B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (317 page)

A looming question that never gets answered is why they’re meeting in reverse order
at all
, as if someone or some thing is trying (however imperfectly) to actually make their meet-ups run back-to-front. One possibility goes to a theory mooted in
About Time
- that in classic
Doctor Who
, the TARDISes of Time Lords such as the Doctor, the Master, the Rani, etc., coordinate things so that their pilots keep meeting each other in chronological order. Perhaps such protocols are rent asunder following the obliteration of Gallifrey and the Time Lords prior to New
Who
, making the psuedo-reverse means by which the Doctor and River keep meeting better than nothing.

For the Doctor (and the audience), his meet-ups with River are:
Silence in the Library
/
Forest of the Dead
;
The Time of Angels
/
Flesh and Stone
;
The Pandorica Opens
/
The Big Bang
;
The Impossible Astronaut
/
Day of the Moon
(909-year-old Doctor);
A Good Man Goes to War
;
Let’s Kill Hitler
;
The Wedding of River Song
(1103-year-old Doctor) and, by extension,
The Impossible Astronaut
again. It is usually not specified exactly how many years pass between the Doctor and River’s encounters in either her home era or elsewhere. As River is a human-Time Lord hybrid with a more malleable appearance (per
Let’s Kill Hitler
), the time between their encounters is doubly indeterminate.

It should also be noted that Captain Jack Harkness hails from the late 5000s and so is a rough contemporary of River, but we’ve no record of their meeting one another. In
Silence in the Library
/
Forest of the Dead
, River has a squareness gun identical to Jack’s (although it’s entirely possible that she found Jack’s old gun in the TARDIS), and
The Pandorica Opens
has her buying a time travel-enabling vortex manipulator that’s “fresh from the [severed] wrist of a handsome Time Agent” (not that said handsome agent is necessarily Jack himself).

Timelink
dated
Silence in the Library
/
Forest of the Dead
to 5008, but saw print before it could take River’s appearances in Series 5 and 6 into consideration.

[
1410
] Dating
Let’s Kill Hitler
(X6.8) - The date River starts university is given in a caption. Professor Candy, who is named in the credits, first appeared in the short story “Continuity Errors” (also by Steven Moffat) and is mentioned in
Benny: Oh No It Isn’t!

[
1411
] The background to much of Series 5 and 6, as given in
The Wedding of River Song
.

[
1412
] Dating
Closing Time
(X6.12) - No date is given, but as River has been awarded her doctorate, it’s at least several years since we last saw her in
Let’s Kill Hitler
.

[
1413
] After
Closing Time
and before
A Good Man Goes to War
. It’s not entirely clear how this came to pass, as it looks like River is convicted and imprisoned for the Doctor’s murder by the Clerics - the same organisation that helped to train and task her with killing him in the first place. That said, different factions within the Clerics might be working to different ends - by
The Time of Angels
, Father Octavian and his Clerics are not only willing to involve the Doctor in their affairs, Octavian blatantly draws the Doctor’s attention to the murder (namely, his own) that River committed.

[
1414
]
The Big Bang

[
1415
] Before
The Big Bang
.

[
1416
] She can adeptly fly the Ship (in her timeline) no later than
The Pandorica Opens.
River says (
The Time of Angels
) that she had TARDIS-flying lessons from “the very best” and that it was a “shame” the Doctor was busy that day, but yells “You taught me!” at the Doctor in
The Pandorica Opens
. In
Let’s Kill Hitler
, the TARDIS itself teaches River how to pilot it.

[
1417
] Dating
The Pandorica Opens
(X5.12) - The date is given in three captions. River and the Doctor seem to be married by now, as implied by her impish conversation with him at the end of
The Big Bang
.

[
1418
] In unknown circumstances between (from River’s point of view)
The Big Bang
and
The Time of Angels
.

[
1419
] At some point prior to
The Impossible Astronaut
, as revealed in
The Rebel Flesh
and
A Good Man Goes to War
.

[
1420
] Dating
The Rebel Flesh
and
A Good Man Goes to War
(X6.6-6.7) - No firm date is given, but Dorium’s presence (he was last seen in
The Pandorica Opens
) suggests that this is River Song’s “native time”. It’s a bit of an oddity that River is born after her adult self has been confined to Stormcage, but it’s no more strange than so many other things about her. The River who appears at Demon’s Run can independently travel in time; for all we’re told, she only gains the vortex manipulator that lets her do so in
The Pandorica Opens
. The Cybermen seen here are the first in the new TV series that don’t have the Cybus logo on them, and are clearly a galactic power in the far future.

[
1421
]
Let’s Kill Hitler

[
1422
]
The Impossible Astronaut
/
Day of the Moon

[
1423
] Dating
The Wedding of River Song
(X6.13) - No date given, but we can infer that all of these events occur in the same timezone. Dorium’s appearance is explicitly after the main events of
A Good Man Goes to War
.

[
1424
] Dating
A Good Man Goes to War
(X6.7) - This is tricky to place. The fact that River has knowledge of events at Demon’s Run - in particular, that the Doctor will then learn her true identity - suggests that for her, those events have already happened.

River doesn’t seem to know, until Rory arrives, that it’s the day that Demon’s Run will occur - so even though it’s her birthday, it’s presumably a different year from when she was literally born. This has the slightly awkward consequence that while
A Good Man Goes to War
is set in River’s native era, Rory must not visit Stormcage at the exact same time as the effort to rescue Amy from Demon’s Run. With the Doctor recruiting allies from all throughout time and space, it’s possible that Rory or the Doctor just told the TARDIS, “Take us to River”, and it acted accordingly. (Hence Rory’s comment that, “The time streams, I’m not quite sure where we are...”)

[
1425
] In River’s lifetime, these events happen before
The Impossible Astronaut
.

[
1426
] Dating
The Impossible Astronaut
/
Day of the Moon
(X6.1-6.2) - The general reverse order of the Doctor and River’s meet-ups would suggest that these two episodes would, for her, occur prior to
A Good Man Goes to War
. Also, River acts as if she and the Doctor who took her to the 1814 frost fair are quite chummy - so if
Day of the Moon
is indeed the last time she kisses him, the frost fair trip likely occurs (for River) before that event.

[
1427
] Dating
The Time of Angels
,
Flesh and Stone
and
The Big Bang
(X5.4-5.5, X5.13) - River tells the Doctor that they will next meet “when the Pandorica opens” - meaning that for her, it’s after
The Pandorica Opens
(set in 5145).

[
1428
]
The Time of Angels
/
Flesh and Stone
. There’s no mention of her being imprisoned after this point.

[
1429
]
The Wedding of River Song
. River says that she “climbed out of the wreck of the
Byzantium
” and is dressed as she was at the end of
Flesh and Stone
. She has very possibly been released from prison at this point, although that’s not explicitly stated.

[
1430
] As the Doctor let slip to her in
The Time of Angels
, and as she introduces herself in
Silence in the Library
. Octavian refers to her as “Doctor Song” in
The Time of Angels
.

[
1431
]
Forest of the Dead.
River tells the Doctor, “You never show up in the right order, though. I need the spotter’s guide.” As he doesn’t meet her before his tenth life, it perhaps suggests that River meets other Doctors past the Matt Smith version. This would further violate the notion that River and the Doctor meet in exact reverse order, though.

[
1432
] At some point before
Silence in the Library
. If the Doctor does indeed
not
tell River his real name when they’re wed (
The Wedding of River Song
), and instead tells her the secret (“Look into my eye”) that he doesn’t have to die after all, then the most likely place that this occurs is when he’s dying and whispers in her ear in
Let’s Kill Hitler
. That, or the Doctor’s real name actually
is
“Look Into My Eye”.

[
1433
] All before
Silence in the Library
/
Forest of the Dead
.

[
1434
] Dating
Silence in the Library
/
Forest of the Dead
(X4.8-4.9) - For River, the story takes place an unspecified amount of time after
Flesh and Stone
. See the Dating River Song essay.

[
1435
] Six hundred years after
Tomb of Valdemar
, according to the Doctor.

[
1436
] Dating “Fire and Brimstone” (
DWM
#251-255) - The Doctor says “some two hundred years ago, I saw the Cauldron launched”, a reference to “The Keep”. The humans in this story don’t recognise the Daleks.

[
1437
] Dating “Wormwood” (
DWM
#266-271) - It’s “twenty years” since “Fire and Brimstone” according to Chastity. Earth’s moon is here destroyed (albeit without any mention of the environmental havoc such an event would inevitably mean for Earth itself), but might be restored off screen, as it looks whole in “The Child of Time” (
DWM
). By
The Long Game
(set in 200,000), Earth is the centre of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Empire, and has five moons.