Doctor Who neepery: A Good Man Goes to War

So we’ve been working our way through Doctor Who Season 6, and towards the mid-season episode that, when friends realized we hadn’t seen it yet, led them to say, over and over again, “Oh! So you don’t know who River is yet!”

So now I know. And have mixed feelings–on that, and on the episode in general.

Spoilers from here on out. Highlight to read. Spoilers welcome in comments, too, but only up through this episode, please, not through the rest of the season!

Taken in isolation from everything else, I love River as Amy and Rory’s daughter. Because for two seasons now, whenever she’s shown up, I’ve been struck by how young Rory and Amy seem, by contrast. So it’s a cool way of playing with this, because time travel really would be like that. And the setup with her name was enough to make me believe it, too.

Taken in combination with her romance with the Doctor, though, I was a bit skeeved out, and felt like the story had just gone the route of, well, Meyer meets Heinlein (or Breaking Dawn meets Time Enough for Love, anyway). Because while she doesn’t love the Doctor now (which is lovely, because I ship Amy/Rory pretty hard), Amy was seriously lusting after him for a while, only to have it turn out her daughter is the one who really has/had a thing for him. And because it’s now clear the Doctor played a role in River’s upbringing, even if from a distance, even if maybe he didn’t know it when they first met. All of which feels, kind of icky beneath its cleverness.

There’s also one thing I felt the episode cheated on: while the setup was there and all, having non-pregnant Amy go adventuring while pregnant Amy was being held captive so she could give birth felt like a huge cheat. As if the writers were unwilling to do the really interesting thing and let Amy be pregnant and adventuring and on the Tardis all season. That would have been pretty awesome. But on some level we’re still unwilling to see mothers and especially mothers-to-be as anything but makers and protectors of their children. So pregnant Amy had to be protected from all danger and held under sterile white conditions instead of continuing to live her (yes, dangerous) life while pregnant. This has been bugging me more and more as I think about it, actually.

She could have still been kidnapped shortly before giving birth, if necessary, or the baby could have been kidnapped shortly after. They didn’t need to send her away to make the story work.

Still interested enough to keep watching, of course. But more warily, with not quite as much buy in as before. Which is too bad, because I still love the characters.

Of course, the fact that I’ve never really bought into the idea of the Flesh in the first place–though it’s clearly going to be needed to make the season climax work, too–doesn’t help.