dramadramaduck app: STILL IN PROGRESS

[nospoilers4you]

Player nickname: Tophie
Player LJ: later_days
Way to contact you:
Email: metalbenderpwns@aim.com
AIM: metalbender pwns
Other: Tophie on plurk, smoke signals, carrier pigeon, or three long blasts on a vuvuzela
Are you at least 15?: I remember a time before compact discs and high-speed internet.
Current Characters: Feldt, Lily, Toph

WARNING: SPOILERS UP TO 'THE WEDDNG OF RIVER SONG'. DO NOT READ ON IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET AND DON'T WANT SPOILERS. BITS HAVE BEEN ADDED IN TO INCLUDE THE SERIES SIX MINI-EPISODES. THOSE AREN'T VERY SPOILERY WITH MASSIVE PLOT DETAILS UNLESS YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ANY OF RIVER'S EPISODES.

Character: Starting off as Mels [Pond], will regenerate and revert back to Melody, and soon after adopt the pseudonym River Song.
Fandom: Doctor Who [new series]
Character Notes:
Combined History of Melody/Mels/River: HER LEGEND BEGAN IN THE 52nd CENTURY. Wait no... it began... I'll explain that bit later. And then it just went every which way from there.... This is going to take a lot of explaining, so put on your seatbelts. This is going to be one hell of a twisty-turny ride. (And you have my sincerest apologies if you've seen Doctor Who between Silence in the Library and The Wedding of River Song.)

And I apologize in advance for any tenses switching around. They can be wily little beasties.

I. She was born as Melody Pond to Amelia Pond [kidnapped] and the non-plastic Last Centurion Rory Williams [not-kidnapped] in the 52nd century on the asteroid known as Demon's Run. Madam Kovarian stole her away when she was only a month old, replaced her with a flesh avatar, then brought her to Earth around the early 1960's. There, she was raised in an American orphanage and brainwashed to be a psychopath with one mission: kill The Doctor. At first, she had been put in an old Apollo spacesuit with alien life support systems. With the suit, she was able to call up a direct line to President Nixon for two weeks straight and ask him for help. Even from a Floridian warehouse where the phones weren't working. At all. Now the Doctor had gotten involved in finding this frightened child, which led to her meeting the Doctor officially for the first time. But dear mummy shot at her and Melody ran away. Sadness. 8( She eventually went back to the orphanage, where Amy and Canton Everett Delaware III were investigating. Same orphanage she had been brought up in, as there was a picture of Amy holding her little baby self. She tried asking mummy for help, but alas.... The memory-proof agents of The Silence arrived. Amy was taken away. Somehow, little Melody broke out of the spacesuit and got away. She eventually turned up in New York City, about six months later (January, 1970). She was sick, so sick she was dying. Such a brave girl, not even afraid of impending death. And then... she regenerated in front of some homeless man. Surpriiiiiiiiiise!

"But Tophie, how could Melody regenerate?" you are clearly wondering if you haven't seen the series but happen to be reading this anyway. "She was born to two humans. How can she regenerate? Clearly, Rory isn't her daddy and Amy boinked Eleven." WRONG. Rory is her daddy. But something about doing the horizontal mambo on a bunkbed while the TARDIS is bouncing around in the time vortex tosses in a bit of Time Lord DNA into the genetic stew. Who knew? The Silence knew, apparently, since that's why Kovarian went through all that trouble to steal the little baby Pond.

ANYWAY. Back to the story. Some time after regenerating into a toddler, Melody ended up in Leadworth after a few years. (I'd like to know how she got there from New York City...) She went by the nickname, Mels, and grew up alongside her parents as one of their best friends. She was constantly getting into trouble in school for blaming the world's problems in history on the Doctor for not being there. As she got older, she showed more criminal tendencies. Like stealing a public bus to get home. Having grown up listening to Amelia's stories about her "Raggedy Doctor", she grew obsessed with him, dreaming of marrying him someday. In the meantime, she acted as the Shipper On Deck for Amy and Rory. The whole time knowing they were her parents. And that she'd kill the Doctor someday.

II. One day after "borrowing" a red convertible, Mels finally meets the Doctor in a Leadworth cornfield, immediately scolding Amy for not telling her the Doctor was hot. There's a case of mood whiplash when she pulls out a gun and gets the Doctor to take her anywhere in time to escape arrest, saying "what the hell, let's kill Hitler." Of course, this does not go as planned, in accordance with Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act. The TARDIS crew seems to accidentally save Hitler from torture, death, and replacement from some time-traveling vigilantes inside a shape-shifting "body" known as the Teselecta. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if the Doctor hadn't told Mels her gun wouldn't work in-flight due to "temporal grace". But alas, how could he have known that Mels loves to push her boundaries, and she fires it... breaking the TARDIS console, resulting in saving Hitler's life. GOOD JOB MELS. Of course, Hitler is ever grateful and on trying to shoot his would-be assassin, ends up missing and shoots Mels instead. With Hitler at gunpoint, Rory shoves him into a cupboard so he can think about what he did. Then Mels tells everyone what Hitler did before falling over and slowly reveals what she had kept secret for so long. That she was Melody Pond and that they got to raise her after all. Very touching until... more surprises (for some of the TARDIS crew, anyway)!

Mels regenerates again! This time, into the face and body associated with "River Song". She runs about acting all excited about her new features down below ("I'm going to wear LOTS of jodhpurs!") and dashes off to the bathroom to "weigh herself". On her return, Melody and the Doctor have a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. She had her gun tucked away after it had been dropped on a chair and she knew of Hitler's gun stashed in the fruit dish. But! The Doctor had the foresight to empty out her gun while she regenerated and turned the fruit bowl to swap Hitler's gun with a banana while she grinded up on him. But the Doctor didn't anticipate one thing: poison lipstick. Such a deadly love she bears for him. And he's actually dying! With no way to regenerate! He can't die in Berlin when his death is listed as a fixed point at Lake Silencio, Utah! He escapes into the TARDIS to take care of matters while Amy and Rory go running after their daughter who has just taken out a few Nazis with her 16-hour window of fresh regenerative energy. Then she steals a motorcycle and zooms off into Berlin for some new clothes. Does she pay for these clothes? Hell naw, she barges in this little cafe sort of place, a gun in either hand, and demands that everyone strips.

"Mummy" is the one that finds her, but it's not really her. It's the Teselecta disguised as Amy. Its crew harps on her about killing the Doctor and Melody's like "whatever mum" and the crew decides it's time to "give her hell". So they do. Oh, how she screams. The pain and agony-- oh wait, who's that that just turned up? It's the Doctor in his suit, with a spiffy sonic cane. He says he's fine, and he sure looks it. The surprised Teselecta releases Melody, but catches and resumes torturing her when she tries running. But the Doctor orders them to stop, not to hurt her. Even after he's collapsed. Eventually, it was her mother's quick thinking that stopped the Teselecta from killing her, but it was too late for the Doctor to do much of anything. He dragged himself across the floor, fighting to get back to the TARDIS to save the Ponds facing imminent doom from killer robotic antibodies that more resemble stiff jellyfish. She seems surprised that he still cares, but a bit put off (jealous, maybe?) when he keeps calling out for River to help him. Still, she gets an emergency flying lesson from the TARDIS (which seems to have recognised her as its child too... probably because Melody was conceived inside the TARDIS... idk, take it up with Moffat) and lands around her parents to save them.

When they get back, the Doctor only has a few moments left and leaves a message for River with Melody before kicking the bucket. To satisfy her curiosity, she asks who River Song is. Amy finds the Teselecta still active and has it show Melody her current face. She then asks her parents if he's worth it, and not because she wants a bottle of L'oriel shampoo. They quickly say yes, and she uses up her remaining regenerations to bring the Doctor back to life and kisses him. Yay! All is well with the world again. ...Right? Not quite. After doing what she did, Team TARDIS brings Melody to what the Doctor calls "the best hospital in the universe". She falls asleep after talking a little with her parents and the Doctor, and the latter leaves her the diary with the TARDIS door-pattern. Then Team TARDIS leaves her behind to live her life. Fast forwarding a few years before she was to be born, she applies to study archaeology at Luna University with the name River Song, saying she is looking for a "good man".

III. Fast forwarding again through the years, River Song has finally received her doctorate. She seems to have been studying the Doctor extensively since coming to Luna University, making notes in the book he had left with her. River's in the middle of doing so when Madam Kovarian and other agents to The Silence invade her study space and knock her out. When River wakes up, she is in an Apollo spacesuit, also adjusted like the one she had been trapped in as a little girl all those years ago. The same one? Who knows. Not only is she in the spacesuit, she has been dropped under the surface of Lake Silencio and forced to wait for the Doctor.

Then the moment arrives. The spacesuit controls her actions and she tears up while talking with the Doctor. Poor River is so unwilling to kill the Doctor, and in that unwillingness... she drains her weapons pack and breaks apart time itself.

Time becomes frozen in an alternate reality with everything from every point in time bleeding through at once. She knows what will set things right, but she can't do it. She has plans. Plans that include pointing a gun at Cleopatra to commandeer one of the pyramids for a base. Plans that include not letting the Doctor touch her. Not yet. After the memory-proof agents of The Silence break out and stir shit up, she shows him a device she built, sending out a message, a distress signal, to the rest of the universe to show the Doctor how much he really is loved. That the universe simply cannot live without him. They continue bickering until the Doctor agrees to marry her and shows her a secret that she keeps with her for a long time. That secret? The Doctor is really inside a Teselecta masquerading as the Doctor! Once they are married in this particular timeline, she finally agrees to restore the correct timeline and let the events at Lake Silencio take place. With the Doctor dead, River is hauled off to the Stormcage Containment Facility to serve out her murder sentence. Twelve thousand consecutive life sentences. How fun.

IV. During her stay in Stormcage, the Doctor comes to get her for short trips at night and then return her, or else she gets out herself, beginning a long string of break-outs and break-ins. Thus, the highest security prison in the universe becomes a Cardboard Prison to Doctor Song. Some of those trips aren't known at all, and a few others have been listed by name or very brief descriptions only. Her first trip is to a boring planet with a 400-foot tree growing on the north side of a mountain in the middle of a sea. At exactly 12 minutes past midnight, on September 21, 2360, there's a view from the very top that will let them see more stars in the sky than anywhere and anytime in the whole universe.

V. Another one of these trips is a birthday celebration. The Doctor takes her to the last Winter Frost Fair on the Thames. He gets Stevie Wonder to put on a concert there before bringing him back to his correct time, and then delivers River back to the prison. There, she runs into Rory in his Roman armor and tells him about her escapade, just beaming all the while. He had come to get her to help the Doctor rescue Amy and baby Pond. After a quick consult of her diary, her face falls and correctly interprets what he's trying to recruit her for. She apologises and says she can't come and help, not until the end. Quite possibly because, no matter the outcome, it would be crossing her own timeline. (Can't risk summoning the nasty clock roaches...) She tells Rory today is the day the Doctor "will rise higher than ever before and then fall much more than that". So, he eventually leaves her behind to continue the recruitment.

She does eventually turn up, as promised. But not until baby Melody has already been taken away, revealed to be a flesh avatar, and Nurse Strax and Lorna Bucket have been killed in action. He yells and fumes at her until she turns he tables on him, telling him she couldn't have done anything to prevent this. That this is him. Able to make armies turn and run without a drop of blood spilled (before the Headless Monks came in for round two). On seeing his cot, she drags him over and finally helps him understand who she really is. Soon after departing to find the stolen baby, she does the same for Amy and Rory (once Amy puts the gun down), revealing that River Song is her name as it would translate to the language of the Gamma Forest. Since ponds don't exist there. River Song = Melody Pond. After the big reveal, River takes everyone home with her vortex maniplator (no idea how she got this one, unless I got the chronology mixed up) and plunks herself back in prison.

Oh, yes, there's that wonky timeline. Take a deep breath, massage your brain, get rid of that twisting headache from trying to get this all straightened out. Ready for more? Doesn't matter, there's still lots more to be covered. 8Db

VI. Up to the current point in canon (end of series six) and going by her timeline, River has been in prison for a while when she receives a letter from the Doctor bearing time, date, and coordinates. She meets up with him and her parents in Utah, making a grand entrance by shooting off his Stetson. They go to a little diner to chat, she compares diary notes with the Doctor, and then they all go off for a picnic by Lake Silencio. --Wait. Lake Silencio? Didn't we just go over this a couple "paragraphs" back? River was in the lake and killed "the Doctor" here. Oh, if only it were so simple.... This is one event River was allowed to cross her own timeline for without any risk of clock roaches. She came as a guest and the killer. She is forced to watch her younger self kill the Doctor, unable to interfere. Her gun has no effect on the "astronaut" (quite fortunate as she would have created another temporal paradox if she succeeded) as she walks back into the lake, which isn't a surprise to her at all. An old Canton Everett Delaware III comes to help burn the "body" and she watches on with Canton and her parents as they give him a Viking-style funeral. What no one else but River knows is that they're burning a Teselecta.

Canton leaves them and the Ponds all return to the diner where they realise the envelopes are numbered and find the envelope marked with a '1' open on a table. From the back, out comes the Doctor. Fresh as a daisy with his special straw, two hundred years younger than the one that just 'died'. To keep up appearances, she pretends to be angry with the stunt he had just pulled and slaps him. Next on the travel itinerary for Team TARDIS and River is a trip to Washington DC in 1969 once the Doctor finishes being a moody child and finds it in his hearts to give his companions a chance. But only after Amy convinces him that she's not being manipulated and swears on fish fingers and custard. Why not River? He doesn't really trust her yet at his point in their timeline. He doesn't know who (or what) she is or who she killed.

Still, off they go to visit Nixon, convince him to let them help with the problem (mysterious phone calls every night from a kid Nixon assumes is called Jefferson Adams Hamilton when asked who and where they are), and then steal Canton away when they go to investigate in Florida. In a warehouse of sorts at an intersection of streets named Jefferson, Adams and Hamilton, the group set to work, soon finding alien technology with stolen NASA astronaut gear. Strange.... They also discover a hole leading to a series of underground passages, which River checks out. No one has to worry since she's tried being careful, (but it was "too dull") and if she gets into any trouble she's "quite the screamer". Oh my. :3c She finds agents of the Silence, runs back up, forgets about them, then goes back down for another look. Still, the Doctor asks Rory to go on down after her, which he reluctantly does. Down below she's already run into the memory-proof agents of the Silence. Again. But this time she's gotten queasy because of them. By the time Rory joins her, they've scuttled off to hide around the corner and out of sight. They head through the winding tunnels wth River leading the way, scanning the tunnels and finding them to be really old.

The father-daughter team find a locked maintenance hatch and River sets to breaking in. As she does, she has a heart-to-heart with Rory concerning a part of her relationship with the Doctor. She explains the backwards nature of it, where she lives for the days she sees him, but he knows her less. She confides in him her fear of the day she will run into him and he won't have a clue who she is. The door unlocks and they enter a room that looks like a makeshift TARDIS console (like the one seen in The Lodger, from series 5). River starts scanning some more and finds the tunnels branch out worldwide. Now that's what I call networking. Then something happens to Rory, possibly at the hands of our memory-proof friends that can shoot electrical energy out of their massive sausage-like fingers. But somehow, he came out of it just fine.

VII. MOVING ALONG TO PART TWO, everyone had split up. Three months after the events in Florida, everyone is in different parts of the country, being tailed by the FBI and Canton. River runs through a building under construction in New York, finds some more Silence agents, and marks up her skin with more tallies. She turns around when the FBI agents find her, promptly forgets the creepy Silence agents, then pauses for a quick chat before taking a backwards leap of faith off the 50th floor. After all, "there's always a way out". With a bit of timey wimey magic, the doors to the pool are opened up, the TARDIS gets parked on the side of the building, and River dives right on in. She dries off and changes, the Doctor reveals his brilliant plan to use Neil Armstrong's foot as his secret weapon and then implants everyone with nano-recorders. Such lovely devices that allows them to record what they say.

They split up again, River and Rory sticking together while the Doctor makes a couple adjustments to the Apollo spaceshuttle. They go along with Nixon to bail him out of trouble, then go to try help Amy, who is with Canton, checking out children's homes. Trouble is... Amy's vanished when they find the little girl's room. Only thing remaining is a busted open spacesuit and Amy's nano-recorder. Rory keeps the nano-recorder to listen to(because Amy's voice can still be heard, broadcasting live from wherever she is), the Doctor tries interrogating River about the envelope, while River examines the suit. She deduces the girl's life support software was for a human, but the girl had been strong enough to break out on her own. Watching in broadcast order, this is a brainteaser, but since we're going by River's timeline, we know it's that little bit of Time Lord DNA that gives her a boost.

The Doctor's plan is just about ready, so they head off to rescue Amy. River and the Doctor flirt while discussing how many Silence agents she'll shoot first, the plan rolls out with the Silence agent's planet-wide eviction, River takes out all the Silence, and tells her Sweetie to go build a cabinet with the sonic screwdriver in the middle of the fight. After dropping off Canton, River's brought back to Stormcage, where she and the Doctor have a chat in front of her open cell. He's about to run off, but she calls him back and kisses him. She looks surprised when he tells her that it's their first kiss from his point of view, but she looks so hurt after he leaves inside the TARDIS, knowing this is most likely their last kiss from her perspective.

VIII. A bit later on down the line, the TARDIS reroutes a phone call for the Doctor to River in 5145 from Winston Churchill in 1941. He passes on a message about a painted message from Van Gogh, so she uses hallucinogenic lipstick on a brand new guard outside her cell to break out. River then moves on over to steal the painting from the royal art collection. She's stopped by Liz X, but she shows it to the queen, convincing Liz to let her go and deliver the message to its intended recipient. From there, she heads over to the Maldovarium and has a chat with Dorium Maldovar to make a deal for a vortex manipulator. The deal being slipping microexplosives in his wine, then offering him a Callisto pulse which would disarm them. She gets what she wants and promptly goes on to deface the oldest cliff-face in the universe with "Hello Sweetie", a set of coordinates, and a date.

She breaks out the hallucinogenic lipstick in full force and goes all out on some Roman soldiers to make them think she's Cleopatra, waiting for Julius Caesar. "Caesar" finally arrives and scolds her for leaving the graffiti (really, he liked it), and she comes back at him for not answering his phone. She then gets down to business and shows him the painting: the TARDIS exploding with a date and location where the notice should be on the door. The kicker is, it's entitled "The Pandorica Opens" but the Pandorica is just a fairy tale. Or so they say. Still, the trio rides out of the encampment (River, sans costume) and over to Salisbury Plains on horseback. Yep. The location of Stonehenge. It's already old, being from the Neolithic era, thousands of years before, as it were. Amy drops a tiny spoiler, creating another stable time loop, in the form of River hinting at this adventure after the Byzantium (that's another story). She goes scanning the grounds and finds traces of a battle having taken place there in the past. Curious.... They spend the afternoon attaching these levitaton devices to one of the fallen megaliths to move it aside and reveal an underground passage!

Can't resist that, so they go on down. With no Bob Barker to open up door number 1, they do so themselves and find a room with giant stone pillars and... the Pandorica. An enormous cube with strange circular carvings on it. River goes about scanning it, finding numerous security measures that had been put into it. Time-stops, deadlocks, matter lines, and more. Yikes! Oh, and it's opening from the inside... wonder what could be coming out. Well, no time to worry about that, turns out the giant pillars are really transmitters, telling everyone everywhere that the Pandorica was opening. Everyone everywhere. Yep. Everyone... everywhere.... Oh. The Doctor sonics her handheld computer so she can figure it out. And she finds... hundreds... thousands... millions... too many ships coming to Earth than can be processed. All containing old enemies of the Doctor. Daleks, Cybermen, Raxicoricawhatchamacallems, Atraxi, Draconian, Nestene, Sontaran, and so many more. Even the Lawful Neutral Judoon have shown up too. The trio runs up top to find spaceships zipping around and River's sent off to gather up Roman reinforcements.

When she gets there, the commander has returned and isn't happy with the tricks played on his men. After showing him what her gun can do, she laid out the Doctor's request for help. He seemed reluctant until there was one volunteer, a centurion, soon followed by about 49 more that River sent off to Stonehenge. She still hadn't made it back by the time the old ruins were surrounded, so she called him up and he told her to bring the TARDIS over. She gallops on over, starts her up just fine, but then everything goes wrong. The engine sounds sicker than normal, the old girl pitches around in the time vortex, and River tries to figure out what's wrong, but to no avail. At least she manages to land, at Amy's house, of all places. Strange. Out comes the scanner, burn marks are found on the grass indicating visitors. Past the broken-down door, she climbs up to Amy's room, finding 'Raggedy Doctor' toys, a Roman Britain picture book, and a copy of The Legend of Pandora's Box. Funny how the box on the book's cover looks like the Pandorica.

...Uh oh. River takes the books back to the TARDIS and rings up the Doctor to tell him of her findings. The Romans aren't real. Something had visited the house. The TARDIS had flown wrong. Together, they deduce the Romans are duplicates that are so deep under cover, they don't realise it themselves. She figures out this whole thing was nothing more than an elaborate trap and is able to tell him as much before the TARDIS jolts and the engines start acting up, like something else was controlling it. She runs about trying to fix it, tells the Doctor she can't be flying wrong because he taught her (maybe a little bit...), and what's the date? 26 June, 2010.

Big uh oh.... That's the date the TARDIS is due to explode and open the cracks in time. He orders her to land, to SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING, like Madagascar when someone sneezes in Canada. But she's trying and she can't. And then... SILENCE WILL FALL. SILENCE WILL FALL. Maybe that's the force controlling the TARDIS. He repeats his orders, but it's not safe. Not yet. She does eventually land, but the doors are locked. She shouts down the line to tell the Doctor of her predicament, but with no reply, she runs around to find her own way out. The way out consisting of blasting the doors' lock as time runs out. River runs to the doors, throws them open, and finds herself face to face with a giant stone blocking the doorway completely. Her face falls as she utters her final words. "I'm sorry, my love." And she turns her head in time to see the center console explode.

IX. FAST FORWARD ABOUT 1,894 YEARS. Don't worry, River's fine... ish. She's just been stuck in an emergency temporal loop this whole time. Repeating her last act to escape, but never really dying. She has the TARDIS to thank for that. Her last loop is interrupted by the Doctor popping in with her vortex manipulator and pulling her out. She thanks him by teaming up with Amy to blow up his fez. And then a Dalek appears and fires on her, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory. They escape into the museum and everyone listens to the Doctor explain his mad plan to restart the universe. River argues against it, after all such a thing is impossible. Or... almost impossible. He's about to explain to her, but the Dalek shoots him down. Before she can check him, he pops off downstairs twelve minutes ago. One dead Doctor does not for a happy River make. She sends her parents off ahead and unleashes tranquil fury on that Dalek. It assumes she'll show mercy, but she tells it that she's River Song and to check its records again. Then the Dalek is the one begging for mercy. Not once. Not twice. Three times. Did she give it? Well, she came down shortly to find the Doctor not where he had apparently died and told her young parents that the Doctor lies. He isn't dead. But that Dalek is.

They find the Doctor in the Pandorica, now hooked up to the vortex manipulator. River figures out that his plan for Big Bang Two requires the Pandorica to fly into the heart of the explosion, spread its healing light everywhere, to every point in time. But the Doctor is sacrificing himself to do it. Everyone will wake up where they started on 26 June, 2010 with no memory of the Doctor. At this point, he doesn't really know her, and she does so well to hide the entirety of how much it really hurts her. The universe resets and River remains some sort of wild time anomaly. Why? Because her diary's pages are wiped clear. No trace of her past adventures or notes or anything regarding the Doctor or her past with him.

She leaves her diary for her mum to help her remember. Disguised as the old wedding saying "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue", but still looking like the TARDIS. Amy catches sight of River as she walks past a window, but that's the last she's seen until River finds the Doctor about to head back into the TARDIS. He returns her diary and vortex manipulator, the former now with all the writing restored. She gives him mathematician's answers to his questions regarding her marital status. She warns that he'll find out who she is very soon and apologises as that's when everything changes before vanishing via vortex manpulator.

X. A bit more time passes and it seems there's a propostion on the table. She is put into Father Octavian's custody and soon ends up recruited for a dangerous mission. She hops on board a starliner carrying some deadly cargo, gets a short clip of it, leaves a message on the home box, and makes sure the security footage catches her good side as she leaves coordinates and instructions. Then she breaks open an outer door and flies out. The Doctor and Amy find her message about 12,000 years later and go to pick her up. They fly after the ship, until River hits the blue boringers-- er, stabilisers. Sorry. Then the Doctor sits back and pouts as she flies and lands the TARDIS next to the Aplan temple it crashed into on Alfava Metraxis.

The wreckage of this ship-- the Byzantium-- is found to have no survivors, except for one thing that can't really ever die. It's not until after she hails down the clerics that the Doctor's told that they're dealing with a Weeping Angel. After changing from a black dress and hot red heels into neutral-colored cleric fatigues, she shows Amy, the Doctor, and her keeper the four-second video clip and sticks it on a loop. River leaves with the Doctor to show him a book containing the only known written info on the stone menaces, written by a madman. In the meantime, she goes through her diary again to pick out his spot in her timeline. And how young he is to her! She's even got pictures to indicate just how young. Pictures... that's what's missing from the Weeping Angel's field guide. No pictures of what to look out for. Why? The image of an angel is an angel. ...Video loops are images. And they left Amy with a video clip playing. Oh shit.

Good thing Amy found a way to stop it or River's timeline would have been destroyed before it even started. Whoops. Not much time beyond giving mom a hug (as ordered by the Doctor, as he's busy) because the clerics have finally decided to just blow up a hole to get in. They walk in and find the temple is full of statues. Perfect hiding place for the angel. While on the hunt, she has a chat with Amy, who asks if River is the Doctor's wife. Could it be that simple with him? Yes? She doesn't admit if she's right or wrong, but conceeds that Amy is "good". Well, she is right. Sort of. (It did happen in an aborted timeline, but if they remember it, does that mean it still counts? Best to ponder that later.) Still, no time to lose, gotta find that angel.

And then... it hits her at the same time it hits him. Could have been them being ignorant or a perception filter. A perception filter on what, you might ask. Very good question. Well, we learn today that our friends, the Aplans, had two heads and died out a long time ago mysteriously. The statues filling the Aplan temple? One head each equaling to hundreds of heads. Hundreds of angels. ...Another whoops. Time to head up closer to the wreckage since the angel isn't there. He was nice enough to call... after killing and stealing Cleric Bob's voice... after killing and stealing Christian and Angelo's voices too. Welp. Everyone heads up as the broken down, powerless angels start feeding off the radiation from the downed ship and slowly chase after the clerics, River, Amy, and the Doctor. Everyone's trapped... or so it seems. The Doctor gives them a Reason You Suck speech of badassery and gets them all up onto the Byzantium by shooting out the grav globe for a boost when jumping.

XI. The journey of terror continues into the Byzantium, a little corridor where the lights need to be drained to open the door again, and River tells Octavian that she absolutely trusts the Doctor but can't honestly answer "he's not some sort of madman, is he?", only reaffirming her trust. Apparently, that is good enough for him (albeit, with a little reluctance... understandable, as he'd lost three good men already) since he let the Doctor cut the lights to get the door open. After the risky maneuver, everyone safely gets to the secondary flight deck. River gets to work on the console, trying to get something to work while they introduce Amy to the oxygen factory on the ship. She continues while Angel Bob calls, until he mentions that they're in Amy's eye. She actually shows something close to fear when a horrific screeching and ripping sound comes from nowhere. The sound? Angel Bob approximates it to the Weeping Angels laughing. Laughing at her sweetie. Because he hasn't noticed. The room starts rattling around when the crack from Amy's bedroom wall appears. On the Doctor's and Octavian's orders, she heads into the forest with everyone and leaves the Doctor behind.

A ways in, she realises her mum isn't looking too hot. She gets a med scanner and insists they wait for the Doctor, since keeping him alive is apparently her mission (as well as everyone else's). She tells Octavian that she won't forgive herself if the Doctor died back there, and she'll never forgive him if he lived. ...And he's standing right behind her, right? Right. She hates him, but not really. Time to focus on mum again because she's dying. She keeps an eye on her vital signs while the Doctor thinks out loud. He gets it pieced together with a temporary solution for Amy to shut her eyes as the angels start coming in. River pronounces her too weak to move yet. The Doctor orders her to come along while Octavian and the clerics stay behind, but Octavian insists that he come with them. River watches, a bit tense (possibly nervous he'll tell the Doctor what the real connection hey have is), but relaxes slightly when Octavian acknowledges that they are engaged or something, "in a manner of speaking". And off they trot toward the primary flight deck after the Doctor has a quick chat with Amy. On the way, she chats with the Doctor about the crack, and tells him she's a sucker for a man in uniform when he questions the odd term for their engagement. Oh, the look that crosses her face as the bishop clears up that she's in his personal custody, released her from Stormcage, personally responsible, yadda yadda, etc.

They finally make it to the outside of the primary flight deck. River's got a gun out, standing guard, while the Doctor fiddles around on River's computer, and Octavian gets the service hatch open. He sends River through first, where she gets to work on a teleport to bring everyone else in. Even on learning that Octavian's dead and being told she's wasting her time, she keeps going at it. She questions his plan to get Amy to them, it couldn't work. Result: the Doctor blows up at her, demanding to know if she's got an alternative. The angels are running from the crack, she asks what the time energy was going to do, how to stop it, and... what would the complicated space-time thing to give it would be like. Result: more furious yelling, since he would fit the bill. Stunned into silence, she goes back to work on the teleport and gets it to work. Just in time to save Amy from certain doom. She rubs it in the Doctor's face that she managed to get it working, he declares he could kiss her, she tells him "maybe when you're a bit older".

Then the Weeping Angels raise the barrier blocking off the flight deck. They try to convince the Doctor to toss himself into the crack, River offers herself, but the Doctor tells her (and Amy) to get a grip. It takes a bit of repeating, before she catches on, calls him a genius. Why? Because the angels are draining the power, and the artificial gravity along with it. BYE ANGELS HAVE A NICE... non-existence? The crack closes up, well-fed on quantum-locked stone. The trio makes their way out of the wreckage and back on the beach next to the temple. River is back under cleric guard and wearing handcuffs. She talks with the Doctor, saying she might have done enough to earn a pardon. (This time? Maybe she's gone for pardon before, but failed to get it? We may never know... though I do like the idea of it.) He tells her what Octavian told her, that she had killed a good man. She doesn't smile anymore as she tells him it was 'the best man she ever knew' that she killed. He tries pressing her to learn the identity, but her smile returns as she refuses him information. No future hints, he has to live that long story out, but she does drop the hint that he'll see her when the Pandorica opens. But the Pandorica's a fairy tale. "Aren't we all?" They dabble in tense-play. Her "I'll see you there", his "I look forward to it", and then her "I remember it well". She exchanges goodbyes with Amy, and tells the Doctor he can trust her if he wants to, but where would be the fun in doing that? In a whirl of sand-colored wind, she gets teleported up to the ships.

Still in her fatigues, she uses her vortex manipulator to go pay a visit to her mother to share a bottle of wine. They compare timelines: her having just come out of the Byzantium with an Amy that didn't know who River was at all, and Amy having had the Doctor die and the alternate timeline vanishing. She plays with spoilers, teasing Amy for a while, reminding her about Rule One. She tells Amy that the Doctor was actually alive and had been inside the Teselecta. So when dear old dad comes along, he finds his wife and daughter hugging, laughing, and dancing. River tells him the good news, reassures them that she's sure. She is his wife, after all.

So far, much of the time between getting out of Stormcage and the next time she has already shown up in the Doctor’s timeline isn’t yet known. Last little linebreak interjection before we hit the homestretch.

XII. One night, some time after she's released from Stormcage, the Doctor shows up at River’s door. Not a younger Doctor, an older version of Eleven from the future that knows her well. He has a new suit and haircut. After a slight parking mix-up, of River walking into the wrong TARDIS on the same night as her first night with the Doctor, he takes her off to Darillium to visit the singing towers, something he has been "promising for ages". She later recalls as the towers sang, he cried, but she didn't know why at the time. After dropping her back off at home, he gives her a version of his sonic screwdriver with dampers, red settings, and a few other features.

XIII. The next time they meet, River had sent him a message via his psychic paper to meet her at The Library. Not just any library, The Library. A library that covers an entire planet. It had been blocked off for nearly a hundred years when something happened. River and the rest of the crew brought in by Mr. Lux came via ship as an expedition of sorts, to investigate what happened 100 years before. She’s the first to approach Ten with a smile and greets him with her trademark “Hello, Sweetie.” How does he respond? “Get out.” Lovely fellow. But hey, he and the woman must be able to breathe, so everyone can take off their helmets. She introduces herself as Professor River Song, archaeologist, and listens to what he has to say about the possible dangers there. Possible? More like definitely. Looks like Vashta Nerada.

She sets the crew to different tasks and drags off Pretty Boy for diary time. Bit confusing to her why he's acting like he doesn't know her. Looks young though. Must be early days. Crash of the Byzantium? Nope. Picnic at Asgard? Oh dear, not yet. How about the Bone Meadows? Still no? Must be very early days. She flips through more pages, presumably hitting her "spotter's guide". He’s the youngest she’s ever seen him. She reaches up and touches his face and when he looks confused and awkward, half-asking that she's seen him before. The awful realisation slowly hits and she asks him if he knows who she is. Then. The three words that cut through her heart: “Who are you?” There's no time to explain as Proper Dave has issues trying to get into the security grid. The Doctor messes around with it, giving everyone a view of a girl in front of her television. River asks questions, but there are no answers. Not yet, anyway.

Everyone scatters, the Doctor spots River's diary and just gets his hand on it before she darts in to explain his own rules to not look inside her diary. She takes it and stuffs it in her bag, which she brings over into the light-circle as the Doctor bickers with Mr. Lux over getting information. What idiot places pride over telling him what he needs to know to keep everyone alive? She chimes in and throws him off-kilter, asking why he won't sign Lux's contract. Still, she doesn't have room to talk. She didn't sign it either, and freely admits to it. While Miss Evangelista finds something quite possibly important, River and Mr. Lux give him information related to what happened to the planet. A message: "The lights are going out.", and a data extract: ">>> 4022 saved. No survivors. <<< So they all keep talking until they hear Miss Evanglista scream... and find her clean skeleton and shredded suit in a reading room. Mere seconds after she screamed. River refuses to cut off her data ghost as a mark of respect for the newly deceased, but only does so when the pattern degrades to the point where she keeps repeating "ice cream". After pocketing the dead neural relay device, she mentions that she'd like a word with whatever did that to Miss Evangelista.

She heads back with everyone else and digs through her bag for a pack lunch. He questions her about her diary and who she is to him. Both answers to him: spoilers, before handing over a tin of chicken and salad. As the Doctor hunts for the Vashta Nerada, she talks with Donna, half-explaining how her timeline with him is weird, and that when he looks right through her like he has been that day, it kills her on the inside. Donna doesn't fully follow what River's saying and demands a straight answer, but the Doctor tells her to quiet down. Only then, after he referred to Donna by name, does River realise she's talking to Donna Noble, someone she's only heard of. She clarifies that she does know the Doctor, but in his personal future, and can't answer why she doesn't know her in the future or what happens to her. Such a sad look in her eyes. Odds are good somewhere in her past, the (future) Doctor told her the story of the Doctor-Donna and how she couldn't handle a Time Lord mind, and needed it repressed. Understandably, she seems wary of the shadows now, all of them? No. Any of them... and Proper Dave's shadows. Oh dear.

After orders are given to put helmets back on, she suggests increasing the mesh density of the suits to 400%. The Doctor cranks it up to 800% instead and goes to pass on his screwdriver to her only to find... she's already got a sonic screwdriver of her own. Snap, indeed. While the Doctor teleports Donna back to the TARDIS, River sets to work on everyone's suits... then calls him back to show him the second shadow on Proper Dave had vanished. She could only watch as the Vashta Nerada crawled into his suit and ate him. But she wasn't about to let the swarm in his suit get to the Doctor. Cue her getting past him and sonic-ing it, successfully getting it off the Doctor. Out comes a sonic blaster, and she makes a hole in the wall for them to escape through. Everyone runs away, River automatically taking the Doctor's hand for a moment. They have to stop to rest, most everyone out of breath while the Doctor tries to brighten the lights. River whips out hers again and the light responds quickly. She tells him that he gave it to her and that she's not just anyone, but only asks what the plan is when asked who she is. But when Proper Dave's infested suit catches up to them, she has to drag him away from an information node with Donna's voice explaining she had left the Library, but had been saved. Strange, but no time to think about that. MUST RUN AWAY FROM VASHTA NERADA. But now they're trapped by the swarm-in-a-suit and some shadows that just cut off some light, while being serenaded by a repetitious "Hey! Who turned out the lights?" and "Donna Noble has left the library. Donna Noble has been saved." Fun, huh? Well, things just get better from there. Right? Spoilers! Well, not really spoilers. And not for very long, either.

XIV. River finally takes command and uses the sonic blaster again, making another hole in a nearby wall. Everyone uses it to escape and the chase resumes! They make it to another room where River tries quelling the concerns of the others she arrived with about the Doctor, saying he's the only story they'll ever tell if they get out alive, and that she trusts him to the end of the universe, and they've actually been (remember the Pandorica?). Then, she goes over to ask what's wrong with the Doctor's screwdriver, telling him to use the red settings and dampers, but he doesn't have those... not yet. She tries assuring him she didn't take it from his cold, dead hands (though she's had a few opportunities already), but they quickly devolve into an argument. Lux breaks it up, getting frustrated because they could die and the pair of them are arguing like an old married couple. That snuffs out the fuse rather quickly, because she decides enoughs enough and whispers something in his ear to prove that she's someone he trusts completely.

The Doctor tries to figure out what's wrong with his sonic, Anita (one of the crew members) finds she's got two shadows, and Proper Dave finally catches up. RUN! After a way, the Doctor tells River to go on. He asks for five minutes to try and talk to the Vashta Nerada stuck in Proper Dave's suit. She tells Other Dave to stay with him, "pull him out when he's too stupid to live", and gives him two minutes before running ahead with Lux and Anita. When the three of them get to a safe spot, River starts using her sonic to investigate a spot on the floor and has a chat with Anita about the Doctor, explaining that while the Doctor was here, it's not her Doctor. River tells her how she had seen whole armies turn and run at the mention of his name, and how he could open the doors to the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers. "The Doctor in the TARDIS... next stop everywhere." Then the Doctor finally speaks up, saying no one can snap their fingers and make a TARDIS' doors open, not even him. The Doctor can, but maybe later.

She then notices that Other Dave isn't there, and her face falls when she learns "he's not coming". But then the Doctor realised what happened. The people weren't safe, they had been saved... by the computer, to the harddrive. And suddenly... the self-destruct function was activated. Lux finally decides to show them CAL at the core of the planet. How do they get there? River uses her sonic on the big floor panel she had been sonic-ing earlier and it reveals a gravity platform. All four hop on and take a trip on Route 66 down to the core. Once there, they race to the data core area. She looks at the readings on a terminal and finds that it looks like the computer's not only in sleep mode, but dreaming too. But... computers can't dream of electric sheep... right? Right. ...And then Lux says that little girls do. He pulls a lever and a node turns nearby to show the little girl from earlier, as they had been trying to call the security grid. Everyone but Lux is shocked, because this is CAL. The main computer. Charlotte Abigail Lux. His aunt who had been dying as a little girl. River looks so sad as she listens to the sad story of CAL. And soon, it's back to action time. They still have to stop the computer from melting down. But the Doctor has a solution! He'll hook himself up to the computer and let CAL borrow his memory space.

But River sees the flaws in this plan: he'll burn up both of his hearts and won't regenerate. He tells her to go with Lux and find as many data cells as possible for a maximum download. He tells her to shut up, she tells him she hates him sometimes, but he knows. She tells Lux to come with her, and asks Anita to stay behind, telling her if he dies, she'll kill him. Then she runs off with Lux. However... when she gets back, Anita was already dead, eaten by the Vashta Nerada. She tells the Doctor that Lux can manage without her, but he can't... before giving him a hard punch to knock him out. While he's out, she handcuffs him, leaves her diary, both their screwdrivers, and her gun out of his reach. She also sets up a device that will allow the computer to use her for the memory space, just as he had been planning.

When he comes to, there's not much time left. She says that he's known how she dies the whole time they knew each other. She continues to tell him of the last time she saw his future self. The new haircut and a suit. The trip to the singing towers. How he cried. Realising now that he must have known that she was going to the Library. How he gave her his screwdriver. She tries comforting him, telling him there's nothing he can do. When he tries arguing to let him do it in her place, she says if he dies in the Library, she'd never have met him. Time can be rewritten? "Not those times. Not one line, don't you dare!" River tells him that this isn't the end, he'll see her again. "You and me... time and space... you watch us run." He stops fighting, but tells her in the last ten seconds that she whispered his name in his ear, and there's only one way she could know his name. She tells him to hush, because... well.... "Spoilers." On the end of the countdown, she connects the device in time for the download. And so is the death of River Song.

...Or is it? The Doctor and Donna go to set down River's diary and sonic screwdriver in a section of the Library. They leave it wthout reading, but the Doctor comes running back to examine the screwdriver. While he does that, River can be heard telling a story (breaking in spots for other bits of dialogue and action). Why would he have given her that, knowing she was going to die? Then he discovers the neural relay containing River's brainwaves. He takes her on one last run. The platform disabled, he flies down to the data core and shoves the screwdriver into the computer. He saved her. In the computer world, River meets CAL and Doctor Moon, the former telling her the Doctor helped make the virtual world a good place again. Then the others who had died show up, courtesy of CAL: Proper Dave, Other Dave, Anita, Miss Evangelista... all saved properly. They hug it out all together. Then River is shown telling the story to the two virtual kids (Ella and Joshua) and CAL, reading out of her diary to them all as a bedtime story. This is the way she remains. Forever entombed in the Library's computer, while the Vashta Nerada thrive in the books.

Note: I will be taking River as Mels, before she regenerates. When Eleven and Rory do a canon-move to Let's Kill Hitler, she'll regenerate into Melody/River.

Personality:
I. In her days as Mels, she keeps what secrets she does have buried, and she does it well. Mels also sees nothing wrong with blaming the Doctor for things that had gone wrong in history. The Titanic sinking? His fault, but the teacher's too stupid to know about him. Reason behind Hitler and the Third Reich's rise to power? The Doctor wasn't there to put a stop to that. Always she was getting into trouble at school, bouncing in and out of class and the head teacher's office until she finished. She didn't care though, getting in trouble wasn't a big deal to her. Then her complete disregard for rules and always questioning authority gets her tossed in jail for taking a bus. No, taking a bus in the literal sense of the word and driving it through a botanical garden for a shortcut. At least she gave it back? Nope. Amy had to come bail her out and she walks out all "whatever, finally out of this dump".

Really, she has no remorse at all. She sees no problem with stealing a car and running from the law. Tell her to do one thing and it seems that Mels does the complete opposite. Gun won't work because a TARDIS in motion establishes a state of temporal grace? Yeah right, let's test that. --Oh, there goes the console! Then she goes and blames the Doctor for telling her guns wouldn't work, even though she fired it. To make her remorselessness even worse, she's so eager to jump on the chance to kill Hitler. They could have run away to any point in time, and she wants to kill someone. The complete lack of regret and remorse could be derived in that Mels was being raised by her parents when they were growing up alongside her. She's not even noted to have any adopted parents in this period, so she may very well be trying to survive on her own when not at school or hanging out with Amy and Rory. It also explains her massive independent streak too.

Despite all the blame she lays on the Doctor and whatever disdain or resentment she feels for him, Mels states that she'd like to marry him.

II. River Song loves being mysterious and vague, sort of toying around with the Doctor a little whenever she runs into him. Sometimes she drops little hints, but usually only when she knows it won't cause a complete collapse of temporal stability, or because someone informs her she'll do so. The rules she has concerning spoilers and her diary are given to her by the Doctor in her earlier years, and she maintains them.

She also has a bit of a playful side too. She loves teasing the Doctor, often making a catchphrase out of "Spoilers~" whenever asked something that would reveal future information that shouldn't be known yet. (Such as who she is to the Doctor.) Another time she uses it is whenever someone else reveals information about her future. (Like the Doctor introducing her to Amy as "Professor River Song" when she was still "Doctor Song".) Beyond that, she has no qualms of teasing others if the situation calls for it.

River is also a sneaky lying liar who lies... sneakily. She lies to the Doctor's face about why Bishop Octavian came along with them (and looks horrified when Octavian reveals the truth). She lies to Amy about a metabolism stabilizer which she claimed wouldn't hurt, and again later when she said Amy was fine, only to be refuted when the Doctor told her she was dying. In addition, it's absolutely necessary that she's a good liar. She has to pretend not to recognise the astronaut at Lake Silencio, hide that she knows Amy and Rory are her parents, not say that she is the Doctor's wife, etc. Besides that, she's also very bright, which helps her sneaky plans work. With the TARDIS's tutelage, she's able to pilot it, both as the Doctor's assistant and on her own. She has also learned how to write "Hello Sweetie" in Old High Gallifreyan and some old, forgotten language that no one has been able to translate except with the TARDIS' translator microbes. Not sure how she learned Old High Gallifreyan, but it's possible the Doctor showed her how to write it.

Unlike a lot of the Doctor's other companions, River has proven herself to be among one of the more ruthless ones. Well... technically psychopathic, depending on where she is in her timeline. She has had a weapon of some sort on her nearly every time she shows up. Something most companions don't have, even for their duration as a companion. A small handful of these weapons are relatively harmless, but there were not-so-harmless handguns, rifles, and an alpha-mezon blaster too. The latter she used to make a point and to get revenge on a Dalek. Now, the Dalek is a very special case. Over the course of the series they have been touted as one of the most fearsome and indiscriminate killers since they first appeared. They're stripped completely of any and all emotions. One appears to kill the Doctor and she makes it beg for mercy, traces of fear evident. Why? On checking its records again as it was told, it found that she was guilty of killing the Doctor, the Daleks' arch-nemesis. You bet that Dalek was shitting its tin-pants.

In each of her appearances, she has displayed unwavering loyalty toward the Doctor. She trusts him with her life, despite him being a madman and would go to the end of the universe for him. She wasn't always that way, though. River started off as Melody, the brainwashed psychopath Madam Kovarian raised her to be. It wasn't until she found out she was going to become River Song and asked her parents if the Doctor was worth it. Melody put all her faith into him, and willingly used up all her remaining regenerations to bring him back to life. River's loyalty toward him also evolved into love for him, which led to them eventually getting married (in an alternate timeline). Even when she knew and he didn't, they ended up arguing like an old married couple in some of their later (from her perspective) meetings.

In a crisis, she can really keep her cool. River doesn't freak out, scream, or cry in the face of danger. Sure, some things might catch her by surprise, but she rarely shows fear. It's mainly in situations like being realising there are Weeping Angels everywhere or suddenly coming face to face with agents of the Silence. In fact, she maintains most of her composure and continues focusing on what she was doing. If and when things do come to a head in a hectic situation, she has a tendency of becoming argumentative, which has led to some of the "old married couple" moments.

Even after she managed to break through her conditioning that directed her to kill the Doctor, she still has little trouble killing things, but usually if she has a good reason, such as protecting the Doctor or her parents. All the memory-proof agents of the Silence that kidnapped her mum? Down they go like dominoes! The Dalek that shot her Doctor? Make it beg for mercy and kill it anyway. However, in later adventures (Crash of the Byzantium and in the Library), she doesn't rely on making her enemies shed blood (then agan, with stone statues and carnivorous shadows beng her opponents at those points in time... can't exactly kill them).

River's also very in-touch with her sexual side. She makes bawdy puns here and there like "Don't worry, I'm quite the screamer. Now there's a spoiler for you!" and in response to him telling her "We've got ten minutes, get dressed." She said, "So close to the perfect sentence." She must love seeing him get all flustered (really, it's quite funny). Also, she flirts with him non-stop, unless it's serious business time.

Other: As mentioned above, Melody/River, though born to two humans, was conceived while the TARDIS was zooming through the time vortex. That direct exposure to the time vortex resulted in her getting some Time Lord DNA stuck in there, allowing her to regenerate. However, she won't have that fall-back when she brings the Doctor back to life. Another ability from her mixed-genetics is her immense strength, having been able to bust out of the spacesuit as a little girl. As brought up in Let's Kill Hitler and The Wedding of Riiver Song, the TARDIS recognises River as her child too (the concepton thing). As a result, she's able to pilot the TARDIS (better than the Doctor, most times), and understand the principles behind building a distress beacon that can reach beyond a frozen, alternate timeline to the rest of the universe, still in motion. The wiki labels it as "understanding complex principles of time and space". In theory, she could possibly figure out how to make a world hopping device or adjust her vortex manipulator to act as such, when she gets it in canon. However, I'll ask permission before exploring either possibility. (Also, in case any more canon information turns up.)
Additional Links: Due to relevence, in that River was along for most of these adventures (most prominently in the last two), I'm linking the Series Six boxed set mini-episodes: Good Night (brief mention, instructed to tell Marilyn she's "too late", something about planes too), Bad Night (with the Doctor at some gathering where there's a giant diplomacy crisis with a queen turned into a fish and a warrior chief as a fly...), First Night (picked up from Stormcage on her first night in Stormcage, and a version of her from five years later turns up), and Last Night (a continuation, where River's early, middle-ish, and late timelines intersect; the Doctor tries his best to keep them all separate). Mods want a wiki?

First Person (entry type):
[As Mels]: So, my mates have been back for a few months after a long trip, and I just found this place open on Rory's computer. Weird place you got here, let me tell you. Amy just keeps going to their window and looking out at the street. Said they're waiting for the Doctor to turn up. He's out looking for their daughter. Still don't know why she named the baby after me, especially after she and Rory bailed me out of jail last week. I guess the police don't like it when you try to make some of the statues in town a bit more colorful. I thought they'd look more festive for the upcoming holiday season.

[As River]: I've finally been accepted to Luna University's doctorate program. Who knew lying a little could get you in to study archaeology. After all, no one needs to know my real name. I'm getting used to it too. River Song. It rolls off the tongue.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't lie for my whole interview. I told Professor Candy the truth when I told him my intentions. I really am looking for a good man. Not just any good man, though. A specific one. One specific, good man.

If anyone has any firsthand accounts about the Doctor or know where I can get ahold of any, please get in contact with me.

Third Person: 150+
It was day... oh forget it. No use counting days on 12,000 consecutive life sentences. Especially when the guards continually failed to acknowledge any suggestions to dress up in various period costumes. Days could be boring. They could be, but River Song was bound and determined to at least keep them a little interesting. It was time well-spent writing down the previous night's adventures with the Doctor. The thoughts of where and when they would go the next night sustained her through the afternoons. Sometimes he dropped hints, never many details. Until night fell, that is. After the sun had gone down, the fun began. Her early days (or nights, rather) in Stormcage often began with the same grating noise that eventually alerted the guards to her departures and arrivals. Eventually, River started finding ways out on her own. Little tricks that she couldn't repeat more than once in the span of a few months. Too much risk of the guards catching on. Then, there were her bolder break-outs. Making a passing guard look like a complete fool by stealing a kiss from him... and his keys. She welcomed the challenges.

But it was her confidence that was key. Everyone had said it was the highest security prison anywhere in the galaxy. The guards all parroted the same story: there was no getting out once you were in until your sentence was complete. On her first night, the Doctor had said River Song could walk in and out of Stormcage like the walls didn't exist. That was all the encouragement she needed.