River Song

Melody "Mels" Pond, later River Song, was a human being with Time Lord DNA due to being conceived onboard The Doctor's TARDIS and exposed to the Time Vortex. She became an archaeologist and a convicted murderer.

The daughter of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, Melody shared a close, romantic marriage with The Doctor and was one of the few people to know his true name. She was a doctor of archaeology, and later a professor, in the 51st century. Like Melanie Bush and Charley Pollard, she was an example of the rare companion whose timeline was not synchronous with the Doctor's.

Birth
Melody Pond was born on the asteroid of Demon's Run to Amy Pond and Rory Williams, after her mother had been abducted. Shortly after birth, Melody was replaced with a Ganger and taken by Madame Kovarian to become a weapon against the Doctor. She was chosen for this purpose because she had traces of Time Lord DNA as a result of being conceived onboard the TARDIS inside the Time Vortex. The extent of her Time Lord-like abilities gave her incredible physical strength, (DW: The Impossible Astronaut) the ability to understand and create devices based on complex principles of time and space, (DW: The Wedding of River Song), regenerate and pilot and talk with the TARDIS. (DW: Day of the Moon / A Good Man Goes to War / Let's Kill Hitler)

Early Life
As a child, Melody was indoctrinated by the Silence to kill the Doctor. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)

While a little girl, Melody ended up in an orphanage in America in 1969 and later at a warehouse in Florida. She was put into an Apollo astronaut suit upgraded with alien life support systems. She used the suit to telephone President Nixon directly, begging for help. This led to her first physical meeting with the Doctor (in their meeting as a baby she had been a Ganger)—a brief one, as her mother shot at her, scaring her away. She returned to the orphanage and tried to ask Amy for help, but the Silence arrived. After an unknown incident, she escaped the spacesuit and fled. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon)

Mels
Six months later, in New York City, dying, Melody regenerated. (DW: Day of the Moon) By the late 1990s she was an adolescent living in Leadworth under unknown circumstances. Nicknamed "Mels", she became her parents' close friend and helped them realise their love for each other. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)

Mels was often in trouble, with outbursts of reckless but largely harmless criminal behaviour. She was obsessed with Amelia's "Raggedy Doctor", dreamt of marrying him and claimed in school that historical disasters were his fault because he did not intervene. Through all of this, she was fully aware that Amy and Rory were her parents, and that she intended to kill the Doctor. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)

Regeneration into River
When the Doctor arrived in a Leadworth cornfield in 2011, Mels forced her way into the TARDIS at gunpoint to escape the police. She shot up the console, exposed the temporal grace feature as a "clever line" and forced them to land in Hitler's office in 1938, inadvertantly saving Hitler from the Teselecta. He mistakenly shot her. To the surprise of the Doctor and her parents, she regenerated into her next incarnation, recognisable as River Song. Acting on her conditioning, she almost immediately tried to kill the Doctor — first with guns, then with poisoned lipstick. She cheerily called herself a psychopath and ran amok in Berlin, yet showed empathy for the Doctor's devotion to his friends, to the "River Song" he kept mentioning, and his struggle to save her from the Teselecta. When she demanded to know who River was, Amy ordered the Teselecta to show her and it morphed into River's image. She asked her parents if the Doctor was worth saving. When they said yes, she sacrificed her remaining regenerations to revive him.

A new purpose
The Doctor took River to the "best hospital in the universe" to recover. Knowing of her future as his on-and-off companion, the Doctor left a "thank you" gift at her bedside, a TARDIS-shaped diary. After recovering, River matriculated at the Luna University a few years before the battle of Demons Run. When asked why she wished to study archaeology, River said she was "looking for a good man". (DW: Let's Kill Hitler) The day River received her doctorate, Madame Kovarian, agents of the Church and the Silents tracked her down; she had never truly escaped them. River was forced into a modified astronaut suit and taken to Lake Silencio, Utah on the 22nd April, 2011, where she was submerged in the lake to lie in wait for the Doctor. (DW: Closing Time)

When the moment came to kill the Doctor, River drained her weapon pack, defying a fixed point in time. Time ripped apart, creating a reality where every moment happened at once. Though at first unwilling to rectify her error, after marrying the Doctor. she followed through with his murder to restore the timeline, but did so knowing that he was really the Teselecta. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)

Imprisonment
River was imprisoned in the Stormcage Containment Facility for the murder of the Doctor. When he asked her about this earlier in his timestream, she said he was "A very good man. Best man I've ever known". (DW: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone). Though River knew the truth, she served the sentence to make the Silence believe the Doctor was dead. She escaped frequently to spend time with her husband, then returned to her cell until the next time. (DW: The Wedding of River Song, DW: A Good Man Goes to War, et al.)

The Battle of Demon's Run
On one of her birthdays, the Doctor took River to the last Winter Frost Fair on the River Thames in 1814. Stevie Wonder unknowingly performed before being returned to his time. Returning to Stormcage from this escapade, River met Rory in his Roman uniform. She refused his request to come aid them at Demons Run, saying she "can't be there until the very end" and "This is the day he finds out who I am."

River had already met the Doctor, Amy, and Rory at the end of the battle of Demon's Run in the 52nd century. She had revealed her identity, first to the Doctor, and then to her parents. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War, CON: When Time Froze)

Silence in America
On receiving an invitation containing coordinates from the Eleventh Doctor, River escaped from Stormcage to meet Amy, Rory and him in Utah in the United States of America in 2011. The Doctor took them on a picnic, where he was killed. River, Amy, and Rory burned the Doctor's body, then went to a cafe and found another version of the Eleventh Doctor, who claimed to be about two hundred years younger than the one who had died. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)

River helped the Doctor defeat the Silence by using their brainwashing of humanity against them. At her request, the Doctor returned her to Stormcage, where she kissed him. From his shocked reaction, she realised that from his perspective, it was their first kiss, and from her perspective, probably their last. (DW: Day of the Moon)

The opening of the Pandorica
The TARDIS rerouted a phone call for the Doctor from Winston Churchill to River. She escaped from Stormcage to warn the Doctor of a prophecy of the TARDIS exploding. After blackmailing a Time Agent's vortex manipulator off Dorium Maldovar, she travelled to the Roman era of Earth, where she met the Doctor and Amy.

They found the Pandorica under Stonehenge, transmitting a signal summoning an alliance of the Doctor's foes. The Doctor got them to back off and sent River to fetch the TARDIS. Instead, it took her to Amy's house on the 26th of June, 2010. When River told him the date, the Doctor realised the TARDIS was about to explode and told her to escape. Instead, she was trapped in a time loop of the first moments of the explosion. (DW: The Pandorica Opens) The Doctor used her vortex manipulator to rescue her and bring her to 1996, where she learned of his plan to use the Pandorica's restoration field to reverse the erasure of the universe. The Doctor was badly wounded by an energy blast from the Stone Dalek hunting them. Angered at the apparent loss of the man she loved, River told the Dalek to look in its data banks for her identity, taunted it into begging for mercy, then killed it.

After the Doctor restored the universe, erasing himself in the process, River left her now blank, TARDIS-shaped diary with Amy on her wedding day in 2010 so she could remember the Doctor back into existence from the Void. After a brief conversation with him about her marital status and identity, she said he was "...going to find out very soon now, and I'm sorry, because that's when everything changes" and left him wondering. (DW: The Big Bang)

The crash of the Byzantium
Some time after River had returned from 2010 to prison, she was put in Father Octavian's custody in the 51st century. If she carried out her mission successfully, she might earn her pardon. Sent as a guest on the ship Byzantium, she infiltrated the lower levels to find its Home Box, into which she carved "Hello Sweetie" in Old High Gallifreyan to attract the Doctor's attention twelve thousand years later. Leading the Doctor to Alfava Metraxis, she helped him defeat an army of Weeping Angels which had been awakened in the planet's Maze of the Dead. (DW: The Time of Angels, Flesh and Stone)

After this adventure, she visited Amy and Rory after the Doctor had "died" and exposed the truth behind that and other lies to her parents. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)

Darillium
Some time after earning her pardon, River received a surprise visit by the Doctor, who had a new haircut. He took her to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. The Doctor knew, although River did not, that her death was imminent, and gave her an upgraded version of his sonic screwdriver. (DW: Forest of the Dead)

The Library
In the 51st century, River, now a professor, was hired by Strackman Lux for an expedition to The Library to discover what had happened there a hundred years earlier, when a cryptic final message had been sent: "4022 saved. No survivors." Expecting trouble, she sent the Doctor a message by psychic paper. The version of the Doctor who turned up had not yet met her. Though bewildered, he agreed to help River and her team.

River still had her battered, TARDIS-shaped diary of her travels with the Doctor. She tried to use it to discover where the Doctor was in his timeline, but realised that he was a much younger version of the Doctor who neither knew nor trusted her. As the situation with the Vashta Nerada worsened, River knew she must prove to him she was someone he would come to trust completely. With profuse apologies, she whispered his true name into his ear. The Doctor was stunned, and River had won his trust.

River died physically when she sacrificed herself in the Doctor's place to save Donna and the other four thousand twenty-two people trapped in the Library's computer. She pleaded with him to not change their history, not one moment of what had/would come for them. (DW: Forest of the Dead)

After saving the trapped people, the Doctor reasoned his future self would give her his sonic screwdriver for a purpose. Inside it he found a data chip, a "Neural Relay", which held River's Data Ghost. The Doctor saved River by uploading her into the virtual world in The Library's data core, CAL. CAL had also saved the data ghosts of River's dead archaeological team, giving her company in the virtual world. River would take care of her two virtual children and Charlotte (the girl wired into the mainframe) in the virtual world, reading out her diary of her many adventures with the Doctor, and how sometimes, "everybody lives" when the Doctor comes to call. Her story ended with her wishing her audience sweet dreams. (DW: Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead)

The Tenth Doctor would later remember her death when Davros reminded him of the people who had died in his name. (DW: Journey's End)

Alternate Timeline
In an alternate timeline, River regained control of herself long enough to drain the suit's weapon system and not kill the Eleventh Doctor. A fixed point in time was ripped open, and all of time collapsed into a single moment, 22 April, 2011 at 5:02pm. In this new, disintegrating timeline, River was a member of a group that sought to fix time and yet not end the Doctor's life. This group was led by Amy Pond, who also remembered the original events due to her exposure to the Cracks in Time. River built a distress beacon, begging the universe for help in saving the Doctor, to which much of the universe responded with resounding agreement. She was wed to the Doctor and he revealed that he was really the Teselecta. River and the Teselecta kissed, and River "killed the Doctor" to restore the timeline. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)

Undated/Unchronicled events

 * The Doctor and River had a picnic at Asgard. (DW: Silence in the Library)
 * The Doctor and River shared an adventure in "the Bone Meadows". (DW: The Time of Angels)
 * The Doctor and River visited Easter Island together. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)
 * The Doctor and River met a being named "Jim the Fish". (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)
 * The Doctor took River to London in 1814 on her birthday to go ice skating on the River Thames. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)

Personality
River's personality was a patchwork of many factors, most of them so bizarre that any one might have driven her mad. Her earliest care givers were Madame Kovarian and the Silence, who worked for the first few years of her life to make her a psychopath intent on killing the Doctor. She wound up shy, innocent and terrified of the "monsters" that had trapped her in the spacesuit -- and probably of the Doctor. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut) Her mother tried to shoot her. After she escaped, she regenerated in the middle of New York City, with only one kindly individual to focus on: a homeless Black man who asked her if she was all right. Her next incarnation was likewise Black: only Black people were good, so she would be one. ( Day of the Moon)

For the next quarter century, she searched for her real parents, apparently while remaining a child. She found them as children, giving them a chance to raise her and she them -- it was she who made them realise they loved each other in a daunting bootstrap paradox. 'Mels' was often in trouble. She had no respect for any authority and was chased by the police shortly before her regeneration. She resented the Doctor and blamed him for many historical disasters, knew she would kill him but wanted to marry him. When she finally met him, after almost running him over with a car, she called him "hot", fondled the TARDIS and pointed a gun at his head. (Let's Kill Hitler)

The period following regeneration was a plastic one for Time Lords; Romana started dressing like the Fourth Doctor after her first regeneration(DW: Destiny of the Daleks) and the Tenth Doctor immediately acquired an accent like his companion, Rose Tyler. (DW: The Christmas Invasion) Following River's last regeneration, the crisis period let her kill the Doctor, have a chance to observe him as he struggled to save her and her parents while he died and to be "raised" by her third mother, the TARDIS, who taught her how to pilot itself. Without a purpose to keep her functional, with the relationship of the TARDIS and the Doctor what it was, River "reversed her polarity". She was still focused on the Doctor, but now on keeping him alive, with a liberal side of sex and death.

For his part, the Doctor undoubtedly enjoyed the adoration of someone he could view as a peer -- she had Time Lord DNA and, by some means he did not understand, was a better TARDIS pilot than he -- and who was so happily violent. The Doctor had had to do some terrible things in his past, including destroying his entire species twice. His way of coping was to deny responsibility; it was wrong, but that he had been forced to do it. River was so sensually violent, it was titillating; their "flirting" usually consisted of her talking about her misdeeds and his disapproval, albeit admitting that he somehow liked it. (Day of the Moon, The Wedding of River Song)

In her final incarnation, River's personality echoed her parents'. She had her mother's Scots stubbornness and her father's quiet determination. She took every opportunity to assert her superiority to the Doctor and hated it when he would come upon her telling others how wonderful he was (Flesh and Stone). She slapped the TARDIS console and scolded it when it didn't do as she wished. (The Pandorica Opens) She understood the fragility of reality. She helped maintain it by lying -- blaming the Doctor for the necessity -- and was good at acting to keep secrets. She enjoyed teasing others with her foreknowledge, saying "Spoilers" and keeping others from her precious diary in a constant effort to assert her superiority to everyone. (DW: Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead) She retained her psychopathic egotism. Intent on keeping the Doctor alive in an alternate time line in which his continuing life meant the universe would end, she told him that she would suffer more if she killed him than the rest of the universe would if it were to die. (The Marriage of River Song)

River knew how bizarre her situation was and gloried in it. She joked that she was breaking into prison instead of breaking out, implying that she was perfectly at home in that situation or indifferent to it. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War) She remained focused on the Doctor in a loving, psychopathic way, telling him she hated him with a smile to echo her earlier, psychopathic hatred. She enjoyed killing the stone Dalek after it had shot the Doctor, making it it plead for mercy when it realised who she was. She enjoyed the psychological advantage that shocking others gave her, and was often flirtatious, contemptuous and bawdy -- although given the standards of the early Sixth Millenium, where she spent much of her time when not with the Doctor, this may not have been remarkable. (DW: The Big Bang) Her "contemporary", Jack Harkness, often behaved in a similar manner.

River was willing to sacrifice herself from the moment she decided the Doctor "was worth it". She freely gave her remaining regenerations to save him after poisoning him herself. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler) She took the Doctor's place when he tried to release the people who were saved in the computer that controlled the Library, knocking him out and handcuffing him before hooking herself up to the computer. Just before her death she comforted the Doctor by saying that although it was her last meeting with him it was his first with her and he would see her again. (DW: Forest of the Dead) She was also willing to sacrifice herself to close the Time Field on the Byzantium to stop the Doctor from doing it, though he told her it wouldn't be enough. (DW: Flesh and Stone). It was, after all, her psychopathic purpose.

From beginning to end, River remained an enigmatic individual of impossible skills and unachievable goals -- she once remarked that when the Doctor was in the room, everyone's job was to keep him alive until he could get them out -- and trust her, it wasn't easy. (Flesh and Stone) From beginning to end, she was a tightly focused, well-integrated mess.

Known family

 * The Doctor - husband
 * Jenny - step-daughter
 * Rory Williams – father
 * Amy Pond – mother
 * Augustus Pond – maternal grandfather
 * Tabetha Pond – maternal grandmother
 * Sharon – maternal great-aunt

Other information

 * River's "present day" spanned the 52nd and 51st centuries - in that order. She entered Luna University in 5123 and was in Stormcage by 5145. One of her last Stormcage appearances was in the 51st century, which was also when she died. How the outside world saw this, and when she was released from Stormcage, is unknown.
 * River Song seemed to take shorter trips with the Doctor, living a "normal" life between trips, rather than having one extended trip with the Doctor and never seeing him after parting ways.
 * River Song was a skilled TARDIS pilot, with techniques very different from the Doctor's. She claimed that she "learned from the best", and joked that the Doctor wasn't available that day. (DW: The Time of Angels) It turned out she had learnt from the TARDIS itself, which recognised her as its "child". (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
 * River had knowledge of Time Lord anatomy, and knew about regeneration. She knew that destruction of both of the Doctor's hearts would make regeneration impossible. (DW: Forest of the Dead). She also understood that if the Doctor died before his regeneration cycle was complete, he was dead for good. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)
 * River Song could write Old High Gallifreyan. It is not known where she learned this.
 * River had pictures of all the Doctor's incarnations (DW: The Time of Angels), though she did not know what order they came in
 * River told Rory that she and the Doctor were meeting in reverse order and that every time she met him, he knew her less. She feared the day when she met a Doctor who did not know her. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut) Generally, River met the Doctor in reverse order respective to their timelines. This was not always the case, as River once met a version of the Doctor who had shared an adventure to Easter Island and a meeting with Jim the Fish.
 * Both the name "Melody" and "River Song" are ontological paradoxes. Amy named her daughter after her friend, who unbeknownst to Amy was her daughter Melody. Melody later began using the name "River Song" after learning about her own future as River Song.

Behind the scenes

 * All full-episode appearances have taken place in stories written by Steven Moffat. Her only other appearances were in a flashback in DW: Journey's End and at the end of DW: Closing Time.
 * Excluding DW: Closing Time and DW: The Wedding of River Song, River Song only appears in two-part episodes.
 * In a recent interview for a short video about the Eleventh Doctor's companions, Alex Kingston stated that River Song has encountered many incarnations of the Doctor and that the Doctor "sends her into his past, where he knows he needs her expertise". Arthur Darvill stated that Kingston had been told more than anyone else about who River really is.
 * Humourously, the conversation at the end of The Doctor's Wife implies River was conceived on a bunk bed. When asked about this, both Steven Moffat and Neil Gaiman independently and simultaneously acknowledged this, joking about the possibility of the ladder. They later agreed they had accidentally canonised this by agreeing on it at the same time.
 * To date, River has been played by six different actors, the most to portray a single companion on-screen.
 * River Song is the only Time Lord to change skin colour via regeneration on-screen, as the actresses who played her in both her Melody Pond and River Song incarnations were white, while both of Mels' actresses were black. Earlier in SJA: Death of the Doctor, the Doctor noted that his racial characteristics were not limited to white; he "can be anything." Rassilon has been portrayed by white actors Richard Mathews and Timothy Dalton on-screen while black actor Don Warrington was Rassilon's voice actor and cover-art model in Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories. A black Time Lord was also seen in DW: The Sound of Drums.
 * In Let's Kill Hitler, River says that she will gradually bring down the age of her body a little "just to freak people out", referring to the fact that a younger Alex Kingston will play later versions of River.
 * Before the fact that the little girl and River are one and the same was revealed in-universe, Steven Moffat confirmed it in an interview.