Sunday, October 2, 2011

Stephen Moffat, you let me down.

Spoilers!  Spoilers if you watch Doctor Who!  Spoilers!

I was disappointed with the series finale last night.  So disappointed that I had to write a blog post about it.  How they wiggled out of the Doctor dying was very literally a deus ex machina move, and... I expected more.  There was always going to be a twist, but it felt very contrived and sloppy.

The biggest disappointment for me, though, was River Song.  River has been a mystery since the Library episodes, the more so because she's such a great character.  Amy is the Hot Sidekick (I mean, she's a great character, but she'd be a different one if she spoke the same lines while overweight with bad skin), but River is sexy without being a slim twenty-something - more than that, she's seductive, rather than just standing there bein' sexy.  She's confident and clever and strong.  She does her own saving the day, and has her own adventures, and is a match for the Doctor.  The probably-love-story arc is compelling too, because the more you see of her character the more tragic it becomes that they're moving in opposite directions, and she has get older knowing that he's going to forget her and their presumed love.  (It's kind of like The Time Traveller's Wife, but with characters and a plot.)  I thought her rapid turn-around in Let's Kill Hitler was a little clunky, but I could forgive it since they were pressed for time.  I didn't like that in The Wedding of River Song she was in love with the Doctor after one meeting and a few years of research.  It's entirely uncharacteristic with strong, self-sufficient River.  And the marriage for the sake of saving the world, when he still doesn't know her, and she doesn't know him at all... It wasn't the grand romance they'd been building up to.

After a little over two seasons, and who is River Song?  She's a kid with a crush.  Hopefully the next season has the older version of her, rather than the moony-eyed one.

I did like Amy killing Kovarian though.  One of my main complaints in the second half of the season is that Amy and Rory didn't seem too fussed about having lost their baby.  They always knew she grew up to be River, and it was treated as though it was somehow alright after Let's Kill Hitler because they had grown up alongside her (did she get fostered?  Do not understand.) when none of that changed the fact that their baby had been stolen from them.  I understand that to be the kind of thing to which parents don't take kindly, and that storyline just vanished.

That said, I can respect a man who can spend a whole season building up to a pun.

EDIT: Another thing I liked: "Die a final time, and know that she will never return for you." Oh yes she will. 

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