Application: He Waits Dreaming
✢ The Player
Player Name: Bri
Age: 22
LJ: riverborntorun
AIM / MSN / Y!M: -TBA-
E-mail: wilderebellion@aol.com
Other Characters: Molly Hooper (Sherlock) (alldosillythngs
✢ The Character
Character Name: River Song (Birthname will be in the super spoiler-y bio below!)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Canon Point: Forest of the Dead (post-death, prior to being ‘saved’)
Age: Physically, 40 years approximately. She is older than she looks.
Appearance:
Abilities / Powers:
As a time traveler, River has intimate knowledge of alien life and future events, especially those of the 51st and 52nd centuries. She is an excellent marksman and gifted at lying. With her knowledge, she has to lie in order to protect the fragility of space and time. She has also dabbled in lock-picking, and can read and write in Old High Gallifreyan. Much to the chagrin of the Doctor, she is an excellent TARDIS pilot and appears to know how to operate the TARDIS better than he does. She also has very swift reflexes (evidenced in "Let's Kill Hitler"). Furthermore, she takes no responsibility if anything you say can be turned into an innuendo.
Though born of human birth, River’s triple-helix DNA made her capable of Time-Lord like regeneration. She has since lost that ability, but her genes will still look veeery interesting under a microscope! In addition to that, the fact that she was conceived in and has had countless adventures in the TARDIS means she’s been soaked in Artron Radiation, which has altered her biological makeup and made her highly resistant to illness. Furthermore, it enables her to remember alternate histories/timelines that have occurred, and gives her Temporally Active Biodata. This refers to her ability to influence time to a greater extent than others. This, according to head-canon, is why the Silence needed her as an assassin for the Doctor - they could take advantage of her ability to influence time in order to make the Doctor’s death a fixed point.
**Want to thank Yusagi for chatting DW with me and accidentally having a conversation that influenced my knowledge of River’s genes!**
Inventory: What was your character carrying with them when they arrived in Arkham? Remember that if it's not listed here, they don't have it and will likely never see it again.
-Vortex manipulator (bracelet-like device on her wrist that enables time travel; will likely be disabled here)
-A few pages torn from her journal prior to her death at the Library
-Hallucinogenic lipstick
-The spacesuit in which she ‘died’ at the Library
-Beneath the spacesuit, River is wearing this dress
-Possible gun? (Up to mods if she can bring one or must acquire one in-game.)
-A bow tie she stole from the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS wardrobe and keeps on her person. Closest thing she has to a wedding ring.
Personality:
River Song is, in a single word, complex. This stems from the fact she has intimate knowledge of the future that she must conceal, and often lies or puts on an act in order to do so. She’s a relentless flirt and fan of innuendo, and she will resort to any means necessary to get what she wants. She isn’t quite as prone to mercy as the Doctor is, though she’s likely more mellow now compared to her younger years. Being raised as a psychopath and an assassin makes you a bit…feisty.
In her younger years, she had less respect for the laws of time (well, laws in general really). It is likely that because she did not have a stable childhood, River behaved as if she were above the law, thus constantly getting into trouble. Truthfully, she often felt that she didn’t belong anywhere in the universe, hence why very few can actually get close to her and why she often prefers to travel the universe rather than stay in one place. Even while jailed she couldn’t stay still. Her life as an archaeology professor hasn’t been explored in canon, but my thoughts are that River teaches in between adventures with the Doctor and prides herself upon being the eccentric but well-loved professor. She has great stories to share with her students, but she can also come down hard on them, because she’s challenging them to think.
More than anything, River wants two things out of life - freedom and love. Though she experienced a fair amount of independence growing up in Leadworth, her primary objective was always related to killing the Doctor, an order imposed upon her by her captors. Captors who meddled in her life again years after she thought she had escaped them. She never wants to be held down like that again. River fears being a slave to anyone’s will but her own. She prefers to go by River Song rather than her birth name because she associates it with her past as a pawn to the Silence (head-canon).
As for love, it has been the one ‘constant’ in her life. Raised as a weapon to kill the Doctor, he became her obsession, one that eventually backfired for the Silence as those intense feelings for the only man in her life became love. At this canon point she is being pulled from, River has already faced one of her great fears - the Doctor not knowing her. She’s dedicated her life to him, because he believed she could be a better person. He was, in her eyes, the first one to see her as a person and not a tool.
History: (I just wanted to write it out myself rather than rely on a wiki)
Melody Pond was born at the asteroid base known as Demon’s Run in the 52nd century. Her parents, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, were companions of the Doctor (in his eleventh incarnation) originally from the year 2010. After rebooting the universe (a very long story, see “The Big Bang”), newlyweds Amy and Rory spent their wedding night aboard the TARDIS. A child conceived while the TARDIS was in flight made for a special human being; post-birth scans would later reveal Melody was a human with triple helix DNA, a genetic pattern usually only seen in Time Lords.
Amy Pond was kidnapped shortly before she and Rory rejoined the Doctor for a 2011 adventure in America and was replaced with a duplicate made from Flesh. This duplicate, mentally connected to the real Amy, traveled in the TARDIS unaware of her purpose in a plot by The Silence. When the Doctor figured out how to block the signal to the Flesh, the avatar disintegrated and the real Amy (now very pregnant) awoke and went into labor. Named after a childhood friend of her mother’s (“Let’s Kill Hitler”), Melody Pond was born and then shortly taken from Amy’s arms.
The Doctor gathered an army to rescue Amy and her child, and at first it appeared successful. Through use of another Flesh duplicate, Madame Kovarian escaped with the real baby Melody who was then raised and brainwashed as a weapon to kill the Doctor.
While in the hands of The Silents (and somewhere in Florida, U.S. in 1969) Melody was forced into an Apollo astronaut spacesuit that had been modified and upgraded with advanced alien technology. Part of the tech enabled the frightened child to directly phone President Richard Nixon and ask for help. Nixon asked two questions, “Where are you? Who are you?”, to which she answered “Jefferson Adams Hamilton”. The President mistook this to mean it was a little boy calling, and this phone conversation was later replayed for the Doctor. In fact, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton were the three street signs that little Melody could see from wherever she was being held.
The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and River Song (Melody in the future) found the warehouse where the three streets converged. They found a version of the spacesuit and analyzed it; it was River Song herself who commented that the girl must be “incredibly strong” to have ripped herself free from the suit. Then they were attacked by the Silence, and also encountered Melody who was in the spacesuit and begging for them to help her. The spacesuit was in control, and she raised her arm to shoot at the Doctor. Amy Pond (technically the Flesh avatar of her mother) fired a gun at her and missed.
The Doctor and company spent the next few months independently investigating the Silence. Melody, meanwhile was held in an Florida orphanage. Three months after the first encounter, the spacesuit-bound Melody met Amy Pond again, who apologized for shooting at her. In Melody’s bedroom, Amy found a photograph of herself and a baby (canon never states who took this photograph; my headcanon says Lorna Bucket). The Silents then awoke and kidnapped Amy, meanwhile Melody ripped herself free of the suit and escaped.
Six months after that, Melody found herself on the streets of New York City. A homeless man asked if she was all right. “I’m dying,” she said. “But I can fix that.” Then she regenerated. Though it isn’t shown on-screen in canon, Melody regenerated in a toddler. Still, she had all her memories and brainwashing, and took it upon herself to find her parents. By the late 1990s she was in Leadworth and attending school alongside young Amelia Pond and Rory Williams. Melody, or ‘Mels’ as she most often went by (Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia lists her surname here as Zucker, but it’s never heard in canon) was a huge trouble-maker. She began obsessed with Amelia’s ‘Raggedy Doctor’ story, and often protested in her history class that certain events could be blamed on the Doctor for not intervening. As she grew older, her actions grew more reckless and illegal. One positive thing she accomplished was giving her future parents a helpful nudge into confessing their feelings for each other.
In Leadworth 2011, Amy and Rory finally got the Doctor’s attention and he landed the TARDIS in a field. They questioned him about his search for Melody (for their timeline this was a few months after her kidnapping from Demon’s Run). Then, Mels, brandishing a gun and on the run from the police for a stolen car, arrived on the scene and held the Doctor at gunpoint. She coerced him into taking her aboard the TARDIS.
They traveled back to Berlin, 1938, specifically Adolf Hitler’s office. Mels fired off her gun inside the TARDIS, which made the landing rocky. The TARDIS crew accidentally thwarted the efforts of the Teselecta to torment Hitler, and in the fray the Fuhrer fired a bullet that struck Mels.
Though she’d frustrated and threatened him moments before, the Doctor tried to comfort the young woman in her dying moments, saying he’d fulfill her dream of marrying him. Mels then mentioned how convenient it was that her parents were already present, revealing herself as the Melody. Though the three knew that baby Melody eventually became River Song, the fact that Amy and Rory obliviously grew up alongside their daughter was a shock.
While a stunned Amy, Rory, and the Doctor barely had time to swallow this new information, the reckless Mels regenerated into a very familiar face.
While she broke in her new body and the others dealt with the reveal of her identity, Melody pulled out all the stops to try and kill the Doctor. All the while she was questioning this ‘River Song’ the Doctor kept mentioning, almost out of jealousy. Though they kept matching each other in a battle of wits and deception, Melody poisoned the Doctor with her lipstick, then jumped out the window to go wreak havoc on Berlin.
She beat up a few Nazis, stole a motorbike and some guns, and then threatened an upperclass party because she didn’t “have a thing to wear”. The Teselecta then came after her, as its records indicated she would kill the Doctor at Lake Silencio, Utah in 2011. The poisoned Doctor intervened in its torture of her, most likely motivated because he knew the woman she would become in the future. The Doctor’s pleas roused enough empathy in Melody to save her parents from imminent death inside the Teselecta by piloting the TARDIS to rescue them.
Still dying, the Doctor asked Melody to pass a message on to ‘River Song’. Hoping to stir something in her daughter, Amy demanded the Teselecta to show them who River Song was, and the assassin was shocked to see it take her new face. In another moment of compassion, she asked her parents if the Doctor was “worth it”, and when they said yes, she kissed the Doctor, using the power of her remaining regenerations to save him.
Once fully revived, the Doctor took an exhausted Melody/River to ‘the best hospital in the universe’, the Sisters of the Infinite Schism, somewhere in the early 52nd century. They would help her recover not only physically, but mentally from years of being bred into a psychopath. The Doctor left her a TARDIS-shaped diary as a gift, reflecting on her future with the words “she will be amazing.” After her recuperation, now going by River Song, she enrolled in Luna University on the Moon in the year 5123, planning to study Archaeology. Her reasoning was “I’m looking for a good man”.
River spent the next few years studying for her degree, as well as researching the Doctor, with whom she’d become infatuated. The day she received her doctorate, Madame Kovarian (whom River did not remember from her youth) appeared, flanked by two Silents. “You never really escaped us, Melody Pond … we were always coming for you.” They forced her into a new version of the Astronaut suit and submerged her in Lake Silencio for April 22nd, 2011.
The Doctor, now aware of his death, invited his friends (including a future version of River) and then bravely walked to his death when the spacesuit-bound River emerged from the lake. She cried to the Doctor that the suit was in control, and that he should run. He refused, and told her to look at the beach and see her future self.
“Why would you make me watch?” She asked tearfully. The Doctor wanted her to know that this was inevitable, that it had to happen. He also wanted her to know that he forgave her.
The Doctor prepared to be shot, but River ended up wresting control from the suit and draining the weapons systems. Because she blatantly changed what was supposed to be a fixed point in time, River plunged all of space and time into an alternate reality where every aspect of time was happening at once (pterodactyls in the park, Roman chariots driving alongside cars, etc).
In this alternate reality, River was one of the few people who remembered the other timeline, and with the aid of her hallucinogenic lipstick and her gun, she secured a facility for Area 52 inside an Egyptian pyramid to contain and monitor the Silents. When Amy (who also had some memory of the other timeline) brought the Doctor to Area 52, River was careful not to touch him, as they were the epicenter of what was rippling across time.
Atop the pyramid, River showed the Doctor a ‘timey-wimey distress beacon’, which she had been using to send a message across all of time, asking people to help the Doctor. And millions had responded in the positive. “I can’t let you die without knowing you are loved,” River said, confessing the depth of her feelings to him. “-and by no one more than me.”
With the attacking Silents getting closer, the Doctor married River in a handfasting ceremony as a symbol of trust. Once they kissed, time righted itself and returned to Lake Silencio, where River shot the Doctor. Or what appeared to be the Doctor. She kept it secret for several years (in her timeline), but when they exchanged vows, the Doctor let her in on a plot that involved faking his death. The man she shot on the beach was The Teselecta with the real Doctor hidden inside with his TARDIS.
River was imprisoned in The Stormcage Containment Facility in the 52nd century to serve several life sentences for ‘killing’ the Doctor. However, her first night in jail the Doctor visited her, beginning a series of adventures where she would break out of jail, travel with him, and then break back in. It was also at this point where the Doctor told her to use the diary he’d given her years ago to keep track of their differing timelines.
After one adventure, a celebration for River’s birthday which included a Stevie Wonder serenade in 1814, she returned to her cell and was met by her father, asking for her help at Demon’s Run. River had to refuse, knowing that the Doctor would learn her true identity and she couldn’t be there until the end. (Note: After her baby!self is kidnapped, River arrives at Demon’s Run and reveals to Amy and Rory that she is their daughter; in terms of River’s timeline it is unclear specifically where this event goes.)
Still serving her time, River received an invitation from the Doctor with coordinates to meet him in America. Lake Silencio, Utah on April 22, 2011. She watched the Doctor walk to his (fake) death, and had to keep secret that he was alive and that the assassin from the lake was a younger version of herself.
After giving the Doctor a funeral, River, Amy, and Rory (at this time they are unaware that she is their future daughter) encounter a younger version of the Doctor; they end up traveling to 1969 and searching for the mysterious little girl (young Melody) who phoned President Nixon. River got to take some revenge for her childhood when she shot several Silents after the Doctor used the moon landing to thwart their plans.
The Doctor returned River to the Stormcage upon her request (she said she had a promise to keep), and she kissed him. Something she apparently had done a lot. But for the Doctor it was their first kiss, signaling to River that her time with him (on the romantic front) was likely dwindling.
River met up with the Doctor again when the TARDIS reroutes a call to her Stormcage cell. She hastily broke out of prison via hallucinogenic lipstick, snagged herself a Time Vortex Manipulator, and got her hands on a lost Van Gogh painting to show the Doctor in 102 AD (after she graffitied the oldest cliff face in the universe and impersonated Cleopatra for a bit, of course). The painting foretold of the TARDIS exploding and causing cracks in time. She accompanied the Doctor and Amy to Stonehenge, where they discovered The Pandorica, a mythical prison for the most feared creature in the universe. Stonehenge was transmitting a signal to all of the Doctor’s enemies, who showed up and imprisoned him in the Pandorica ‘to protect the universe’ from the exploding TARDIS. River, however, was piloting the TARDIS at that time, when an external force took control.
Unable to escape what was certain death, River was put into a time loop by the TARDIS to protect her from the explosion. She was rescued by the Doctor, where she found that Earth (in 1996) was in an alternate timeline where there were no stars, as the whole of reality was beginning to collapse. Again, River had to pretend not to know her parents, and after a moment of seeing the Doctor shot by a Dalek, she annihilated the enemy in cold blood. She would bear no mercy to anyone who harmed her loved ones.
The Doctor was forced to restore the Universe in a series of actions that would erase himself from existence. River was unspeakably pained by this, and could not even share her grief with her parents, who did not yet know her. She left her diary (now blank) at her parents’ wedding in 2010 to help Amy remember the Doctor back into existence. After the reception, River met the Doctor and dropped hints of her marital status, meanwhile warning him that he would learn who she was “very soon”.
Back to serving time in the Stormcage in the 51st century, River, along with Father Octavian of the military-church, began a mission that she hoped would grant her freedom. She infiltrated the Galaxy Class ship Byzantium, which was carrying a Weeping Angel in its cargo. She inscribed coordinates on the ship’s Home Box in Old High Gallifreyan, telling the Doctor to come pick her up. Then, she jumped out of the spaceship.
The Doctor, accompanied by Amy (who was meeting River for the first time) rescued the femme fatale who informed them of her mission regarding the Weeping Angel. They ended up defeating an army of Angels on the planet Alfava Metraxis, and River, handcuffed, said her goodbyes. Not without hinting that the Doctor would see her again soon at the Pandorica.
It is possible that after these events River Song earned herself a pardon for her crimes. Directly after the Byzantium events, she reveals the truth about the Doctor’s ‘death’ at Lake Silencio to her parents. At some point she becomes a professor of Archaeology, and has one last date-like night with the Doctor (presumably the Eleventh); he takes to the Singing Towers of Darillium. The Doctor, for reasons unknown to River, cried and gave her a sonic screwdriver.
River then went on an expedition of The Library, sending a casual message to the Doctor’s psychic paper to join her in solving the mystery of the Library’s final transmission, “4022 saved, no survivors.” Unfortunately, the Doctor that arrived was not her doctor, the one she knew her entire life. Rather, it was the Doctor in his tenth incarnation, before he ever met her. The day she dreaded had finally come to pass; she tearfully looked into his young eyes and pleaded that he recognize her.
As River, the Doctor, and their companions were besieged by the Vashta Nerada, beings that dwell in shadows and who sought to reclaim their “forests” - the books of the library - she found herself constantly butting heads with the younger form of her husband. She kept her tongue quiet about the nature of their relationship, but the fact that they squabbled “like an old married couple” did not go unnoticed by the others. To prove her trustworthiness, River whispered the Doctor’s true name in his ear, much to his shock.
Once they determined that the computer core of the Library had literally “saved” the 4022 former inhabitants as data, the two of them descended to the core to free them. However, the Doctor planned to hook himself up to the terminal to do so, even though it would spell his death. River punched the Doctor out and handcuffed him, taking his place at the terminal. Tearfully, she bid him goodbye, having realized the truth of their differing timelines, that the Doctor she knew had always known this was her fate. She keeps the truth of her identity a secret in her final moments, wishing him to enjoy all the times he has to look forward to with her.
First Person Sample:
I’m not sure I like this. Strange, really, I’ve always been the type to try anything once, but this? Goes against everything I’ve learned. A journal - or at least, my journal is supposed to be private. For my eyes only. But an audio journal? That’s like trying to have a conversation without the luxury of someone’s eyes to look into. Or it means someone really loves to hear himself talk - trust me, I know a man like that, god forbid he ever had to keep one of these. Then again, he’s more than just a man, but…
[Her voice drifts off for a moment, and when she resumes she’s abandoned that line of thought] Anyway, I suppose now that I’m here, all the usual rules are out the door, yes? Which sounds like a lot of fun, actually - no rules, only good times.
But I’m afraid my good times are over, sweetie… [Is she talking to herself, or imagining someone else is there?] I lived my life. If this is some sort of…second chance, I’m not sure I want it. Or maybe it’s hell, in which case…
[The cocking of a gun can be heard] ..Here. I. Come.
Third Person Sample:
In this thread, (done in action brackets but is still third person, past-tense) the Tenth Doctor (circa The End of Time special) is traveling to see past companions one last time. He doesn’t intend to actually talk with River, but she catches sight of him while at an archaeological dig and refuses to leave him alone: http://memebells.livejournal.com/112493.html?thread=174163053#t174163053
Other:
Another aspect of my River headcanon (like with the Abilities & Powers section, many thanks to Yusagi for helping me with this information) is that her intense devotion to the Doctor may be a result of the Rassilon Imprompteur (which binds the TARDIS and a Time Lord) confused itself with River and became connected with her. Not only does this explain her ‘Child of the TARDIS’ title, but she is extremely attuned to how the TARDIS operates, and since the relationship between a Time Lord and TARDIS is very much spousal, this sheds new light on the depth of River’s love for the Doctor. She would certainly have a problem if she learned this information, questioning whether her love was her own or merely an effect of genetics.
Player Name: Bri
Age: 22
LJ: riverborntorun
AIM / MSN / Y!M: -TBA-
E-mail: wilderebellion@aol.com
Other Characters: Molly Hooper (Sherlock) (alldosillythngs
✢ The Character
Character Name: River Song (Birthname will be in the super spoiler-y bio below!)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Canon Point: Forest of the Dead (post-death, prior to being ‘saved’)
Age: Physically, 40 years approximately. She is older than she looks.
Appearance:
Abilities / Powers:
As a time traveler, River has intimate knowledge of alien life and future events, especially those of the 51st and 52nd centuries. She is an excellent marksman and gifted at lying. With her knowledge, she has to lie in order to protect the fragility of space and time. She has also dabbled in lock-picking, and can read and write in Old High Gallifreyan. Much to the chagrin of the Doctor, she is an excellent TARDIS pilot and appears to know how to operate the TARDIS better than he does. She also has very swift reflexes (evidenced in "Let's Kill Hitler"). Furthermore, she takes no responsibility if anything you say can be turned into an innuendo.
Though born of human birth, River’s triple-helix DNA made her capable of Time-Lord like regeneration. She has since lost that ability, but her genes will still look veeery interesting under a microscope! In addition to that, the fact that she was conceived in and has had countless adventures in the TARDIS means she’s been soaked in Artron Radiation, which has altered her biological makeup and made her highly resistant to illness. Furthermore, it enables her to remember alternate histories/timelines that have occurred, and gives her Temporally Active Biodata. This refers to her ability to influence time to a greater extent than others. This, according to head-canon, is why the Silence needed her as an assassin for the Doctor - they could take advantage of her ability to influence time in order to make the Doctor’s death a fixed point.
**Want to thank Yusagi for chatting DW with me and accidentally having a conversation that influenced my knowledge of River’s genes!**
Inventory: What was your character carrying with them when they arrived in Arkham? Remember that if it's not listed here, they don't have it and will likely never see it again.
-Vortex manipulator (bracelet-like device on her wrist that enables time travel; will likely be disabled here)
-A few pages torn from her journal prior to her death at the Library
-Hallucinogenic lipstick
-The spacesuit in which she ‘died’ at the Library
-Beneath the spacesuit, River is wearing this dress
-Possible gun? (Up to mods if she can bring one or must acquire one in-game.)
-A bow tie she stole from the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS wardrobe and keeps on her person. Closest thing she has to a wedding ring.
Personality:
River Song is, in a single word, complex. This stems from the fact she has intimate knowledge of the future that she must conceal, and often lies or puts on an act in order to do so. She’s a relentless flirt and fan of innuendo, and she will resort to any means necessary to get what she wants. She isn’t quite as prone to mercy as the Doctor is, though she’s likely more mellow now compared to her younger years. Being raised as a psychopath and an assassin makes you a bit…feisty.
In her younger years, she had less respect for the laws of time (well, laws in general really). It is likely that because she did not have a stable childhood, River behaved as if she were above the law, thus constantly getting into trouble. Truthfully, she often felt that she didn’t belong anywhere in the universe, hence why very few can actually get close to her and why she often prefers to travel the universe rather than stay in one place. Even while jailed she couldn’t stay still. Her life as an archaeology professor hasn’t been explored in canon, but my thoughts are that River teaches in between adventures with the Doctor and prides herself upon being the eccentric but well-loved professor. She has great stories to share with her students, but she can also come down hard on them, because she’s challenging them to think.
More than anything, River wants two things out of life - freedom and love. Though she experienced a fair amount of independence growing up in Leadworth, her primary objective was always related to killing the Doctor, an order imposed upon her by her captors. Captors who meddled in her life again years after she thought she had escaped them. She never wants to be held down like that again. River fears being a slave to anyone’s will but her own. She prefers to go by River Song rather than her birth name because she associates it with her past as a pawn to the Silence (head-canon).
As for love, it has been the one ‘constant’ in her life. Raised as a weapon to kill the Doctor, he became her obsession, one that eventually backfired for the Silence as those intense feelings for the only man in her life became love. At this canon point she is being pulled from, River has already faced one of her great fears - the Doctor not knowing her. She’s dedicated her life to him, because he believed she could be a better person. He was, in her eyes, the first one to see her as a person and not a tool.
History: (I just wanted to write it out myself rather than rely on a wiki)
Melody Pond was born at the asteroid base known as Demon’s Run in the 52nd century. Her parents, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, were companions of the Doctor (in his eleventh incarnation) originally from the year 2010. After rebooting the universe (a very long story, see “The Big Bang”), newlyweds Amy and Rory spent their wedding night aboard the TARDIS. A child conceived while the TARDIS was in flight made for a special human being; post-birth scans would later reveal Melody was a human with triple helix DNA, a genetic pattern usually only seen in Time Lords.
Amy Pond was kidnapped shortly before she and Rory rejoined the Doctor for a 2011 adventure in America and was replaced with a duplicate made from Flesh. This duplicate, mentally connected to the real Amy, traveled in the TARDIS unaware of her purpose in a plot by The Silence. When the Doctor figured out how to block the signal to the Flesh, the avatar disintegrated and the real Amy (now very pregnant) awoke and went into labor. Named after a childhood friend of her mother’s (“Let’s Kill Hitler”), Melody Pond was born and then shortly taken from Amy’s arms.
The Doctor gathered an army to rescue Amy and her child, and at first it appeared successful. Through use of another Flesh duplicate, Madame Kovarian escaped with the real baby Melody who was then raised and brainwashed as a weapon to kill the Doctor.
While in the hands of The Silents (and somewhere in Florida, U.S. in 1969) Melody was forced into an Apollo astronaut spacesuit that had been modified and upgraded with advanced alien technology. Part of the tech enabled the frightened child to directly phone President Richard Nixon and ask for help. Nixon asked two questions, “Where are you? Who are you?”, to which she answered “Jefferson Adams Hamilton”. The President mistook this to mean it was a little boy calling, and this phone conversation was later replayed for the Doctor. In fact, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton were the three street signs that little Melody could see from wherever she was being held.
The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and River Song (Melody in the future) found the warehouse where the three streets converged. They found a version of the spacesuit and analyzed it; it was River Song herself who commented that the girl must be “incredibly strong” to have ripped herself free from the suit. Then they were attacked by the Silence, and also encountered Melody who was in the spacesuit and begging for them to help her. The spacesuit was in control, and she raised her arm to shoot at the Doctor. Amy Pond (technically the Flesh avatar of her mother) fired a gun at her and missed.
The Doctor and company spent the next few months independently investigating the Silence. Melody, meanwhile was held in an Florida orphanage. Three months after the first encounter, the spacesuit-bound Melody met Amy Pond again, who apologized for shooting at her. In Melody’s bedroom, Amy found a photograph of herself and a baby (canon never states who took this photograph; my headcanon says Lorna Bucket). The Silents then awoke and kidnapped Amy, meanwhile Melody ripped herself free of the suit and escaped.
Six months after that, Melody found herself on the streets of New York City. A homeless man asked if she was all right. “I’m dying,” she said. “But I can fix that.” Then she regenerated. Though it isn’t shown on-screen in canon, Melody regenerated in a toddler. Still, she had all her memories and brainwashing, and took it upon herself to find her parents. By the late 1990s she was in Leadworth and attending school alongside young Amelia Pond and Rory Williams. Melody, or ‘Mels’ as she most often went by (Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia lists her surname here as Zucker, but it’s never heard in canon) was a huge trouble-maker. She began obsessed with Amelia’s ‘Raggedy Doctor’ story, and often protested in her history class that certain events could be blamed on the Doctor for not intervening. As she grew older, her actions grew more reckless and illegal. One positive thing she accomplished was giving her future parents a helpful nudge into confessing their feelings for each other.
In Leadworth 2011, Amy and Rory finally got the Doctor’s attention and he landed the TARDIS in a field. They questioned him about his search for Melody (for their timeline this was a few months after her kidnapping from Demon’s Run). Then, Mels, brandishing a gun and on the run from the police for a stolen car, arrived on the scene and held the Doctor at gunpoint. She coerced him into taking her aboard the TARDIS.
They traveled back to Berlin, 1938, specifically Adolf Hitler’s office. Mels fired off her gun inside the TARDIS, which made the landing rocky. The TARDIS crew accidentally thwarted the efforts of the Teselecta to torment Hitler, and in the fray the Fuhrer fired a bullet that struck Mels.
Though she’d frustrated and threatened him moments before, the Doctor tried to comfort the young woman in her dying moments, saying he’d fulfill her dream of marrying him. Mels then mentioned how convenient it was that her parents were already present, revealing herself as the Melody. Though the three knew that baby Melody eventually became River Song, the fact that Amy and Rory obliviously grew up alongside their daughter was a shock.
While a stunned Amy, Rory, and the Doctor barely had time to swallow this new information, the reckless Mels regenerated into a very familiar face.
While she broke in her new body and the others dealt with the reveal of her identity, Melody pulled out all the stops to try and kill the Doctor. All the while she was questioning this ‘River Song’ the Doctor kept mentioning, almost out of jealousy. Though they kept matching each other in a battle of wits and deception, Melody poisoned the Doctor with her lipstick, then jumped out the window to go wreak havoc on Berlin.
She beat up a few Nazis, stole a motorbike and some guns, and then threatened an upperclass party because she didn’t “have a thing to wear”. The Teselecta then came after her, as its records indicated she would kill the Doctor at Lake Silencio, Utah in 2011. The poisoned Doctor intervened in its torture of her, most likely motivated because he knew the woman she would become in the future. The Doctor’s pleas roused enough empathy in Melody to save her parents from imminent death inside the Teselecta by piloting the TARDIS to rescue them.
Still dying, the Doctor asked Melody to pass a message on to ‘River Song’. Hoping to stir something in her daughter, Amy demanded the Teselecta to show them who River Song was, and the assassin was shocked to see it take her new face. In another moment of compassion, she asked her parents if the Doctor was “worth it”, and when they said yes, she kissed the Doctor, using the power of her remaining regenerations to save him.
Once fully revived, the Doctor took an exhausted Melody/River to ‘the best hospital in the universe’, the Sisters of the Infinite Schism, somewhere in the early 52nd century. They would help her recover not only physically, but mentally from years of being bred into a psychopath. The Doctor left her a TARDIS-shaped diary as a gift, reflecting on her future with the words “she will be amazing.” After her recuperation, now going by River Song, she enrolled in Luna University on the Moon in the year 5123, planning to study Archaeology. Her reasoning was “I’m looking for a good man”.
River spent the next few years studying for her degree, as well as researching the Doctor, with whom she’d become infatuated. The day she received her doctorate, Madame Kovarian (whom River did not remember from her youth) appeared, flanked by two Silents. “You never really escaped us, Melody Pond … we were always coming for you.” They forced her into a new version of the Astronaut suit and submerged her in Lake Silencio for April 22nd, 2011.
The Doctor, now aware of his death, invited his friends (including a future version of River) and then bravely walked to his death when the spacesuit-bound River emerged from the lake. She cried to the Doctor that the suit was in control, and that he should run. He refused, and told her to look at the beach and see her future self.
“Why would you make me watch?” She asked tearfully. The Doctor wanted her to know that this was inevitable, that it had to happen. He also wanted her to know that he forgave her.
The Doctor prepared to be shot, but River ended up wresting control from the suit and draining the weapons systems. Because she blatantly changed what was supposed to be a fixed point in time, River plunged all of space and time into an alternate reality where every aspect of time was happening at once (pterodactyls in the park, Roman chariots driving alongside cars, etc).
In this alternate reality, River was one of the few people who remembered the other timeline, and with the aid of her hallucinogenic lipstick and her gun, she secured a facility for Area 52 inside an Egyptian pyramid to contain and monitor the Silents. When Amy (who also had some memory of the other timeline) brought the Doctor to Area 52, River was careful not to touch him, as they were the epicenter of what was rippling across time.
Atop the pyramid, River showed the Doctor a ‘timey-wimey distress beacon’, which she had been using to send a message across all of time, asking people to help the Doctor. And millions had responded in the positive. “I can’t let you die without knowing you are loved,” River said, confessing the depth of her feelings to him. “-and by no one more than me.”
With the attacking Silents getting closer, the Doctor married River in a handfasting ceremony as a symbol of trust. Once they kissed, time righted itself and returned to Lake Silencio, where River shot the Doctor. Or what appeared to be the Doctor. She kept it secret for several years (in her timeline), but when they exchanged vows, the Doctor let her in on a plot that involved faking his death. The man she shot on the beach was The Teselecta with the real Doctor hidden inside with his TARDIS.
River was imprisoned in The Stormcage Containment Facility in the 52nd century to serve several life sentences for ‘killing’ the Doctor. However, her first night in jail the Doctor visited her, beginning a series of adventures where she would break out of jail, travel with him, and then break back in. It was also at this point where the Doctor told her to use the diary he’d given her years ago to keep track of their differing timelines.
After one adventure, a celebration for River’s birthday which included a Stevie Wonder serenade in 1814, she returned to her cell and was met by her father, asking for her help at Demon’s Run. River had to refuse, knowing that the Doctor would learn her true identity and she couldn’t be there until the end. (Note: After her baby!self is kidnapped, River arrives at Demon’s Run and reveals to Amy and Rory that she is their daughter; in terms of River’s timeline it is unclear specifically where this event goes.)
Still serving her time, River received an invitation from the Doctor with coordinates to meet him in America. Lake Silencio, Utah on April 22, 2011. She watched the Doctor walk to his (fake) death, and had to keep secret that he was alive and that the assassin from the lake was a younger version of herself.
After giving the Doctor a funeral, River, Amy, and Rory (at this time they are unaware that she is their future daughter) encounter a younger version of the Doctor; they end up traveling to 1969 and searching for the mysterious little girl (young Melody) who phoned President Nixon. River got to take some revenge for her childhood when she shot several Silents after the Doctor used the moon landing to thwart their plans.
The Doctor returned River to the Stormcage upon her request (she said she had a promise to keep), and she kissed him. Something she apparently had done a lot. But for the Doctor it was their first kiss, signaling to River that her time with him (on the romantic front) was likely dwindling.
River met up with the Doctor again when the TARDIS reroutes a call to her Stormcage cell. She hastily broke out of prison via hallucinogenic lipstick, snagged herself a Time Vortex Manipulator, and got her hands on a lost Van Gogh painting to show the Doctor in 102 AD (after she graffitied the oldest cliff face in the universe and impersonated Cleopatra for a bit, of course). The painting foretold of the TARDIS exploding and causing cracks in time. She accompanied the Doctor and Amy to Stonehenge, where they discovered The Pandorica, a mythical prison for the most feared creature in the universe. Stonehenge was transmitting a signal to all of the Doctor’s enemies, who showed up and imprisoned him in the Pandorica ‘to protect the universe’ from the exploding TARDIS. River, however, was piloting the TARDIS at that time, when an external force took control.
Unable to escape what was certain death, River was put into a time loop by the TARDIS to protect her from the explosion. She was rescued by the Doctor, where she found that Earth (in 1996) was in an alternate timeline where there were no stars, as the whole of reality was beginning to collapse. Again, River had to pretend not to know her parents, and after a moment of seeing the Doctor shot by a Dalek, she annihilated the enemy in cold blood. She would bear no mercy to anyone who harmed her loved ones.
The Doctor was forced to restore the Universe in a series of actions that would erase himself from existence. River was unspeakably pained by this, and could not even share her grief with her parents, who did not yet know her. She left her diary (now blank) at her parents’ wedding in 2010 to help Amy remember the Doctor back into existence. After the reception, River met the Doctor and dropped hints of her marital status, meanwhile warning him that he would learn who she was “very soon”.
Back to serving time in the Stormcage in the 51st century, River, along with Father Octavian of the military-church, began a mission that she hoped would grant her freedom. She infiltrated the Galaxy Class ship Byzantium, which was carrying a Weeping Angel in its cargo. She inscribed coordinates on the ship’s Home Box in Old High Gallifreyan, telling the Doctor to come pick her up. Then, she jumped out of the spaceship.
The Doctor, accompanied by Amy (who was meeting River for the first time) rescued the femme fatale who informed them of her mission regarding the Weeping Angel. They ended up defeating an army of Angels on the planet Alfava Metraxis, and River, handcuffed, said her goodbyes. Not without hinting that the Doctor would see her again soon at the Pandorica.
It is possible that after these events River Song earned herself a pardon for her crimes. Directly after the Byzantium events, she reveals the truth about the Doctor’s ‘death’ at Lake Silencio to her parents. At some point she becomes a professor of Archaeology, and has one last date-like night with the Doctor (presumably the Eleventh); he takes to the Singing Towers of Darillium. The Doctor, for reasons unknown to River, cried and gave her a sonic screwdriver.
River then went on an expedition of The Library, sending a casual message to the Doctor’s psychic paper to join her in solving the mystery of the Library’s final transmission, “4022 saved, no survivors.” Unfortunately, the Doctor that arrived was not her doctor, the one she knew her entire life. Rather, it was the Doctor in his tenth incarnation, before he ever met her. The day she dreaded had finally come to pass; she tearfully looked into his young eyes and pleaded that he recognize her.
As River, the Doctor, and their companions were besieged by the Vashta Nerada, beings that dwell in shadows and who sought to reclaim their “forests” - the books of the library - she found herself constantly butting heads with the younger form of her husband. She kept her tongue quiet about the nature of their relationship, but the fact that they squabbled “like an old married couple” did not go unnoticed by the others. To prove her trustworthiness, River whispered the Doctor’s true name in his ear, much to his shock.
Once they determined that the computer core of the Library had literally “saved” the 4022 former inhabitants as data, the two of them descended to the core to free them. However, the Doctor planned to hook himself up to the terminal to do so, even though it would spell his death. River punched the Doctor out and handcuffed him, taking his place at the terminal. Tearfully, she bid him goodbye, having realized the truth of their differing timelines, that the Doctor she knew had always known this was her fate. She keeps the truth of her identity a secret in her final moments, wishing him to enjoy all the times he has to look forward to with her.
First Person Sample:
I’m not sure I like this. Strange, really, I’ve always been the type to try anything once, but this? Goes against everything I’ve learned. A journal - or at least, my journal is supposed to be private. For my eyes only. But an audio journal? That’s like trying to have a conversation without the luxury of someone’s eyes to look into. Or it means someone really loves to hear himself talk - trust me, I know a man like that, god forbid he ever had to keep one of these. Then again, he’s more than just a man, but…
[Her voice drifts off for a moment, and when she resumes she’s abandoned that line of thought] Anyway, I suppose now that I’m here, all the usual rules are out the door, yes? Which sounds like a lot of fun, actually - no rules, only good times.
But I’m afraid my good times are over, sweetie… [Is she talking to herself, or imagining someone else is there?] I lived my life. If this is some sort of…second chance, I’m not sure I want it. Or maybe it’s hell, in which case…
[The cocking of a gun can be heard] ..Here. I. Come.
Third Person Sample:
In this thread, (done in action brackets but is still third person, past-tense) the Tenth Doctor (circa The End of Time special) is traveling to see past companions one last time. He doesn’t intend to actually talk with River, but she catches sight of him while at an archaeological dig and refuses to leave him alone: http://memebells.livejournal.com/112493.html?thread=174163053#t174163053
Other:
Another aspect of my River headcanon (like with the Abilities & Powers section, many thanks to Yusagi for helping me with this information) is that her intense devotion to the Doctor may be a result of the Rassilon Imprompteur (which binds the TARDIS and a Time Lord) confused itself with River and became connected with her. Not only does this explain her ‘Child of the TARDIS’ title, but she is extremely attuned to how the TARDIS operates, and since the relationship between a Time Lord and TARDIS is very much spousal, this sheds new light on the depth of River’s love for the Doctor. She would certainly have a problem if she learned this information, questioning whether her love was her own or merely an effect of genetics.