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reaction post for Doctor Who'ss A Good Man Goes To War
Just. Wat.
(This is the ep that hasn't aired yet in North America)
First off, I cannot believe that Steven Moffat had the balls to pull that off.
Deep down in my heart, I think I always wanted to believe that River was Amy and Rory's kid. I even wrote 2,000 words to that effect (which what the hell, I'll post at the bottom of this post because it's not like it'll ever happen now). But not like this. Never like this.
You do realize that this means that Amy nearly killed her own daughter? That River reminded her own parents of their life with the Doctor, thereby securing her own future? That River can *regenerate*? That wee!River tore her way out of an alien exoskeleton in Florida and then made her way to New York when she was six years old? That's one bad-ass first-grader.
(I'm having flaily thinky thoughts about the Library now. Initially, it was WAIT RIVER COULD REGENERATE but then I was all, oh yeah, she did that cuz a Timelord would die with all the electricity and then as I'm writing this I thought, SIR, She is no Timelord! and I'm back where I started with the flailing)
Was entertained with the Sontaran's last line to Rory. Can we say foreshadowing? Actually, it's less foreshadowing and more fore-hammering.
From the ep:
River: It's your daughter's name in the language of the forest.
Fact the first: The people from this ep were from The Forest.
Fact the second: I offer the following episode titles from season 5, in which we first meet River.
Idris/TARDIS: The only water in the forest is the river.
tl;dr My idea is: The Silence are behind this as both revenge upon the Doctor for murdering them and in pre-emptive defence against the Doc rot. Recall, there is no evidence that the Silence can travel in time. Thus, after the Doctor defeated them in the season opener by freeing the child, they started this campaign to stop him. It's all cyclical. And this really makes no sense, even to me, but hey it could happen. Wibble Wobble Time Wime What.
Really, tho, I have no answers, only squee. Steven Moffat, I salute you, and I look forward to whatever the hell you pull off next.
and then the fic. Pardon any grammar mistakes, I never got as far as a beta with this.
I was going to call this
written in August, 2010, way before season 6 started.
Summary: Why River? Because Millpond would have been cruel
At the time, the name had seemed brilliant.
Amy's life moved in circles and here she was, in labor in Ledworth, only this time without murderous elderly aliens or Dream Lords; only Amy screaming and Rory by her side and honestly, if the baby didn't make an appearance soon , Amy was putting the whole thing off for another day.
Rory held her hand and talked her through the contraction, and this was different too, her brilliant husband who was still part plastic Roman centurion, with more patience than anyone and the stupid pragmatism of someone who'd lived for two thousand years.
The contractions went on and it was nearly dawn when Amy could finally push and there she was, a tiny beautiful baby squalling at the top of her lungs.
The doctor put the baby in Amy's arms, and the long hours of labor didn't matter much any more. "Hello there," Rory whispered, touching the baby's cheek. The infant turned her head toward the touch, her eyes wide open.
"What were you thinking?" Amy asked, cradling the baby to her chest. The baby fit , a piece of Amy's heart she hadn't known she was missing. "Were you trying to kill Mummy?"
The baby curled her tiny hand around Rory's finger, holding tight.
Amy settled back against Rory, with him holding her up as he'd been doing forever. "Watch out Rory, she'd going to have you wrapped around her little finger in a moment."
"Too late," Rory responded, never taking his eyes off the baby. "She's perfect."
"Sure is." Amy tried to breathe around the hammering in her chest, heart-pounding terror wrapped up in so much love that it hurt.
"What are we going to name her?"
"I dunno." All the names they'd picked out beforehand suddenly seemed inadequate for the tiny human being in her arms. "I bet she'll be amazing one day."
"Hullo, she's amazing now," Rory pointed out. "And strong."
"And stubborn. I was in labor for nearly a day."
"Don't forget beautiful."
Maybe it was the hormones from the labor, or the long days in the TARDIS with the Doctor, or memories of saving the universe made close by her life circling back in on itself, but Amy found herself blurting out, "River."
Rory looked around, probably expecting to see River Song in the doorway. "What?"
"We should call her River," Amy repeated. The baby let go of Rory's finger and waved her arm in the air.
"River," Rory said experimentally. It sounded even better than Amy had hoped. "You don't think she'll mind?"
Amy snorted. They had left the Doctor a few months before, but hadn't seen River Song since before Amy got pregnant. "River would think it was a grand joke."
"All right, then." Rory carefully took the baby from Amy's arms. "How would you feel about us naming you River, love?"
The baby blinked, and it must have been Amy's imagination, but the expression on the tiny face held an echo of the other River. But that was impossible, so Amy let it slide out of her mind.
"River," Amy said, testing the weight of the name on her tongue. "Little River."
"We call her River on one condition," Rory said.
"What's that?"
"River, last name Williams."
"Why? What's wrong with Pond?"
"Amy, I'm not saddling any child with the name River Pond."
"Spoilsport."
And that was how they were three, Amy, Rory and little River.
In a few weeks, the baby's eyes faded from the dark blue of a newborn to a beautiful green.
This wasn't anything to be alarmed at, Amy told herself as she walked the moonlit garden with the baby in her arms. Amy had green eyes, so little River could have green eyes too.
it didn't mean anything that River Song had green eyes too.
After a few months, the baby's hair started to grow, light blond and curling into ringlets.
Amy's mum cooed and nattered on about how Rory's dad had curly hair, didn't he? while Amy and Rory looked at each other over the baby's head in silence.
River was a brilliant child. Crawling by seven months, she was soon faster on four legs than Amy was on two. At nine months, she figured out how to escape her crib. When she was ten months old, Amy put her on the kitchen floor for a moment, went to rummage in a drawer, and turned back to see her daughter escaping the house through the cat flap.
It was slowly driving Amy mad, so when Rory suggested they go away for a weekend and leave little River with Amy's parents, Amy jumped for it. But when it was time to leave, Amy couldn't let go of the baby.
"It'll be all right, dear," Amy's mum told her, sitting on an armchair in Amy and Rory's house. Amy paced back and forth, her green-eyed curly-haired daughter talking nonsense in Amy's ear all the while.
"Will it?" Amy shot back.
"Mama mama," River sang out, tugging on Amy's hair. "Mama mama mama!"
Amy shifted River around in her arms, no longer startled to see the ghost of River Song in her strange changeling child. "River River," Amy said back, making the baby grin in delight. "My brilliant River."
It didn't make sense, how she could love someone so much and still be a little scared of them.
Rory came in to announce the car was packed, and River nearly came to grief as she tried to jump into her father's arms. "Hold up there," Rory said, tossing River into the air. "You behave for your gram and gramps, won't you?" To Amy's mum, he said, "We've got bond money in the sock drawer upstairs if she causes any explosions or fires."
Amy's mum laughed as if Rory were joking.
Six hugs and eighteen kisses later, Amy was in the car, clutching one of River's socks as Rory drove them out of town. They were silent for several miles, Amy lost in thoughts she'd been repressing since the first day she held little River in her arms.
Finally, after they'd passed the sign telling them twenty miles to Gloucester, Amy had had enough. "I think I'm going crazy."
"I want to be a doctor."
It was probably a good thing Amy wasn't driving. "You what now?"
Rory didn't take his eyes off the road. "It's been over a year since we left the Doctor and I can't do this anymore."
"Do what ?"
"Do this! Don't you want to do more ?"
Amy pushed back in her seat, wondering at the strange relief she felt, another piece of the puzzle in her life sliding into place. Of course she wanted more. No one could possibly travel with the Doctor for as long as they had and walk away unchanged. Hell, they'd rebooted the universe and all in time for her wedding. And that had just been the start.
Rory had changed more than she had, and part of Amy had been waiting for him to act like it. She'd recovered memories of a year traveling with the Doctor, but Rory had nearly two thousand years of memories in his head, roaming the world protecting the Pandorica throughout history. Protecting her. That meant something.
Amy sighed. " 'Course I want more, idiot." Apprehension bled out of Rory's posture at Amy's words, but he kept his mouth shut. "I've just been freaking out over the possibility that we've got a baby River Song in the nursery, that's all."
Rory took his hand off the wheel to squeeze Amy's knee. "It'll be okay."
"You're not going to tell me I'm imagining it?"
"Imagining what?"
"The green eyes, the crazy hair? How about the escape acts? I caught her trying to pick a lock yesterday!"
"She only did that because she saw you do it the other night when you dropped your keys in the park."
"That's not the point!"
"It is the point. She wants to do everything you do."
Amy crossed her arms over her chest. Damn it, but he was right. "Fine, but if she starts talking about running off with the Doctor when she's seven, she's grounded until she's forty."
Rory considered. "Fair enough."
Amy rubbed the tiny sock between her fingers, wondering what they had started on that day they gave River her name. "Do you think we'll ever see him again?" No need to specify who she meant. Who else could she be talking about?
"Probably." There was something in Rory's tone that made Amy look at him.
"What?"
"It's just... I wonder what he'll say when he meets River. Our River."
"She'll probably hotwire the TARDIS and end up setting Rome on fire."
"She's not even a year old."
"Give her time."
The weekend was a smashing success. Amy and Rory had two rows over his wanting to be a doctor, mostly around Amy's insistence of what took you so long? They'd spend the night in a pub, Amy calling her mum three times to make sure the baby was all right and the house still standing. On Saturday, they went for a walk in the streets of London, got caught up in an art heist, were nearly arrested, and had to run for their lives.
All in all, a glorious day.
They arrived back in Ledworth on Sunday afternoon, earlier than they'd planned because Amy couldn't bear to be separated from little River any longer. They walked into the house to find Amy's mum with a worried expression on her face. "Dear..." she began.
"What happened?" Amy demanded, visions dancing in her head of Daleks in the nursery. Rory pushed past them to bolt for the bassinet in the living room.
"Well, River had a little tumble out the window," Amy's mum said. "She's all right, we took her to the clinic, but she's got a bit of a gash on her head."
No Daleks. And the baby was all right. Amy wavered on weak knees as she hurried over to Rory and the baby, the million little disasters in her mind fading as her little girl reached out for her, full of smiles and happiness in spite of the two-inch gash on River's forehead.
"She'll be all right, dear," Amy's mum said again.
Amy thought of the other River, during the crash of the Byzantium and at the Pandorica at the end of everything, and felt her heart seize up at what she had started when she'd named her child River.
Whoever invented the term the terrible twos must have met River Williams.
Rory was in medical school so he wasn't around a lot, which meant Amy was the one handling the demon child in the nursery.
The girl just never stopped. Running around all day, babbling questions, throwing anything not nailed down and climbing up on anything solid enough to hold her weight, then collapsing for too-brief naps before getting up and doing it all over again.
Amy got no sympathy from her mother. "You were worse at her age, dear," was all she said. Then River toppled off the sofa onto the cat and Amy had to go play grown-up.
When Rory came home, he'd invariably ask, "How was River today?" as the little girl ran to him with arms wide open.
"Oh, you know," Amy would reply with a smile. "Typical River. Brilliant as always."
The little facade Amy built around her life came crashing down just after River turned three.
and then I stopped writing, but this was the point the Doctor came to call and met River and was like WTF and we learn that River is River, and Amy is livid. But I suppose I'll never write that now. Oh well :)
(This is the ep that hasn't aired yet in North America)
First off, I cannot believe that Steven Moffat had the balls to pull that off.
Deep down in my heart, I think I always wanted to believe that River was Amy and Rory's kid. I even wrote 2,000 words to that effect (which what the hell, I'll post at the bottom of this post because it's not like it'll ever happen now). But not like this. Never like this.
You do realize that this means that Amy nearly killed her own daughter? That River reminded her own parents of their life with the Doctor, thereby securing her own future? That River can *regenerate*? That wee!River tore her way out of an alien exoskeleton in Florida and then made her way to New York when she was six years old? That's one bad-ass first-grader.
(I'm having flaily thinky thoughts about the Library now. Initially, it was WAIT RIVER COULD REGENERATE but then I was all, oh yeah, she did that cuz a Timelord would die with all the electricity and then as I'm writing this I thought, SIR, She is no Timelord! and I'm back where I started with the flailing)
Was entertained with the Sontaran's last line to Rory. Can we say foreshadowing? Actually, it's less foreshadowing and more fore-hammering.
SPECULATION!
From the ep:
River: It's your daughter's name in the language of the forest.
Fact the first: The people from this ep were from The Forest.
Fact the second: I offer the following episode titles from season 5, in which we first meet River.
Silence in the Library.
Forest of the Dead.
Idris/TARDIS: The only water in the forest is the river.
tl;dr My idea is: The Silence are behind this as both revenge upon the Doctor for murdering them and in pre-emptive defence against the Doc rot. Recall, there is no evidence that the Silence can travel in time. Thus, after the Doctor defeated them in the season opener by freeing the child, they started this campaign to stop him. It's all cyclical. And this really makes no sense, even to me, but hey it could happen. Wibble Wobble Time Wime What.
Really, tho, I have no answers, only squee. Steven Moffat, I salute you, and I look forward to whatever the hell you pull off next.
and then the fic. Pardon any grammar mistakes, I never got as far as a beta with this.
I was going to call this
Child of Water
written in August, 2010, way before season 6 started.
Summary: Why River? Because Millpond would have been cruel
At the time, the name had seemed brilliant.
Amy's life moved in circles and here she was, in labor in Ledworth, only this time without murderous elderly aliens or Dream Lords; only Amy screaming and Rory by her side and honestly, if the baby didn't make an appearance soon , Amy was putting the whole thing off for another day.
Rory held her hand and talked her through the contraction, and this was different too, her brilliant husband who was still part plastic Roman centurion, with more patience than anyone and the stupid pragmatism of someone who'd lived for two thousand years.
The contractions went on and it was nearly dawn when Amy could finally push and there she was, a tiny beautiful baby squalling at the top of her lungs.
The doctor put the baby in Amy's arms, and the long hours of labor didn't matter much any more. "Hello there," Rory whispered, touching the baby's cheek. The infant turned her head toward the touch, her eyes wide open.
"What were you thinking?" Amy asked, cradling the baby to her chest. The baby fit , a piece of Amy's heart she hadn't known she was missing. "Were you trying to kill Mummy?"
The baby curled her tiny hand around Rory's finger, holding tight.
Amy settled back against Rory, with him holding her up as he'd been doing forever. "Watch out Rory, she'd going to have you wrapped around her little finger in a moment."
"Too late," Rory responded, never taking his eyes off the baby. "She's perfect."
"Sure is." Amy tried to breathe around the hammering in her chest, heart-pounding terror wrapped up in so much love that it hurt.
"What are we going to name her?"
"I dunno." All the names they'd picked out beforehand suddenly seemed inadequate for the tiny human being in her arms. "I bet she'll be amazing one day."
"Hullo, she's amazing now," Rory pointed out. "And strong."
"And stubborn. I was in labor for nearly a day."
"Don't forget beautiful."
Maybe it was the hormones from the labor, or the long days in the TARDIS with the Doctor, or memories of saving the universe made close by her life circling back in on itself, but Amy found herself blurting out, "River."
Rory looked around, probably expecting to see River Song in the doorway. "What?"
"We should call her River," Amy repeated. The baby let go of Rory's finger and waved her arm in the air.
"River," Rory said experimentally. It sounded even better than Amy had hoped. "You don't think she'll mind?"
Amy snorted. They had left the Doctor a few months before, but hadn't seen River Song since before Amy got pregnant. "River would think it was a grand joke."
"All right, then." Rory carefully took the baby from Amy's arms. "How would you feel about us naming you River, love?"
The baby blinked, and it must have been Amy's imagination, but the expression on the tiny face held an echo of the other River. But that was impossible, so Amy let it slide out of her mind.
"River," Amy said, testing the weight of the name on her tongue. "Little River."
"We call her River on one condition," Rory said.
"What's that?"
"River, last name Williams."
"Why? What's wrong with Pond?"
"Amy, I'm not saddling any child with the name River Pond."
"Spoilsport."
And that was how they were three, Amy, Rory and little River.
In a few weeks, the baby's eyes faded from the dark blue of a newborn to a beautiful green.
This wasn't anything to be alarmed at, Amy told herself as she walked the moonlit garden with the baby in her arms. Amy had green eyes, so little River could have green eyes too.
it didn't mean anything that River Song had green eyes too.
After a few months, the baby's hair started to grow, light blond and curling into ringlets.
Amy's mum cooed and nattered on about how Rory's dad had curly hair, didn't he? while Amy and Rory looked at each other over the baby's head in silence.
River was a brilliant child. Crawling by seven months, she was soon faster on four legs than Amy was on two. At nine months, she figured out how to escape her crib. When she was ten months old, Amy put her on the kitchen floor for a moment, went to rummage in a drawer, and turned back to see her daughter escaping the house through the cat flap.
It was slowly driving Amy mad, so when Rory suggested they go away for a weekend and leave little River with Amy's parents, Amy jumped for it. But when it was time to leave, Amy couldn't let go of the baby.
"It'll be all right, dear," Amy's mum told her, sitting on an armchair in Amy and Rory's house. Amy paced back and forth, her green-eyed curly-haired daughter talking nonsense in Amy's ear all the while.
"Will it?" Amy shot back.
"Mama mama," River sang out, tugging on Amy's hair. "Mama mama mama!"
Amy shifted River around in her arms, no longer startled to see the ghost of River Song in her strange changeling child. "River River," Amy said back, making the baby grin in delight. "My brilliant River."
It didn't make sense, how she could love someone so much and still be a little scared of them.
Rory came in to announce the car was packed, and River nearly came to grief as she tried to jump into her father's arms. "Hold up there," Rory said, tossing River into the air. "You behave for your gram and gramps, won't you?" To Amy's mum, he said, "We've got bond money in the sock drawer upstairs if she causes any explosions or fires."
Amy's mum laughed as if Rory were joking.
Six hugs and eighteen kisses later, Amy was in the car, clutching one of River's socks as Rory drove them out of town. They were silent for several miles, Amy lost in thoughts she'd been repressing since the first day she held little River in her arms.
Finally, after they'd passed the sign telling them twenty miles to Gloucester, Amy had had enough. "I think I'm going crazy."
"I want to be a doctor."
It was probably a good thing Amy wasn't driving. "You what now?"
Rory didn't take his eyes off the road. "It's been over a year since we left the Doctor and I can't do this anymore."
"Do what ?"
"Do this! Don't you want to do more ?"
Amy pushed back in her seat, wondering at the strange relief she felt, another piece of the puzzle in her life sliding into place. Of course she wanted more. No one could possibly travel with the Doctor for as long as they had and walk away unchanged. Hell, they'd rebooted the universe and all in time for her wedding. And that had just been the start.
Rory had changed more than she had, and part of Amy had been waiting for him to act like it. She'd recovered memories of a year traveling with the Doctor, but Rory had nearly two thousand years of memories in his head, roaming the world protecting the Pandorica throughout history. Protecting her. That meant something.
Amy sighed. " 'Course I want more, idiot." Apprehension bled out of Rory's posture at Amy's words, but he kept his mouth shut. "I've just been freaking out over the possibility that we've got a baby River Song in the nursery, that's all."
Rory took his hand off the wheel to squeeze Amy's knee. "It'll be okay."
"You're not going to tell me I'm imagining it?"
"Imagining what?"
"The green eyes, the crazy hair? How about the escape acts? I caught her trying to pick a lock yesterday!"
"She only did that because she saw you do it the other night when you dropped your keys in the park."
"That's not the point!"
"It is the point. She wants to do everything you do."
Amy crossed her arms over her chest. Damn it, but he was right. "Fine, but if she starts talking about running off with the Doctor when she's seven, she's grounded until she's forty."
Rory considered. "Fair enough."
Amy rubbed the tiny sock between her fingers, wondering what they had started on that day they gave River her name. "Do you think we'll ever see him again?" No need to specify who she meant. Who else could she be talking about?
"Probably." There was something in Rory's tone that made Amy look at him.
"What?"
"It's just... I wonder what he'll say when he meets River. Our River."
"She'll probably hotwire the TARDIS and end up setting Rome on fire."
"She's not even a year old."
"Give her time."
The weekend was a smashing success. Amy and Rory had two rows over his wanting to be a doctor, mostly around Amy's insistence of what took you so long? They'd spend the night in a pub, Amy calling her mum three times to make sure the baby was all right and the house still standing. On Saturday, they went for a walk in the streets of London, got caught up in an art heist, were nearly arrested, and had to run for their lives.
All in all, a glorious day.
They arrived back in Ledworth on Sunday afternoon, earlier than they'd planned because Amy couldn't bear to be separated from little River any longer. They walked into the house to find Amy's mum with a worried expression on her face. "Dear..." she began.
"What happened?" Amy demanded, visions dancing in her head of Daleks in the nursery. Rory pushed past them to bolt for the bassinet in the living room.
"Well, River had a little tumble out the window," Amy's mum said. "She's all right, we took her to the clinic, but she's got a bit of a gash on her head."
No Daleks. And the baby was all right. Amy wavered on weak knees as she hurried over to Rory and the baby, the million little disasters in her mind fading as her little girl reached out for her, full of smiles and happiness in spite of the two-inch gash on River's forehead.
"She'll be all right, dear," Amy's mum said again.
Amy thought of the other River, during the crash of the Byzantium and at the Pandorica at the end of everything, and felt her heart seize up at what she had started when she'd named her child River.
Whoever invented the term the terrible twos must have met River Williams.
Rory was in medical school so he wasn't around a lot, which meant Amy was the one handling the demon child in the nursery.
The girl just never stopped. Running around all day, babbling questions, throwing anything not nailed down and climbing up on anything solid enough to hold her weight, then collapsing for too-brief naps before getting up and doing it all over again.
Amy got no sympathy from her mother. "You were worse at her age, dear," was all she said. Then River toppled off the sofa onto the cat and Amy had to go play grown-up.
When Rory came home, he'd invariably ask, "How was River today?" as the little girl ran to him with arms wide open.
"Oh, you know," Amy would reply with a smile. "Typical River. Brilliant as always."
The little facade Amy built around her life came crashing down just after River turned three.
and then I stopped writing, but this was the point the Doctor came to call and met River and was like WTF and we learn that River is River, and Amy is livid. But I suppose I'll never write that now. Oh well :)