Ok, so I’m totally not getting why anyone dislikes River Song. Can anyone enlighten me?
Update: Particularly given the big hints about the nature of River Song’s relationship with the Doctor, I thought sending her off to a world where she looks after made up children was a big disappointment. She should have been liberated to be a scholar adventurer in another timestream (h/t Shakira) or if there wasn’t enough of her to save, to have had adventures in all the books in all the world (h/t P). It was a library after all!
[As the astute will note, discussion of this ep is proceeding on FB and gchat… We need a fanfic revolution!]
I’m pretty sure only the Doctor-Rose shippers hated River. One of the less pleasing aspects of modern Doctor Who is the way some of the Internet’s more virulent shipper-fans have attached themselves to some of the relationships within the narrative.
“adventures in all the books in all the world”
Well, we don’t really see River explore her afterlife - I suspect there’s quite a bit more to it than could be shown in an episode wrap-up.
On a geeky note: there are interesting parallels between this story and “The Deadly Assassin”, which reveals that the personalities of dead Time Lords are stored in a computer simulation called “The Matrix” (in 1976, no less). It’s effectively the Time Lords’ afterlife. The Doctor in “Forest of the Dead” seems to quite genuinely equate “the soul” with “the uploaded personality pattern”, which makes his anger at the Vastu Narada the more pointed. In a way, his uploading of River actually gifts her with entry into his people’s version of heaven. So “saved” has more than a double meaning in this story - he’s saved her soul as well!
Oh, the title post is ironic then?
Sort of. It’s a reference to the ep itself. I’m assuming folks have seen it. But I don’t want to hear about any future River/Doctor stuff!
Well there isn’t any future River/Doctor stuff, we have to wait until moffat decides to do something about it.
Perhaps River Song will reappear: let’s face it, she is both one of those annoying archeologists AND someone with intimate knowledge of the Time Lord. There are two more important developments in our household: firstly, we no longer have to check for Vasta Narada in our teenager’s bedroom, which means that the dust and dog hair are safe for another week.
Secondly, we are now all unable to look at anyone who seems vague or repeats themself without someone saying with awed voice ‘She/he’s ghosting!’ It seems to happen an awful lot when politicians are interviewed…
I prefer the olden days when the Doctor was asexual and the show didn’t spend half of every story examining its own navel.
Don’t tell me that a 900-year-old senior citizen banging Billie Piper isn’t wrong.
I’m with Monaro
I don’t have a telly, so have just finished watching the recent seasons 1 and 3 (2 was out at the vid library), and I can’t say I’m overwhelmed by the new Doctor Who.
My main critique would be that the acting, uniformly, is over the top. It’s like they all think they’re on stage and don’t realise you don’t have to convulse your face into exaggerated expressions or yell all the time because this is tv people and the camera is right there. It’s concerning that Tennant makes Eccleston (? -the season 1 Doc) look subdued.
I can’t believe the budget didn’t stretch to dyeing Billie Piper’s eyebrows.
I find the reduction (thus far) of the Doctor’s female companions to “will he shag her or not”/ “will she pine for him or not” incredibly disappointing after the heights of Romana 2 and Leah. I could cope with the Doctor not being asexual If his female leads, no matter how bright they are (eg Martha) weren’t reduced to moony cows with nothing to offer but the dreary inevitability of needing saving and as a ‘love interest’ for gawd’s sake.
the Brits seemed to have learned only one lesson from American tv, and not very well, which is their idea of generating excitment now seems to be to do the exposition at a break-neck speed which makes no sense in action scenes, get everyone to scream loudly and unnecessarily (I mean the extras as well as the leads) and have a jarringly over the top sound track and soundscape.
I’d give it a B. the writing did improve in season 3 (hooray).
“I prefer the olden days when the Doctor was asexual and the show didn’t spend half of every story examining its own navel.”
The olden days when the Doctor had a granddaughter and got engaged to an Aztec matron? Or the olden days when he took his girlfriend on a romantic holiday in Paris that got interrupted by Julian Glover?
I’d settle for less screaming and emoting and overwrought overblown sentimentality. Give me the hard-a**ses at Battlestar Galactica 2004-9 any day. Dr Who simply isn’t worth the toe-curling. Meanwhile, while this episode had its moments, it was still a mess of technobabble covering up plot holes and general lack of focus.
But, could be worse. Could be Torchwood … oh wait, that’s right, the two are brought together in one steaming camp messy morass at the end of the season.
oh no, they link Dr Who further to Torchwood? the horror the horror.
Torchwood was so bad it was like watching a traffic accident - in a ‘look at all the blooood’ kind of way. I had to rent and watch the seond half of season 1 before I really accepted that it was in fact, that bad.
“Meanwhile, while this episode had its moments, it was still a mess of technobabble covering up plot holes and general lack of focus.”
You’ve got a remarkably low threshold for technobabble! I thought the real achievement of the Library story was that it wrapped up unusually deep world-building with high-end lit SF concepts in a pretty accessible package.
Nothing is ever said outright, but this is a civilisation of very very long-lived humans (CAL is Lux’s aunt, but the Library was sealed 100 years before the story began and surely took many many years to build), who have the technology to upload human consciousness but it’s rare enough to be distressing and shocking, and worth keeping a secret when the Lux family do it to CAL.
“Meanwhile, while this episode had its moments, it was still a mess of technobabble covering up plot holes and general lack of focus.”
Unlike Doctor Who for the past how many decades? Or are you strictly a “Carpet-and-Tinfoil Monster” fan?
Look, just because she was wearing a school uniform doesn’t mean there was something dirty going on.
Of all the recent sci-fi revivals (Dr Who, Star Wars, Hitch Hikers…), this, the most unlikely, is easily the best. In spite of all its darkness, and the fact that the most sympathetic characters are Cylons, it’s quite compelling and a better bet for your time and money.
That is of course assuming you’ve already seen Firefly/Serenity. Speaking of which, there’s a new Joss Whedon series with the chick from Neighbours in it.
I actually really liked the River Song charcter and I think there will be a lot more of her in a couple of years time when the next series of Dr Who shows up.
1) I curse the day that “’shipping” entered my vocabulary. Bloody ModernFandom…
2) River’s cool. Reminds me of an incredible friend of mine in Uni I had a huge crush on.
3) Sorry, you’ll almost certainly never her back again.