedly), she can choose when, now she got what she wanted, she is free to fade. Since she gets closure (BEAUTIFUL, POETIC CLOSURE), I do think that when she disappears her echo 'dies', or will do so shortly after. She eventually passes on as she should.
(Kind of) Time out:
[ Also, I think that even if you disregarded all of this, a forced, *complete* immortality in any form, would go against the show's themes that those things shouldn't, can't and don't really last, even this universe itself, everything ends (and something new begins; there was a universe before this one, there is going to be another after it): the Time Lords in Classic Who could potentially achieve it but refuse it, Missy’s Nethersphere eventually shuts down, Jack becomes the Face of Boe, THE immortal dies etc. To quote the 6th Doctor, “*Nothing* can be eternal”. Plus, it would be restrictive and against its 'we don't care about the afterlife, you are free to believe whatever you want, vague and mysterious humanists here, SCIENCE!' policy and its general reluctance to set absolute, total rules about these things; because it would *absolutely deny* the spiritual to anyone who wishes to believe it. See the Moffat quote: He's an atheist, but he doesn't force anyone, he lets us choose according to our worldview (AFTERLIFE PARTY WITH THE PONDS AND 11 AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, MOTHERFUCKERS). Anyway, I think when he wrote FOTD, he basically just wanted a bittersweet but kind of happy ending that should work no matter what you believe.
And finally, even if you decide to ignore *all* these (Jesus Christ), realistically, even by Who standards, I think that a “final” death is unavoidable at *some point* in any case: The Library Planet -and therefore CAL (who *will* fail at some point anyway, it's a computer, no matter how advanced it is and now nobody can go there to fix it because of the Vasta Nerada)- won't last forever, black holes, solar flares, meteorites, heat death of the universe, you know the drill. And until then, all the books, ever? Pretty sweet deal when it comes to life extensions says I. So did Moffat in the Confidential: “I think that sounds right quite a good retirement plan.” Of course, he also called it an “eternal retirement”, but he was also speaking with the “there is no soul” mindset -so *this* is as good as it gets-, a mindset with which he clearly stated we are allowed to disagree -which I do-, we are free to interpret the story according to our beliefs. And well, “eternal” can be a relative term. The Whovian material universes die at some point like I said, hell, we have the precise date for this one, so eternity can be measurable here, it’s not *infinity*, it would never be in Who, even if we *did* have several Tolkien Elvish-style immortals marching around. It just means a *really* long time in this case (baring accidents like aforementioned nearby exploding suns for instance, though I doubt they’d make it to 100,000,000,000,000 AD anyway, it was stated that very few things did), which if you go by this theory for River -if you consider it to be indeed *her* which I don’t- is spent quite well. Plus, Moffat soon adopts a different perspective anyway, that was 6 years ago. Hey, a man can change his viewpoint in order to produce great story-telling.
Because, speaking as a writer myself, even strictly narrative-wise, if we want to keep the amazing symbolism and parallels to 'A Christmas Carol', and to have a proper, tragic love story in general (and still, the “FOTD manifesto” is not harmed, I explained its significance), she *should* be considered completely dead at some point anyway (and hey, 11 does behave like a widower). And I think Moffat did realise that, and therefore we have the different perspective I was referring to (and emphasized repeatedly nonetheless, “-What did you see? -That everything ends”, “Everything ends, Clara, and sooner than you think.”):
We now have TNOTD which implies her final death, and not the FOTD representing her 'true' ending, bittersweetness prevails. Plus, you can't go around with an "everything has to end sometime" Aesop -which was a core part of the show already anyway- and have *something* last forever. ]
-End of (Kind of) Time Out.-
So, friends, no matter which you consider her "proper" death or if you consider them equally significant like I do, until explicitly stated otherwise, River Song is indeed dead (at *some* point anyway if you are of the aforementioned “ignoring” lot even after all this, but even then her linear story is clearly over), regardless of your spiritual beliefs or lack thereof -those just temporarily influence your interpretation of some concepts.
And that is good. Because she was awesome, lived an amazing life, got what she wanted, and all this was so beautiful and meta and amazing and POETIC AS FUCK, that I wrote a 6-page essay about it.
(See? If you analyse these things enough, there’s a satisfying conclusion no matter your worldview, everything works out in the end any way you slice it. Now, that’s a good -and okay, generally beautifully tragic- story I say.)
I rest my case. (collapses)
~~
And finally - witness heartbreaking adorableness and Matt Smith being the cutest, most precious motherfucker on Earth. And various other planets, I'm sure.
(x)
Post has been cloned from dreamwidth. Comments welcome everywhere.
x-posts: metatardis, professor_song and spoiler_song.
Well - they wrote an essay, I should say. I was just fortunate enough to be the person they first showed it to. Although it is - at various points - addressed to me. I was going to edit those parts out, but I like them and they add a nice personal touch, so I've left them in. :)
ANYWAY - then they allowed me to post it here for all of you to see, so that's what I'm doing.
Their name is BasiliskRules and can be found under that name on DeviantArt and FF.Net.
Here, however, is their essay. Enjoy. And please leave feedback!
Understanding/Analysing the ultimate fate of River Song
I like to try and figure out the spiritual/afterlife/metaphysics whatever of various fictional universes, generally speaking. I have actually been trying to write a coherent analysis on this one (I love doing those), and that is really difficult, because canonically, the Whovian afterlife is an understandable mess: Like how the fuck is any human being going to be able to reconcile 52 years of canon of varying degrees, Buddhist show-runners, atheist show-runners, Christian symbolism, the simultaneous existence of Santa Claus and Lovecraftian monsters, the Guardians of Time, the (possible) Devil, loads of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who claim to be Gods but are eeeeevil, fake afterlives, Greek Gods and the Elysian Fields, whatever the hell was happening in Torchwood, the quite Platonic idea of the N-Space and Null-Space in which N-forms enter a higher plane of existence once an individual dies and the Doctor has fought evil parts of beings who couldn't do it, brain uploading, ghosts, visions, Limbo, the Eternals, Iris Wildthyme winning the Ark of the Covenant from Archangel Gabriel in a three week-long game of gin rummy, and writers simply not giving a fuck and going "Hey, you know what? This character is cool, let's bring him back from the dead! How? Meh, who cares…"?
I *did* like that this season's was a *fake* afterlife, leaving the real one, if it exists, open to interpretation. The viewer can imagine whatever he likes or believes. So since the "official" stance right now seems to be "we don't know, let's be vague and mysterious about it, the show doesn't go there, we don't care" (plus anything concrete they might show could result in huge amounts of backlash), I go with: "There is no canon in Who and you know it. There can't be, there are 4 different versions about why the 1st Doctor left Gallifrey, for God's sake! You choose what to consider canon, and since they are currently leaving it vague, the Whovian afterlife is whatever you want it to be. You want a Heaven made of cheese, you get a Heaven made of cheese, buddy".
~~~
So, about River:
Moffat has explicitly said in the Confidential of the episode: "If you believe in a soul, then you will say that she's not in the computer, that's just a copy of her, that's just her mind, her memories; if you don't believe in a soul -like me-, then you think that is her, that's everything about her, that’s all, that’s the crucial mental data preserved perfectly within that computer". Have your cake and eat it too. The interpretation is left to the audience’s discretion, he lets us choose according to our beliefs. (Cheeeese Heaven! Okay, joking).
Therefore, examining this from a spiritual perspective, but it works anyway:
I don't think that River's 'saving' makes any difference in the end. See it like this: I would not call her experience there "post life". If something is post life, it has to be the "proper" one, if it exists, and technology can't change that, the most it can do is record brain patterns. And if it isn't, well, it's life, if we say that the *soul* stays there for some reason, it is a life *extension* and it has to end at some point, no matter how distant, like everything does.
The general consensus at this point from what I've found, is that: a) she *is* just an echo, not "her", and/or b) that she fades anyway here like you say and I agree:
a) I'm of the school of thought that River's data ghost in the Library is just a copy. For example, even the original Matrix -which was super-duper Time Lord technology nonetheless, CAL isn’t- stored the *memories* of dead Time Lords and their DNA code, not souls. How do you capture a *soul* with technology? It is not a scientific, it is a metaphysical concept. (So, again, if you are religious like me, SHE “PROPERLY” DIED IN FOTD, SHE PASSED ON, MOFFAT AGREES, CASE CLOSED.) And you are still making a copy anyway, in my opinion, regardless of the soul issue. Imagine that the person in question was still alive: He wouldn’t lose his memories, his self. It’s not cut-paste, it’s copy-paste. (For instance, “Bells of Saint John” *did* have that. People’s minds were forcefully *extracted* from their bodies). And then you lose the original. The copy’s just as good as the first, and if the first doesn’t exist anymore, you can still edit, add new things to the copy; but it’s separate.
There are many quotes that support the 'not her', the copy viewpoint, both from many websites of varying ‘officiality’:
First of all, the data ghost is defined as a "digital *impression* of a living consciousness that sometimes remained in the Neural relay of a 51 century communications systems after its occupant had died".
And we have the descriptions: 'In turn he is able to upload a copy of her consciousness into a computer'.
‘The Doctor uses his future sonic screwdriver to save River Song's *neural pattern* within CAL.’
'Still living on as a fragment of memory in the Library'
‘He preserved her memory at the Library’.
'This data echo desired a true goodbye from the Doctor, and persisted for some time.'
'River also reveals that she died saving the Doctor, and is now only the echo saved by his tenth incarnation in "Forest of the Dead".'
“The 'River' we saw in 'Name of the Doctor' is a 'downloaded' copy that the Doctor saved in the Library, and was not the 'real River'”
‘The Doctor's managed to transfer the *personalities* of everyone who died into the library's computer’.
And in the episodes themselves:
'Sometimes it can hold an *impression* of a living consciousness for a short time after death. Like an afterimage.'
'I am *what is left *of Miss Evangelista. You teleported. You're a perfect reproduction. I was just a data ghost caught in the Wi-Fi and automatically uploaded. We're only strings of numbers in here'.
"I made a backup". Yes, he's just making a bad joke to defuse the tension but it still reinforces the idea of "copy" River.
RIVER: The time winds will tear you into a million pieces. A million versions of you, living and dying all over time and space, like echoes.
CLARA: But the echoes could save the Doctor, right?
RIVER: But they won't be you. The real you will die. They'll just be copies.
CLARA: But they'll be real enough to save him. It's like my mum said. The soufflé isn't the soufflé, the soufflé is the recipe.'
And consequently: "You are an echo, River. Like Clara…etc"
A soul has nothing to do with technology, it passes on to its proper resting place. Of course, the saving is still meaningful, because we have the Almost People Argument: a copy is just as real as the original. And metaphysically, if you are a conscious thinking and feeling entity, no matter its form, you *have*, you acquire a soul in my opinion, even if the original dies. End of story. I mean, the Time Lords were able to resurrect the Master and Rassilon, probably using the Matrix, no problem. And we are obviously meant to see it that way. Oswin Oswald and Victorian!Clara are distinct from the original, and "like River" only echoes. Does that make their accomplishments and fate any less sad or meaningful?
(So I do have the slightly controversial belief that what basically happens, is that you do kind of remember it in Heaven or wherever, once both you and the “copy” cease to be; because it's a part of you, the two sort of merge.)
I have this complicated opinion, because consciousness and souls are complicated things in Who. Basically, a person is not limited to one version of himself. We have clones, parallel universes, alternate universes, alternative timelines (even canon ones, the 7th Doctor for example dies for good in "Death Comes to Time") and negated timelines that still have an impact on the main one, or are at least remembered, so they should exist metaphysically as well in my opinion in some form, and multiple versions of the same character and alternate Doctors in audio plays (I mean the timeline afterwards should diverge completely) and you get what I'm saying. Take 'Human Nature'. As evidenced by the dreams and various accidental slips, the 10th Doctor still exists inside John Smith, he is just suppressed. But John Smith *is* a separate person. The Doctor remembers being him, shares many of his feelings but *he* doesn't and he doesn't remember being the Doctor and he dies in every sense of the word when the Doctor comes back (Hey, no offence John, but we need him). He should exist metaphysically as a separate entity, despite coming from the same person, because he *has* an independent soul and he has existed.
In any case, whatever you consider River to be in TNOTD, she is no less deserving of closure is what I'm saying. And if you think that it is indeed her, her "original" soul, it's cool, technology in the Whoniverse is basically magic, one *can* make it fit.
b) Now, about the whole fading away, final death issue.
She is just there because she still has a psychic link with Clara. And I don't think that the Doctor regrets saving her. But I think that by now he realises that her 'saving' wasn't a proper 'everybody lives'-only an echo and that not forever, plus they are separated anyway and he has a much greater emotional attachment to her than 10, who was just happy that he managed to save everyone for once, even in such a way. And he's just sad about her death which he has to accept and acknowledge, and he doesn’t want to, he hates endings, as we well know. (Finally doing so in TNOTD “hurts [him] too much” like he says; a bit selfish perhaps, but *so* understandable. She has to help him through it, poor man.)
But he *had* to do *something*. *Everything* he could possibly do. The Doctor can’t just stand by. (Which is why I consider River's speech from FOTD to be something like the Doctor Who Manifesto. I consider it especially poignant, in that in that episode 'everybody' doesn't really live. River and her team *are* dead. But the thing is that he *still* saves her data echo, 11 still constructs the screwdriver. So, is River dead? Yes. Is something meaningful of her left behind? Also yes. Because that's what the Doctor does, he will preserve any sort of life for as long as he possibly can. It’s very symbolic. (It's basically what he does on Christmas: he knows, he has seen that in the end his enemies will win). Because he considers every form of life precious and worth living. And like I said, the audience is usually meant to do so too.)
That said, like you, I do think that it's implied that she is gone now -whatever you think that she is, the "real" her or just a digital memory, that her echo fades away there or will do so shortly after . (If you say that is indeed her soul, original or not, “fading away", not as in "winking out of existence", it has nothing to do with technology, if you say that we have those they are inherently immortal, in that she "passes on" as we say, it’s Cool Proper Afterlife Time, bitch).
After all, 'everybody lives' doesn't mean they live or have to live forever. It just indicates present survival. 'Not today' like River says.
And actually, like you had suggested in the past, I don't see why she couldn't just "un-make" herself if she wanted to, even if there was no NOTD. She knows she is in a simulation and the computer does not try to hide this from her. I see no reason to believe that, if she decided to, the computer would not let her 'die', ask to be wiped from the system if that's what she wanted. And knowing her, I don't think that River would choose to stay *anywhere* forever, no matter how nice a place it is.
However, I do think that various quotes from the episode indicate that River and the saved consciousnesses in general too, wouldn't and couldn't last forever, would eventually fade anyway:
"You should've faded by now." (Well, that does raise the question of how does he know how long her echo has lasted, the 'by now'. I mean they are both time travelling. Well, to that I say, he's a Time Lord, presumably he can sense her "age").
And "There is a time to live and a time to sleep" so he's not just referring to her presence there. (Interestingly, if you notice, death is likened to sleep many times in 11th's era.)
To which she doesn't disagree but says that: "It's hard to leave when you haven't said goodbye". (Well now she has, she is free to fade).
And after he grants her that (and she teases the hell out of him), she is gone with a "goodbye, sweetie", the opposite of her usual catchphrase.
And I believe that is meaningful, because she *would* choose to say that at her death, plus narrative-wise: remember 10's catchphrase and *his* last words? Same principle, I think. One must not forget that these characters "are all stories in the end" anyway. “Goodbye, sweetie” *are* listed as her last words.
Descriptions from various websites again agree too that this is her final appearance (chronologically):
After the pair kiss, River feels closure and fades away.’
'The eleventh doctor is giving the proper goodbye she never got to have before he lost her. So he gives her one last kiss and she fades away forever, and gives him closure and acceptance to move on and find peace.'
'Her echo faded at the end of The Name of The Doctor. River is no more.'
'This earlier version of her character before her final death in 2013's The Name of the Doctor”.
'With a final goodbye from the Doctor, River is able to end her story.'
'After telling the Doctor this, River ended the "call" and faded away for a final time.'
I suppose that the "saving" of the data ghost is less effective than the saving of full blooded people, like Donna and the 4022. A corrupted file might eventually fail, and what is left of River and the gang would die. Plus, maybe life expectancy depends on how well the data ghost was saved. She was just one green bar, well, she’d fade eventually and both she and the Doctor expect this. (But goodbye first!)
Moreover, I have the theory that they may last about as long as they would have normally lived, as long as their real, natural lifespan, they are not inherently "part of the system" like Charlotte. River being part Time Lord would outlive the rest by a little, (not that she’d be alone -plus not for long anyway- CAL, Donna’s children, other children her team might have chosen to have, and she can enter any book and have *excellent* company anyway).
But maybe they would all fade at a general distant point, together more or less, irrespective of their natural lifespan and my theory is wrong; but I also think in any of the two cases, her words and the Doctor's reaction indicate that she is just stubbornly holding on anyway, because happy with her life or not - and she *is* clearly happy and grateful that she was saved in the FOTD, her team’s there, place is awesome, think of the possibilities, cue best speech ever etc, I really don’t understand those who view it as tragic and bad, that she would hate it there, it is regarded as something good *in universe*, it’s not just the author’s and the obsessed fanboys’ weird opinion - she wants a proper goodbye, and 10 couldn't give it to her, and she’s just a copy but fuck you, you will say it. Because she is that awesome. Hey, in Who we have instances of willpower and emotion overriding technology all the time, and River is an extremely strong-willed person, she has done similar things in the past.
So (perhaps unexpectedly), she can choose when, now she got what she wanted, she is free to fade. Since she gets closure (BEAUTIFUL, POETIC CLOSURE), I do think that when she disappears her echo 'dies', or will do so shortly after. She eventually passes on as she should.
(Kind of) Time out:
[ Also, I think that even if you disregarded all of this, a forced, *complete* immortality in any form, would go against the show's themes that those things shouldn't, can't and don't really last, even this universe itself, everything ends (and something new begins; there was a universe before this one, there is going to be another after it): the Time Lords in Classic Who could potentially achieve it but refuse it, Missy’s Nethersphere eventually shuts down, Jack becomes the Face of Boe, THE immortal dies etc. To quote the 6th Doctor, “*Nothing* can be eternal”. Plus, it would be restrictive and against its 'we don't care about the afterlife, you are free to believe whatever you want, vague and mysterious humanists here, SCIENCE!' policy and its general reluctance to set absolute, total rules about these things; because it would *absolutely deny* the spiritual to anyone who wishes to believe it. See the Moffat quote: He's an atheist, but he doesn't force anyone, he lets us choose according to our worldview (AFTERLIFE PARTY WITH THE PONDS AND 11 AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, MOTHERFUCKERS). Anyway, I think when he wrote FOTD, he basically just wanted a bittersweet but kind of happy ending that should work no matter what you believe.
And finally, even if you decide to ignore *all* these (Jesus Christ), realistically, even by Who standards, I think that a “final” death is unavoidable at *some point* in any case: The Library Planet -and therefore CAL (who *will* fail at some point anyway, it's a computer, no matter how advanced it is and now nobody can go there to fix it because of the Vasta Nerada)- won't last forever, black holes, solar flares, meteorites, heat death of the universe, you know the drill. And until then, all the books, ever? Pretty sweet deal when it comes to life extensions says I. So did Moffat in the Confidential: “I think that sounds right quite a good retirement plan.” Of course, he also called it an “eternal retirement”, but he was also speaking with the “there is no soul” mindset -so *this* is as good as it gets-, a mindset with which he clearly stated we are allowed to disagree -which I do-, we are free to interpret the story according to our beliefs. And well, “eternal” can be a relative term. The Whovian material universes die at some point like I said, hell, we have the precise date for this one, so eternity can be measurable here, it’s not *infinity*, it would never be in Who, even if we *did* have several Tolkien Elvish-style immortals marching around. It just means a *really* long time in this case (baring accidents like aforementioned nearby exploding suns for instance, though I doubt they’d make it to 100,000,000,000,000 AD anyway, it was stated that very few things did), which if you go by this theory for River -if you consider it to be indeed *her* which I don’t- is spent quite well. Plus, Moffat soon adopts a different perspective anyway, that was 6 years ago. Hey, a man can change his viewpoint in order to produce great story-telling.
Because, speaking as a writer myself, even strictly narrative-wise, if we want to keep the amazing symbolism and parallels to 'A Christmas Carol', and to have a proper, tragic love story in general (and still, the “FOTD manifesto” is not harmed, I explained its significance), she *should* be considered completely dead at some point anyway (and hey, 11 does behave like a widower). And I think Moffat did realise that, and therefore we have the different perspective I was referring to (and emphasized repeatedly nonetheless, “-What did you see? -That everything ends”, “Everything ends, Clara, and sooner than you think.”):
We now have TNOTD which implies her final death, and not the FOTD representing her 'true' ending, bittersweetness prevails. Plus, you can't go around with an "everything has to end sometime" Aesop -which was a core part of the show already anyway- and have *something* last forever. ]
-End of (Kind of) Time Out.-
So, friends, no matter which you consider her "proper" death or if you consider them equally significant like I do, until explicitly stated otherwise, River Song is indeed dead (at *some* point anyway if you are of the aforementioned “ignoring” lot even after all this, but even then her linear story is clearly over), regardless of your spiritual beliefs or lack thereof -those just temporarily influence your interpretation of some concepts.
And that is good. Because she was awesome, lived an amazing life, got what she wanted, and all this was so beautiful and meta and amazing and POETIC AS FUCK, that I wrote a 6-page essay about it.
(See? If you analyse these things enough, there’s a satisfying conclusion no matter your worldview, everything works out in the end any way you slice it. Now, that’s a good -and okay, generally beautifully tragic- story I say.)
I rest my case. (collapses)
~~
And finally - witness heartbreaking adorableness and Matt Smith being the cutest, most precious motherfucker on Earth. And various other planets, I'm sure.
(x)
Post has been cloned from dreamwidth. Comments welcome everywhere.
x-posts: metatardis, professor_song and spoiler_song.