River’s big confession on the “Harmony and Redemption.”
(This has been rattling around in my brain since Friday, and while I haven’t really found the words to express the pinball machine of my brain and heart, I wanted to spit it out before it devolved further or slipped away entirely.)
To start,there are two ways River Song could’ve used the diary the Eleventh Doctor gave her. The first: cold, practical, simple accounts that divulge just enough information to keep their timelines straight whenever the two of them cross paths and avoid spoilers. The practical path a scientist or archaeologist or historian may take when documenting events. However, the diary of River Song is not a collection of facts compiled by an archaeologist, but rather detailed accounts of their adventures and her love for the Doctor that a woman turns to when alone and reads them like fairy tales to keep her company. It’s a collection of her vulnerabilities compartmentalized, contained, and physically separated from her body.
The diary is old, battered, loved… And of the utmost importance to River not only because of spoilers or because it is a potentially dangerous exposure of the Doctor, but because it is a physical manifestation of her vulnerabilities. Of her love. The diary is her soft underbelly; the vulnerable side she keeps well-hidden. Just look at her reaction when her Diary is snatched away: her impulse is to physically tackle Flemming overrides her ever-present logic telling her to stay level-headed.
And what does Flemming do? Grabs that reaction and runs with it. He reads the subjects of several diary entries aloud so every criminal and murderer – people River would want to keep a certain front with – in the room can hear, gleefully mocking her entries:
“The Pandorica Opens. Woo, that sounds exciting! And goodness me,a picnic as Asgard – some people really know how to snack, don’t they? … The crash of the Byzantium. Didn’t they make a movie of that? [laughing] Oh, Jim the Fish! [laughs, then more seriously] Well we all know Jim the Fish. … And you’ve just been to Manhattan. What planet is that?”
All of this is interspersed with River growling threats at Flemming, explaining the longer he goes on the longer it will take her to kill him, and the more she will revel in the act. He’s taking some of the most important, cherished moments in her life (or in the case of Jim the Fish, he lets her know all of this is completely ordinary and foolish to cherish) and using them to humiliate her in front of a crowd as he holds her prisoner, but all it does is fuel her rage. That is until her cracks begin to show…
Kingston’s eyes soften as River discovers Nardole’s fate. She’s sad over that loss even as Nardole confirms that she is a “known consort of the Doctor,” making her position with her captors more precarious. Seeing this moment of softness, Flemming knows he hasn’t quite hit the button yet but it confirms he’s making progress. River continues to simmer as Flemming keeps questioning her – she even becomes her typical, flippant self when she says she doesn’t know where the Doctor is. But then Flemming finds a nerve with “You’re the woman he loves.”
She denies it, of course. (You can see Kingston trying to put up River’s defenses.)
He calls her a liar. It becomes a slowly-escalating argument to prove which of them is correct.
Flemming: “My information is correct! You are the woman who loves the Doctor.”
River: “Yes I am, I’ve never denied it. But whoever said he loved me back? He’s the Doctor, he doesn’t go around falling in love with people. And if you think he’s anything that small or that ordinary, then you haven’t the first idea of what you’re dealing with.”
It continues…
Flemming: “I assure you, this she is the perfect bait. When this woman is in danger, the Doctor will always come.”
(and this is where she really starts to crack…)
River: “Oh you are a moron, no he won’t! … God knows where he is right now, but I promise you he’s doing whatever the hell he wants and not giving a damn about me! And I’m just fine with that! When you love the Doctor, it’s like loving the stars themselves; you don’t expect a sunset to admire you back! And if I happen to find myself in danger, let me tell you: the Doctor is not stupid enough or sentimental enough, and he is certainly not in love enough to find himself standing in it with me.”
Here we really get to see what Steven Moffat meant when he said “I can write it as badass as I like, knowing that Alex will add heart.” (DWM, issue 494) Her entire monologue here could easily be played as bitter and angry; all teeth no tenderness. But it’s not. It’s meant to sound both on the page and to the ears on that ship like she doesn’t care about the Doctor, she doesn’t need him and she certainly cannot be used as bait because the Doctor isn’t so stupid or ordinary as to fall into that sort of trap, not with her anyway.
Of course, that’s not 100% the way it goes with Kingston’s performance. She takes the words and uses them to reveal what River thinks about herself: small, ordinary, stupid, sentimental… Because River did fall in love, because River does come whenever the Doctor calls, and because her love – her love that she would never expect to have returned because she’s selfless (even if she won’t admit it) and independent and guarded – for the Doctor is her weakness and that weakness is being put on parade. She even tries to reassure herself with “And I’m just fine with that!” but it’s clear she’s not particularly “fine” at all. The words bite and claw and deny and push away, but on screen, between those words, River – Kingston – is scrambling to keep the tears back and hold up her defenses even as her voice threatens to falter. It’s both badass and tender.
And Flemming has succeeded, in a way, by exploiting her weakness before a crowd of known criminals and murderers. But River being River – and because it’s Moffat who sketches her out but Kingston who breathes life into her – throws his attack back in his face and tells him that what he sees as foolishness in her diary isn’t anything she didn’t already know about herself.
So yes, the speech with all of the sunsets and the stars is about doubt and insecurity and unconditional love, but it’s also the much deeper confession that she is a vulnerable, sentimental idiot who would absolutely find herself “standing in it” with him. It’s an incredibly complex scene that can be interpreted in a number of ways because all of us have life experiences, of course. And I think it’s a scene is vastly important to understanding River and her constantly shifting relationship with the Doctor. But find it’s especially important when it comes to understanding not only what River keeps behind her bravado and bravery and ruthlessness, but how River sees herself.
(Not that these things are always weaknesses, but… In the context of River and her life…)
