Feminist Frequency

Some brief thoughts about Amy Pond & River Song

This article “Why This Year’s Doctor Who Finale Was (Mostly) Better than Last Year’s” by Charlie Jane Anders (io9) has some interesting thoughts about River and Amy’s characters.

SPOILERS

“River Song was such a shiny character, full of endless possibility, and she hit her high point in some of the early Matt Smith stories. Jumping out of spaceships in flight, carving messages in ancient cliffs, and generally being badass and mysterious. Now, it seems like her mystery is gone, and it’s been replaced by… I can hardly bear to type the words.”

“So in order to get River to restart the universe and set things right, the Doctor has to marry her — you’ll notice the Doctor never says he loves her, and he makes fun of her for saying she loves him. Soon afterwards, the Doctor tells River, “I don’t want to marry you.” And then, right before he does marry her, he tells her, “You embarrass me,” and he genuinely seems to be full of loathing for her in that moment. During the actual quickie wedding ceremony, River asks, “What am I doing?” and the Doctor replies, “as you’re told.” Awwww… so romantic. Finally, the Doctor tells her, “Now you’re the woman who marries me,” as if she’s won the jackpot.”

“Meanwhile, there’s Amy. It’s now safe to say that the Silence didn’t brainwash Amy to stop caring about the fact that she’ll never see her baby (as a baby) again — she just got over it really, really quickly.”

“In today’s episode, Amy finally does deal with the fact that her baby was stolen and abused by monsters, by inflicting a painful death on the bubble-universe version of Madame Kovarian. It’s a nice enough moment, but no substitute for seeing Amy actually deal with the enormity of what’s happened to her child. After two seasons, Amy remains a bit of a cartoon character-“

I really have to agree with both of these sentiments, first I was really troubled with how Amy vengefully assisted the murder of Madame Kovarian. While there was some relief at the end of the episode when Amy speaks about her shame for her actions there is really, hardly any discussion about the emotional ramifications of having your BABY STOLEN! If there was any doubt that Amy’s pregnancy was a Mystical one, then this is further proof.

While I enjoy Amy, and in fact really adored her in the fifth season, I completely agree about the cartoonish aspects. The writers haven’t really developed her character much at all and we have very little reason to really care about Amy or even like her that much other than the snarky jokes. Plus this latest season met with way too many “Save Amy” moments to describe her as empowered.

Source: io9.com