Dear fandom: why is no one wondering if . . . ?

[promethia_tenk]

Spoilers for Doctor Who 6x01 and 6x02.  Although having seen though 6x04 would probably be safer.  Please no future spoilers in the comments.

So, I've been doing some Moffat-specific story analysis here (symbols, running themes, comparison to other Moff stories) and I am seriously starting to think that the little girl in the astronaut suit could be the Doctor and River's.  Why is fandom not even WONDERING if this could be the case?  We've got one Time Lord left in the whole universe and suddenly there's a little girl who can regenerate.  Are we so used to Doctor Who story logic being insane that the most straightforward explanation available doesn't even occur to us?  Are we so lulled by our sense as television viewers that 'they're not allowed to do that' that we won't even think it?  Cause four years ago who would have believed a writer would actually disrespect the status quo so much as to give the Doctor a wife?  And look where we are now.

Look, I've got reasons!:

1) Basically, if this were just any show that Moffat was writing without a fifty year franchise history to take into consideration, I would be surprised if that little girl wasn't the Doctor and River's. All writers have their things and this is very much Moffat's. [Quote of Moff's supplied by owlsie  : Russell reckons it's all about parenthood with me. It's his view that every writer has one story that they go on re-telling, and that being a father is mine.]

2) Season five has taught me to trust the symbolism.  Symbolism said Amy and Rory would get married.  Symbolism said the Doctor would fix the universe and Amy by sacrificing himself to the cracks and that he would then be brought back to life through the combined auspices of Amy and River.  The symbolism says the story of Eleven and Amy is the story about how both of them will grow up.  And the symbolism around the Doctor/River relationship is crammed full of parental tropes. Now, I would be perfectly happy to accept all that in an abstract kind of sense in which the Doctor and River serve as a metaphorical mum and dad to the universe (see icon) and with Amy as a stand-in daughter figure, but that was before there was a six year old running around with an ability to regenerate.

3) SPOILERS FOR JEKYLL. So a few years ago Moffat wrote this six-episode television show called Jekyll, which is a modern re-imagining of the story of Jekyll and Hyde.  At its heart, it is a six-hour long elaboration of what went down between River and the Dalek: mess with my family and I will FUCK YOUR SHIT UP.  Moffat is already borrowing heavily from Jekyll for the Doctor/River storyline, including playing with ideas of dual identity, putting people in stasis boxes, a woman married to a man who takes different forms, cyclical god/goddess symbolism, the connections between violence and love . . . even apples.  And the only major component that's missing is children. But that's a huge, central component. So much so that I was looking at bits of River's actions last year like the scene with the Dalek and going 'this makes better Moff-sense if there are kids at stake.'  In Jekyll, the main character's children are stolen by an evil corporation that's been directing his life in the hopes of using them to gain control of the super-human powers of Hyde . . . so why do you think the Silence are interested in little Time Girl?  What did River say about why you can't leave Time Lord bodies lying around?

4) A storyline in which future!Doctor and future!River's daughter has been stolen by the Silence in order to steal her Time Lord-y powers, possibly controlled/altered by them in some way, and current!Doctor and current!River have to discover who she is and acknowledge her in order to save her (and the universe), thus claiming their own identities in the process hits . . . approximately every Moffat narrative checkbox ever. Especially ones about stolen/estranged/altered children and about discovering and acknowledging hidden family connections being the key to resolving whole multi-threaded storylines. Also, I have no idea by what story logic this would work, but re: future!Doctor and what he's plotting--having to set up an elaborate time-paradox manipulation in order to force one's younger self into rescuing his future daughter seems like sufficiently weighty reason to choose to submit to mysterious astronaut-related death.

5) Re: discovering hidden family connections. Owlsie had this to say: Moffat would absolutely, totally, 100% try to make us think that it's all about Amy's kid when PSYCH THE WHOLE TIME IT WAS REALLY ABOUT THE DOCTOR'S KID AND AMY'S PREGNANCY IS A DIFFERENT PLOT THREAD ENTIRELY The blatantly manipulative head writer of this show has had the blatantly manipulative alien menace put a photo of Amy with a baby in a kid's room and fandom is taking that as more reliable proof of parentage than AN ABILITY TO REGENERATE? The show even went out of its way with the whole voice recorder 'oh no, does Amy actually love the Doctor not Rory why did she tell the Doctor about her pregnancy before Rory?' thing to discount the possibility that Amy's child is the Doctor's. But nobody's bothering to ask how the girl who regenerated might be the Doctor's in some other way?

6) NARRATIVE IRONY. Watch the scene with the Doctor and River examining the astronaut suit and talking about the little girl but make the assumption that they are unknowingly talking about their own child. It starts to feel very like the scenes in The Pandorica Opens where they're trying to figure out what's in the box and the Doctor keeps not realizing that he's talking about himself. "I have the strangest feeling she's going to find us." Ditto the end of the episode: "So, this little girl, then. It's all about her. Why is she important?"

7) More from Owlsie: And if the little girl is a Timebaby, the Doctor would know, which may be why he seems to be running from her? [it really, really bugs me that he's not trying to find her and I'm SURE there's an EXCELLENT reason for that because Moffat wouldn't spend a whole series/ an x-mas special establishing the Doctor's devotion to children and then have him do something that out of character for NO REASON....right?] Which does have that same kind of 'ack, personal future, do not want!' kind of motivation that had him running away from River in Time of Angels.

8) How did Moff get us all (and, not coincidentally, the Doctor) to accept the idea that the Doctor could actually have a wife? He presented her as a fait accompli, let everybody freak out for awhile, and then it all settled down and three years later we have the impossible: a majority of the audience are going to tell you 'of course she's his wife!' Why not pull the same trick with a kid?

9) elisi  trying come to terms with this possibility: I guess I'm just trying to wrap my head around the concept of the Doctor having sex in canon (oh God, it would be THE END OF EVERYTHING!!!! *g*)  I'll just point out here that it already was.  We got that out of the way last season, lol.  The universe ENDED because the Doctor had sex in the future.  And while, after last season's finale, I was puzzling over the sudden shift away from the water symbolism that dominated the beginning of the season over to the sun symbolism and its mother/father connotations, all of that makes so much more sense as a set-up for a storyline about actual parenthood.

10) Just from a perspective of not wanting to watch a lot of Doctor Who episodes about raising a toddler: I figure that's mitigated by the fact that this show doesn't have to be closely tied into sequential time. We know there are big jumps in the Doctor's timeline sometimes that we don't get to see (like the Time War, or the time Ten spent running from the Ood's summons). Heck, we started this season with a Doctor 200 years older than the last one we saw. I'll fully accept that they can jump over a lot of the young years and get the kid to a point where they are leading their own life that intersects with the Doctor's from time to time.  And Moff's also given us the idea with Amy and Rory that companions might pop back to their own lives for a while and then come back to the TARDIS again--he's breaking us away from the idea that this show is about the Doctor and one companion who stay together no matter what and we follow (pretty much) all of their story until the companion leaves and then we repeat.  We've got the concepts in place for a much more flexible sort of storytelling and system of relationships.

Anyway, I'm not saying I'm 100% sold on this, but I feel like, in the ways that it's possible to predict Moffat's writing, it all fits rather well and I'm a little confused as to why fandom seems to not even have thought of this idea and/or dismissed it out of hand without too much consideration past 'no, they wouldn't dare to do that!'

Comments

[owlboy]

I APPROVE OF THIS POST.

>>So much so that I was looking at bits of River's actions last year like the scene with the Dalek and going 'this makes better Moff-sense if there are kids at stake.'

"It's our oldest, deadliest impulse, the need to protect our own at the expense of any other living thing... Love... is a psychopath" -- Jekyll

I keep coming back to this quote whenever I think of River now . . .

[elisi]

I'll need to mull this over a lot more. Plus, again, I wish you'd watched Angel. (Buffy is about growing up, but Angel is about family. And there's the most gorgeous fic that's pure metaphor, all about forests and string and a Pool of Truth that so relevant...)

The universe ENDED because the Doctor had sex in the future.
("And, in all fairness, the universe *did* blow up...") Whatever the case, then I love time-wime-y storytelling.

OK, I need to make my head FUNCTION before I comment any further. See you later.

[sarahandcocoa.livejournal.com]

I agree!

It was the answer that came straight to my mind when I first saw the little girl regenerate. After all, Moffat has pretty much confirmed they'll be married in Series 5's finale. It can't be Amy and Rory's kid unless it was somehow injected with Time Lord-y powers (which could be what Episode 4 was preparing us for?) He might choose to tell the story of being a parent through Rory and Amy, but I doubt it, not when he has the Doctor to play with. Moffat is changing the very nature of Doctor Who in this series, I feel, and isn't scared of taking risks and perhaps losing some of the more traditional fans. I hope he follows this through with River's story arc, and making her the mother of the Doctor's child would certainly do that.

Two things don't sit right with me, though. One, why the girl was trapped in that spacesuit by the Silence without future!River and future!Doctor not turning the Universe over with a fine toothcomb to find her. Two, when River examines the spacesuit and says the girl must be incredibly strong to have broken out of it, if this theory is correct then she would suspect at this point that it was their daughter and show distress (even if she felt the need to conceal it - they'd be some hint there, surely?). I understand what you're saying about narrative irony, but it would be very subtle and dark irony if it turned out to be the case.

Having said that, River might have handed her daughter to Rory and Amy before she is arrested and put in Stormcage. She would then assume her daughter is safe and sound. All this could happen while present!Doctor remains oblivious. It would make a good cliffhanger for episode 7!

[bendingwind.livejournal.com]

Actually, Adri and I theorized this based on spoilers before the episodes even aired. And then we went around being smug and not telling one because if this doesn't turn out to be canon--and it might be the case that it's not even though I would sulk forever--I think we're going to try to write an AU fic about it.

So basically YANA.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Lots of interesting thoughts. I agree that it seems like an obvious possibility for the girl's origin, certainly a more logical one than "Amy and the Doctor had sex" or "Amy's unborn child is affected by the TARDIS/radiation/magic."

Hmm, I think the main objection I would raise is that River seems to be living in mostly, if not entirely, opposite order to the Doctor. I feel like she is bordering on too old to have the baby later and not know about it yet. Certainly it could happen, but if we assume River is close-ish to Alex Kingston's age, she may be pushing fifty. This is a somewhat flimsy objection, as AK could believably play younger than she is.

Also, and depending on how much older or younger the River we see in Seasons 4 and 5 is, it could reflect badly on River and the Doctor's parenting. If it's, I dunno, twenty years later for her, by all means return to dangerous time travel, but if neither she nor the Doctor are caring for the child (which we don't see them doing), and both are engaging in dangerous activities that could easily leave them stranded far from the child, well, poor kid. Again, a flimsy objection, as we have no idea how much time has passed, and for all I know, maybe the kid lives with her grandparents, which is legit.

The universe ENDED because the Doctor had sex in the future.

I agree that they imply heavily that the Doctor and River are in a sexual relationship, but is that the same as having it confirmed in canon? And I thought the world ended because the Silence messed with the TARDIS and made it explode....

[cassi0pei4.livejournal.com]

I think the picture could actually work as evidence for your theory as well. I mean, if River and the Doctor had a daughter and Amy and Rory were still around as companions you know they would become the kid's cool godparents or aunt and uncle. And maybe Amy got her picture taken when holding the baby because she was the honorary aunt? I feel like that's a plausible explanation for Moffat to use, if the story does break the way you're thinking.

Anyways, this was really awesome to read. As much as I generally shy away from fanfic in which people make River pregnant - because it's usually just so full of gender stereotypes that I find it nauseating - I think Moffat could pull it off and...man, that kid would be just epically awesome. No wonder she can break out of an astronaut suit and survive on her own!

[honeynoir.livejournal.com]

Ooh, shiny essay! One of my first thoughts after seeing the regeneration was "when I log on to LJ fandom will be divided between Amy/Rory!child and River/Doctor!child" -- (I spend too much time on LJ *g*) -- and fandom really wasn't. At all. Basically, this post needed!

Anyway, awesome post; I plan on returning later and read it more carefully!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, that totally did occur to me as one of the parent-child permutations of this whole series (because I'm well aware of that quote about RTD's opinions on Moff's writing, and while I'm not a huge RTD fan in Who terms, he really did nail Mr Moffat with that one, and Jekyll is marvelous), but while i tihnk it needs to be out there as an option, there's a few things about it that don't add up (not that her being Amy and Rory's child does either, mind you).

In terms of "they can't do that, though, can they?!" I think there's a bit of that going on? 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. Now, granted, time-travel ("Hey Amy and Rory, I'll be back in 10 years time for me, but next Saturday for you, River says it's my decade to handle the sprog!") presents a fix for this too, but again, it's an issue I think is worth not discounting?

But more than that, I think that I'm uncertain what the symbolism is telling me at this point, and I find that disconcerting?

Last year was all about marriage; this year is all about children, that's a progression that makes sense - I don't mean in terms of whether it's good in terms of personal preference, there's a reason lots of people don't want babies on their shows - what I mean is it's narratively logical, especially in view of Moffat's core themes.

Last year also had two distinct marriages under examination - Amy/Rory and River/Doctor. Amy/Doctor at the end of the Angels episode was an argument against a love quadrangle; a confirmation that these are separate but parallel stories, not interlocking ones, at least on the romantic front.

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.

Because that mirroring, and duality, is already expressed in Amy's story due to the positive/negative aspect of her Schroedinger's pregnancy. Two kids is difficult enough to juggle when you have the thematic justification of OMGSPARALLELS but I'm not sure how this puzzle piece fits in.

Which is to say, I don't think you're wrong to point out the things you're pointing out, because I agree with all of them. But so far this season's themes are...I don't know. It reminds me that a cancer is only uncontrolled replication; pretentious perhaps, but 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. Whether that's going to turn into disappointment or genius, I honestly, honestly can't say.

It is...not the way I expected to feel about this season. I think I was expecting one great big trip of trust, the way I felt after The Big Bang? Instead I feel like if he pulls this off, it'll be even better, but if he doesn't, it'll be...really weird.

All that said, the only new thing I have to add, without necessarily thinking this is likely, but thinking it may bear...noting -

If the story wants to really make us question whether Octavian was right (if not in terms of the specific reasons, at least in terms of the Doctor being horrified by something that River did), when he learns the truth about River, maybe we're approaching this the wrong way around. Maybe River is not Jekyll in this equation.

Maybe the Doctor is, and River stops him.

(Of course, how that ties in with the fact River does still kill a good man, with the fact I don't think the show would ever go quite as far as to have River sacrificing her own child on a family teatime show, etc., I'm not sure. But I do find myself asking if it's so horribly implausible, if that child is theirs, that River was forced to give her to the Silence - and then forget all about it - because it was better than some kind of alternative.)

[thette.livejournal.com]

(Jumping in without reading all the comments.)

I have a looney theory about the child being the Doctor himself. (Especially now that we've heard him say that cross-gender regeneration is possible. But then, he's an unreliable narrator.)

I was thinking about Moffat's themes after TIA/DotM. Identity and being human is a huge part of it, as is memory and children.

[alt_universe_me.livejournal.com]

Wow! Um, so, I fail at fandom-y things lately and haven't been keeping up, so just wanted to leave you a quick note that I read this and you've given me A LOT of interesting things to think about :DDDD

[sea_thoughts]

It all makes sense. Wish I could give a better response.

[stick-poker.livejournal.com]

Before I reply to this, I feel like I have to purge the theory which I didn't really like and didn't want to believe but which gripped me at that vulnerable moment while falling asleep a couple of weeks ago and so took a firmer, dream-like hold than it has any right to. It went that River is a fob-watched Time Lady and the little girl is her, before she became fob-watched, and the Doctor ends up in a nasty reversal of his John Smith situation with deciding whether to let her know, or letting her know and letting her make the decision, of whether she stays as the human who loves him and he loves or becomes the Only Other Member Of His Species And A Girl And Everything but someone else. But as a theory that left so many questions unanswered, aspects unresolved, that it was no cop for anything other than giving me an unquiet night, I don't think.

This, now, this theory I like. For all the Moffly logic you point out, but I think most compellingly number 6, although maybe I just have a narrative irony kink. There's something about the dialogue in that scene that makes no sense unless River knows more than she's letting on in it.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

I have nothing intelligent to add at the moment that hasn't already been said in the comments, but you just made me happy in my brain after reading this and then following links. May I friend you?

[stargatecrazy.livejournal.com]

I thought this as soon as we had River's reveal in AGMGTW (so not as early as you thought it...but :P)

It would make sense as I'm not 100% sold on the fact that River can regenerate (since she only has plus DNA), so the little girl could be their child...

SGC