"Angels of the Silences"

Addendum—August 4, 2010

Why Should You Come When I Call?

What follows are my responses to some remarks posted by "Kristin Lavransdatter," since she's disabled her private messaging function.

"Especially Cassie. She got lost. And I liked her."

It was a tricky story with a lot to balance. I felt like I kept enough of the focus on Cassie. Mileage may vary, naturally. Other comments have said the same thing, so I guess I should be pleased that people liked Cassie and wanted to see more of her.

"And there was very little mystery left regarding River. A great deal of her appeal is that she's enigmatic. No angst over the Doctor having watched her die? And that was the most unromantic wedding I could imagine."

1) I wrote the story after River had only made one appearance. Possibly if I'd written it following season five, I might've written the character a little differently. I wanted to get inside River's mystery, so to speak, and explore what makes her tick. Obviously, that involves unraveling some of her enigma.

2) With regard to angst: all the angst would be on the Doctor's side. River doesn't know how she's going to die. I thought I conveyed the Doctor's distress at meeting her again pretty well. He knows he's going to have a significant relationship with her, and he has to let it happen, because of all the important events that might change if he didn't. But he knows how it's going to end, and that's a source of tremendous sadness for him. I made a point to convey that at several junctures in the story.

3) Also, the wedding is deliberately unromantic. It's a quick, spur-of-the-moment civil ceremony.

"Re: Martha's wedding:

Weddings in the Church of England must be solemnized between 8 AM and 6 PM. So they're not formal evening affairs.

"Lovely to see Geraldine Granger, but if she were the dean of the cathedral, she would be the Very Reverend Canon."

1) Heh, you're the only person who "got" the Geraldine reference.

2) The internet research I did on Anglican weddings said nothing about time restrictions, otherwise I certainly would've incorporated that detail. Also it said nothing about the proper titles of deans of cathedrals. The limits of internet research!

"Would Martha really talk shop at her wedding reception?"

Absolutely! The job is 24/7 for Martha, even on her wedding day.

"Would River, if she were really an archaeologist/anthropologist, ask the Doctor about Christian faith and customs? Wouldn't she ask an insider? (He can't even find Easter, remember!)"

Well, he IS the person she's sitting right next to, and she probably figured he's as good a person to ask as any (and at that juncture, nether she (nor we, the viewers) knew he "couldn't find Easter".) Based on "Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead," it was impossible to know what River would know of Earth customs in the twenty-first century. So she asked the Doctor, who is 1) more widely traveled than her, and 2) more familiar with Earth culture.

"I disliked the Doctor when he got all patronizingly-Carl-Sagan about evolution. No quarrel with the concept, just thought he was a prick about it."

He was meant to be, a little. At least in New Who, the Doctor doesn't suffer idiots gladly, and any schmuck who'd sit in a science class and argue that a major scientific theory is essentially invalid is setting himself up to be roasted.

"Kind of a lot of Christian-bashing going on for a piece with a statement to make about the (limited)value of religion. Nobody else's deity got used as a swear-word. I notice you had nothing to say about the third Abrahamic faith. Chicken?"

1) I didn't think I bashed anyone's religion, but rather tried to get across the point that an awful lot of the mythology surrounding any faith is pretty much human-created. That doesn't make those faiths invalid—it just helps to remember where they come from. I thought I gave a pretty respectful representation of all the faiths depicted in the story.

2) Even non-religious people use "Jesus Christ!" to express anger, frustration, etc. You pick it up. I'm not Catholic, but I say "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph" all the time because I grew up in the Boston area, and I just absorbed it. I have a lot of Jewish friends, and I've picked up "oy vey" from them.

3) By the third Abrahamic faith, I assume you mean Islam? "Chicken?" That's a pretty harsh accusation. At a small, rural college in New England, there would probably be only a handful of Muslim students at most. When the student religious organizations' offices are destroyed (in chapter 4), I did mention that the cubicle for the Islamic Student Alliance was trashed, too, so Islam at least was name-checked, even if I didn't go into it too deeply.

A closing thought…

While I always appreciate feedback on anything I've written, it helps if there's some kind of give-and-take. Anyone who leaves reviews of other people's stories at their sites might want to enable private messaging so that people can respond to the feedback. Writing critiques of other people's material, and then leaving them no way to get in touch, strikes me as more than a little sanctimonious.

Cheers,

EA Week