#but when we get so much of that doctor being angry/river being restrained combo

[theajaheira]

OOF, we've started to hit "scenes that have aged like milk with the full context of river's reveal!" the doctor speaking with SUCH condescending certainty that river could never be his equal, could never in the world measure up to him in terms of space-time complexity, when arguably river is That And More...i feel two kinds of ways about this, one very colored by my doctor/river softness, one very colored by my writer brain frustration. i shall start with the first one.

i do think that there exists a way to read this as the doctor continuing to write off river and refuse to admit that she could be A Person to him. he doesn't know her, so he does not know enough to make this call, and to tell her she doesn't know what she's talking about when he Doesn't Know Her is patently absurd. he's been digging himself into defensive anger all of this episode, all while floating around her like a lil satellite, not wanting to admit that he does actually absolutely like her, so i do think he would be off-the-cuff harsh with her in a moment like this! plus of course he has another plan + he is not one to let people sacrifice themselves for him when he can avoid it, so character-wise, this tracks.

but the thing is, river is right! and the fact that the narrative sorta has her put up these garden-variety protestations instead of having her go "you really have no fucking clue what you're talking about" yet again showcases the weakness of shifting all melody pond hints all the way into season six, and making all of these hints so tiny that no casual viewer could conceivably knit them all together! this was a moment that needed a hint, and the fact that it doesn't have one turns it into this brutal and uncomfortable dismissal both upon first watch and rewatch.

first watch, the doctor is flat-out saying "you're not as important as me" to someone he's ostensibly starting a flirtationship with, and he is constantly saying things like this to river -- i'd never trust you, you embarrass me, why did you have to be this, etc. which is just VISCERALLY uncomfortable to sit with when we just do not get nearly enough tenderness between them to counterbalance... all of that! (we get tenderness and flirting and silliness, but none of it really outweighs how awful some of the things he says to her are!)

rewatch, WE KNOW RIVER IS RIGHT. full stop. she is a complicated space time event on a level that gets frankly ridiculous. maybe the doctor's been doing this for longer but i truly don't think (at least in new who, can't speak for classic) that anyone's timeline is as consistently fucked and nonsensical as river's. so when the doctor dismisses her and she just keeps going "but i don't want you to die!!!" that seems wildly inconsistent with river's character (or, at the very least, how the narrative seems to want us to view river) -- she definitely keeps her cards close to her chest, but if the doctor is in danger and she knows that her life will work as well as his, she will Literally Die For Him to preserve the timeline. as has been shown to us in the library. this is a moment where i truly think that a consistently written river would have dug her heels in and brought up, rightly, that he does not know her and does not know enough about her to make that call. (and that in itself would feed so beautifully into the doctor's anger/insecurities around not knowing who she is, and being drawn to her despite that! they could start having another married couple fight in front of the angels! so many things are possible that would make this make more sense!)

i think what i am going to keep coming back to over and over is that we did not get enough time with river to make this story feel consistent and planned. we have the skeleton of a story, but we needed foreshadowing, filler moments, episodes where river is just there kinda fucking around with the crew and establishing a rapport with amy and rory. she is simultaneously incredibly important to the doctor and the ponds and a complete stranger who breezes in here and there, and there's more that could be done with that! maybe with LESS of the doctor being a dick to her. (or, at least, same amount of the doctor being a dick to her, but much more of their loosely sketched s7 dynamic, where it's clear he adores her and always hears her and would give up years of his life just to make her feel a tiny bit better!)