Thank you! Very glad you enjoyed it. ◕ ◡ ◕ I wrote a reference to the birthday date with River but it got cut. It came in the montage sequence on the ice at the start of the episode when Bill is running around trying everything. She twigs that the Doctor has been to the frost fair before and he replies, “Oh yes. A few times.” A stunned Bill absorbs that and we cut to:
The scene might have actually been filmed (not sure) but I do understand why it was cut. You said it yourself – the important thing here is to focus on the present-day story. A mention of River doesn’t move the plot forward, or even advance Bill’s understanding of the Doctor to a significant degree, especially compared to the more solemn things she comes to understand about his past just minutes later.
There might even be another reason it was cut. Perhaps Steven decided Bill should learn about River in some other way further into the series. If not, then if you want to you can always extrapolate from the Doctor’s “Oh yes. A few times”, and assume that Twelve took the opportunity to tell Bill about his wife in between scenes.
one of the reasons why i appreciate the doctor standing up for bill is that back when i saw the family of blood two-part special, i was very disappointed with how the writers treated the bigotry and racism martha faced to protect the doctor, and it hurt me that the doctor never really stood up for her or even apologized after gaining his memories back for practically treating her as a servant. it made him look back. so i appreciate them finally recognizing the type of racism a companion like bill and martha would face and not have the doctor ignore it.
[time traveler punches him in the face for having the gall to not anticipate the political climate 200 years in advance]
tumblr will defend this
What the hell is wrong with you? There is no situation in which that kind of gross human injustice is acceptable. None. It may be a dominant attitude for the time period but that in no way justifies it. It never has and it never will. Nobody should ever just accept injustice and oppression just because it’s a cultural norm, no matter what time period.
Plus, Bill is the Doctor’s guest and he intends to keep her safe. Are you seriously suggesting it’d be better for him to just tell her to accept horrific injustices because it’s the past? God, you’d probably like that scene in the horrible book Timewyrm: Genesys where the Doctor tells Ace to just accept being sexually harassed because they’re in the past and it’s treated as okay there. That’s disgusting. If you seriously want to see companions abused and injustices embraced just because it’s the past, please get as far away from the optimistic family series that is Doctor Who as possible.
