Ahhh, good, more people coming out of the woodwork! And I think I'm going to say that, yeah, I agree with all your caveats, although I'll add some caveats of my own to my agreement:
River was an interesting idea from the start because from the start, built into the fact she could be his wife, is the mechanism by which she is not always present - by which she is, in fact, the only kind of wife he probably could have . . . This bugs me too. I don't *mind* the time travel hand-wave to make raising a Time Family work, but the trick with how River's timeline worked and how that allowed her to fit into the show was just so damn neat and tidy. Adding a child complicates it a whole lot, and it's less that I object on a logistical level as that it offends me aesthetically . . . I don't know how to solve that.
The question then becomes if that pattern holds - are we talking about two parallel stories about parenthood? That would make sense, but here's where I start losing track of the symbolism something chronic . . . the best way I can illustrate the vertiginous sensibility of so many familiar tropes and themes repeating and repeating until I can't recognise them anymore: until they seem sinister rather than familiar. Oh dear lord yes. Are you familiar with goldenmoonrose's episode analyses? They are excellent, but half of them I read and I come away with this horrible sinking feeling that everything is a reflection of everything else and therefore nothing means anything any more and there's no way to decide what's important or not or to do anything with any of it. And her Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon review definitely left me like that.
Maybe River is not Jekyll in this equation . . . Maybe the Doctor is, and River stops him. I remember us talking about this when that blurb from the online marketing of the season six DVDs leaked. I think this is very possible. Or that they both have a Jekyll/Hyde thing going. I've been meaning to write an analysis of the symbolism of A Christmas Carol up ever since it aired because I think it's an allegorical foreshadowing of what's going to happen this season. I could never quite seem to get it written, and I'm just now realizing that probably I was missing big pieces of the picture. But the essential thing, I think, is that Amy and Rory are going to be threatened by the Doctor's lingering Time Lord Victorious/control issues (Kazran and his refusal to saving the ship), and that these issues will have to be addressed through the Doctor looking at himself and deciding to change himself (young!Kazran meeting old!Kazran and choosing a different path in life), and that River (Abigail and the space shark) will be instrumental to saving the day and restoring order and basically intellect and romance will triumph over brute force and cynicism.
no subject
River was an interesting idea from the start because from the start, built into the fact she could be his wife, is the mechanism by which she is not always present - by which she is, in fact, the only kind of wife he probably could have . . .
This bugs me too. I don't *mind* the time travel hand-wave to make raising a Time Family work, but the trick with how River's timeline worked and how that allowed her to fit into the show was just so damn neat and tidy. Adding a child complicates it a whole lot, and it's less that I object on a logistical level as that it offends me aesthetically . . . I don't know how to solve that.
The question then becomes if that pattern holds - are we talking about two parallel stories about parenthood? That would make sense, but here's where I start losing track of the symbolism something chronic . . . the best way I can illustrate the vertiginous sensibility of so many familiar tropes and themes repeating and repeating until I can't recognise them anymore: until they seem sinister rather than familiar.
Oh dear lord yes. Are you familiar with
Maybe River is not Jekyll in this equation . . . Maybe the Doctor is, and River stops him.
I remember us talking about this when that blurb from the online marketing of the season six DVDs leaked. I think this is very possible. Or that they both have a Jekyll/Hyde thing going. I've been meaning to write an analysis of the symbolism of A Christmas Carol up ever since it aired because I think it's an allegorical foreshadowing of what's going to happen this season. I could never quite seem to get it written, and I'm just now realizing that probably I was missing big pieces of the picture. But the essential thing, I think, is that Amy and Rory are going to be threatened by the Doctor's lingering Time Lord Victorious/control issues (Kazran and his refusal to saving the ship), and that these issues will have to be addressed through the Doctor looking at himself and deciding to change himself (young!Kazran meeting old!Kazran and choosing a different path in life), and that River (Abigail and the space shark) will be instrumental to saving the day and restoring order and basically intellect and romance will triumph over brute force and cynicism.