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ed_rex at 02:40pm on 07/10/2011The improbable plagiarist
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Every so often a famous writer gets taken down for plagiarism. Usually it's something pretty blatant, words and concepts lifted almost verbatim from a well-known work, as if it had improbably never occurred to the culprit that he or she might get caught.
When they do get caught, they typically claim it was an accident, that they must have done it sub-consciously. And the rest of us wonder, How stupid do you think we are? Give us a break and just 'fess up!
But I am suddenly much more sympathetic to those claims than I once was.
In my ostensible leisure time this week, I've been working pretty hard on my response to The Wedding of River Song and, yesterday, had what I thought was a well-argued two thousand words merely in need of a little polishing.
Towards the end of it, I made reference to a review I wrote earlier this year. Decided to link to it. And, linking, re-read it.
Guess what? I had been plagiarizing myself.
It wasn't word-for-word, but it was close. It was was a dismaying, a frustrating and a scary discovery. I really do try to credit sources, to quote directly or to paraphrase with attribution — and here I was, ripping off my own work!
Honest go god, your Honour! It was all sub-conscious!.
And so it is that my review of The Wedding of River Song, now plagiarism-free (I hope!), is a lot shorter than I had expected it to be, with a very conscious link to that which I have written before. As usual, spoilers and snark below the icing ... of The Wedding Cake of River Song.
(no subject)
There were a few things I liked. I was very glad when Madam Kovarian died, as well as the sudden awareness on Kovarian's face that she was TOTALLY SCREWED. "She didn't get it all from YOU...sweetie."
I was also glad that Amy stopped Rory from dying again. (I love that the Silence was so very angry that he wasn't staying dead.)
Also, River gets points for not just accepting that this is a fixed point in time, because that seemed to help give HIM time to save himself AND fake his death. Because seriously, just saying it's fixed isn't proof. And the nod to the Brigadier was lovely.
However, I'd like to know how River kissing a mecha Doctor managed to reset the universe. Yes, the real Doctor was inside the mecha, but kissing a robot shells isn't the same as her kissing the actual Doctor.
I know that if I hadn't read spoilers of the episode, I would have turned it off after the Doctor's death and that would have been that. He's dead. It's depressing. Shut up, show. And then I would have missed the twist.
Not to mention...has anyone else noticed that Moffat spends a lot of time resetting universes? We've had the crack in Amy's wall. We had the two universes of Amy's Choice. We had the universe in which Rory stopped existing and came back as an Auton (which was also the universe in which the TARDIS exploded and the Doctor died). There's the reset universe that starts on Amy's wedding day. There's the universe of Old Amy. There's the universe in which Amy kills Madam Kevorian.
And in each case, Moffat's objective is to restore the Whoniverse to a prior status quo. This is not a bad ending in itself, but it has been overused. Any time that something bad happens to the heroes, Moffat rushes in to hit the reset button. I can almost hear him saying to the children of England, "Hush, hush. Nothing bad has to happen to you if you don't want it to. You always get a do-over."
And then there's River Song. Dear God, I am disappointed in River Song. She had so much potential at the beginning--a brave, funny, intelligent adventurous woman.
And Moffat ruined her by making her entire life centered around the Doctor.
The Doctor is River's sole focus. She was created and trained as a weapon to kill him. She became an archeologist, not to discover new things about peoples of the universe or to increase knowledge and understanding, but so that she could find the Doctor wherever he went. She has left messages for him throughout time and space. She will cheerfully jump out of a window in the certainty that the Doctor will be there.
Everything she does, she does because of him. The Doctor matters to River more than anything else in the multiverse.
As I watched, I thought of Sarah Jane Smith who loved journalism and the truth, who told alien women about women's rights (and in a way that suggests at least some of her writers got it), who cared about her friends and family, and who made not the Doctor but protecting the Earth her priority. She was a woman of integrity and valor.
Next to Sarah Jane, River looks like a male fantasy--an older, blonder version of Lara Croft. And that saddens me, because River could have been so much more. She could have broken from her conditioning and become her own person. She could have adopted her job for the sheer love of science.
But instead, she became the Doctor's satellite.
It says something, I think, that the female character created in the 1970s was more her own person with her own likes and dislikes than the one created forty years later.
There are some lovely moments...but that's not enough. The story felt hollow to me...and it shouldn't have.
You are not alone
Amen to that. And yes, you're not the only one to have noticed. As you said, it's not necessarily a bad ending, but it's a hard one to pull off (I can't think of any time I thought it was used well just off the top of my head. "Father's Day", maybe ...)
I am completely with you on what happened to River Song, in terms of the once-cool character becoming just a Doctor-appendage — or satellite, as you put it.
(no subject)
To be fair, I think universe resets are to be expected as an outcome of "time can be rewritten."
OTOH, Moff uses the resets mainly as a get-out-of-plothole-free card. It wouldn't be so bad if there were lasting repercussions for the characters. E.g., setting aside Tinkerbell!Doctor in "Last of the Time Lords," the reset of The Year That Never Was worked for me because it *didn't* restore the status quo for the main characters. TYTNW was the catalyst for Martha's and Jack's respective decisions to leave the Doctor; that alt universe had lasting effects. In contrast, Amy's character didn't change after the reset in "The Big Bang." In fact, Moffat went out of his way to say the characters would be the same in every universe, so IMHO he basically all but ruled out meaningful development via alt universes. The one time I saw meaningful character development via an alt universe was with Rory in "The Girl Who Waited," when, frankly, that really should have occurred with Young!Amy.
And then there's River Song.
Yep. Her story embodies the issue I have with Moffat's Who, which is how female characters are not allowed to be defined for themselves, but must be defined in terms of a man. River went from what I thought was her own person in the narrative to, as you say, a satellite of the Doctor. There's so much discussion about River "mirroring" the Doctor, but mirrors are equals on some level, and in the end, I don't think River was, because she never broke free of her programming. It simply changed from obsessive hatred to obsessive love. The obsession might have waned over her time in prison, but she still defines herself by him first ("I live for the days when I see him").
But the problem is not just with River. Abigail's only purpose in "A Christmas Carol" was to further Kazran's character development. When she wasn't needed, she was literally stuck in a freezer. (Which is essentially River's S6 story in a nutshell.) And since "Flesh and Stone" the narrative has stated Amy cannot (metaphorically) exist without Rory. She needed "fixing" at the end of F&S, and the only way to "fix" her was to manipulate her into choosing Rory in "Amy's Choice." I was thrilled with TGWW because I saw an Amy who had survived on her own for 36 years, and, even better, asserted her right to exist independently. But that Amy couldn't exist, not only because it was an alt!Amy in the Watsonian view, but also because in the Doylist view that would contradict the narrative from S5, so she was locked out of the TARDIS. Even when she lost her faith in the Doctor in "The God Complex," it wasn't under her power--the Doctor had to break it for her.
Next to Sarah Jane, River looks like a male fantasy--an older, blonder version of Lara Croft.
*nods* It's the difference between a strong female *character* and a *strong* female character. Sarah Jane's the former, River's the latter. And it is depressing, because as you say, River could and should be so much more.
(no subject)
Yes, exactly! If there were lasting repercussions, everything would be fine. But refusing to let the characters change is bad.
But the problem is not just with River. Abigail's only purpose in "A Christmas Carol" was to further Kazran's character development. When she wasn't needed, she was literally stuck in a freezer.
Oh, don't get me STARTED. That story enraged me.
And since "Flesh and Stone" the narrative has stated Amy cannot (metaphorically) exist without Rory. She needed "fixing" at the end of F&S, and the only way to "fix" her was to manipulate her into choosing Rory in "Amy's Choice." I was thrilled with TGWW because I saw an Amy who had survived on her own for 36 years, and, even better, asserted her right to exist independently. But that Amy couldn't exist, not only because it was an alt!Amy in the Watsonian view, but also because in the Doylist view that would contradict the narrative from S5, so she was locked out of the TARDIS.
Yes. I hate it. The women are all mentally and emotionally dependent on the men, to the point where they can't survive without them.
It's the difference between a strong female *character* and a *strong* female character.
I don't really know how the emphasis changes the meaning. I think you're saying that Sarah Jane is a strong PERSON...but I don't know what you're saying about River, who isn't strong. The best I can say is that she gives the illusion of being strong and capable.
And it is depressing, because as you say, River could and should be so much more.
On that we agree.
(no subject)
Yep, that's what I meant, and I'm sorry for not being clearer. There's an article on Overthinking It that describes the difference between the two:
http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/
I guess it depends on whether the female character can stand on her own, in the end.