theassortedmediareport

The complete history of the famous time traveller’s wife and murderer

Introduction

Writer Steven Moffat was a juggernaut in the 2010s British TV landscape, he took the reins of two of the most iconic British properties: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, his status is undeniable.

Moffat’s stories in most of his programmes play around with the chronology of the narrative; due to the time hopping nature of Doctor Who, Moffat was really able to delve into this in his tenure as showrunner and that is most apparent with his original character River Song. River is introduced in a Moffat penned two parter (Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead) during Series 4 of the Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who.

Anyone familiar with the previously stated two parter will remember River’s iconic debut, River Song clearly knows the Doctor very well when they meet but the Doctor has no clue who this person is; as you watch these episodes it becomes clear that these characters are both time travellers who have met in the wrong order, we meet her again (a younger version) in the next series and this starts this interesting dynamic where they continuously meet in the wrong order.

River Song (Alex Kingston) and The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) in Silence in the Library

Now I think many viewers would assume that the more the Doctor gets to know River Song the less she knows about him, however this isn’t really the case and their meetings are more at random points in their lives and it’s not like the timelines run parallel but opposite.

I have decided to make a timeline that chronologises the Doctor and River’s meetings from River Song’s perspective, this will help viewers understand how well River knows the Doctor at each point they meet; looking at the timeline for the perspective of River is also more interesting than the perspective of the Doctor, we already know the order the Doctor meets River in (the order is just the order we see her in the series) so this will interest avid fans of Doctor Who that want to see from this view.

Now naturally this is going to contain spoilers, I know most readers will know that but better to be safe than sorry. Also it should be added that this timeline will only include her appearances in episodes broadcast on the BBC, so that means any mini episodes, audio appearances or video game appearances won’t count as the canon around those is kind of loose.

The Setup 

As established before the Doctor meets River in Series 4 but as River Song clearly already knows the Doctor this isn’t where her story starts, if we want to view River Song’s timeline from the start we have to set up a bit of context which is given to us in Series 6.

Series 6 – Episodes 1 – 4: The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon, The Curse of the Black Spot and The Doctor’s Wife – Throughout the first four episodes of Doctor Who Series 6 the Doctor’s companion Amy Pond keeps seeing a mysterious woman with an eye patch, at this point the Doctor, Amy and Rory (her husband) all know River Song but they don’t really know as much about her as she knows about them (the River they know is from their future).

The woman seen throughout Series 6

Series 6 – Episodes 5 – 6: The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People – The teasing of this mysterious woman is eventually paid off in the second two parter of the series. In this story we meet a group of acid miners that uses a liquid called “The Flesh” which allows them to create clones of themselves to prevent them from getting into accidents with the acid, these clones see themselves as the people they are impersonating and that leads to the reveal where Amy turns into a puddle of Flesh at the end (this shows us that she’s been a clone this whole time). The real Amy turns out to have woken up from a coma and is giving birth in a mysterious place and the eye patch woman is her midwife, the random appearances of this woman in the series are the real Amy seeing her and the clone Amy’s mind somehow linking.

Timeline Start

Series 6 – Episode 7: A Good Man Goes to War – The Doctor and Rory find out that Amy is giving birth and is being held at a military base known as Demons Run so they gather a team to help save Amy.

Amy’s “midwife” is revealed to be a woman called Madame Kovarian and she was the person who took the real Amy and swapped her with a Flesh clone. After giving birth Amy Pond names her daughter Melody and as an act of good will one of the soldiers (Lorna) creates her a “Prayer Leaf” (a piece of fabric with writing meant to guide people home), on the Prayer Leaf is the Amy’s daughter’s name written in Lorna’s native language (she is from a place known as The Gamma Forests).

The Doctor wants to know why Madame Kovarian kidnapped Amy and after a bit of pressing he sees that Melody’s DNA is part human and part Time Lord due to being conceived in the TARDIS, we find out that Madame Kovarian’s plan was to kidnap Melody Pond and utilise her part Time Lord DNA to raise and train her to kill the Doctor.

After the Doctor’s efforts the military force and Madame Kovarian seemingly give up and the Doctor gives his childhood cot from the TARDIS to Amy and Rory as a gift, unfortunately it turns out Madame Kovarian has won because the real Melody Pond is with her and the one with Amy and Rory was a Flesh clone that has now melted; River Song (who was asked to come by Rory but said no) turns up saying that she couldn’t be there because these events were meant to happen.

The Doctor asks River to tell him who she is and she says “I haven’t seen that cot in years” and the Doctor seems to understand what this means. Amy asks for an explanation and River Song shows her the Prayer Leaf and asks her to concentrate because the TARDIS struggles to translate this language, as the only water in the Gamma Forests is the river the name Pond translates as River and Melody just translates to Song in the language – River Song is Melody Pond so Amy and Rory’s are actually her parents.

Series 6 – Episode 1: The Impossible Astronaut – Melody is raised by Madame Kovarian and a religious order known as The Silence who aim to kill the Doctor, Melody is placed into a space suit which acts as a life support system that not only keeps her physically well but mentally well; if Melody becomes scared it will call the highest authority for help, The Silence (currently located in 1969 in a warehouse near NASA) use this so that President Nixon would get these calls, they know the Doctor will eventually be in The White House to help Nixon with these mysterious calls which will lead him to The Silence.

Melody Pond in her space suit

Amy and Rory are younger versions of themselves (they don’t yet know she’s their daughter) and before these events they watched the Doctor gets shot and killed by an astronaut; before his death he invites a younger version of the Doctor (he doesn’t know it’s from his future self) to meet with Amy and Rory, after this they then end up in The White House helping Nixon. They eventually meet Melody (obviously they don’t know who she is yet) and Amy shoots her because she assumes that she’s the astronaut that killed the Doctor, Melody manages to escape with The Silence and is kept alive with her life support suit.

Series 6 – Episode 2: Day of the Moon – Note – The Silence is not just the name of a religious order but also the name of the species that are a part of this order, in order to differentiate I will call the species the silence and the religion The Silence).

Silence are unique because when someone sees them and looks away they forget about their existence and the encounter they’ve just had, the Doctor uses this to his advantage by tricking the silence into saying “You should kill us all on site” and he broadcasts this on all the televisions across the world as they will all be watching for the moon landing.

A silence from the episode The Impossible Astronaut (not that you’ll remember!)

Melody eventually forces her way out of her astronaut suit which means she begins to die (as the suit was keeping her alive), due to her Time Lord DNA however she doesn’t die and instead regenerates and now has a new face and body.

Series 6 – Episode 8: Let’s Kill Hitler – At some point off screen Melody manages to find Amy and Rory as children and grows up with them as school friends, she hears Amy talk all about the Doctor as they grow together. Obviously Amy and Rory wouldn’t know about their future daughter so naturally they never had any suspicion of her (Amy actually states at one point in the episode that she named Melody after her childhood friend, but obviously that’s not really true as her childhood friend was in fact her daughter Melody).

Note – There is quite a large plot hole here because at a certain point in the story Melody says it took her two years to find Amy and Rory, we don’t know old Melody exactly is in The Impossible Astronaut but her actress was 9 years old at the time meaning that Mels was probably 11 when she found Amy and Rory. The problem with her age is that they are shown to be in the same year group despite Melody probably being about 4 years older than Amy but they are shown to have met when Amy was about 7 (there has been some speculation that Melody can slow down her aging but canon wise this is still technically a plot hole).

Melody’s second incarnation (known as Mels to Amy and Rory)

Amy and Rory eventually meet up with the Doctor again after the events of A Good Man Goes to War but Melody finds them and she finally has the chance to kill the Doctor but also wants to time travel in the TARDIS whilst she has the chance, she decides that they should go to the past and kill Hitler in Berlin 1938.

In Berlin 1938 we find out about the Teselecta, the Teselecta are a Police type force that kills criminals before they commit the acts they were imprisoned for, they shrink themselves down and hide themselves in robots that can turn into the form of any human. Before the Doctor lands the Teselecta are hiding themselves as a Nazi operative in order to kill Hitler and they nearly manage to shoot him.

Just as the Teselecta is about to shoot him the TARDIS lands and the crew end up inside Hitler’s office which prevents them from taking the shot at Hitler, in the resulting scuffle Hitler ends up shooting Melody who then regenerates with the body and face of the River Song Amy and Rory know; Amy and Rory then realise that their friend Melody was actually their daughter, the Teselecta (now knowing Melody Pond is River Song) want to assassinate her because they know she apparently kills the Doctor in the future.

River Song is clearly still set on her birth mission to kill the Doctor, she kisses him with a poisonous lipstick and the Doctor starts to die. Amy and Rory have now been taken by the Teselecta and are shrunk down and arrive on the control deck inside the Teselecta robot, the Teselecta starts to kill River but in a last effort Amy and Rory break the controls to stop them; the Teselecta all teleport away and the security system attempts to kill Amy and Rory, to save them River Song flies the TARDIS (she can fly it because the TARDIS tells her how) and materializes in the Teselecta robot control room to save Amy and Rory.

River regrets killing the Doctor and after she materializes back in the office with Amy and Rory she uses all of her regeneration energy to stop him from dying (she now does not have the ability to ever regenerate). After all these events she is comatose for the time being but eventually makes a full recovery, she decides to then get a job in archeology and she wants to find the Doctor.

River Song’s final incarnation

Series 6 – Episode 12: Closing Time – The Silence are still persistent on killing the Doctor and find River at some point after the events of Let’s Kill Hitler and place her back into a space suit, this suit is controlled by The Silence to force her to kill the Doctor. 

Series 6 – Episode 13: The Wedding of River Song – River is taken to Lake Silencio so that the suit can force her to kill the Doctor. River manages to stop the suit killing the Doctor but the event was an important moment in time that had to happen, this breaks the rules of time causing time to be stuck until River Song kills the Doctor. Many points in time all merge into one time period creating a broken reality, the Great Pyramid of Giza is now home to area 51 where Madame Kovarian and The Silence are located and the Doctor, River, Amy and Rory eventually find each other here.

River and the Doctor head to the top of the pyramid (Amy kills Madame Kovarian and then joins them) and River and the Doctor decide to get married, whilst this happens the Doctor whispers to River “Look into my eye” and inside she can see a miniature version of the Doctor  which means that he is actually inside a Teselecta robot.

River Song realises that this means that if she shoots the Doctor he doesn’t actually die but everyone will think he’ll be dead, knowing that the Doctor won’t die she shoots him and this makes time right again.

We don’t see this in the episode but River Song is arrested and sent to Stormcage Prison for “killing” the Doctor.

Note – Once River gets arrested it is a little bit less clear as to where she is in the timeline so a lot of this is speculation based on small bits of dialogue and development.

River and the Doctor tying the knot

Series 6 – Episodes 7: A Good Man Goes to War – Rory finds River in Stormcage after the events of The Almost People to recruit her to help in Demons Run, River Song says no as she knows she can’t be there until the Flesh clone of her as a child is taken away from Amy. She breaks out and arrives just after the clone of her as the child melts and explains who she is to the Doctor, Amy and Rory and why she couldn’t be there until now.

Note – I think this is before The Pandorica two parter because River doesn’t understand why Rory is wearing a centurion outfit, the centurion outfit becomes associated with Rory after The Pandorica two parter because Rory ends up as a Roman in that episode

Series 5 – Episode 12: The Pandorica Opens – She heads back to Stormcage and after being there for a little bit long River Song gets a call in Stormcage from Winston Churchill (a friend of the Doctor) about a new Vincent van Gogh painting that has surfaced depicting the TARDIS exploding, this also has a date, time and location written on it. River escapes by tricking a guard with hallucinogenic lipstick and meets with a man called Dorium Maldovar so she can steal a vortex manipulator (this works as portable time travel essentially); River travels back to the oldest planet in the universe (Planet 1) and engraves a message on the cliff-face which is her catchphrase (“Hello Sweetie”) and the date and time from the painting, the Doctor travels to this planet at some point with Amy and sees the message so goes to the time and place engraved on the cliffs. This takes them near Stone Henge in Roman times and River meets him there and shows him the painting which is called The Pandorica Opens, Rory also died earlier on in the series but is somehow back as a Roman (he still remembers who he is).

The Pandorica is a prison buried somewhere underground that is said to hold the most dangerous thing in the universe so it is assumed that whatever is inside is going to escape today, the Doctor deduces that there should be something to indicate where The Pandorica is and they figure out that it must be Stone Henge.

They manage to find a secret passage that takes them under Stone Henge which leads to a chamber that contains The Pandorica, the Doctor’s enemies hear of The Pandorica opening and arrive in order to supposedly find out what is contained in The Pandorica.

River is sent back to the TARDIS by the Doctor to grab him some equipment, the TARDIS suddenly takes off and takes River to Amy Pond’s childhood home on the 26th of June 2010 (this is the time and location where cracks in time started appearing), she explores the house and in Amy’s room finds a children’s book on Romans, a copy of the book Pandora’s Box and various other bits of iconography that they saw when they arrived to The Pandorica’s location.

It is realised that The Pandorica was actually a trap for the Doctor made using parts of Amy’s childhood memories, The Pandorica was opening in order for its prisoner to be placed in there, the Doctor is the prisoner and his enemies were actually there to make sure that he is put in there.

The Doctor is placed inside and this causes time to mess up and as River enters the TARDIS again it explodes causing the cracks in time, River is stuck in a time loop of the TARDIS exploding and Amy has just been shot.

Series 5 – Episode 13: The Big Bang – All the previous events create an alternate reality where Amy never meets the Doctor. The Doctor from the future travels back to The Pandorica (he uses a vortex manipulator to do this) and gives Rory his Sonic Screwdriver and tells him to release him and place Amy in there instead (The Pandorica will revive her), the Doctor tells Rory that they will need to time travel to much further in the future to enact the rest of the plan but Rory says that he will wait in real time so he can keep Amy and The Pandorica safe.

The Doctor goes back into the future and sends childhood Amy Pond a museum pamphlet that has an advertisement for The Pandorica exhibit saying “Come along Pond”,  the child Amy stays in the museum after hours and touches the Pandorica which releases the version of Amy from The Pandorica.

Rory, the Doctor and Amy meet at the museum and the Doctor remembers that he has to go into the past quickly to go to Stone Henge and tell Rory to open The Pandorica, put Amy in there and then give him the Sonic Screwdriver. The Doctor figures out that River is stuck in the TARDIS in a time loop and then goes and grabs her with his Vortex Manipulator, in order for them to get time right the Doctor flies the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS erasing everyone’s memory of the Doctor but making sure that time is correct and the cracks in time close.

The Doctor visits a sleeping child Amy and whispers to her all about his adventures with her and Rory in the hope that she will remember him, Amy and Rory finally get married and on that day they finally remember the Doctor and he arrives at their wedding.

Note – River mentions in a previous series 5 story about the events in this so this has to take place before that story.

Series 6 – Episode 1: The Impossible Astronaut – River is still serving time at Stormcage and receives a message from The Doctor asking her to meet him in Utah, she arrives and meets with Amy Rory and The Doctor in a diner and then go for a picnic and get promised an important trip to 1969. At the picnic River sees the Doctor approach her past self in a space suit in the lake and get “killed” by her, as River already knows this happens she has to react shocked and to sell this more she even attempts to shoot her past self (she intentionally misses all shots of her 6 rounds).

River “killing” the Doctor

She makes sure to burn the robot body with Amy and Rory and meet up in the diner again and an earlier version of The Doctor turns up (the future Doctor invited a previous version of himself to arrive after he “died”), the 3 tell the Doctor that he has to go back to 1969 in Washington because the future Doctor said they had to.

As explained before the group help Nixon along with (temporality rehired) agent Canton and end up encountering The Silence in a warehouse near NASA and Amy ends up shooting the childhood version of River.

Note – I feel that this takes place here because a prison guard says “not again” when River escapes implying that this has happened numerous times.

Series 6 – Episode 2: Day of the Moon – After shooting child River the group are then on the run from the US government and begin to understand what the Silence are and how they work (River already knows this but no one else does) and they agree to tally their arms every time they have an encounter they forget. Canton has to keep a front so the government thinks he actually wants to capture The Doctor and kill his companions, the Doctor is locked in a prison cell and Canton fakes the deaths of Amy and Rory and sneaks them into The Doctor’s prison cell where the TARDIS is secretly kept and they escape in the TARDIS to get River.

Canton actually pushed River off a building earlier to kill her, the Doctor prevents this by flying the TARDIS below her just as she falls and opening all the doors to the TARDIS swimming pool so she lands in the pool and survives. They eventually send the message out that causes everyone to shoot the silence on site and the Doctor drops River back off to Stormcage.

Series 5 – Episode 4: The Time of Angels – After more time in Stormcage River gets made a deal to give her a full pardon, she has to help a man called Octavian capture a Weeping Angel from a crashed Byzantium ship. She is told to find an army and decides to get the Doctor as he is equivalent to an army for her, she puts her catchphrase on a homebox along with coordinates and The Doctor find it in a museum and him and Amy go to the coordinates and meet River and Octavian outside the ship (this is the first time Amy meets River and the first time The 11th Doctor encounters River).

They traverse through some catacombs full of old statues of bodies to reach the ship and they eventually realise that the statues are all dormant Weeping Angels that are now waking up, the Byzantium ship crash has caused all these dormant Weeping Angels to become active again.

Note – I think this story happens a long time after her various escapes from Stormcage as if a prisoner is known for escaping they probably wouldn’t offer a deal like this soon after those escapes, I would say this means these episodes happens before she ever escapes but this has to take place after at least one escape, because this episode definitely takes place after The Pandorica Opens due to a line in the next episode.

Series 5 – Episode 5: Flesh and Stone – They manage to get into the ship and the goal has now become an escape mission when the group realise the danger they are in, they eventually escape and River Song isn’t sure if she’ll get her full pardon. She knows that the next time The Doctor meets her will be the events of The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, she tells him he’ll see her again when The Pandorica opens.

Series 6 – Episode 13: The Wedding of River Song – River Song wasn’t pardoned for her crime but after the events of Flesh and Stone she is allowed to quickly visit Amy (Amy has just dealt with the events of The Wedding of River Song), she reveals to Amy that the Doctor isn’t really dead and consoles Amy (who regrets killing Madame Kovarian).

River Song and her daughter catching up

Off screen she heads back to Stormgate and is there for an unknown amount of time.

Note – I think this is a permitted visit as River is still in the same clothes from Flesh and Stone.

Series 7 – Episode 5: The Angels Take Manhattan – River Song eventually gets pardoned because the legal system can’t find any records of the man she kills existing, she figures out that the Doctor erased these records to make sure she was freed. At some point after this she finds herself in New York in 1938.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory travel to New York in 2012 for a trip and the Doctor has somehow ended up with a book called Melody Malone which he is now reading, Rory heads off to get coffee and The Doctor and Amy realise that the book is describing what Rory is doing right now: on the way to get coffee he gets sent back into the past by a Weeping Angel, then he ends up face to face with River Song.

The Doctor realises that River and Rory are in New York in 1938, River tells Rory that the TARDIS is going to struggle to land there (thus informing The Doctor as he is still reading). River and Rory have been taken by Julius Grayle (art collector and mob boss), he wants to use a Weeping Angel he has as a power source and needs River and the Doctor to help him.

Once taken to Winter Quay (the apartment complex the Weeping Angel is held in) River discusses Qin artifacts with Grayle, The Doctor reads about this which means he now knows how to get landing lights (this isn’t well explained in the episode) and then he can finally land the TARDIS in Winter Quay and help River and Rory.

Throughout the episode so far The Doctor has stated to Amy to not read ahead as that will create fixed points in time that have to happen (they see that the book clearly documents this whole adventure), before this warning Amy reads a section that says that River Song will have to break her arm to escape a Weeping Angel.

River Song gets her arm trapped by a Weeping Angel so The Doctor tells her she has to break her arm, River ends up having to do this. Amy thinks she has found a way around creating fixed points by reading future chapter names instead of actual segments of text, the final title however is called Amelia’s Last Farewell.

They enter a room and find an older Rory (Weeping Angels zap people into the past so they die of old age the same time they vanish), as they meet this older version of Rory they realise that the Weeping Angels must take him in the near future and that this is a fixed point (Amy can’t go back with him either as the fixed point doesn’t include her).

Rory dying of old age

The Weeping Angels are using this apartment complex to continuously send people back to the past so they can feast on the energy, Rory and Amy come up with a plan to stop the angels from gaining more power and Rory dying without Amy; The plan they have come up with is committing suicide together in order to create a paradox (the paradox being that Rory dies before the angels zap him into the past), this works and everything seems to be okay.

They all end up in a graveyard in 2012 and Rory notices a gravestone with his name on it and a Weeping Angel zaps him into the past, as his name is on the gravestone this is a fixed point but Amy decides that she should be with him so she lets herself get taken by the angel as well.

As established before the TARDIS is unable to land in New York 1938 and The Doctor says this is a fixed point anyway so he can’t go and meet them or bring them back, he’s distraught about this and asks River to travel with him but she says she can’t and heads off. 

River realises she has to write the book that was being read in the episode (Melody Malone is a pseudonym for River Song) and somehow gets the book to the doctor so that all the events can happen as they are supposed to.

Note – This episode was and is quite infamous for having very flimsy logic around fixed points, the script itself has many contradictions so you kind of just have to accept the weird logic this story has.

Series 9 – Christmas Special: The Husbands of River Song – River Song has ended up on the planet Mendorax Dellora in the year 5343, she works as a sort of mercenary and is currently trying to receive a diamond for The Halassi which is inside the head of King Hydroflax. River takes her time with this and marries King Hydroflax so he’ll trust her, at some point he ends up needing surgery and she uses this so she can hire a corrupt Doctor to take the diamond out even though this will kill him.

River sends a man called Nardole to look for a Doctor and Nardole ends up bumping into the 12th Doctor and asks him if he’s a Doctor, the Doctor thinks that Nardole meant him and not an actual medical Doctor.

Nardole takes the Doctor to River Song so he can perform the surgery to get her diamond, The Doctor tells River that he’s a new incarnation of The Doctor she hasn’t met yet. River refuses to believe this as she says according to the rules of a Time Lord he can only have 12 faces (there is a plot hole here which I will explain), River Song doesn’t know that in the events of The Time of the Doctor he was given more regenerations. Despite the Doctors being numbered there are actually 12 versions of The Doctor before The Twelfth Doctor (there is one incarnation between the 8th and 9th Doctor that The Doctor doesn’t acknowledge because of what that version of him did).

Note – The plot hole here is that the rules of a Time Lord are that they can regenerate 12 times not that they have 12 incarnations, the 12 regenerations means they have 13 incarnations. River Song only knows 12 of the 13 incarnations. One of the regenerations is when the 10th Doctor uses enough regeneration energy to heal himself and puts the rest into the hand he had chopped off in Series 2 to create the Metacrisis Doctor. As the Metacrisis Doctor was only on Earth for a brief period (that River wasn’t there for) and put in a parallel universe she wouldn’t know about this regeneration, River Song would be able to comprehend this face as The Doctor because as far as she knows he should have one more face.

The 10th Doctor with the Metacrisis Doctor

River eventually gets hold of the diamond and tries to get payment for it but they end up in a whole ordeal in a restaurant, River finally realises that the man she is with is indeed The Doctor. River eventually gives the diamond to its owner as the ship the restaurant is on crashes, River and The Doctor eventually escape in the TARDIS but River gets knocked out in the chaos of it flying away.

She leaves the TARDIS once she wakes up and she figures out she’s at a restaurant with a view of Darillium and The Singing Towers, The receptionist at the restaurant tells her the Doctor is waiting for her and he greets her with a gift (a Sonic Screwdriver). As she and The Doctor watch and listen to The Singing Towers River notices The Doctor crying, River realises him crying probably means that this is the last time The Doctor meets her (she pieces this together because the diary she uses with the Doctor to figure out where they both are in their lives is almost full).

Despite this being the Doctor’s last night seeing her they get to spend a long time together, one night on Darillium lasts 24 years.

The Doctor’s last night with River Song

Series 4 – Episode 8: Silence in the Library – River continues to work as an archaeologist and at some point ends up on a job with Strackman Lux in The Lux Foundation Library (a planet sized library owned by his corporation). They want to investigate why everyone in the library has disappeared, before heading to the library River also decides to send out a note to the Doctor asking for help.

Eventually River Song finds the Doctor in the library and she tries to figure out at what point in his timeline he is, she realises that the Doctor doesn’t recognise her at all and that this is the first time the Doctor ever met her, she shows and gives him the Sonic Screwdriver given to her in the events of The Husbands of River Song to prove they know each other.

All the crew have heard is that four thousand and twenty two people have been saved but there are no survivors (four thousand and twenty two is the exact amount of people that disappeared from the library), they find that the library is infested with billions Vashta Nerada which are creatures that live in shadows and strip everything except bone from their victims.

Donna (The Doctor’s current companion here) disappears and when they ask the information nodes in the library why it responds “Donna Noble has left the library, Donna Noble has been saved”.

Series 4 – Episode 9: Forest of the Dead – The Doctor is angry about Donna disappearing and to calm him down River proves to him that he really should trust her, she tells him his real name which is something the Doctor would never tell anyone unless they were extremely important to him (the Doctor trusts her implicitly for the rest of this adventure after this).

The Doctor notices that the information nodes all say four thousand and twenty two people saved when they are asked about the disappearances which he finds to be odd wording, Lux informs him that the moon on the planet is a Doctor Moon (a virus checker for the library system); The Doctor puts two and two together and realises that the computer system saved everyone to its system because the Doctor Moon found the Vashta Nerada. The computer system is known as CAL which turns out to actually be the name of Lux’s daughter (who is dying) and Lux wired her into the computer system so she can live in an imaginary world with every book in the universe and gave her a Doctor Moon to look after her.

CAL’s mind becomes overloaded and that stress causes the computer system and library to self destruct, the Doctor realises that the only way to recover all the people saved to the computer is to link himself to its core which will kill him; River knows The Doctor can’t die now so she has to take his place and this causes her death.

The Sonic Screwdriver still has a memory of River Song and the Doctor uses that to save her to the computer system, just like CAL she can now live in an imaginary world where she’s happy and with the rest of the crew she visited the library with.

River Song lives happily ever after…

Series 7 – Episode 14: The Name of the Doctor – A man called Dr Simeon is working with a faceless and formless entity known as The Great Intelligence, throughout Series 7 The Great Intelligence has been an ongoing threat who has been attempting to kill the Doctor. The group that the Doctor brought to help with The Battle of Demons Run (known as the Paternoster Gang) meet together on a psychic conference call, the Doctor’s Series 7 companion Clara Oswald is also invited and River Song joins the call from her data banks in The Lux Foundation Library.

Vastra arranged this call because a murderer in Victorian London called Clarence DeMarco (who was on death row) revealed to her whilst pleading for his life that he knows about the Doctor, Clarence says to Vastra that the Doctor has one secret that he will take to the grave and that secret has been discovered and at some point also mentioned a word: “Trenzalore”.

In the conference call this is mentioned and River Song knows what Trenzalore means, it is the planet with the Doctor’s grave that the Doctor will visit once because he will die there. There is an ancient prophecy that states: “On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked, a question that must never, ever be answered. Silence will fall when the question is asked”. The answer to the question is the Doctor’s name.

The conference call gets broken up when the minions of The Great Intelligence (The Whisper Men) break into Vastra’s home, Clara wakes back up in her home and the Doctor is currently downstairs. Clara goes to tell the Doctor everything she heard at the conference and the Doctor (who knows about the prophecy) immediately takes Clara and sets course for Trenzalore in the TARDIS.

Once they eventually land on Trenzalore River Song appears (only to Clara) and explains to Clara that she is still here because she kept the line of the conference call open, the Doctor notices a gravestone with River’s name on it. River says to Clara that the gravestone is probably the secret entrance to his tomb and Clara relays that to the Doctor.

They finally enter the tomb and come face to face with Dr Simeon, inside the tomb is a physical manifestation of the Doctor’s timestream; Dr Simeon reveals his plan is to enter the timestream (which will splinter him allowing him to be in multiple times at once) and change every one of The Doctor’s victories into losses, Clara goes in after him to make sure that this doesn’t happen (which works) and The Doctor is able to get Clara back.

It turns out the Doctor knew River was there the whole time and he knows where she is in relation to him. The Doctor didn’t get to say goodbye in the library and they now finally have the chance, they say goodbye and River goes back to the fake world created in the library – this is where her timeline ends.

River saying goodbye to the Doctor for her last time

A Message From The Assorted Media Report

Thank you for reading this article as it is the first piece I’ve written for the website, I’m really excited to start posting stuff on here as this has become a bit of a passion project for me. Any feedback would be really helpful as I want you guys to be able to enjoy my writing and analysis.