Friend of the Family (audio story)

Friend of the Family was a full cast audio story released on 12 January 2023 by Big Finish Productions. It comprised the eleventh series of The Diary of River Song. It was written by Tim Foley and featured Alex Kingston as River Song.

Spread over four parts, it saw River investigating a multi-decade mystery surrounding the Mortimer family.

Publisher's summary
River Song decides to investigate a temporal anomaly after a Luna University expedition makes some odd discoveries in an old Earth house - pages of her own diary with an inscrutable riddle written across them.

However, her investigation goes badly wrong when she is transported back into the past of the house and gets trapped within its grounds.

The house is the home of the Mortimers and with a limited ability to travel back and forth in time across eighty years and multiple generations she finds herself witnessing key moments in their family history.

If she wants to escape, the words in her diary are not the only riddle she has to solve. But not everyone in the house will survive what's coming. And not everyone is on her side.

The Rules of the House (1)
The day before the Luna University semester ends and the Doctor is due to take her to the Shores of Glib, River travels to the Mortimer house on Earth with a prototype echo gun. Although she has disabled her holographic assistant, Hugo, he has secretly added a projector to her vortex manipulator and accompanies her. She finds what she came for: a bundle of pages torn from her diary in the future which, in what appears to be her handwriting, tells her to "learn the rules of the house, find the key to the door, save the bird from the nest, draw the isle on the shore".

River uses the echo gun on her diary, scanning the timelines and inadvertently transporting herself back to 2014 where she finds that her vortex manipulator will not move her forward in time, possibly due to Hugo's interference. She meets Harry Mortimer and Vinay Siddiqui, a couple who mistake her for the cook and explain that they have come to renovate the house before selling it; looking around, she sees a photograph of herself with Harry's grandmother in the 1980s and wonders if Hugo arrived in that decade. She is able to use the vortex manipulator to move back in time, but instead arrives in December 1936, where she is mistaken by Lady Maddie Mortimer for her new lady's maid.

River next travels forwards in time to June 1988 and scares Thomas Mortimer by appearing out of thin air. The cook knows her name and takes her to Mary Mortimer, Harry's grandmother, who explains that River has a long history with the family and that she must come to understand the family legacy. In her bedroom, River is able to reactivate an earlier cache of Hugo and learns that a barrier is keeping her from travelling further back than 1936 or beyond 2014. Deciding that she has to solve the first part of the riddle and learn the rules of the house, she allows Hugo to explore in incognito mode whilst she goes to sleep.

In the morning, Hugo explains that an invisible holographic shield charged with temporal particles is around the area, preventing himself and River from leaving. She fires a temporal shot at the field with Hugo's holographic vortex manipulator and sees Maddie and her husband, Henry, for a few moments before Thomas invites her to join Maddie and Carla Alcazar, his girlfriend, for lunch. River learns that Mary's elderly mother is Maddie and speaks with her, but she becomes distressed when she mentions Henry. Afterwards, River learns from Mary that Maddie mysteriously vanished in 1936 and returned only a few months ago.

To keep track, River draws up a timeline from 1936 to 2014 on a page from her diary and notes the periods that she knows she will visit. She heads back to 1936 to play the role of Maddie's maid and Hugo is attacked by the cook, who looks exactly as she did in 1988 and is able to see him despite him being incognito. The cook tells him not to struggle.

The Key to the Door (2)
After the party, River manages to get Hugo back online, but he is suffering amnesia and triggers another hop, taking them both to September 1962 and making them realise that the years they have visited have been at twenty-six year intervals. River senses an unusual energy signature behind a locked door through which Hugo cannot pass and she assumes her sonic device will be unable to open. To get around this, she returns to 1936 with the intention to enter the room and leap forwards in time, but her vortex manipulator fails and Henry avoids telling her whose room it is when he sees her. Hugo is unable to enter the locked room despite the lack of an energy signature within.

In the morning, Maddie introduces River to her children, George and Mary, has her wrap an empty box for Henry's Christmas present and makes her read her palm; when River does so, she tells her that she will go elsewhere without her children for a long time. In 1988, River finds that the locked room is still locked and Mary tells her that it has likely been painted over or that the door is fake. River asks Maddie about it, but she starts crying and Mary sends River to wait for her in the library. Once Maddie has calmed down, Mary tells River that she will go back in time to 1962 and enter the locked room, which she will do by ingratiating herself into the family.

River travels to 14 September 1962 and uses forged references based on Mary's recollections to get hired as Thomas's governess, which Henry, recognising her from 1936, insists upon. She peeks under the door of the locked door and sees what she believes to be snow, which she leaves her sonic trowel to scan, hidden by a perception filter. She encounters the cook, who looks exactly the same; River realises that she is the Kontron crystal inside her vortex manipulator and that she has drained the device of power, which she then uses to send River and Hugo forwards in time to 2014. The sonic trowel has been removed, meaning that River cannot use it to recharge the vortex manipulator.

With an injured ankle and no way to leave, River stays the night with Harry and Vinay watching Pride and Prejudice. Afterwards, she confides in Hugo that she is nearing the end of her diary and making sure not to use up any pages unnecessarily as it might mean that her adventures with the Doctor will be over. She hears noises coming the locked room and investigates, but she is interrupted by a phone call from her future self from the 1960s, who warns her that things are going to become more complicated.

The Bird from the Nest (3)
to be added

The Isle on the Shore (4)
to be added

Cast

 * River Song - Alex Kingston
 * Hugo - Mark Elstob
 * Maddie Mortimer - Lillie Flynn
 * Henry Mortimer - Joseph Capp
 * Mary Mortimer - Jemima Rooper
 * George Mortimer - Matt Addis
 * Older Henry Mortimer - Tim Bentinck
 * Older Mary Mortimer - Isla Blair
 * Older Maddie Mortimer - Wendy Craig
 * Thomas Mortimer - James Camp
 * Carla Alcazar - Vineeta Rishi
 * Harry Mortimer - Jack Holden
 * Vinay Siddiqui - Ronak Patani
 * Cook - Phyllida Nash

Uncredited cast

 * Old man - Tim Bentinck (BFX: The Key to the Door)

Continuity

 * River met a version of herself from another universe and might have married her. The details are fuzzy, however, and there was a strange resolution. (AUDIO: The Two Rivers)
 * River has "dabbled" with using the title of professor, having been referred to as such by people that she had met in her future. (TV: The Time of Angels; AUDIO: The Boundless Sea, Animal Instinct, etc.)
 * River got married in "a bit of a rush" because the universe was ending. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
 * River tells her past self that things are going to get more complicated. Amy Pond did something similar after being released from the Pandorica. (TV: The Big Bang)