Doctor Who 5x13 Review, Part 2
Jun. 28th, 2010 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iaria• I loved them hearing River’s last words over and over again. It gave them... a lot of weight. There was just something I loved about it. (Also it reminds her first two-parter and Miss Evangeline’s last words caught and repeating.) And then actually getting to see the replay of her final moments two and a half times as she loops over and over, playing out her final moments, also had a lot of weight. I don’t know how else to say it. I loved it though.
• Doctor: Hi honey. I’m home.
[The Doctor smiles; River looks at her watch and is not impressed.]
River: And what sort of time do you call this?
♥ Heh. I loved this moment. My god, are they an old married couple sometimes. He’s all casually leaning against the door, pleased and impressed with himself for saving her, and she’s all ‘seriously? It took you this long? Cutting it a bit close, yeah?’ The expressions on both their faces were fabulous.
- I loved that the Doctor didn’t even blink at her calling him ‘my love’ in her final words and in fact meets her with ‘hi honey’, so domestic and... relationshippy, when he sees her next.
- I love the ‘I’m Home’ bit just as much because he is, he’s not joking or playing a role or lying or whatever – he is home. The TARDIS has always been his home.
- I love that they turned up on the roof arm-in-arm.
- Then their fight later in the museum also felt very old married coupley – I loved River’s casual “Well, that would be lovely dear” (the way she says that), and him tapping her nose and just the way she talks to him and the way they interact. I was surprised to hear her say something was impossible, though, because that really seems to be more his thing.
• Dalek: Records show that you will show mercy. You are an associate of the Doctor’s.
River: I’m River Song. Check your records again.
Dalek: (checks silently) ... Mercy.
- While this moment does have a lot of ‘oomph’ and it worked very well when I watched it, and was effective at showing that River is perhaps a bit darker than all the Doctor’s other Companions, when I got to thinking about it it fell a bit apart. I mean would the Dalek seriously expect a Companion not to defend herself from him? Even as an associate of the Doctor – who by the way twice erased their species himself – I can’t see why there would be an expectation that they wouldn’t fight back. The only instance I know of is Rose’s compassion to the Dalek in ‘Dalek’ but it was alone so how would they even know about that? Not to mention that I’m sure that it was offset pretty substantially by her later destroying them all (even if they came back). I just really can’t imagine the Dalek ever thinking for a moment that a Companion wouldn’t kill him because they were an associate of the Doctor.
That said, even having thought all that, this exchange still remains very powerful, and a bit... unnerving, and I think that’s entirely because there is clearly not any mercy in her. She talks with it first and then instead of just killing it she makes it beg for mercy, three times, before killing it. Yikes. The fact that upon realising who she was it did beg for mercy makes me really wonder what mystery is River hiding about who she is that would cause a Dalek to fear her.
- The Dalek learning who River is makes me wonder though that if it so easy to learn who River is then why hasn’t the Doctor ever looked her up? Her confronting the Dalek was a very Doctor moment – once again alluding to her first episodes and how the Doctor ended up ‘defeating’ the Vashta Nerada but also reminding me of the Doctor facing a Dalek for the first time since the war in ‘Dalek’.
- I see a lot of comparisons between River and Jack (and in one case someone wondering why they didn’t just bring Jack back since he could do everything she did which... displeased me quite a bit. No thank you) but this moment had me suddenly thinking of the Master. I really doubt that River is as bad as him, and if she turns out to be a ‘bad guy’ I would be very disappointed, but I feel like perhaps there’s a similarity in the two relationships where you have River/Master doing bad things, things the Doctor would not agree with, and yet him keeping them in his life regardless.
• “Rule one: The Doctor lies.” – River. This makes me wonder: if the Doctor always lies does that mean River does too?
• I ♥ so much how well River gets the Doctor. How in sync they are, how she understands him and how much she can be his equal. We haven’t just been told about it, we’ve also seen it over and over, and so when she just understood what he was doing after his whispered ‘big bang two’ it works. She always gets him, she has revelations right along with him, sometimes moving them along herself and there’s like this unspoken accord between them. I love it so much.
• “He doesn’t really know me yet. Now he never will.” – River. I felt so sorry for her here. She is clearly in a lot of pain not the least because in the end she’s not the one he wants by his side and it makes me want her to know, even though it won’t matter really since they’ll forget, that he wants Amy because he’s trying to ensure that she can bring him back.
• I was surprised that River didn’t suggest that she take his place in the Pandorica since the universe would need him more. I suppose there wasn’t enough time for them to switch and she knew it. I was getting heavy Forest/Library flashbacks though I didn’t realise until just now how close this scene resembles their last one then – though this time it’s the Doctor hooked up to a chair-like machine, ready to sacrifice himself.
• Doctor: Hi honey. I’m home.
[The Doctor smiles; River looks at her watch and is not impressed.]
River: And what sort of time do you call this?
♥ Heh. I loved this moment. My god, are they an old married couple sometimes. He’s all casually leaning against the door, pleased and impressed with himself for saving her, and she’s all ‘seriously? It took you this long? Cutting it a bit close, yeah?’ The expressions on both their faces were fabulous.
- I loved that the Doctor didn’t even blink at her calling him ‘my love’ in her final words and in fact meets her with ‘hi honey’, so domestic and... relationshippy, when he sees her next.
- I love the ‘I’m Home’ bit just as much because he is, he’s not joking or playing a role or lying or whatever – he is home. The TARDIS has always been his home.
- I love that they turned up on the roof arm-in-arm.
- Then their fight later in the museum also felt very old married coupley – I loved River’s casual “Well, that would be lovely dear” (the way she says that), and him tapping her nose and just the way she talks to him and the way they interact. I was surprised to hear her say something was impossible, though, because that really seems to be more his thing.
• Dalek: Records show that you will show mercy. You are an associate of the Doctor’s.
River: I’m River Song. Check your records again.
Dalek: (checks silently) ... Mercy.
- While this moment does have a lot of ‘oomph’ and it worked very well when I watched it, and was effective at showing that River is perhaps a bit darker than all the Doctor’s other Companions, when I got to thinking about it it fell a bit apart. I mean would the Dalek seriously expect a Companion not to defend herself from him? Even as an associate of the Doctor – who by the way twice erased their species himself – I can’t see why there would be an expectation that they wouldn’t fight back. The only instance I know of is Rose’s compassion to the Dalek in ‘Dalek’ but it was alone so how would they even know about that? Not to mention that I’m sure that it was offset pretty substantially by her later destroying them all (even if they came back). I just really can’t imagine the Dalek ever thinking for a moment that a Companion wouldn’t kill him because they were an associate of the Doctor.
That said, even having thought all that, this exchange still remains very powerful, and a bit... unnerving, and I think that’s entirely because there is clearly not any mercy in her. She talks with it first and then instead of just killing it she makes it beg for mercy, three times, before killing it. Yikes. The fact that upon realising who she was it did beg for mercy makes me really wonder what mystery is River hiding about who she is that would cause a Dalek to fear her.
- The Dalek learning who River is makes me wonder though that if it so easy to learn who River is then why hasn’t the Doctor ever looked her up? Her confronting the Dalek was a very Doctor moment – once again alluding to her first episodes and how the Doctor ended up ‘defeating’ the Vashta Nerada but also reminding me of the Doctor facing a Dalek for the first time since the war in ‘Dalek’.
- I see a lot of comparisons between River and Jack (and in one case someone wondering why they didn’t just bring Jack back since he could do everything she did which... displeased me quite a bit. No thank you) but this moment had me suddenly thinking of the Master. I really doubt that River is as bad as him, and if she turns out to be a ‘bad guy’ I would be very disappointed, but I feel like perhaps there’s a similarity in the two relationships where you have River/Master doing bad things, things the Doctor would not agree with, and yet him keeping them in his life regardless.
• “Rule one: The Doctor lies.” – River. This makes me wonder: if the Doctor always lies does that mean River does too?
• I ♥ so much how well River gets the Doctor. How in sync they are, how she understands him and how much she can be his equal. We haven’t just been told about it, we’ve also seen it over and over, and so when she just understood what he was doing after his whispered ‘big bang two’ it works. She always gets him, she has revelations right along with him, sometimes moving them along herself and there’s like this unspoken accord between them. I love it so much.
• “He doesn’t really know me yet. Now he never will.” – River. I felt so sorry for her here. She is clearly in a lot of pain not the least because in the end she’s not the one he wants by his side and it makes me want her to know, even though it won’t matter really since they’ll forget, that he wants Amy because he’s trying to ensure that she can bring him back.
• I was surprised that River didn’t suggest that she take his place in the Pandorica since the universe would need him more. I suppose there wasn’t enough time for them to switch and she knew it. I was getting heavy Forest/Library flashbacks though I didn’t realise until just now how close this scene resembles their last one then – though this time it’s the Doctor hooked up to a chair-like machine, ready to sacrifice himself.
