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Late (as usual)... But with added River meta.
Happy Belated Birthday ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
promethia_tenk, and a Happy Birthday today to hesadevil!
Life is... busy. This weekend we're having one of Darcy's friends staying, which is nice, but means minimal LJ time. But since Darcy's still not feeling brilliant we stayed in and watched 'Groundhog Day' this afternoon, and I think it'd probably be my Desert Island movie. *deep happy sigh*
Later, the Cherub proved that she is adorableness incarnate by holding up the (Tenth) Doctor's screwdriver to her forehead and going: "WOULD. YOU. LIKE. A. CUP. OF. TEA?" (Victory of the Daleks is her favourite episode ever, and she can recite whole conversations by heart...)
Oh, and Promethia, since my birthday wishes are belated, I'll throw in a teeny bit of River meta. Thoughts on the Library and the Angel eps under the cut.
Firstly, watching the Library episodes was very interesting in the light of S5, but what I noticed was this exchange, towards the end of 'Forest of the Dead':
MR LUX: We need to get to the main computer, I'll show you.
DOCTOR: It's at the core of the planet.
RIVER: Well, then. Let's go!
[She sonics the symbol on the floor at the center of the room, and it opens up.]
RIVER: Gravity platform!
DOCTOR: I bet I like you.
RIVER: Oh, you do!
In those last two lines you can see things just snapping together - the Doctor has a problem, and River already has the solution (she sonics the floor symbol when they enter, and obviously works out what it is then). I think he at that point begins to realise just what an asset she is - the way she can deal with problems on her own and doesn't wait to be told what to do; and these are things he likes. A lot. But what I noticed even more was the smile on her face. How she so obviously got a feeling of 'Finally, he's getting it!' That she wouldn't have to argue with him every step of the way anymore. This scene, I think, is far more important for them than the moment when she tells him his name. That moment is borne out of painful necessity, whereas this one just flows from the characters naturally. (And I rather like it, hence the rambling.)
ANYWAY, what I was going to write about was the Angel episodes. Because Promethia mentioned how nervous River is (once the soldiers show up), and upon rewatch I had to agree. Not just nervous but exceedingly jumpy, on edge, and evasive. Trying to work out why this was (in the final two episodes, with the universe collapsing, she's far calmer!), I realised that the reason is two-fold. One, she knows what's going to happen in the future (end of the universe), which means that she needs to get both the Doctor and Amy through the adventure safe and sound - cause otherwise, bye bye reality (the Doctor needs to save the universe, and Amy needs to bring him back), and River can't let slip a single spoiler, she knows that, hence nervousness and evasiveness. And Two, once the crack shows up she realises that she's inside re-written time, and how exactly does that even work? No wonder she's on a knife edge. Then at the end, once they're all out, the single dominant feeling, I think, is one of relief. She knows that things are going to be OK now, and she can stop worrying. (In her own way, I suppose you can say that she saves the universe in these episodes! 'Savethe cheerleader the Doctor and his companion, save the world the universe... And, of course, she can't tell anyone. She is very, very lonely here, carrying an extra burden no one knows - or indeed can know - about.)
And that's all for now. *runs back to RL*
promethia_tenk, and a Happy Birthday today to hesadevil! Life is... busy. This weekend we're having one of Darcy's friends staying, which is nice, but means minimal LJ time. But since Darcy's still not feeling brilliant we stayed in and watched 'Groundhog Day' this afternoon, and I think it'd probably be my Desert Island movie. *deep happy sigh*
Later, the Cherub proved that she is adorableness incarnate by holding up the (Tenth) Doctor's screwdriver to her forehead and going: "WOULD. YOU. LIKE. A. CUP. OF. TEA?" (Victory of the Daleks is her favourite episode ever, and she can recite whole conversations by heart...)
Oh, and Promethia, since my birthday wishes are belated, I'll throw in a teeny bit of River meta. Thoughts on the Library and the Angel eps under the cut.
Firstly, watching the Library episodes was very interesting in the light of S5, but what I noticed was this exchange, towards the end of 'Forest of the Dead':
MR LUX: We need to get to the main computer, I'll show you.
DOCTOR: It's at the core of the planet.
RIVER: Well, then. Let's go!
[She sonics the symbol on the floor at the center of the room, and it opens up.]
RIVER: Gravity platform!
DOCTOR: I bet I like you.
RIVER: Oh, you do!
In those last two lines you can see things just snapping together - the Doctor has a problem, and River already has the solution (she sonics the floor symbol when they enter, and obviously works out what it is then). I think he at that point begins to realise just what an asset she is - the way she can deal with problems on her own and doesn't wait to be told what to do; and these are things he likes. A lot. But what I noticed even more was the smile on her face. How she so obviously got a feeling of 'Finally, he's getting it!' That she wouldn't have to argue with him every step of the way anymore. This scene, I think, is far more important for them than the moment when she tells him his name. That moment is borne out of painful necessity, whereas this one just flows from the characters naturally. (And I rather like it, hence the rambling.)
ANYWAY, what I was going to write about was the Angel episodes. Because Promethia mentioned how nervous River is (once the soldiers show up), and upon rewatch I had to agree. Not just nervous but exceedingly jumpy, on edge, and evasive. Trying to work out why this was (in the final two episodes, with the universe collapsing, she's far calmer!), I realised that the reason is two-fold. One, she knows what's going to happen in the future (end of the universe), which means that she needs to get both the Doctor and Amy through the adventure safe and sound - cause otherwise, bye bye reality (the Doctor needs to save the universe, and Amy needs to bring him back), and River can't let slip a single spoiler, she knows that, hence nervousness and evasiveness. And Two, once the crack shows up she realises that she's inside re-written time, and how exactly does that even work? No wonder she's on a knife edge. Then at the end, once they're all out, the single dominant feeling, I think, is one of relief. She knows that things are going to be OK now, and she can stop worrying. (In her own way, I suppose you can say that she saves the universe in these episodes! 'Save
And that's all for now. *runs back to RL*
no subject
Indeed you have :-) It's always refreshing to come here and know I don't have to worry about bowling you over with speculative excess. Out in the wilds of LJ, I'm always feeling apologetic over it. But it almost hurts to hold it in! What is it like to take in one thought and to get one thought back in response (rather than 15)? It must be so restful :-\
(I'm wondering if this is an inherent trait or something she's picked up from the Doctor...)
My money's on most of "serious" River being inherent to the character and "theatrical" River being more something she learned/developed in her association with the Doctor, but fandom consensus seems to want to see it the other way round. Not that it has to be quite that clear cut or anything.
once she discovers how clueless he is (The Blue Stabilisers!)
Can I just say how much I love her little chin flick/*heh* thing she does at that point?
I was also struck by her playful "You don't know who I am yet, do you?" which is in sharp contrast to her pleading in SitL (although there she just wants to know that he knows her, really) and her apologeticness in TBB.
I'm confused by the last one. What scene are you referring to?
Most of her behaviour is a mask.
That I most definitely agree with.
I think I'd just sort of filed that away as obvious . . . but in the sense that I probably noticed this the first time and wondered what else could lie behind her nerves . . . I was trying to work out if there was more to it!
Hmmm . . . I guess I tend to see the interpersonal factors as enough, particularly given how solid River always seems in a crisis or when dealing with practical problems. Additionally . . . and I'm not quite sure how to formulate this; I've never really written it out before . . . River seems galvanized by objective necessity. If something needs doing, if something *must happen* she does it, she makes it happen, and the knowledge that some particular course truly is necessary seems to serve more as a ballast than a burden to her. When does she ever seem more sure of herself than when she's doing what she knows needs to be done? I'm thinking particularly of both her sacrifice of herself in the Library and of her calm acceptance of the Doctor's sacrifice of himself in "The Big Bang," but I feel like you see the same principle at work in almost everything she does. The minute she knows she needs to, she'll break out of prison and engage in a number of shady activities to get the Doctor his warning. She can push down panic and accomplish things like fixing the transporter or getting the TARDIS doors open--because that is simply what must happen. She was the one telling the Doctor in "The Pandorica Opens" that he had no way to win and he needed to run away--that he didn't have the sense to listen was his own fault. And, again, she's the one who can go to the Doctor and say "you're too emotionally invested right now, you need to step back and concentrate on what needs doing." If River had been in the Doctor's place in "The Waters of Mars" she would have walked right out that door and gotten the hell away from the planet without a look back--because she would have known what needed to happen.
Admittedly, knowing what needs to happen and knowing how to make it happen are two different things, and getting the Doctor and Amy through the Angels episodes alive was definitely a difficult objective in a complicated and evolving situation. But I guess I tend to see the knowledge of what she needed to have happen as more likely be something she could hold on to to bear herself up through the whole situation--an objective on which to concentrate to keep herself going--rather than an added burden. Rather like the principle of "ignore the shouting, concentrate of fixing the transporter" expanded to encompass the entire episode.
no subject
And from typing all that, I was just struck with something from TPO/TBB. River, in the TARDIS, does get genuinely panicked once she realizes this outside force has taken control away from her--the pleading with the Doctor "Doctor, please, I've got seconds" seems uncharacteristic, and her voice actually breaks--and yet when the Doctor rescues her in the next episode, mere minutes later from her perspective, she's calm enough to fire off jokes. What happened in between is that she refocused herself on the task of getting the doors open--it had to happen, so she (almost) made it happen--and having that objective seems to have been enough to calm her down considerably. Hmmm, all the joking was probably venting stress, wasn't it? I mean she goes straight from "what sort of time do you call this?" to teasing about swappable heads to shooting the fez, all in the course of about a minute, when in the previous episode she'd barely said or done a single humorous thing since scolding the Doctor for not answering his phone.
no subject
Exact same pattern as above (stress, concentrate, joke) happens in "Flesh and Stone" with the transporter. Yelling/nervousness, fix the transporter, suddenly calm and vents with a joke "maybe when you're older."
Although, come to think of it, both the situation with the transporter and the rescue from the TARDIS are also major turning points on the interpersonal front too, what with the "I could bloody kiss you" and "Hi honey, I'm home." So I guess in both cases you can't really attribute her change in mood to one thing or the other--the improvement in the objective situation and the improvement in the interpersonal situation coming bang on top of each other.
Huh, Moffat really likes to twist the two together, doesn't he? Makes it more fun to pick apart.
no subject
The thing is, the Buffy verse characters do this pretty much always, so I kinda see that as the normal, default reaction in these situations. Life threatening situation followed by banter just seems perfectly natural.
no subject
I think we agree with each other – I’m just throwing ideas out there and when you bounce them back they all shift. Plus the situation is tricky enough to be multi layered.
Hmmm, all the joking was probably venting stress, wasn't it?
Oh yes, And it’s a way of not talking about the fear and the stress and all the other things that are much too close still.
no subject
*grins*
My money's on most of "serious" River being inherent to the character and "theatrical" River being more something she learned/developed in her association with the Doctor, but fandom consensus seems to want to see it the other way round.
Depends whether she started out an academic or a crook, I suppose.
Can I just say how much I love her little chin flick/*heh* thing she does at that point?
I like a woman who's not afraid to be awesome. :)
I'm confused by the last one. What scene are you referring to?
I meant the ‘I’m sorry, but that’s when everything changes.’ There is a wistfulness to her that's very different to 'You don't know who I am yet' from Time of Angels.
River seems galvanized by objective necessity. If something needs doing, if something *must happen* she does it, she makes it happen, and the knowledge that some particular course truly is necessary seems to serve more as a ballast than a burden to her.
This is a brilliant insight. Yes, I agree 100%!
If River had been in the Doctor's place in "The Waters of Mars" she would have walked right out that door and gotten the hell away from the planet without a look back--because she would have known what needed to happen.
Absolutely. She's a lot less sentimental too, I think.
But I guess I tend to see the knowledge of what she needed to have happen as more likely be something she could hold on to to bear herself up through the whole situation--an objective on which to concentrate to keep herself going--rather than an added burden.
Oh, now that’s a good point. I like it. Yes. And it could explain part of her aloofness – concentrate on the mission, don’t get sidetracked, fudge tricky questions. (And that goes for her behaviour at the start too – by bantering she’s also keeping control of the situation.)