The Girl Who Waited. Meta.

[elisi]

It turns out that I had A LOT of thoughts....

So, there are going to be Buffy quotes. Actually, there are going to be a lot quotes, fullstop. You have no idea the many buttons this episode pressed. And in case you’re wondering - I didn’t cry. Which is odd, and unusal (‘cause boy, was it sad), but I didn’t. Maybe because my default is always the Doctor, I don’t know. *wonders at self*

Also this was DIFFICULT to write. I like narrative in my meta. I mean - going from one idea/theme into the next, linking them all up. I can’t do that, because everything is connected... So yeah, there’s a lot of repetition, just to warn you.

Anway. Buffy is the poster girl for metaphors in the narrative, the original idea (apart from ‘cheerleader girl fights monsters’) being ‘High Shcool is Hell’. Usually the Monster of the Week was a physical manifestation of the character’s struggles, something they could apply to their own lives. But in S6 this changed...And hey, I wrote meta on this and shall happily quote myself:

But in S6 the nature of the metaphors changed. We didn’t get MOTW metaphors, instead we got something else:

1) Other characters as metaphors.
2) The characters themselves became their own metaphor! (As in: internal battles shown externally)
3) Restless (4.22) showed the characters struggles in S6 through metaphor.

Leaving aside Restless, we see this method of using metaphors all over S6 of DW. Including the characters mirrored in other [one off] characters, in the other main characters, and even with themselves. Especially Amy...

We had two Amys in the Comic Relief sketch. We had Ganger!Amy for nearly half the season. We had Tesalector!Amy. We had Amy turned into a doll. And now we have older Amy and younger Amy. We have had Amy the child and Amy the friend and Amy the wife and Amy the mother and Amy the Doctor (sonic and all).

Funnily enough, I think she’s going to be rather pivotal. To quote aerintine:

This is the other thing I believe: last year Amy was Wendy flying off to have adventures with Peter Pan. This year she's Alice, and she's fallen down the rabbit hole, THROUGH the LOOKING GLASS. And her Mad Hatter Raggedy Man cannot save her. Neither can her partner in Creation the warrior-nurse, one Rory Williams, Last Centurion, and the Boy Who Waited. Amy has to save herself, and be careful not to accept the kindness because it will kill her.

Now the basic formula for Amy’s story is: The Doctor is late for Amy. The Doctor is always late for Amy.

Amy waited 12 years for the Doctor when she was young, and it screwed her up pretty badly and she lost a lot of faith. This episode was the same thing, just without the veneer of sweetness. Because little Amelia waiting was sweet, with her little dolls, and dressing up Rory to look like the Doctor. But that kind of ordeal isn’t sweet, or romantic, or noble - it’s brutal. It destroys people. Older Amy was a bitter, severe, battle-hardened woman, who only slowly began remembering who she once was.

And this where the questions of agency come in, I think. A lot of people were cross at Amy’s lack of agency - just waiting - but it’s not that simple, and IMHO the person who was by far the most active was Amy. The Doctor was stuck in the TARDIS, so vulnerable that he had to send Rory out in his stead. Rory... was the prize, the ‘fair maiden’ that spurred Amy into action. He was saved from the handBots by older Amy, who had turned him to a ‘pet’ (such lovely parallels to her Doctor dolls when she was a child. Except she was no longer innocent), and was sent ‘outside to wait’ whilst the Amys discussed what to do. Without older Amy’s “I'm gonna tear time apart for you,” nothing would have happened. Partly this was a very Doctor-y statement, but it was absolutely the thing the whole episode pivoted around. “He’s Rory. You’re Amy. Yes I’m asking.”

And it was only after this choice that the Doctor had anything to manipulate and lie about. Amy was the active person here, the Doctor and Rory re-active. Let me explain:

To focus on the Doctor for a bit. Because what would people have the Doctor do? No really? I’m sure we all remember the Master turning the TARDIS into a paradox machine... Should the Doctor go all Victorious again, declaring that he can do whatever he wants? Really? He’s cruel to be kind, just like the handBots. (“This is a kindness...”) Of course the main point of contention is the lying - making promises and then breaking them...

But that is who he is. Rule 1, remember? And Amy understands, I think. And if we see older Amy as a mirror for the Doctor, then her journey seems to mirror the Doctor’s this season - the eventual acceptance of her own death (along with a final look at her home/last day with his friends).

Remember, older Doctor even keeps younger Doctor out of the loop... He lies to himself, about his own fate. In TGWW I think the Doctor does what he needs to, and above all, I’m reminded of this speech of Buffy’s:

BUFFY: It is always different! It's always complicated. And at some point, someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me. You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off. There's no mystical guidebook. No all-knowing council. Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law.

Except, like I say above, it’s not that the Doctor sets himself up as The Law, it’s actually that he follows the natural laws, the laws of time and space. But because of who and what he is, he can manipulate things around it... He gives Rory a choice, but he rigs the options. To quote promethia_tenk:

That is where the Doctor gets most dangerous and is most unnerving, I think. The chaos of his life is certainly risky and burns its share of people, but it's a very upfront risk. The manipulativeness, though . . . he really does take control away from people. The chaos, ironically, puts him in control, and that control is all the more powerful and dangerous because other people can't see it.

The Doctor is dangerous, and he welcomes chaos. What he does, in any situation, is create chaos, or ride the chaos that is there already. And this is where Rory comes in. Rory is order, the natural counterpoint to the Doctor. To quote Promethia again:

The thing I'm coming up with is that Rory and the Doctor are always going to be fundamentally wrong to each other--just by being themselves. It's not a matter of anybody's intentions or fault, it's who they are. They are similar in caring deeply about the people who are important to them, but in so many other way they are complete opposites roped together by Amy. Rory's primary concern at all times, his whole MO, is to keep people safe--emphasis on the keep. He thinks preventatively, and deep down in his bones that is the thing that is right. The Doctor does also care deeply about the wellbeing of the people around him, but keeping has precious little to do with it: he is all about change. It is fascinating that Amy is a strong enough force to bring these two together and that they've managed to build a mutual appreciation and understanding of each other that goes beyond Amy and has helped each of them grow, but I think, still, when the chips come down, they are still going to be just . . . wrong to each other, and the chips have come down quite hard now. Rory may have gained an independent appreciation for the advantages of life in the TARDIS, but that doesn't change the fact that left to his own devices, he would not be traveling with the Doctor, but what Amy wanted has always been a stronger consideration (and now the Doctor is also their only tie to their lost baby). Rory's not really saying anything he hasn't been saying from the very beginning. He's just saying it louder.

I LOVE the argument between the Doctor and Rory, where Rory berates him for not being more careful and the Doctor not only refuses to apologise, but even refuses to think about changing.

The Doctor is chaos, and through change and turmoil puts things back together. His gift is to see patterns - or rather, to see how the kaleidoscope can be turned in order to create a new pattern. To find the one thing that everything turns around. That’s generally how he saves the day - not through force, but through understanding systems. (River is the same.) When he gets it wrong (the starwhale, the Daleks, the Angels)... things go wrong even faster, because he can’t not cause change.

Of course, it’s because he’s a Trickster through and through:

I especially like the character because he is often *not* the protagonist or hero, but the other fellow--the catalyst or outsider whose unexpected arrival and unpredictable behavior turn the world upside down and get the story rolling. And sometimes even tell the story.

Trickster is not just one of the most entertaining and fascinating characters in myth and fiction, he is also the one who plucks the strings of Story, makes music out of words, and sets the world resonating.
[...]
Trickster is not always a nice fellow, to say the least. He has something in common with bad guys--liars and thieves and confidence men; cheats.

To go back to the beginning, then the thing about S6 of BtVS is that it pushed everything to breaking point - and beyond. I’m finding that S6 of DW does the same. What usually happens with the Doctor is that either people are forced away from him (Rose, Donna), or they walk away (Martha, Mickey). Amy and Rory... Well. In the words of the Moff himself:

"I suppose what I'm interested in - and it's developed organically from Amy's particular situation, of him always being late - is that the Doctor has sort of hung around in her life for far too long. He never says it out loud, but he obviously has an MO. 'I'll get out before I screw up their chances of happiness. I'll run away, and let them grow up. I'll go and find somebody else to mess about with.' But he's accidentally ended up with a married couple in the TARDIS, because he ran alway with Amy on the night of her wedding, and now he's in the most dreadful pickle. "

"It's quite nice to force him to live through their lives a bit. He'll grow to realise that he sort of can't leave. He was meant to be the last crush before the serious relationship. The last fling. You know he's the stripper at the stag. He's not meant to be there for any length of time.... but damn it, he can't help it now. He's stitched into that family in the most overt way."

And the thing is - as a consequence of their travels Amy and Rory lost their baby. And they keep nearly losing each other. Which is where the fact that they’re a couple becomes so important - throughout the RTD years, the focus was on the Doctor and the Companion. The most important person for the Companion was the Doctor and the most important person for the Doctor was the Companion. If either got hurt, the other was upset. Simple. But now the Doctor is much more on the sidelines (again, Trickster, the one who gets the story moving - is it any wonder that he reacts so badly to the idea that he should check things beforehand?). He’s the one creating the possibility of adventure, but if something goes wrong, he, and his feelings, are not the focus. People are angry with him over locking older Amy out of the TARDIS (in much the same way they were angry over taking away Donna’s memories), but the difference is that the pain this decision caused the Doctor is hardly touched on. The focus (quite rightly) is on Rory and Amy.

To quote one of my favourite reviews EVER (for Amy’s Choice):

In fact, the Doctor's darkness is shown and is ugly and not handwaved or romanticized or apologized for, much in the way that Pouty!Face Ten's Epic Emo Manpain trumped all other ethical/moral/scripting considerations. And Eleven, to his everlasting credit, doesn't make excuses for himself or have them made by adoring companions who keep insisting he's the Lonely Angel Storm at the Oncoming Fire of the Universe.

In The Girl Who Waited, his Companions are HUGELY critical, as both of them realise/see that they are turning into him. We saw this already in Journey’s End, with Davros’ triumph over the Doctor, but at that moment every single Companion, former or current, was proud to be where they were, proud to be carrying on his work. This? This is the dark side. This is the painful choices, the ugly consequences. Here, have another Buffy quote:

FAITH: OK. The point. Me, by myself all the time. I'm looking at you, everything you have, and, I don't know, jealous. Then there I am. Everybody's looking to me, trusting me to lead them, and I've never felt so alone in my entire life.
BUFFY: Yeah. (swallows, looks down)
FAITH: And that's you every day, isn't it?
BUFFY: I love my friends. I'm very grateful for them. But that's the price. Being a slayer.

The sheer development this season is staggering. At the beginning there was a definite sense of WTF? to the Doctor being killed. I’ve been leaning towards River, or Ganger!Doctor, because they would kill him if he asked, because he trusts them (and they are him). We’ve seen River go from weapon designed to kill the Doctor, to taking the first steps to becoming the person he trusts the most. River (because of who and what she is, and because the first lesson she ever learned about the Doctor taught her that the Doctor can’t save everyone, he can’t even save himself) is far more understanding and forgiving. She was created as a (dark) mirror for the Doctor, and has the same ability to shape and control chaos. And she understands the price that comes with it.

What I hadn’t really taken into account was the opposite - Amy or Rory going the other way. I can now absolutely see the possibility for Amy being the person in the space suit, and the mirroring of both River and Amy instinctively picking up a gun and shooting at the thing that killed a man they love (and - in the process - unwittingly shooting at their mother/daughter)... oh that would be exquisite. But more than that, I can see Amy doing it. And how interesting is it to be in a ‘verse where the hero could be killed by, well, anyone? I think we all presumed that as time went on, we’d get closer to discovering/being able to guess who it might be - instead the list of suspects has only grown...

In RTD era Who, despite everything, people still [usually] adored the Doctor (just look at Wilf). Here? The price is weighed very carefully, and when older Amy says that she hates the Doctor more than anything? We can understand it, and find it perfectly justified.

By the way, I also think the Doctor was absolutely justified in his actions in this episode, and did the right thing. Friends don’t let friends wait, alone, for 36 years. Much as older Amy was brilliant, she was also very, very wrong. Did she deserve to live? Of course. But given the choice, I would not inflict that kind of suffering on anyone.

Also, it is worth bearing in mind this:

DOCTOR: Right, (walks back to them) so one minute it's, "You make people a danger to themselves," the next it's, "We're not leaving you!" But if one of you gets squashed or blown up or eaten, who gets...
Vampires of Venice

Who gets the blame? The Doctor. And we see how neither of them really want to be in his position, be the one to make his choices.

Which reminds me of a mirror with ‘Cold Blood’: The Doctor locking the door (making the necessary choice), as Rory then, older Amy now, gets erased and has never existed, with their beloved inside, grieving.

(“Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. And if something can be remembered, it can come back...” <- hopefully words of comfort)

To briefly touch on mirrors in more detail, I shall quote janie_aire:

TGWW made a point of mirroring everybody with everybody! The whole bloody planet was a giant damn mirror, with its towering silver colonnades and its mirror mountains and all.

Amy and the Doctor: Making a sonic, understanding time-streams, becoming like the monster you're fighting, all kinds of protective layers around intimate emotions. The story ends with Amy in a chair with the Doctor's coat over her like a mantle. And all that is just the tip of the iceberg! Dying and living at the same time. Coming out of the Pandorica. This has been going on for a while.

Rory and the Doctor: Rory stands in for the Doctor via the spectacles. He's a Doctor surrogate. Half the time when Amy is talking to Rory, she's talking to the Doctor. He mucks about with wires and pulls levers. He becomes like one of the monsters, but it's the only monster that's helpful... and it has no hands?!? Hmm. Disarmed. And lots of visual mirroring of these two.

Amy and River: Older and younger at the same time. The older one wants to live. The Doctor and Rory trying to save "young Amy" is parallel to Rory and Amy trying to save "young Melody." Both Amy and River have shot at the Apollo.

Amy and Rory: Amy's now wielding a sword! They both wear the spectacles. (So does the Doctor.) She and Rory have both used the Doctor's sonic, and Rory trained her to be a nurse in Black Spot. But the key thing, I think, is that both Rory and Amy are depicted as being anaesthetized. They are are still in shock about their baby daughter's predicament.

Incidentally, for those who think that Amy has been too passive this year - would killing the Doctor fix that for you? 'Amelia Pond, judgment death machine' <- would you look at that. Foreshadowing and everything.

It’s a fact that the Doctor warps people’s lives around himself, Amy especially, but the fascinating thing is that she has warped him in return. Eleven crashed in her garden when he was but minutes old, and ever since everything has been about this little girl. If she should be the one to kill him, his whole life has been about her. Think about that for a minute. She was, from the beginning, the girl who told the story of the Doctor, she was the one who re-created him (not to mention her parents and Rory), out of, essentially, thin air. (And as early as Starship UK she took his place, instinctively working out how to solve the problem.)

It’s a circle, you see, the Doctor and Amy, and you can’t pinpoint where what started:

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.

And in this context, Melody/River’s life/existence has to be completely dependent on the Doctor and Amy. She is a story within a story, and because of that she can use and control stories herself, changing her own role, her own narrative, as she sees fit:

- This season, people have felt that Amy is too passive (she was used and lied to and her baby was stolen, and she couldn't do anything about it).

- This season the Doctor has been very active, but in the process helped pave the way that leads to his own death.

- And this season, Melody went from completely passive (stolen, programmed and set on her path, which she walked, willingly) to completely active (she changed her name, changed herself, and chose a different road).

If River is the story within a story, and she breaks out of her pre-ordained course/narrative, then really, that bodes very well.


ETA: In a fairytale nutshell: Amy is the questing knight, Rory is the princess, the Doctor is the wizard and River is, uh, everything.

Comments

[promethia_tenk]

DEAR LORD, MORE! /o\ *pats your poor brain* If you do literally keel over from meta, I shall be very cross with Moff.

Nothing really new to comment on, but oh, you do pull it together just beautifully. It's a very satisfying statement of where the show is now, I think.

'EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED' is totally a mood . . .

[elisi]

DEAR LORD, MORE! /o\ *pats your poor brain* If you do literally keel over from meta, I shall be very cross with Moff.
Well I feel better now. I just need to get it out. (And quotes are lovely and save time.)

Nothing really new to comment on, but oh, you do pull it together just beautifully. It's a very satisfying statement of where the show is now, I think.
Oh good. *deep relaxing breath* I shall now concentrate on LIFE and write fic on the side.

'EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED' is totally a mood . . .
Ianto looks EXACTLY how I feel. It's like flicking through a book, but nothing is linear...

ETA: Although my favourite [obvious] insight from digging into all this is that Amy's the questing knight (just like you've been saying since forever), Rory the princess (prize), the Doctor the guide/magician and River... everything. ;)

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. The parallels between Amy's first wait and this one (which is precisely 3 times longer) are really interesting in particular--the Rory bot as a form of the Raggedy Doctor dolls, etc. I didn't get much sleep last night and I have class in an hour, so I have nothing particularly coherent to add, but this was fun to read!

[elisi]

The parallels between Amy's first wait and this one (which is precisely 3 times longer) are really interesting in particular--the Rory bot as a form of the Raggedy Doctor dolls, etc.
*nods a lot* And I love that - taking something we know and making it darker.

Anyway, glad you liked it. :)

[independence1776]

IMHO the person who was by far the most active was Amy.

Yes! First time watching it, I was a bit concerned about the ending. Second time, Amy completely took charge. TGWW was the most active she's been this entire series.

I have thinky thoughts about the lying/self-sacrifice, but they're jumbled still. Best I've been able to come to expressing why it bothered me is: "You gave me hope and then you took it away. That's enough to make anyone dangerous." And yet it's perfectly in character. (Jack in POTW, anyone?)

I think we all presumed that as time went on, we’d get closer to discovering/being able to guess who it might be - instead the list of suspects has only grown...

I've always considered Amy to be a possibility, but as S6 goes on, I've been leaning toward River. It's just that the Justice Department's insistance on it being River killing him made me suspicous-- we got an answer (or a confirmation) we've been waiting for for well over a year, and it was by a bit character? Something's going on.

I have the feeling I'll be thinking about this episode for weeks, tying it into the finale and everything else. So many layers.

[owlboy]

I thought they were talking about her killing him in that episode, with the poison. That's what they wanted to punish her for, anyway.

edit// Oh, and she says "it was never going to be a gun for you". So I don't think she's gonna shoot him.

[elisi]

Yes! First time watching it, I was a bit concerned about the ending. Second time, Amy completely took charge. TGWW was the most active she's been this entire series.
She gets *tricked*, but that's different.

I have thinky thoughts about the lying/self-sacrifice, but they're jumbled still. Best I've been able to come to expressing why it bothered me is: "You gave me hope and then you took it away. That's enough to make anyone dangerous." And yet it's perfectly in character. (Jack in POTW, anyone?)
Hmmm. Very good parallels. Plus Jack. The Doctor can be so goddanm cold. At least he apologised to Amy (to her face!), and gave Rory time to say goodbye...

I've always considered Amy to be a possibility, but as S6 goes on, I've been leaning toward River. It's just that the Justice Department's insistance on it being River killing him made me suspicous
Oh Lord, the WHOLE THING is ridiculously suspicious. He was supposed to die on the beach... And the whole thing about the killer being in that darn suit, means that the Justice League must have gotten their information from someone else, and since Melody was created to kill the Doctor there is no reason someone else couldn't have taken her place, but still let those in charge think it was her... (This is why I try not to speculate beyond 'We have a lot of candidates now', because my head starts hurting. /o\)

I have the feeling I'll be thinking about this episode for weeks, tying it into the finale and everything else. So many layers.
Layers upon layers upon layers...

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

I am loving this season, even though Amy's agency gets called into question. We see Older!Amy as active rather than passive (at last!) in this episode, even though she was the one left waiting. I really appreciated that about this episode.

I always wait for your meta after a really good Who episode, and this one didn't fail to intrigue. I may have more thoughts. Let me think on it.

[elisi]

I am loving this season, even though Amy's agency gets called into question. We see Older!Amy as active rather than passive (at last!) in this episode, even though she was the one left waiting. I really appreciated that about this episode.
This is where I think River is so important, because she moved from no agency at all, to being all agency. And since River is a walking talking metaphor for everything ever...

I always wait for your meta after a really good Who episode, and this one didn't fail to intrigue. I may have more thoughts. Let me think on it.
Have fun! Did you see my fic? Lots of the same themes...

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I see your point about Amy mirroring the Doctor and it's true that the sonic probe was a clue about that, and there was an obvious parallel going on, but at the end of the day I keep seeing Rory as The Doctor's counterpoint, more than Amy, and I focused on Rory in my own review.

can now absolutely see the possibility for Amy being the person in the space suit

Funny you said that because I totally can see Rory in the space suit now!

http://frenchani.livejournal.com/498991.html

[elisi]

Funny you said that because I totally can see Rory in the space suit now!
This is what I mean! It could be ANYONE, because EVERYONE mirrors EVERYONE ELSE. /o\ I'm used to following the metaphors in order to figure out the plot, but they're all so tangled that... *waves hands around helplessly*

You are absolutely right that Rory is mirrored through out (and even calls the Doctor on it). The boy who was always a stand-in, right from the beginning.

So yeah, I don't have a clue.

[janie-aire.livejournal.com]

Fantastic meta, wonderful! I love how you use Buffy to explain Who, and that magnificent shift from monster/metaphors to character/metaphors.

I want to explore the active/passive dynamic of Amy, and how she's represented. What a balance of yang and yin! And look in A Good Man how she's basically powerless, and surrounded by white, in a place that's otherwise dark. When she gets out into the dark, that's when she becomes active, pulling a gun on her daughter. (*Again.*) But she's dressed in white. She's an active principle in a passive environment.

And now she's in a White Place once more, but now white and black are reversed. In the dark place, behind the time engines (which are held within) she is passive, but get her out into the light and she becomes active, especially when they enter the all-white art gallery. Older Amy wears White Armor, and she's the active one, not younger Amy in her darker earth tones.

Wearing black when she's captured by the Silence. Passive.
If she's the Apollo, then wearing white makes her Active.

(The Dolls in the Dollhouse were called Actives, btw.)

When she's in that white window dressed in white in A Good Man, right in the middle of Manton's speech we get this cut to her just as he says "the Papal Mainframe Herself." C'mon, that can't be accidental!

And now my brain is turning to mush. Must have coffee!

[elisi]

Fantastic meta, wonderful!
*blushes* (I can't help writing it...)

I love how you use Buffy to explain Who, and that magnificent shift from monster/metaphors to character/metaphors.
It suddenly became clear with Night Terrors - there were so many people who wondered why Amy and Rory weren't more caught up in the main action, since the parallels to their situation was so very obvious, and I realised that I'd been here before! (Re-using insights is fabulous.)

I want to explore the active/passive dynamic of Amy, and how she's represented. What a balance of yang and yin! And look in A Good Man how she's basically powerless, and surrounded by white, in a place that's otherwise dark. When she gets out into the dark, that's when she becomes active, pulling a gun on her daughter. (*Again.*) But she's dressed in white. She's an active principle in a passive environment.
I love all of this - the colour thing and the passive/active stuff. Very neat!

(The Dolls in the Dollhouse were called Actives, btw.)
And yet, they themselves were passive. Like... Mels, programmed to kill the Doctor. (And in black. Little Melody, running away, in white. River... is everything and wears whatever she wants.) Amy, wedding dress, very active. OK, I'm going to stop now.

Hope the coffee helped - I know just how you feel!

[wander-realtai.livejournal.com]

I can't express how much I loved this episode. It was so rich and layered with character and thematic depth. I'm so glad I took the time to watch it; I almost didn't.

Excellent meta.

[elisi]

I can't express how much I loved this episode. It was so rich and layered with character and thematic depth. I'm so glad I took the time to watch it; I almost didn't.
♥

Excellent meta.
Thank you. :)

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

Another form of doubling, which I haven't seen discussed very much, is with the two couples. Amy and Rory are linear; they are supposed to grow old together, which is part of why what happened to Amy in TGWW was so horrifying. Rory says it outright, in fact: "I don't care that you got old, I care that we didn't have the chance to get old together!" River and the Doctor, on the other hand, will never have that chance; in addition to the fact that neither of them gets older - the Doctor just regenerates, and River can, apparently control her appearance to look however old she wants - they're nonlinear. But in TGWW, Amy and Rory essentially became River and the Doctor - Rory says it outright, and though you parallel Amy with the Doctor here, what I was struck by was how much Amy was like River (right down to the lipstick).

I'm not sure what that means, but I told someone recently that I think the doubling is like mirror images. You look at yourself from the outside and you see yourself more clearly than you ever would from the inside. Hence, Melody looking at the Tesalecta image of herself in LKH and understanding that she is River, and Amy, here, with an older version of herself. What's important about the ending of TGWW for me (and what makes it different from what happens with Donna at the end of JE) is not only that Amy chooses for herself, but also that younger Amy remembers older Amy. She might not have older Amy's mad skillz, but she will remember the core of strength that drove the older Amy to survive, when a lot of people would have just let the robots get them. Those memories will become part of Amy's self-knowledge (for better or worse), and someday, when she needs to be strong, she'll be able to draw on them.

[elisi]

Another form of doubling, which I haven't seen discussed very much, is with the two couples.
Ooooh yes. I mean, it's obvious, but you're right - no one's really discussing it.

Hence, Melody looking at the Tesalecta image of herself in LKH and understanding that she is River, and Amy, here, with an older version of herself. What's important about the ending of TGWW for me (and what makes it different from what happens with Donna at the end of JE) is not only that Amy chooses for herself, but also that younger Amy remembers older Amy.
*nods a lot* It's both a comfort and a warning - she can endure, and survive, something nigh on unimaginable... But she can also be in danger of losing her humanity if exposed to that kinda thing. (I'm also having vague stirrings thinking about The Doctor's Wife and Amy's nightmare with Rory waiting and waiting and waiting, and knowing what she would do in that situation ["I'm going to tear time apart for you"] must surely help.)

[promethia_tenk]

She might not have older Amy's mad skillz, but she will remember the core of strength that drove the older Amy to survive, when a lot of people would have just let the robots get them. Those memories will become part of Amy's self-knowledge (for better or worse), and someday, when she needs to be strong, she'll be able to draw on them.
I love this excessively. It's been bothering me that Rory basically got to "keep" his time as a badass fighter in his memories to be able to draw on, but that Amy has a loose hers, and I've been wondering a bit about how the finale might somehow involve older Amy coming back or younger Amy recalling her somehow and integrating that aspect of herself back into her (perhaps with her magical timecrack head). What you've said at least gives her a metaphorical way of drawing that Amy back out, or could even conceivably give her a way to do it literally.

[joking.livejournal.com]

This is exactly why I don't understand why people keep complaining that Amy has been passive. What?! She's the heroine of Moff's Who, at its core.

[owlboy]

Because they *insist* on breaking everything into black-and-white and ignoring all the greys, and also seem to fail to take the broader context into account. It's bloody irritating.

[elisi]

I'm so happy I actually wrote all this down, it really helped settle stuff in my own mind.

[jeymien.livejournal.com]

My first reaction to the end was that I remembered the Doctor telling older Amy that saving younger Amy might hurt. He just never said how. *sigh* Trickster Doctor... of course it hurt, it hurt all of 4 of them. Just not physically.

[elisi]

Ooooh good catch. I've not rewatched it yet, and had forgotten that line. Ouch.

[janie-aire.livejournal.com]

I just noticed that the white robots are wearing what look like surgical gloves. A doctor's gloves.

[elisi]

This show really is on a mission to freak kids out, isn't it... ;)

(Um yes, I do know what you mean.)

[kateydidnt.livejournal.com]

I can't respond to everything here, but your "the Doctor is Chaos and change" reminded me of a fan comic (brilliant brilliant brilliant dr who fic!) in which the crux of the piece turns on an old who idea: the Black Guardian and the White Guardian. The White Guardian was the embodiment of order and the Black Guardian was the embodiment of chaos. Classic who has the Doctor going on a mission or a quest for the white guardian and it is accepted that he is a champion of the white guardian, but the fic turns that on its head and says the Doctor is an agent of chaos and change and as such is, AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN, the champion of the black guardian, and it is the Master who is the champion of the White Guardian. (Tyranny IS order, it isn't nice, but it is order.)

Anyway, now I want to reread that.

If you are wanting the fic:
http://comics.shipsinker.com/downloads.php

[elisi]

OOOOH THAT IS VERY SHINY I LOVE IT!

(Will read it as soon as I can. Yay!)

[kaffy_r]

So here I am weeks late, which is the way I live my life, apparently. I read the first half of this when you first posted, and came back to go all the way through this time. I'm glad I did; you are as thoughtful as ever, and I believe you're spot on about Amy's agency, and her (or, more properly, their) lack of passivity in this episode.

A couple of questions.

You write: River (because of who and what she is, and because the first lesson she ever learned about the Doctor taught her that the Doctor can’t save everyone, he can’t even save himself) is far more understanding and forgiving. She was created as a (dark) mirror for the Doctor, and has the same ability to shape and control chaos. And she understands the price that comes with it.

When you say River's far more understanding ... more understanding about things than the Doctor, or more understanding about the Doctor than other people? I'd posit that although River was created as a dark mirror, she's actually an image of a brighter, more human Doctor, precisely because of the understanding and forgiveness you mention. The Doctor doesn't forgive himself, but she - as painfully accurate about his failings as she might be - does; in fact, I'd guess she forgives more people, more easily, than even the Doctor does.

And in this context, Melody/River’s life/existence has to be completely dependent on the Doctor and Amy. She is a story within a story, and because of that she can use and control stories herself, changing her own role, her own narrative, as she sees fit:

I've underlined "because" in order to ask if you could unpack this a little more for me. River is a story within a story, but so is every character other than the Doctor within the Doctor's story. Hers is more complicated and more intertwined with the Doctor and two of his Companions, but I'm not grasping any other qualitative differences, which leads me to ask - how does being a story within a story grant River the vast free-agency she has, when others who are equally stories (We're all stories in the end) don't have it? I'm grasping the imagery up to some point where I lose it, and I don't want to lose it. Hellllp Meeee!

[elisi]

So here I am weeks late, which is the way I live my life, apparently. I read the first half of this when you first posted, and came back to go all the way through this time. I'm glad I did; you are as thoughtful as ever, and I believe you're spot on about Amy's agency, and her (or, more properly, their) lack of passivity in this episode.
Thank you! :) And late comments are always welcome!

I'd posit that although River was created as a dark mirror, she's actually an image of a brighter, more human Doctor, precisely because of the understanding and forgiveness you mention. The Doctor doesn't forgive himself, but she - as painfully accurate about his failings as she might be - does; in fact, I'd guess she forgives more people, more easily, than even the Doctor does.
Yes, that's exactly what I was getting at. (Did you ever read my fic She Can Be. She Will Be. It's all about this.

which leads me to ask - how does being a story within a story grant River the vast free-agency she has, when others who are equally stories
To be honest, this is mostly be trying to work out the appropriate metaphors. What I mean is that all of River's life is warped around the Doctor - she wouldn't be who she is without him. Everyone else meets him, is whisked away and changed etc, but River was conceived on the TARDIS, his nature a part of her DNA. And not just that, but she was stolen, deliberately manipulated to become a mirror - she was created/written to be a story against the Doctor. (Or: from within her parents story, her story unfolded.) But because of all this manipulation, all this deliberate writing of her, she has the strength and the tools for breaking free and write her own story.

It is significant (and I've been saying this for a long time), that she's not a companion. Companions have 'normal' stories, their lives have beginnings, middle and an end. Their stay with the Doctor likewise. River's story is completely back-to-front and upside-down. Her story, like the Doctor's, exists out of time, and that's what I mean by 'a story within a story' - The Doctor's story incorporated Amy and Rory, and their story created River's... But River's is mostly separate from theirs, looping back into the Doctor's, where it is anchored.

*fervently hopes this makes sense*