River Song (Doctor Who)

Three of the six actresses to portray River Song at different stages in her story. From left to right: Sydney Wade, Nina Toussaint-White and Alex Kingston.

River Song first appears in the Doctor Who 2008 series two-parter "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" (written by Steven Moffat) during the Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who. Here, she encounters the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) in the 51st century and, though he has never met her, claims to be someone he will come to trust completely. River, who is a professor of archaeology and carries a TARDIS-colour/pattern diary of her adventures, is able to convince the Doctor of his future trust in her by whispering his real name into his ear, which he explains he would only divulge under rare circumstances. At the end of the second episode, she sacrifices herself to save the people who were trapped in the Library's database, knocking out the Doctor before he can do the same. In turn, he is able to upload a copy of her consciousness into a computer, allowing her to live on in a virtual world with the archaeological team she was with in the Library. He achieves this via the use of a sonic screwdriver given to her by his future self.

After Moffat took over from Davies as executive producer of the show, River Song reappeared in the 2010 series. In the two-parter "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone", which takes place prior to River becoming a professor, she encounters the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), with whom she is more familiar. She leaves coordinates for the Doctor so that he may rescue her in the 52nd century, and together they investigate the crash of the spaceship Byzantium. She shows herself to be more adept at flying the TARDIS than he is and reveals to the Doctor that she is imprisoned in the "Stormcage Containment Facility" for killing "the best man I've ever known."

An earlier version of River appears to assist the Doctor in the fifth series finale "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang". After being contacted by Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice), River leads the Doctor to 102 A.D. While River is travelling in the TARDIS on her own, it explodes with her inside. The Doctor, using River's vortex manipulator, teleports her out. After the Doctor erases himself from history by flying the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS in order to close the cracks in the universe, River helps Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) to remember the Doctor and bring him back, by giving Amy her now-blank diary. At the close of the series five finale, River ambiguously suggests to the Doctor that they might be married and tells him that he will soon learn the truth about her, after which "everything changes".

In 2011 series opener "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon", River, along with Amy and her husband Rory (Arthur Darvill), is contacted by a future version of the Doctor to meet up in the United States. As they enjoy a lakeside picnic, this future Doctor is killed by an assailant in a space suit, and the trio give him a Viking funeral, in Lake Silencio. In 1969, the present Doctor and company subsequently encounter a little girl (Sydney Wade) who wears the space suit, which River tells the Doctor is a life support unit; the suit has been designed by the hypnotic aliens known as the Silence. Homeless, the girl is later shown regenerating in New York City, 1970. In "A Good Man Goes to War", it is revealed that River is Amy and Rory's daughter Melody (Harrison and Maddison Mortimer),[4] who was conceived in the TARDIS while it was in the Time Vortex and consequently carries Time Lord DNA. The name River Song comes from a recursive translation of Melody Pond via the language of the Gamma Forests, which have no ponds, only rivers, hence the translation of "Pond" to "River." Baby Melody is kidnapped by Madame Kovarian (Frances Barber) to become a weapon against the Doctor.[5]

"Let's Kill Hitler" establishes that Melody was trained by the Silence to kill the Doctor. At some point after regenerating in New York, Melody becomes Rory and Amy's childhood friend Mels (Maya Glace-Green) and grew up with them, and enlightened them to their romantic feelings for each other and ensuring her own existence. When adult Mels (Nina Toussaint-White) is shot, and regenerates into her next incarnation (Alex Kingston), she proceeds to do what she was created for: assassinate the Doctor. Persuaded she will one day become River Song, who the Doctor cares deeply about and places in great trust, Melody chooses to resurrect the Doctor with her own regenerative energy, losing any future regenerations. The Doctor learns, however, that it is she who kills him in the future. While she is recovering in bed, the Doctor gives her the blank TARDIS-shaped/coloured diary, and in an epilogue it is revealed that Melody (now River) wants to study archaeology. At the end of "Closing Time", on the day she receives her doctorate, the Silence and Kovarian recapture her and trap her in the space suit in order to kill the Doctor as history will record. In the series six finale "The Wedding of River Song", River refuses to kill the Doctor as she is supposed to, creating an alternate reality in which time has frozen and all realities are occurring at once. In order to restart time and repair reality, the two of them must touch. The Doctor marries River and convinces her to repair the timeline by letting her know that he plans to fake his own death and how. River goes to prison for his murder in order to corroborate the deception, though it is established that she regularly breaks out of prison to go on dates and adventures with him with the aid of hallucinogenic lipstick (used on the guards) and other tricks.

River appears again in the fifth episode of the seventh series, titled "The Angels Take Manhattan" (2012), where she encounters the Doctor and her parents, Rory and Amy, in 1930s New York City. At this later point in her timeline, she is a professor of archaeology and a free woman, having been released from the Stormcage Prison after the Doctor erased all evidence of his existence. When her parents are sent permanently back in time by the Weeping Angels, to be forever parted from the Doctor, she arranges for Amy to leave the Doctor a message in the form of an epilogue in a book they have been reading written by her in the 1930s. Although she agrees to travel with the Doctor for the time being, she declines his offer of being a full-time companion. In "The Name of the Doctor" (2013), the deceased River's consciousness is summoned from the Library computer, where she has existed since "Forest of the Dead", into a psychic 'conference call' by the Doctor's friend Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh). There, she and Clara (Jenna Coleman) learn that the Doctor's grave has been discovered. River maintains the psychic link with Clara after the call ends, and counsels her throughout the exploration of the Doctor's tomb, although she seems to be invisible to everyone else. When the Doctor and his companions are threatened by the Great Intelligence, she whispers the Doctor's name in order to open his tomb which is inside the TARDIS. After Clara enters the Doctor's time stream to save him from the Great Intelligence, who entered it first so he could destroy the Doctor in all his regenerations, the Doctor reveals that he could see River all along, but had been avoiding confronting her continued existence because it was too painful for him to bear. After he kisses her, River feels closure and fades away. However, before disappearing River points out that her continued presence indicates that Clara has not been destroyed by entering his time stream, and, therefore, he can save her.

When the Doctor next encounters River, in "The Husbands of River Song" (2015), as the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi), she does not initially recognise him and he is able to learn more about what she is like when he is not around. The Doctor accompanies River (from her perspective, shortly after "The Angels Take Manhattan") on a scheme to obtain a rare diamond. He learns that in addition to him, River has had several spouses, both male and female, and is not above ruthless behaviour as she goes about her work. He also discovers that she truly loves him, but that she also genuinely believes that he does not love her back. She feels that the Doctor is above such petty emotions as love, and that he would never willingly jeopardise himself simply to help her. River ultimately discovers that the man she's been having this adventure with is actually the Doctor, with a new face she doesn't have a record of, thinking he only had 12 regenerations and that she'd already seen his last one. The pair later crash-land on the planet Darillium, where River had told the Doctor in "Forest of the Dead" that they would have their last night together. He uses time travel to ensure a perfect date, gives her the sonic screwdriver that she had in "Silence in the Library", and comforts her by revealing that the nights on Darillium last "24 years", giving River a happy life spent with the Doctor before her impending death in the Library.

In 2017 series opener "The Pilot", a photograph of River is seen on the Doctor's desk in the university in which he is lecturing, beside a photograph of his granddaughter Susan Foreman. River is also referenced in the episode "Extremis", and it is revealed that she ordered her employee Nardole (Matt Lucas) to keep an eye on the Doctor for her in the event of her death.

Coinciding with the 2010 series, Alex Kingston portrays River Song narrating the "Monster Files" on the BBC website, an in-universe documentary account of Doctor Who monsters.[6] This series had previously (in 2008–09) been narrated by John Barrowman in character as Captain Jack Harkness.

Included with the series six DVD release, the exclusive-to-DVD bonus five-part serial Night and the Doctor (2011) references River throughout, with River appearing in the mini-episodes "First Night" and "Last Night". The serial helps explain the depth of the relationship shared by River and the Doctor – despite only appearing in 15 (14 plus one flashback, as of 2016) episodes of the television series – when Amy Pond discovers that the Doctor goes on dates with River when Amy and Rory sleep at night in the TARDIS. During the serial, the Doctor attempts to take River on a date shortly after she is imprisoned in Stormcage, but their time in the TARDIS is interrupted by two future incarnations of River, and all are in turn suspicious of the signs of "another woman" being aboard the TARDIS. The Doctor is able to be rid of the two future Rivers, but not before learning from his future self that one of them is shortly to die in the Library adventure where he first met her. (It is later revealed in "The Husbands of River Song" that the Eleventh Doctor ultimately cancelled this date, and it is the Twelfth Doctor who ends up taking River to the Singing Towers.)

River appears in a further direct-to-DVD mini-episode included with the series 7 box set, "Rain Gods".

River, alongside Smith's Eleventh Doctor, is one of two main playable characters in the PlayStation 3 Doctor Who console game The Eternity Clock. Kingston provided voice acting and motion capture physical acting for the character. In regard to River's role in the narrative of the game, the game's producer Simon Harris explains that she "realises that what’s in her diary is not what she wrote and that actually the Eternity Clock is playing with her history, as well as the Earth’s history."[7]

Author Gary Russell had planned to use River in the Twelfth Doctor novel The Big Bang Generation, but when he was unable to get permission to use her due to Steven Moffat planning on the 2015 Christmas special "The Husbands of River Song" being the Twelfth Doctor and River's first meeting, Moffat suggested that Russell write the story to incorporate the Seventh Doctor's former companion Bernice Summerfield instead.[8]

On 27 June 2015, it was announced that River Song will feature in two Big Finish dramas, Doom Coalition 2 and The Diary of River Song, alongside Paul McGann.[9] As a result, River Song becomes the first major character of the 2005–present modern era of Doctor Who to be featured in a Big Finish production (prior to 2015, the company had been restricted to only using characters from the original 1963–1989 series, plus McGann's Eighth Doctor from the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie). She also appeared in Doom Coalition 3 and Doom Coalition 4 alongside the Eighth Doctor. During these appearances, River avoids directly meeting with the Eighth Doctor to preserve the timeline; in Diary she communicates with him over a distorted radio transmission, and in Coalition she initially only assists his companions, although she later meets the Doctor directly while wearing a 'psychic wimple' while disguised as a nun, the wimple presenting her with a different face to anyone who has not already met her (she establishes a temporary psychic link with the Eighth Doctor while he is drifting in the Time Vortex in Doom Coalition 4, in which he expresses a subconscious recollection of other meetings with her in his past, but this brief flash of memory is lost when the Doctor is rescued). It was announced in early 2016 that The Diary of River Song would return for a second series in 2017, this time Kingston would be appearing alongside Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. This box set was released early on Christmas Day 2016.[10] She returned again for a third series later in 2017, which sees River encounter the Fifth Doctor and his new companion Brooke, who is eventually revealed to be a clone of River created as part of the Silences' original plan to kill the Doctor. She returned for further series, with the fourth series seeing River meeting the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and the fifth season pitting River against four different versions of the Master (Geoffrey Beevers, Derek Jacobi, and the Big Finish debut of Eric Roberts and Michelle Gomez as their incarnations of the Master). The sixth season sees River use her knowledge of the Doctor to discreetly 'infiltrate' key moments in his history to acquire key artefacts before they would be lost, including "An Unearthly Child", "The Invasion", "Carnival of Monsters" and "The Talons of Weng-Chiang". She also appears in The Legacy of Time, a six-part audio created for Big Finish's twentieth anniversary of doing Doctor Who audios, where she works with Benny Summerfield when the Eighth Doctor- from a period during the Time War- discovers what appears to be a fragment of Gallifrey. She later featured in a following three sets where she once again encounters the Weeping Angels, directly before The Angels Take Manhattan. This was followed by a Tenth Doctor and River Song boxset, and a set featuring various machines from the Doctor Who universe. This 'machines' set tied into the Tenth Doctor Adventures Dalek Universe series with the appearance of Jane Slavin's Anya Kingdom. Finally in the most recent series, she meets The Third Doctor for the first time, played by the recast actor Tim Treloar.

For the role of River Song, whom executive producer Russell T Davies described as "sort of the Doctor's wife", the production sought to cast Kate Winslet.[11] One of Winslet's first acting roles was in the BBC1 teen drama Dark Season, written by Davies. The role of River Song eventually went to Alex Kingston, known for starring in the popular US drama ER. On Kingston's casting, Davies said, "I bloody love her!"[12] Kingston had been a fan of Doctor Who as a child.[13] Kingston, when first cast, did not expect her role to be recurring. She later learned that Moffat had always intended for Song to come back for return appearances.[14] Kingston enjoys getting to play an unusual action hero female role, and praises the show for its variety of settings and opportunities "to relive one's childhood fantasies" playing with laser guns and wearing varied costumes from one appearance to the next.[13] With regard to having to speak complicated dialogue, she said, "I'd work with a medical consultant on ER, who'd explain what we were saying, so I'd say it with a purpose and a truth. On Doctor Who, I've no idea what some of my lines mean!"[15]

Discussing her role alongside Tennant and Catherine Tate (Donna Noble) in her 2008 introductory episode, Kingston said, "We just clicked. I've done guest roles on other shows, but rarely have I felt such a warm bond."[16] About working with Kingston, Catherine Tate said, "I'm a huge ER fan. When you hold people in awe, it's almost a disappointment when they come in and they're utterly normal. But Alex isn't disappointing at all. She's such a lovely person." David Tennant was quoted as saying, "Alex is terrific. When she's telling you stories about hanging out with George Clooney, you know she's pretty cool."[15]

The character was originally created purely for the plot of "Silence in the Library". Moffat knew that the team of archaeologists would have to trust the Doctor, but the Doctor's psychic paper could not explain and convince the team why he had appeared in a sealed-off library. Therefore, Moffat intended for the Doctor to know one of the archaeologists, but decided that idea was "dull" and instead decided to have one of them know him.[17] Davies and Moffat were going through a phase in which they tried to find Doctor Who titles with rude acronyms "to wind up people on internet message boards", with one of Moffat's being "A River Song Ending"; when Davies asked "What's a river song?", Moffat decided to make this the name of a character who dies. They eventually changed the title to "Forest of the Dead", being unwilling to actually broadcast an episode with the acronym "ARSE".[18] When Kingston returned to the show, Moffat explained to her some details about her character's back-story, knowledge which Smith, Gillan and Darvill did not receive until later. Kingston relates that she knows her character cannot be killed off because we saw her death in her introductory episode; each subsequent appearance is set at a different point in her character's personal history.[13] Moffat had planned out that River was Amy and Rory's daughter for "a long time" and used "Pond" as Amy's last name to create a link between the two.[19] For the filming of the sixth series, Kingston was aware of River Song's relationship to Amy and Rory, while the other cast only found out upon reading of the mid-season cliffhanger script for "A Good Man Goes to War".[20]

Moffat was influenced by Audrey Niffenegger's science fiction romance novel The Time Traveler's Wife, which depicts a woman who romances and marries a man who unintentionally moves through time. Niffenegger's lovers experience an asynchronous and tragic love story. He comments, "I've quite purposefully used it", though he cites his 2006 episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" as the episode which most prominently explores the book's themes in addition to its conceit.[21] Kingston herself compares the character to Niffenegger's titular Time Traveler's Wife, and like Moffat enjoys "backtracking" more and more with the character as the series progresses. The tragedy for Song highlighted by "The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon" is that she is progressing to a point where the Doctor will not know or trust her any more.[14] Kingston comments,

[What] Steven explained to me is that every time River sort of finds the Doctor, for whatever reason, she's never 100 percent sure which Doctor it is she's going to be meeting. And what they have already experienced together or not. So even when I come back, every time I meet Matt, I never quite know where we are in our relationship or what we have revealed or what we know about each other. Because time travel isn't linear.[13]

Several artefacts of River Song's, on display at the Doctor Who Experience.

Kingston describes the character as being "like a female Indiana Jones" with regard to both characters being archaeologists and having action hero qualities. She also took inspiration from Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of Ellen Ripley in the Alien film franchise commenting that she'd always been "so envious of her for having that kind of role."[22] Kingston has also praised the way the love story between River and the Doctor has been deftly handled, stating that "I'm not sure you'd get that kind of dynamic in America". For Kingston, the physical age difference between herself and Matt Smith adds to the success of the pairing, whilst she feels that viewers have responded warmly to the notion of an action hero in her 40s.[23] Matt Smith has noted that in his characterisation of the Doctor that "River Song frightens the Doctor but he finds himself strangely attracted to her" and that "what makes her a great companion is that when she turns up all hell breaks loose!".[24]

River's characterisation has invited parallels with that of Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), a companion of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors introduced by Steven Moffat in 2005. According to Moffat in the Doctor Who Confidential episode accompanying "Forest of the Dead", River's blaster gun is the one previously owned by Jack in the 2005 series of Doctor Who.[25] Upon River's return in series five, Lyle Masaki of AfterElton felt that viewers had the chance to see the character "do her best to channel Captain Jack" by capturing the same "'charming rogue' vibe".[26] In May 2012 Moffat stated that River, like Jack, is bisexual. Heather Hogan, a senior editor of AfterEllen felt that Moffat's ability to create "fascinating, complicated characters like... River Song" is a direct consequence of him abiding by "Captain Jack's label-eschewing motto": "You people and your quaint little categories".[27] James Cornish of WhatCulture subsequently cited River's characterisation in a rebuke against claims of misogyny and homophobia in Moffat's writing. He described her as "a more sexual, trigger happy version of the Doctor" and "the strongest female character seen on Doctor Who for a quite a while".[28] In a 2019 interview with Radio Times, Kingston described the Doctor as River's second wife, with "Cleopatra being the first".[29]