It has been announced today that Frances Barber will return to her role as the villainous Madame Kovarian in the third series of The Diary of River Song.
Barber played the role of Kovarian in the sixth series of Doctor Who in 2011 alongside Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor as she worked against the Time Lord in order to kidnap the child of his companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams, the child who would grow up to be River Song, played by Alex Kingston.
The Diary of River Song is an audio-series produced by Big Finish and has run for two successful series which has so far seen River meet-up with the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors.
Series 3 will add yet another Doctor to River Song’s list as she meets up with the Fifth Doctor played by Peter Davison.
River, Kovarian and The Doctor will appear in four brand new adventures
3.1 – The Lady in the Lake by Nev Fountain
3.2 – A Requiem for the Doctor by Jac Rayner
3.3 – My Dinner With Andrew by John Dorney
3.4 – The Furies by Matt Fitton
The Diary of River Song: Series 3 will be released in January 2018.
Oh oh oh! This is going to be so good.
-and it might implies some Melody background ahahahahahahha-
After finishing that Lorna gifset last night I suddenly got a story in my head. It’s short, and since it deals with Amy and the Demon’s Run stuff it’s probably not very nice, but here it is anyway.
Title: Justice Rating: PG13…I guess? Fandom: Doctor Who Characters: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, Jenny Flint, the Eleventh Doctor, Lorna Bucket, Madame Kovarian, River Song Warnings: Child loss, death, and abuse Summary: Three lives that touched the life of Amy Pond on Demon’s Run.
don’t compare victims to their abusers don’t compare victims to their abusers don’t do it juST DON’T
I hope this demonstrates why it’s not a good idea to compare River Song (victim) to Madame Kovarian (abuser) on the grounds that they dressed slightly similar once.
Let’s talk about Bucky Barnes, River Song, their decidedly similar narratives when it comes to bodily autonomy, agency and abuse, and the way fandom reacts to all that!
Both Bucky and River are forced to become ‘a weapon’ in the most horrific ways possible – Bucky is tortured and brainwashed; River was experimented on whilst in the womb and spent her childhood alone and terrified (”The spaceman’s here! It’s going to get
me! It’s going to eat me!”).
Due to the brainwashing/horrible medical abuse both suffered, both became the cold-blooded assassins that they never would have become without interference – Bucky working for HYDRA, River tasked by Madame Kovarian with killing the Doctor. Similar dehumanising language is used on both characters by their abusers –
“I made you what you are” / “[We’re] your owners.” / “We’ve been far
too thorough with your dear little head.” (Kovarian to River)
“You
are to be the new face of HYDRA.” “Wipe him and start over.” (Zola and Pierce to Bucky)
When finding themselves tasked with murdering someone they realized loved them (Steve for Bucky, the Doctor for River) it shifted the mindsets of these characters enough to make them flee – Bucky disappeared into the ether; River applied for the Luna University. Slowly they started to regain agency.
Neither character can really be classified as villainous, because of all the things they did they did none of them of their free will. And yet ’Bucky’s not a villain!’ has become a meme, added to gifsets and interviews, reiterated constantly, and River…doesn’t have that. Whenever there’s a ‘Look at Moffat’s villains, all dressed the same!/all older women!/all women!’ post, despite her stint of villainy lasting less than one episode she’s right in there, alongside Kovarian, with zero context given. I’ll grant that the writing may not help at all in that regard (I agree with whoever said ‘can we take the word psychopath away from Steven Moffat’) but basically –
River and Bucky are both characters who were abused and brainwashed and had their agency ripped right from them to make them ‘villains’, but Bucky gets a meme and a hundred gifsets of his broken face and a hundred corrections on any MCU post where he’s lumped in with the likes of Loki or (worse) Pierce, and River gets…well, River usually gets a screenshot taken of the time she was wearing an outfit similar to Kovarian’s for plot reasons, has that placed alongside a screenshot of Kovarian – the woman who abused and experimented on both her and her mother – and a witty caption along the lines of ‘but all of moffat’s villains are different guyz!’ placed over her. And try as I might –
I can’t imagine anyone doing the same thing with Bucky and his abuser.
You took my baby from me and hurt her. And now she’s all grown up and she’s fine. But I’ll never see my baby again.
One of the most chilling moments in Doctor Who comes from the look on Amy Pond’s face and the revenge in her voice as she openly defies any moral code she is expected to live by as the Doctor’s associate and kills the woman who kidnapped and tortured her daughter.
You know, for all that Amy wonders what killing Madame Kovarian ‘makes [her] now’, for all that it seems to have affected her, for all that she’s so outspoken against the concept of killing for revenge in A Town Called Mercy…
Title: Things They Talked About In The Playground Author: sarah531 Rating: R (I think? Open to suggestions) Characters: Amy, Madame Kovarian, Melody Warnings: Oh god. I’m not even sure, I’ll need advice. But for now- non-con, rape, forced medical procedures, victim-blaming and trauma. And anger, I suppose.
Summary: What was done to Amy, and what she did, on Demon’s Run.
Yeeeees…I know I said I’d be doing The Timeline Of River Song next. But because a) it’s taking longer than I expected and b) it’s not really analysis, I’ve decided to make that a whole seperate project and finish Analysing The Ponds first. (I’ve gone back and edited some of the previous posts with new observations, too) So here we have…names!
Names in Doctor Who are chosen well. Sure, a lot of this probably wasn’t intentional…but I don’t care!
Amy– you know already that it means ‘beloved’. But Amy’s full name is Amelia, which means ‘Industrious and striving’. A very fitting name for a woman who later a) started her own perfume business and b) saved the world several times.
Amy’s middle name is Jessica, and this is quite interesting- it means ‘God is watching’. If you consider that Amy basically holds the Doctor up as a god, that name becomes a very suitable one. The Doctor has watched her throughout her entire life, from childhood to adulthood…
And of course, Amy’s last name is Pond– she’s named after water. Water is very much Amy’s element, associated as it is with intuition, imagination, emotion, and the feminine. Plus, well, water brings life. If not for the Ponds and the Rivers, life on Earth would simply not exist as we know it…
There may also be something to be said about the fact that a Pond stands still while a River flows, but our Ponds have travelled the universe and have not really stood still even back on Earth, so I’m not sure that bit quite stands up…
Rory, as I may have mentioned, means ‘red’- ‘red king’ to be specific (see icon!). Red like Amy’s hair. The name has both Irish and Scottish roots, apparently- Scottish, like Amy herself! And I like the ‘king’ part, as Rory very much grows into a (symbolic) King- one with a red cape, as well.
I also like that ‘Rory’ can be a male or a female name, as Rory himself has a few feminine qualities.
Williams next- Wikipedia has a whole page on the name. “Derived from an Old French given name with Germanic elements; will = desire, will; and helm = helmet, protection.” Desire, will, protection and helmet- ah, those words are very much Rory-related. Desire for Amy, will to do the right thing, protection of Amy/Doctor/Melody, and helmet- he had a Roman helmet as the Last Centurion.
Melody means- you guessed it- music and song. Alas, there’s not a lot else to be got there! But…what can always break the Silence? A Song.
Mels in Leadworth takes the name Zucker. When we first heard Mels’ surname- I think it was on a trading card or something- people pointed out that it sounded like ‘Sucker!’ Which is a very, very Moffat thing to do, considering that Mels herself is a walking plot twist. But it is also a German name meaning ‘sugar’…now, “sugar” is often used as the pet name for a partner or lover, and of course sugar is the primary ingredient of sweets. Hello, sweetie…
Ah…and then there’s Mrs Robinson, the Doctor’s occasional name for River. Mrs Robinson is the quissential name for ‘the older woman’ after the film The Graduate, which showed a young man (played by Dustin Hoffman) falling in love with an older woman. But interestingly, in the end Dustin Hoffman leaves with the woman’s daughter instead. Maybe the Doctor should have called Amy Mrs Robinson…
Let’s move on to the elder Ponds, as they are of course important figures in Amy, Rory and Melody’s lives…
Amy’s mother is called Tabitha. There’s a famous Tabitha in the Bible who was raised from the dead by by Saint Peter…and Tabitha herself, along with her husband, is (technically speaking) raised from the dead. Neat!
Augustus was the name of the first Roman Emperor. Amy, of course, was fascinated by Roman history, to the extenct that the Alliance built a whole army of Auton Romans from her mind- was Amy’s love of this era a subconcious connection to the father she never had? (I like to think so.)
Sharon means Forest. A word that plays an important part in Amy, Rory and Melody’s lives- the only water in the forest is the river.
And then there’s the people who play various roles, however tiny, in the lives of the Ponds-
Lorna is a popular name in Scotland, Amy’s land of origin. Her surname Bucket is more significant, though- a bucket is of course used to transfer water, and what does Lorna do? She makes a Pond (via her prayer leaf) a River, of course.
The name Renfrew means “Dwells near the still river”- and Dr Renfrew dwells with and looks after the girl who will grow to be River. (That one was definitely done on purpose.)
Kovarian, the woman charged with delivering Amy’s baby, very nearly has the word ‘ovary’ in her name. ‘Madame’ I think is a title given to women of high rank (and Kovarian does seem to be the only woman working for the Silence.)
I find it significant that the woman killed by the Silence in front of Amy was called Joy, as her death definitely symbolises the end of any real joy for Amy in Series Six. She’s already seen her best friend die, but things get even worse- she even loses her baby, which is most likely the most traumatic thing to ever happen to a Companion.
And then there’s places-
Leadworth as a name doesn’t seem to actually mean anything, but lead is a metal that soon turns to a dull greyish colour. And to Amy, Leadworth was often dull and grey. Not only that, but lead is poisonous- maybe the Amy we know would have ‘died’ had she stayed in Leadworth.
Stormcage contains the wife of “The Oncoming Storm”…
Byzantium was a city which became the imperial residence of- who else- the Romans. Romans are everywhere in Series Five! (The city is now the place called Istanbul, in Turkey.)
Lake Silencio is, of course, named after the Silence. (It doesn’t actually exist, by the way. I checked.)
And then, of course, there’s the Doctor’s name- the one great secret. But you know…he’s married into the Pond family, where the tradition so far is for the men to take the wife’s surname. (Although Amy has been called Williams from time to time, interviews, promo material and Amy herself have firmly labeled Rory as a Pond.) Could the Doctor maybe get around this whole thing by simply announcing to the Silence…
Title: The Mother
Author: sarah531
Rating: PG13 (childbirth, swearing, dark themes in general)
Spoilers: Biiiiig spoilers for A Good Man Goes To War.
Characters: Amy, Madam Kovarian
Summary: Imprisoned and alone, Amy has nothing to cling to but her child, her name, and her hatred.
