How I feel about this character: complicated - I love what she could be and the rare snapshots we see of that. But the execution of her character and morals is...I love Thirteen, dislike the writing for her.
Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: River Song, obviously
My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Graham O’Brien
My unpopular opinion about this character: in the hands of Moffat she’d be everything
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: meets River
Favorite friendship for this character: Graham O’Brien
The story of River Song twists and turns as it runs through time and space. It forces its way through the harsh landscape of her beginnings, bends around the Doctor, until one day, it will meet its end at the Library. A worn book in the biography section, incomparable memories saved on the biggest hard drive in the universe. Arguably, some answers may only be found – or, indeed, questions may only be asked – if we try to follow River’s path in its actual order for once.
Hence, I will resurrect a series which began with Let’s Kill Hitler and has since pursued River’s life through Closing Time, The Wedding of River Song, and A Good Man Goes to War. Until now, River has revealed who she is to her parents and the Doctor, but the next time she encounters them, this knowledge will have already been washed away. The tides of time are merciless.
In The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon*, this is still a new kind of pain and flirtatious smiles can only hide so much. Around her, her past is colliding. An astronaut in a lake, tears running down her face. A child in a suit which swallows her whole, calling for help. It is a punch to the gut, but River Song would never have become River Song if she did not have the strength to bear it.
It is strange to watch The Impossible Astronaut with the awareness of how much River knows. An invitation to Utah does not pose a mystery for her and never holds the promise of a carefree family outing. Even if she truly forgot what she went through on the beach of Lake Silencio, she would be able to recite the historical facts by heart. “Some say this is when the Doctor dies.” The time and place are noted in pencil in her diary. They likely grace the pages of her PhD dissertation. And they would have been mentioned in her sentencing, for the supposed crime she committed there.
River knows what fate awaits the Doctor when he gets up to walk towards the lake. (Herself. A certain death. Maybe a clever escape?) When she fires at her own receding figure, she knows she will not hit her target. For a younger River, seeing herself might be a promise of forgiveness. For an older River, it is a cruelty, and so is making her parents witness the Doctor’s death. Amy, sobbing over his body. Rory, with what for River must be a familiar steadfastness, doing what needs to be done to give the Doctor a fire burial. It ends in a well-deserved slap, that will never be able to express the full pain of those moments.
“Now, I love a bad girl, me, but trust you? Seriously.” There is a slap in her face, too. Because however fraught their history, whatever half-truths and secrets lie between the Doctor and her, he was the person who defended her even as she was poisoning him. The moment she chose to give him her regenerations in Let’s Kill Hitler, she gifted him her trust in return. Whatever life has put her through, that trust in him is as much part of her rebellion against her fate as her refusal to kill the Doctor in The Wedding of River Song.
And so River will dive off rooftops without any hesitation, knowing that he will be there. And this Doctor will catch her. But he also doesn’t quite know her yet. There’s a sense of fascination and growing affection that makes it easy to forget occasionally. River can lose herself in the familiarity of flirtation and banter. But her future is haunting her just as much as her past is. Time looms, in all directions.
River’s fears fully rise to the surface in her conversation with Rory. She might have thrown a suggestive comment at the Doctor just moments earlier, but here we see just how strong her trepidation about the future is. She paints a romanticised picture of a young innocent girl instead of the young woman hell-bent on murder, but her future looms ever so truthful. The Doctor has already forgotten who she is. It is only a matter of time before he does not remember her altogether.
There are many turning points in River’s life, with so many crucial decisions. Time never truly stands still. River and the Doctor choose each other, over and over again. Now River’s ghosts have come back to haunt her. Because this is not when her own mother pointed a gun at her, not knowing the suit hides a child, not knowing it is hers. This is not when Melody Pond rescued herself from the Silence. This is not when River Song killed the Doctor. This is not when she refused to do so, all of time stops in its tracks. This is the time she must watch it all happen and that might be the worst of all.
She walks the winding paths of her past, almost to its beginning, to a little lost girl who is already trying to break free from the chains her supposed destiny put her in. “I’m scared of the spaceman,” says the little girl, but she is already in the space suit. It’s likely that another being from space stars in her nightmares and, unknowingly, her cry for help has reached the very person she was made to fear. The Doctor is coming for her. In a race to save a little girl, he cannot know that he might be the monster.
When it comes down to it, The Impossible Austronaut/Day of the Moon is an episode in which the task at hand is not achieved by its heroes. They never save the child. Melody Pond must claw her own way out of the space suit and run away. “She must be incredibly strong,” River observes, looking at the remains of her prison and it’s true in more ways than one. All alone in the word, with magic at her fingertips, Melody Pond will survive and find her parents eventually. It will take many years until she faces her kidnappers on even footing. By then, her name will be River Song.
After being forced to watch her fate unravel for two episodes, the moment they rescue Amy is the first time that history releases its holds on River and allows her to take revenge on those who stole her agency from her. The Silence formed her into a weapon and now her abusers, her owners, find themselves on the other side of her gun. River Song has reclaimed love for herself. She will reclaim kindness and wisdom, too, eventually. But River never tries to hold any claims to morality. Like time itself, she is not a merciful creature. The Silence played with fire and they will burn in it, too.
At the end of this adventure, we are privy to a private moment between River and the Doctor, full of familiarity, for the characters and for us. There is the back and forth with hints of a future, of a past, we have not seen yet, that echoes the goodbyes in Amy’s garden and at the Byzantium. There is also the sense that River has done this many times before, in her knowing smile, in the comfortable way she reaches for the Doctor’s bowtie. We might watch their romance in fragments, but scenes like this hint at the intimacy and love that are written between the lines.
Until River Song kisses the Doctor, just once more, and realises that it is the first. That this could even be the last. However much she has already lost, whatever pain she witnessed in these previous months, River did not even consider that this too would be taken from her so quickly. She knew this Doctor was much younger than the one she had countless adventures with. No Easter Islands for him. No Jim the Fish. But even as she saw his trust erode, she clearly thought she would not lose their relationship so soon. But that, too, might be slipping away from her now. River’s world is breaking apart further.
At the time when the Pandorica opens, she has taken the role of the mystery for granted. At the Byzantium, she has become well-versed in throwing herself into adventure – and, of course, a good deal of flirting – without letting the pain seep through. She will start teasing him about the future ahead, the adventures and revelations still to come for him. That time she is truly scared of, is still much, much farther away. But that too will happen one day.
This meta was started on November 13, 2016 and completed for Moffat Appreciation Day 2018.
*I’ve seen different version of River’s timeline and I think some switch this two-parter with The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. This is the one I like best though.
This is the River Song Diary I made recently! I’m obsessed with it! It’s made from a sketchbook, cardstock (covers), and I painted it myself. The Gallifreyan alphabet is one I found on Pinterest, and it’s the one I always use. The Gallifreyan in the front says “For River. Love, Your Doctor.”
