Question for Doctor Who fans...

[mjr]

I've seen some of the newer episodes.

Can someone explain to me the somewhat strange relationship between River Song and The Doctor?

I understand that River Song is Amy Pond's daughter, and that River Song is (kind of) a Time Lord, because Amy and Rory did the mattress mambo in the TARDIS.

Other than that, they seem to have this relationship I can only classify as "odd".

Can anyone explain it to me??

[Jay 2K Winger]

I've seen some of the newer episodes.

Can someone explain to me the somewhat strange relationship between River Song and The Doctor?

I understand that River Song is Amy Pond's daughter, and that River Song is (kind of) a Time Lord, because Amy and Rory did the mattress mambo in the TARDIS.

Other than that, they seem to have this relationship I can only classify as "odd".

Can anyone explain it to me??

Just in case anyone wants to know, I'll post it.

Because there are SPOILERS!, I'll spoiler-text them.

[=========SPOILERS BELOW!=========]

The Doctor chronologically met River Song first in his Tenth incarnation, at The Library. ("Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead") However, for her, this was chronologically the last time she met him, as she later sacrificed herself to save CAL and everyone that had been "saved." From that point on, they are frequently meeting out of order, hence why River Song checks her journal whenever they meet so they can determine what they've done and figure out how to avoid too many "spoilers."

River was conceived on the TARDIS on Amy & Rory's wedding night, where exposure to the time vortex/untempered schism gave her quasi-Time Lord DNA. While Amy was pregnant, however, Madam Kovarian's sect of the Church of the Silence abducted her, replaced her with a Flesh duplicate, and had Amy carry to term under their supervision. Amy gave birth to Melody Pond, and the baby was replaced with a Flesh duplicate as well. Kovarian escaped with baby Melody, ("A Good Man Goes To War") and Young Melody spent several years under the watchful eyes of the Silence in the mid-to-late 1960s.

In 1969, Young Melody escaped, but was too injured/ill to endure long, and regenerated, ("The Impossible Astronaut"/"Day of the Moon") presumably into Mels, who was moved forward to the time of Amy and Rory's childhood, where she became their friend, and incidentally inspired Amy's choice of name for her eventual child. Mels, a frequent delinquent thanks to the Silence's conditioning, later finally got a chance to meet Amy's "raggedy Doctor," and decided, "Let's Kill Hitler." However, a random gunshot from Hitler himself mortally wounded Mels, who regenerated again, this time into River Song, who promptly tried to kill the Doctor, and came damnably close. When she realized how the Doctor felt about her, she gave up her remaining regenerations to repair the damage her poison lipstick had done to him, and spent most of the rest of her adult life in the 51st Century, where she earned her doctorate in archaeology.

However, the Silence had simply been biding its time, and abducted her again, forcing her into a spacesuit armed with weaponry, and then puppeted her body (via the suit) to kill the Doctor. ("The Impossible Astronaut") She tried to stop herself doing so, almost causing time to unravel, due to trying to change a fixed point in time. The Doctor and his allies fought the Silence at Area 52 in the time-compressed world, and he married River Song and revealed going to his death at Lake Silencio had been an intentional gambit to avoid the trap the Silence had laid, faking his death with the help of the Tessalecta, then going into hiding, where he studiously worked to erase his existence from record to keep his enemies from finding him. ("The Wedding of River Song")

River, however, was still believed to have killed the Doctor and was thus imprisoned in the Stormcage. She did, however, escape frequently, but only for short trips with the Doctor to interesting points in time. Or sometimes because her help was required. ("The Pandorica Opens," "The Angels Take Manhattan") She later was temporarily paroled with the help of the Church to investigate the crash of the Byzantium ("The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone"), and eventually was released after serving her sentence. She later became a professor of archaeology, and some time after that, she paid a visit to The Library...

She has been seen at least once chronologically since her consciousness was saved in CAL's simulation. That was in "The Name of the Doctor."

TL;DR -- River Song is the Doctor's wife, friend, confidant, and walking spoiler.

[=========SPOILERS FINISHED!=========]