Keep Your Dream Alive

If you don't like River Song, you must either a) be a disgruntled Doctor/Rose 'shipper, or b) hate strong female characters.

Um, NO. Neither of the above, thankyouverymuch. My list of awesome female characters I adore is probably longer than your arm (a good chunk of it just from Doctor Who), and FWIW, while it really shouldn't matter to the conversation, I don't like Rose any more than I like River.

So, yeah, I'm admitting it. Out loud. In public. I don't like River Song. I dislike her less this season than last season, granted, but I still find her frequently smug (*gasp* yes, I used that word) and I strongly dislike her tendency to rub their shared/to-be-shared history in the Doctor's face. I love Steven Moffat beyond belief (after that finale, I would happily marry him if he weren't already married ;-) ), but when he created River, I think he must've said to himself, "I know, I'm going to create a character who's half Romana and half Benny Summerfield." But she's not Romana, and she's not Benny, and frankly I would rather have one or both of them than more of River right now. :-(

So why do I dislike River Song? I think part of it is Alex Kingston's performance. Now, I've never really seen her in anything else, have no idea what I think of her as an actress, but as River she really rubs me the wrong way. She really does come across as incredibly smug, and that's got to be a conscious acting choice: many of River's lines to the Doctor, if they'd been said more playfully, would probably not bug me nearly as much. But since she was cast, then obviously Moffat and co. agree with her interpretation, so what can I do but accept it's the "right" one? I will give her props for one thing: having to act a character whose development goes backwards must be a challenge, and one a lot of actors probably couldn't pull off.

Second, while in theory the idea of a relationship out of order sounds pretty cool, in execution it creates one GINORMOUS problem, which is that the power dynamics in it can never be approaching equal, except for perhaps *once* if they meet in the midpoint. I hate, hate, hate relationships with lopsided power dynamics. (This is one reason why The Time Traveller's Wife, while gorgeously written, still gives me a vaguely creepy feeling when I read it. The other being the vaguely pedophiliac undertones of the bits when Claire is a kid.) Which is a big reason why, the more the Doctor learns, and the further we go back in River's timeline so the less *she* knows, the more I can tolerate her. But I also have this niggling fear that once we pass that midpoint and it's a younger River just getting to know the all-knowing Doctor for the first time, the irritation I feel now towards her will be transferred to the Doctor and I really don't want that! :-(

Third, part of the reason I grew to dislike Rose over the course of her run is that I felt like RTD made the Doctor so all about her that all the other companions were consequently relegated to "less important" status, whether intentionally or not. And I'm sorry, but no. The Doctor has loved all of his companions in different ways, but none more or less than any others. Or at least, that's how it should be. With River? We got that same implied "she is/will be MORE IMPORTANT to the Doctor than ANYONE ELSE" from the very start. And in so doing, the show immediately turned me off the character. If we find out at some point in the future that she's not a) his wife/one twu wuv, b) the most important person in his universe, I may very well come to a point where I actually like her instead of just tolerating her with occasional moments of, "okay, that was admittedly pretty awesome". (For example, the "are you married?"/"did I just accidentally propose?" scene in "The Big Bang" undid a LOT of the progress I'd made towards warming up to the character in that episode alone. :-( )

Fourth, going back to what I mentioned above, River feels like she was created to replace two perfectly good characters who already exist in the Whoverse. Now, I don't know that it would be even possible for them to use Benny due to how she was introduced to the universe and her long, complicated and--most importantly--copyrighted history in spin-off media. But Romana? If they could find a way to resurrect the Master, they could find a way to bring her back. And at least when Romana was condescending towards the Doctor, it was because she actually was smarter than him, not just more knowledgeable by virtue of an accident of causality. ;-) And going back to the power dynamic thing: Romana's advantage of intelligence/education was always balanced out by the Doctor's advantage in life experience.

Finally, while she's less of one than she was in Silence in the Library/Forests of the Dead, River is still in many ways the definition of a Mary Sue. And considering how much I hate that term? It should say a lot that I'm using it. :-( We have yet to see her really demonstrate ANY flaws: okay, she was in prison for killing a man. But we don't know who or why, and until we do, we don't know if it's a flaw yet. She can get out of anything (except an exploding TARDIS, but, y'know...), outsmart anyone (even the Doctor so far), frighten a DALEK, and always knows what's coming because it's already happened for her. Oh, and everybody loves her (or someday will). If she has any failings at all, I must be missing them.

So in conclusion: I don't like River Song. This does not make me a misogynistic Barbie!shipper. There are other things that might, I don't know: I'm still very much in the process of examining/discovering my privilege and my prejudices and probably always will be. :-\

As for why other people don't like her? That I can't answer. But you know what? I bet a lot of them--even the Doctor/Rose 'shippers--would have answers that are a lot more complicated and a lot closer to mine than the oversimplification fandom wants to slap on them. :-P

To my friends (and other people) that do love her: considering how big a presence I suspect she's going to continue to be in Moffat's Who, not only do I not begrudge you that, but frankly I envy you. *grin* With luck, maybe at some point in the future I'll be able to enthusiastically say a River Song episode was awesome because of her, not in spite of her. But in the meantime? All I ask from fandom as a whole is this: stop assuming that people who like or dislike a particular character that you feel differently about must have certain traits. It's a surefire way to make them a lot LESS likely to come around to your way of thinking. :-P (And you know what? That doesn't just go for River, but for characters like Rose and Martha and even Adric too, K???)