Reviews Series / Doctor Who

I'd disagree. She's a fairly stock "Moffat" character, all things considered. I always found it rather annoying when she'd barge in on an episode when I would have rather just kept it focused on Amy and Rory, characters who were much more down-to-earth and easier to care about, as opposed to River Song, who really just feels like she jumped out of someone's fanfiction. Which is kinda what happened, if you think about it...

I love River too! And I do know some good fanfics about her (or at least with her in them). Basically, anything from Dobby's Socks is good.

Pannic, that's interesting. To me, it was always Amy who felt like a stock character, a bit like Rose Tyler — cute, boring, kind of selfish, mean to her boyfriend, and rewarded for — what? her almost superlative ordinariness? — with a cute guy who swoops down out of the sky and carries her off in his cool ship. Admittedly, River had a bit of that, too, but at least River was legitimately awesome in her own right; she wasn't waiting around to be swept off her feet; and you couldn't accuse her of being fickle!

Katherine-Sanderson, thanks for the suggestion. I'll check it out when I have time.

Looking forward (a bit apprehensively) to the Christmas special!

I'm talking about Moffat's stock characters. Moffat seems to gravitate towards a series of characters that he falls back on a lot. Amy also falls into that - "regular protagonist lady." River Song is another Moffat stock character; "casually sexual kickass lady" (see also Irene and Space Pope).

Oh, I see. I guess I'm not familiar enough with Moffat's other work to have noticed. She does have a lot in common with Mary Watson, but River came first, and Mary hasn't been that well developed yet.

The Moffat character I would compare River with is Irene Adler. While the women share some superficial similarities, their personalities are in many respects (such as how they express themselves sexually) almost diametrically opposite. Irene is practically built out of offensive, misogynistic tropes, whereas River does a great job of averting and subverting many of the same tropes. Given how many women in modern media seem to be of the Irene-type, a character like River makes for a really refreshing change.

The details might be different between Irene and River, but the truth is, you could take a lot of lines of dialogue they say and it would be very difficult to guess which one said it. And that's the same for a lot of Moffat female characters, even the one-offs in the episodes. Try picking out what thing Clara said and what thing Amy said.

Luckily, like many of Doctor Who's recent problems, this seems to be mostly gone in the newest season. They did so much right there :)

It's not just a thing with his female characters. Rory and Watson, for example both fall into "Easily-baffled everyman" figure. And the Doctor and Sherlock are both "eccentric and socially clueless geniuses."

Anyway, I can't comment on recent seasons (most recent episode I've seen was the twelfth Doctor's debut), but I found the show was losing me after series six.

Oh, I completely agree that the characters on Doctor Who are formulaic, and also that they bear a lot of resemblance to the characters on Sherlock. But then why single River out for particular criticism? She's no more trite and obnoxious than Amy or Rory (or John, Sherlock, or Irene, for that matter); in many ways, I'd say she's a lot better.

Anyway, until a couple of years ago Doctor Who was the only Moffat show I'd seen, and I'm still more inclined to consider River in relation to other Who characters than to other Moffat characters. Most of the Doctor's companions so far have fit more or less into the same cookie-cutter mold: cute, girly twenty-somethings with middle-class ennui and princess complexes. In contrast, what other companion does River resemble? Jack Harkness, yes, but River has enough of her own style for me to over-look the similarities and love her for herself.

I guess I'm just the opposite of Pannic. For me, River always felt like the character who jumped out of a better show and added some fun to the series when Amy was being boring.