Name: PR.
Livejournal:
prthecrazyoneContact: On file!
Other Characters Played: Hino Rei, Jo Harvelle, Rachel Berry, Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Are you 18 or over? Yes.
Canon: Doctor Who.
Character: Professor River Song.
Timeline: 4x09: The Forest of the Dead.
Personality: River Song is, quite simply, the shit -- or, well, she likes to think so. She is the kind of girl who enters a room and immediately takes up all of the space within the room, simply because she is such a presence. You don’t have to know who she is in order to care about who she is and what she’s doing. She does what she wants, when she wants, and doesn’t particularly give a damn if you have anything to say about it. It's that devil-may-care attitude that draws her towards traveling with the Doctor and exploring all of the universe, no matter how or why -- the danger, the power of adrenaline, the excitement -- it captivates her and leaves her wanting more. So, unless you know River Song, you would assume she was just a crazy archaeologist with an excellent shot -- but underneath that cocky flirty exterior, she is so much more.
River Song is a well-practiced warrior, hardened by space and time. While the other Doctor's companions tend to beg the Doctor for mercy for his enemies, River understands the need for cruelty. While she often laughs in the face of danger, she has a very keen sense of when enough is enough -- and is quick to shoot down, quite literally, anyone who crosses that line, particularly when it comes to the safety of the Doctor. When faced with a Dalek, one of the most feared beings in the universe, the alien insists that traveling with the Doctor indicates that River will show mercy. River, without hesitation, loads her gun and aims it at the Dalek, introducing herself, and demanding that the alien check its records again. When the Dalek discovers who River Song is, the Dalek begs for mercy. She does not comply.
All in all, River Song does not have very many weaknesses. She prides herself on being calm and collected in the face of danger. She seems to fear very little -- jumping off of high rises seems to be a regular mode of transport to her. However, River Song has one major weakness, and it is one that people exploit frequently -- the Doctor. No one else in her life matters more to her -- and some would argue, by evidence given, that River values the Doctor over even her own family. The only problem is that River and the Doctor's timelines are moving in reverse. She meets the Doctor near the end of his own timeline -- the Doctor meets River near the end of hers. As a result, they are moving in opposite directions, and will never truly meet. Despite this, River continues living for that one more day where she can see the Doctor again, even knowing that there will be a day that he won't recognize who she is -- and that it very may well might kill her. Her determination and loyalty to be at the Doctor's side is second to none, and while the Doctor is one of her largest weaknesses, he is also her greatest strength. Together, River Song and the Doctor can take on most anything, including the end of the universe -- and they'll win, thank you very much.
All of these things -- her cockiness, her bravada, her loyalty, and her fierce determination to accomplish whatever needs to get done, pull together into a strong woman who will stop at nothing just for the sake of moving forward. After all, when you travel with the Doctor, nothing is quite the same afterwards -- all you can do is keep walking forward. And River is the all-encompassing definition of that -- she takes her heartbreak, her ultimate realization that the Doctor will never be the man she met in Berlin, Germany, 1938, and chooses to make something of herself regardless. Everyone knows the name of River Song, be it international prisons or the most feared beings in the universe -- and they do not know her as a mindless pet of the Doctor. They know her as an equal to the most powerful man in the universe -- and they had better start running if they intend on staying ahead of her.
Background: NOTE: River's timeline, as we are introduced to her, is not linear. As a result, this makes her background really hard to write. I have tried to make reading it as linear as possible in order to make it make sense. If there are any questions regarding what comes first/second/explanations, I'll happily explain further.
Melody Pond was born on the asteroid space base of Demon’s Run, to Rory Williams and Amy Pond. Unfortunately for Melody, a normal childhood was soon impossible -- she was kidnapped, at a young age, by a woman named Madame Kovarian in order to be used as a weapon against the Doctor. The reason why they believe the child would be an excellent weapon is because of the circumstances of her birth -- Melody was conceived in the TARDIS, exposed to the Time Vortex concealed within the time machine. Her DNA mutated, becoming part human, and part Time Lord. Madame Kovarian, upon kidnapping the child, experiments on the baby, to make her as much of a Time Lord as possible.
At some point, Melody is indoctrinated by the religious order known as the Silence. They indoctrinated her and transformed her into a proper weapon to be used against the Doctor. Her new mission? To assassinate the Doctor, the first opportunity she could get. Before she started properly on her mission, though, Melody somehow wound up in the United States, in an American orphanage in 1969, and later in a warehouse in Florida. The Silence had sealed her inside an astronaut suit in order to sustain her vitals. Panicked, the girl tries to beg for help from President Nixon, though she does not leave her real name. She also tries to ask Amy, her own mother, for help, but the Silence arrived and Melody left quickly. She manages to break out of the spacesuit after that and is not seen by the Doctor or his companions after that.
Six months after the incidents of The Impossible Astronaut and The Day of the Moon, Melody regenerates in New York City, due to suffering from some sort of illness. Her whereabouts between 1970 and the early 1990s are unknown -- but Melody resurfaces again, posing as a childhood friend of her own parents, Rory Williams and Amelia Pond. She takes on the nickname ‘Mels’ and facilities Amy and Rory getting together. Ironically enough, 'Mels' is where Amy finds the name for her daughter, and as the Doctor points out later, "You named your daughter after your daughter.", which only proves that Melody's life is the most complicated thing ever.
This is something of a rebellious stage in Melody’s life -- she steals cars, gets into fights, and continually insists that Amy’s stories of the Doctor -- her raggedy Doctor -- are completely and utterly real. She even goes so far as to say that certain historical events (mainly disasters and horrible situations such as the Holocaust and massive earthquakes) were because the Doctor didn’t intervene. She has dreams of marrying him and traveling the universe -- and most everyone finds her crazy. However, underneath this dreamy girl persona, Melody was perfectly aware that Amy and Rory were her parents, and that she had to kill the Doctor, indicating a fantastic ability to lie and an even better sense of fantastic imagination.
It’s at this point that the best chapter of Melody Pond’s life begins -- because it’s here that Melody Pond meets the Doctor.
Amy and Rory signal down the Doctor in a cornfield in Ledworth, England, in order to ask him about the whereabouts of their daughter, Melody. The Doctor, upon arrival, is quickly interrupted by Mels, who forces her way onto the TARDIS by gunpoint, playfully suggesting that they go kill Hitler. While inside the TARDIS, Mels shoots haphazardly, damaging the console, which -- coincidentally -- leads them to the year 1938, directly crashing into Adolf Hitler’s office... which actually winds up saving the dictator’s life. Unfortunately for most everyone involved, Hitler has a terrible trigger finger and an even worse shot, as he misses his actual assailant and winds up shooting Mels in the side. To most everyone else, they believe this is the end for Mels -- but to their surprise, she regenerates -- into the woman that the Doctor, and Amy and Rory, recognize as River Song. However, “River” does not know who she becomes or her connection with the Doctor -- this is, effectively, her very first meeting with the man himself. Much to their surprise, River immediately attempts to kill the Doctor -- first by shooting him, and then by a fatal kiss with poisonous lipstick. After leaving the Doctor to die, River then jumps out of the window, in order to terrorize 1938 Berlin into giving her clothes and -- well, to just have a good time.
When the Tesslecta (an independent police force who polices the universe for individuals who commit crimes outside of their own timelines) catch up with Melody Pond (who is listed as murdering the Doctor), they begin to torture her to punish her for her crimes. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory fight back to save her, and when she is finally released from the torture, River moves to run away from the scene. However, the Doctor begs her not to run, to never run, because her parents need her. It takes some doing and some listening (and perhaps some morbid curiosity), but River is soon touched by how the Doctor fights so desperately to save his friends and his apparent connection to this woman named ‘River’. Urged on by his compassion, River uses the rest of her remaining regenerations to save the Doctor’s life, and is dropped off in the 53rd century, at a hospital, to recover. The Doctor leaves her a blue TARDIS shaped diary and promises that River will turn out to be “amazing”. River, soon after, enrolls in Luna University, to study archaeology, in order to find the Doctor again -- seemingly reformed and attempting to change her life for the better, thanks to the Doctor’s interference.
Some unknown time after this, River is imprisoned within the Stormcage Containment Facility, for a life sentence. During her time in prison, River assists the Doctor numerous times, and seems to have no real problem leaving prison. In fact, she seems to only stay there out of a respect for the price she must pay in order to make up for the crime she has committed. Otherwise, when the Doctor calls, River almost always answers.
The next time she escapes the Stormcage is when the TARDIS reroutes a call from Winston Churchhill that was supposed to be intended for the Doctor to River’s cell. She escapes the cell, in order to warn the Doctor of a prophecy of his TARDIS exploding -- and, as it were, the end of the universe. She blackmails a time vortex manipulator off of a black market dealer and travels back in time, to Stonehenge, and meets up with the Doctor, Rory, and Amy. Together, they travel to Stonehenge in order to find the Pandorica, which they discover to be a large stone cube in the heart of Stonehenge. The group discovers that the Pandorica -- named such after Pandora’s Box, which released all of the troubles in the world -- is not a container of the world’s greatest threat, but a container for the world’s greatest threat: The Doctor. Together, all of the villains of the series -- the Judoon, the Sontarans, the Daleks, and the Cybermen, to name a few, built the Pandorica in order to seal away the Doctor, to save their own worlds, and to supposedly protect their own interests. The Doctor sends River away to bring the TARDIS to him, but the TARDIS is drawn to Amy Pond’s current time. River, as a result of the TARDIS beginning to explode, is trapped within a time loop, and remains stuck in that time loop until the Doctor manages to rescue her from it. Soon after, the Doctor is shot by a Dalek and, believing the Doctor to be dead, River kills the Dalek who did it. She soon realizes that the Doctor lied about being dead and finds him within the Pandorica -- which he plans to drive directly into the heart of the exploding TARDIS, creating a second big bang, to erase him from existence. Despite this, and the prospect of losing all of her memories -- River allows the Doctor to do as he wishes. When the universe resets itself, River is shown again, much later, at the marriage of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, in which River gives Amy her now blank blue TARDIS shaped diary. This triggers Amy’s memory of the Doctor, which brings him back into existence, and the time stream is set back on course. The Doctor meets with River again, after that, and he demands to know who she is. River, ambiguous as always and protective of the Doctor’s future, informs him that he’ll find out very soon -- and that is when it all changes. Timey Wimey Wibbley Wobbley: River herself is the one to show up after the events of Demon's Run to tell him the truth of who she is, after her infant self has been kidnapped by Madame Kovarian.
Quite possibly the most important event that River has escaped jail from is when she receives a mysterious TARDIS-blue envelope, with the number two written on the flap. Within the envelope were coordinates, indicating that River needed to join the Doctor in Utah, in the year 2011, at the edge of Lake Silencio. Together, Amy, Rory, and River have a picnic -- but it is soon interrupted by an astronaut emerging from the lake. The Doctor then gets up, and informs them to not do anything, no matter what happens -- and, in front of them all, the Doctor is killed by the astronaut. While Amy panics and Rory seems emotionally numb to the situation, River gathers her courage and sets about taking care of his body -- which involves burning him, with the gasoline provided by the fourth and final guest -- a man named Canton Delaware III. Together, Amy, Rory, and River return to the diner where they had all eaten just hours previously to run into a younger version of the Doctor, about two hundred years younger -- and completely unaware of his own impending doom. River forbids Amy and Rory of telling him a word -- he must not know his future. She helps the Doctor defeat the mysterious enemy, with the help of a younger Canton Delaware III, Amy, and Rory -- an enemy known as the Silence, who melt away from a person's memory the moment you look away. While the Doctor, Amy, and Rory have no idea who the Silence are, River does -- but does not say a word. Interfering with the Doctor's personal timestream would disrupt his future, something River absolutely cannot do. After this, River requests that she be returned to her jail cell, and kisses the Doctor goodbye. The moment is bittersweet -- as the Doctor acts surprised, because this is his first time kissing River. And River, with a sad goodbye, realizes it's probably their last.
Sometime after this event, River falls into the care of Father Octavian, in the 51st Century. She and the Doctor meet once more, at the wreckage of a crashed space ship, after he catches her in mid-flight. The reason why River called the Doctor? In order to combat an old enemy -- the Weeping Angels. Should River help defeat the Weeping Angels, she could earn a proper pardon for her prison sentence. River winds up helping the Doctor defeat the Angels, sending them into the void between space and time, and earns her pardon. Now a free woman, River pursues the life of a free woman, which includes earning her doctorate in archaeology and becoming a full-time researcher. She last sees the Doctor -- her Doctor -- when he takes her to the Singing Towers of Darillium. While there, the Doctor gives River an upgraded version of his Sonic Screwdriver, to keep. He did not tell her why -- and River did not ask. She only took it -- and did not see her version of the Doctor again.
Fast-forward years ahead -- River Song is now a well-established doctor, a professor, a scholar, and an explorer. She has, at her disposal, a team of researchers, and the woman is hired by a man named Felman Lux in order to discover where all of the people went... because the library, home to billions of people and trillions of books, had gone silent. After receiving a huanting message (“4022 saved. No survivors.”), River sends the Doctor a message via psychic paper in order to summon him, thinking that the Doctor alone can solve this mystery and help restore the library to its former glory -- but when River runs into the Doctor, as she is wont to do, this time is different -- the Doctor is his Tenth incarnation and, as a result, has absolutely no idea who she is. When River discovers this, she is heartbroken, but keeps on with the mission -- and in order to get the Doctor to trust her, she whispers his true name in his ear. After doing so, the Doctor immediately gives her his trust, and fights alongside her to defeat the Vashta Nerada -- or the “shadows” in the dark that were quickly devouring the residents of the library. As the fight worsened against the creatures and all but River and the Doctor had been taken, River decides to give herself in order to save the 4022 people who were “saved” within the computer’s mainframe -- and the Doctor’s companion, Donna Noble. After commanding the Doctor to not change a single word of what had happened between them, River Song sacrifices herself, in order to save her best friend and, many suspect, the man she loved -- the Doctor.
She will be taken when she's in the middle of setting up her death -- before the Doctor has woken up from being handcuffed and before she's actually sat down to connect the power units together.
Abilities/Additional Notes: River has the DNA of a Time Lord. However, she doesn’t have any of the perks associated with being a Time Lord, save for her ability to speak Gallifreyan -- along with understanding most languages. She used all of her remaining regenerations to save the Doctor’s life -- but for a note, she is on her third (and final) regeneration. She can also fly the TARDIS -- but not only can she fly the TARDIS, but the TARDIS taught her how to fly her. Being a child of the TARDIS has its perks, as it were.
River is also a doctor/professor of archaeology. She is well-versed in many histories and knows her way around a ruin better than most people. She is also very adept with technology and is shown operating an advanced communicator with ease. She can also use the Sonic Screwdriver. And -- she is a very good shot. A very good shot. As in, don’t piss her off, and you may escape with your life kind of good shot.
She will also be arriving with her blue TARDIS-shaped diary and her amped up Sonic Screwdriver.
Sample Journal Post: [There is a buzz of blue light as the feed flickers on -- and the image wavers slightly around the edges as the Sonic Screwdriver adjusts the focus. Before long, the feed clears, and a person appears. The woman that is on the feed has a head full of curly hair, is wearing a space suit, and looks somewhat tired. When she speaks, though, her tone is no-nonsense and to the point -- and, miraculously, she doesn't exactly sound surprised.]
I don't seem to be able to call out or reach any other familiar feed or signal, but this device seems to be connected to some kind of network, so if anyone can hear me --
[She pauses before the woman tries for an easy-going smile, and a hand reaches up to her brow, to offer some kind of salute.]
My name is Professor River Song. And I need a doctor.
Sample RP: The day had been coming for years -- but somehow, River was not prepared when the Doctor looked her in the eye and asked her who she was.
It was a unique feeling of pain -- and nothing River had gone through in the past would ever compare to it. Being indoctrinated by the Silence, being kidnapped, watching the only individual who looked at you with those bright fresh eyes die -- no, River Song could endure all of that, so long as she wouldn't have to look at the Doctor with recognition and only receive confusion in return.
It was something of a blessing in disguise, then, to arrive in this strange new world. It was hardly shocking to her, to randomly appear in a strange place. After all, River had spent her entire life time traveling -- what was an apocalyptic landscape?
"A different universe," River said to herself after a moment, the Sonic Screwdriver buzzing happily until she checked the readings with a flick of her wrist, "cut off from my own... delightful, that hasn't happened in quite a few years. How exciting." She glanced around, lowering the Screwdriver to her waist before she noticed a small device on the ground, not unlike her own communicator. Picking it up, she pressed the Screwdriver to it, in order to turn it on, before she was struck with a thought.
An alternate reality, outside of her own time stream. A gap in space and time, hidden away from everything, including the TARDIS.
Her lips twitched slightly as she turned on the recording feed.
If anyone would be here, it would certainly be him.
Time to check out her surroundings.