River song who is

Branching off with her own stories and simply popping by to see the Doctor when it suits her, River Song was effectively a female version of the Doctor before Whittaker was even trying on her trench coat. And going forward, maybe we could see even more of her.

At some point in the next 13 years, we want to see it happen. Want something else to watch? Sign in. Back to Main menu What to watch Film news.

Vworp your way to a whole galaxy of Doctor Who content Sign up for the latest Who news, reviews, interviews and features Thanks, you are now signed up to our Doctor Who newsletter! Sign me up! All about Doctor Who. Subscribe today. The Return of River. The Time of Angels Clip The Time of Angels Clip. River Song — Doctor Who , Series 5. Related Content. River's Diary Transform one of your books into a diary like River Song's! Characters from The Husbands of River Song.

River Song View River Song. After he shot Lily, River killed Lake who regenerated into Lily. After burying Lily, who she believed to be the last of her siblings, River summoned an incarnation of the Doctor to take a break with. River had several adventures with the Fifth Doctor and Brooke, who she did not know, including their visit to Gadalax Prime.

The Doctor took River and Brooke to 18th Century Venice where they investigated the mystery surrounding Mozart's final piece, discovering Aqua Galatia had been sold among disgruntled wives to kill their husbands. River became suspicious of Brooke who was increasingly jealous of River. Brooke spiked the Doctor's tea with Aqua Galatia and attempted to use it to assassinate him but River neutralised it with her love for the Doctor. She and the Doctor forced Brooke to take them to where she was meeting her employer, The Bumptious Gastropod , a restaurant outside space-time where the rules of causality did not apply.

She planned to infiltrate the restaurant to get revenge on Kovarian but was thwarted when the Fifth Doctor immediately returned and was noticed by Kovarian. River kidnapped and dressed Andrew Edwardson in the Doctor's clothes as an attempt to save the Doctor from Kovarian's new plot to kill him.

However, River was convinced by Maitre D' that this was immoral and something the Doctor would not approve of. Whilst River was caught up in increasingly complex timeline of events, Brooke found and killed the true Doctor using regeneration inhibitors to prevent further regenerations. In fury, River shot Brooke, who simply regenerated, and was taken captive by Kovarian.

Back in her old childhood prison in Concorde Well, she discovered that Madame Kovarian had created Brooke and numerous other new a proto-Time Lord. As the Deterrent laid siege to Concorde Well, River was released to help the defences and convinced Brooke and the other clones to create a psychic link of the mythic Furies to taunt Kovarian with the image of the Fifth Doctor, eventually causing Kovarian to have a meltdown.

Though he was unaware of her identity, River said a quick farewell to him. River left Kovarian a prisoner of her cloned siblings. She sent him away when they were attacked by androids disguised as the Queen's guard. After her own escape from the Elizabethan era, River took over the Time Agency in an attempt to get Javic out of her way. River retrieved Katarina 's body from deep space to give her a proper burial.

She was attacked by the Nine who she quickly ascertained had been lured there by her future self. River moved into the Powell Estate and became a neighbour of Jackie Tyler. She asked Jackie for advice about her conflicting feelings for the Doctor and Jack, and they became friends by the time Jack arrived to visit Jackie. As a visiting professor at the University of Jaska Major , River took it upon herself to teach one of her students, Luke Sullieman , the finer poins of Archaeology.

Together, they sneaked into the local museum and opened a tomb which was recently brought there from Jaska Minor. However, in doing so they inadvertently woke up his occupant, who turned out to be the Master.

On Jaska Minor, River witnessed the Master unprecedentedly murder their companions, but didn't stop him, acknowledging this allowed them to distract the local people, the Therians.

She was distressed, however, when the Master apparently caused Luke's death to keep open the door of the ziqqurat's inner chamber. After they turned off the sun relais preventing night from falling on the planet, River wanted to leave the Master, but realised she needed his help to get back safely to the shuttle they arrived in.

She recognised Luke in one of the Therians attacking them and, using the Master's solar capacitor , reversed the progress bringing him back to normal. River thought of using the capacitor to cure all Therians, but Luke persuaded her it was not her choice; she then left it to them and went off with Luke in the shuttle, abandoning the Master. When a mysterious planet appeared out of nowhere, a message was sent to the Luna University , requesting the aid of its most eminent archaeologists.

River accepted the message and went there with a class of students, where they found a tomb apparently untouched by scavengers. As they opened it, though, they found that Bernice Summerfield was already in it: she arrived first upon receiving the same message as River, recognising that it came from the Doctor. Minutes later, the Eighth Doctor landed on the planet with his present companion, Ria , and River sent her class back, fearing for their safety.

She later made the shocking discovery that the planet they were on was the ruins of Gallifrey after the Time War ; she wanted to keep it quiet, but Benny told the Doctor.

Upon further searches, they found out that the Matrix was still active, and that the Doctor and Ria had the power to access it and control it. The arrival of another troop of scavengers then prompted the Doctor to use the powers of the Matrix not only to protect the ruins, but also to rebuild Gallifrey; River then encouraged him to do so, to make himself a god , thus snapping him out of his delusion. By then, she and Benny had already worked out that the planet was not really Gallifrey, but instead the ruins of a TARDIS, which projected the illusion of Gallifrey by connecting with the mind of the Doctor.

The Doctor then reprogrammed it to dispel any illusion after he, River and Benny had gone. River and the Doctor stood hand in hand and watched Gallifrey disappear, before leaving. River visited Jack in Gallipoli. They planned to get married, but the ceremony was interrupted by Snorvlast , who was devoured by the vortex wraiths. Jack and River then visited the end of the universe for their honeymoon. She posed as a Movellan herself and tried to keep his emotions in check, however struggled to control him as he began using a tractor beam to capture more and more vessels to attach to the crippled Movellan ship he'd been created on, forming Mto and tricking human colonists into believing they'd crashed here.

She diverted the Tenth Doctor and Anya Kingdom 's time jump to make them arrive nearby and lured them to Mto With a message of "hello sweetie" in a Dalek voice. As the Doctor and Anya investigated River maintained the pretence of being a Movellan, to the Doctor's frustration, until they managed to expose the truth about Kamen and send the humans on Mto to safety. This drama caused her to lose control of Kamen's emotions, leading to him fatally overloading.

Overwhelmed by the effort of trying to control Kamen, River advised the Doctor to find the First Movellan and then left with her vortex manipulator. Whilst investigating Demonese , the most haunted planet in the galaxy, River summoned the Tenth Doctor. Devising a computer virus to help, the Doctor created holographic replications of River and himself who could make the computer accept it, and they discreetly guided their doubles to deduce the situation by themselves.

River worked with the Tenth Doctor to investigate explosive jewels unearthed in Cheapside in , tracing their origins in to Gerald Pulman , who they found possessed alien explosive material and had killed his wife. Tracking Pulman on a sailing ship, the Doctor confronted Pulman whilst River held off the crew who had turned on Pulman.

After Doctor persuaded Omara to use the energy to defuse the jewels, River encouraged him to let Omara go when she refused his offer to preserve her and faded away. The Doctor then returned River to During this time she went by the alias "Melody Malone.

When she encountered the man she recognised as Rock, he had no memory of their meeting in her office the previous day. After dealing with two thugs that were hired to kill her, River returned to her office only to receive a call from head of Starlight Studios, Max Kliener.

She agreed to meet him at his studio the next afternoon, where she was reintroduced to Rock, who claimed to remember their prior meeting. However, River knew he was lying when she asked about giving him coffee and he pretended to remember this although it never happened.

She also noted that Giddy Semestre , Rock's co-star, also did not remember meeting her the day before at the party. Max then led River down a block from the main studio and revealed to her a room full of giant bell jars filled with what appeared to be clones of Rock Railton, Giddy Semestre, and of Max's bodyguard, Hank Sissy.

Max explained that they were not clones so much as everyday people who had had their flesh redistributed in their bodies to make them look identical to their template bodies. To do this, he had used "the kiss of an angel. Max planned to transform River into a copy of Giddy Semestre, but River kissed him using her hallucinogenic lipstick and managed to escape by killing the Hank copies and pushing Max into the arms of his Weeping Angel, who kissed him and turned him to dust.

As River was reversing the process to turn the other transformed victims back into themselves and escort them to safety, she was unaware that the Weeping Angel was being stolen from behind the curtain it was sitting behind via an escape hole that had been cut into the wall. She returned in time to see a van speeding off, presumably with the Angel inside. River in New York City on 3 April Amy and the Doctor had difficulty following him since all the time energy the Angels had consumed made time travel difficult.

With the help of a Chinese vase as "landing lights", they managed to get through but found River trapped in the grip of one of the Angels; she had to break her wrist in order to escape and the Doctor used up some of his regeneration energy to fix it. Rory was locked in a cellar with a group of baby Weeping Angels but instead of sending him back in time, they just sent him to Winter Quay.

When River, Amy and the Doctor found Rory, they also found an older version of him, dying in a bed. After that they heard loud thumps, made by the Statue of Liberty , which had become a Weeping Angel. With the Angels closing in, River, her husband and her parents were forced to flee towards the roof and got separated on the way up. The Statue of Liberty was waiting for them and Rory and Amy decided to sacrifice themselves and create a paradox which would poison the Angels food source and kill them.

River and the Doctor watched in horror as Amy and Rory threw themselves off the roof, and the paradox killed all the Angels except one, which somehow managed to survive. The group found themselves in a graveyard that had a gravestone with Rory's name on it. As they were preparing to leave, the surviving Weeping Angel ambushed them and sent Rory back in time.

Amy decided to allow the Angel to touch her so that she could be with Rory. After a tearful goodbye to River and the Doctor, Amy turned away from the Angel and allowed it to touch her so that she could live with Rory for the rest of her life. The devastated Doctor asked River to travel with him. River said she would go with him anywhere, but "not all the time", as there was "only room for one psychopath" on the TARDIS. Under the name "Melody Malone", River went upstairs to write the book that led the Doctor to s New York and said that she would get Amy to write the afterword when she sent it to her for publishing, in hopes that the Doctor would listen to Amy.

The Doctor decided to take River to Darillium , knowing there would be their final meeting. Along the way they encountered his younger self who was currently taking River on her first night out from imprisonment. River learned that King Hydroflax had the Halassi Androvar diamond embedded in his head. She purported to have married him as part of a plan to retrieve it. For this reason, she joked that she had actually married the diamond itself. At around the same time, she also claimed to have married her assistant Ramone.

River planned to use a surgeon to remove the diamond. She sent her assistant Nardole to bring the surgeon to her but Nardole inadvertently found the Twelfth Doctor and brought him to River by mistake. River did not recognise the Doctor in this incarnation.

River brought the Doctor to Hydroflax, as part of a ruse to steal the diamond from his head. The Doctor repeatedly tried to tell her who he was, but she did not understand what he was saying. Hydroflax revealed himself to be a cyborg and discovered River's deception, removing his own head in the process.

Aboard the ship, with Hydroflax's body sealed in a cargo hold, River attempted to sell the diamond-studded head. Eventually, Scratch arrived to buy the diamond, but then revealed himself and every other person in the restaurant to be Hydroflax devotees. A fight ensued, during which Hydroflax's head was ultimately vaporised by the body. After Hydroflax's body decided to seek out the Doctor's head as a replacement, River came under questioning as to his location.

To buy time by "keeping them talking", River claimed to Hydroflax's body that while she loved the Doctor, the Doctor didn't love her back, and he wouldn't be stupid or sentimental enough to come rescue her.

River then realised who the Doctor was, and quickly revealed to him that a meteor storm was about to strike the ship and kill everyone and she planned her position perfectly. As the storm struck the ship, the floor broke under River and the Doctor, dropping them to a lower floor, and breaking the standoff. The ship descended, with River and the Doctor unable to bring it under control. As they argued about who would save the ship from crashing into the planet Darillium , they realised they were seconds from crashing and fled into the TARDIS.

The Doctor had regained consciousness first, emerged from the TARDIS on Darillium, and using the diamond, inspired a man called Alphonse to start a restaurant, so he could travel into the future and book a reservation for a balcony view of the Singing Towers. Dressing formally for River when she awakened, the Doctor gifted her with a sonic screwdriver of her own. River expressed concern about the stories saying that this would be their last date, but the Doctor had accepted that their time must come to an end.

The Doctor told River that nights on Darillium lasted 24 years and the two enjoyed the view. True to his word, the Doctor stayed with River on Darillium for the whole "night". Nardole later commented that it was a hell of a twenty-four years.

He asked her to have a proper relationship with him, but River turned him down and told him that the Doctor was her husband. Stranded in the Vortex after her manipulator malfunctioned, River was harboured by a man named Daniel and his daughter Alison on their ship, and stayed with them some weeks, trying to find a way to escape. They eventually came across the ruined timeship of Admiral Eno , and River devised a plan with her to take her back to working so they can live.

Aboard the ship was, however, a dangerous criminal, Kaliopi , who attacked them. While working with Daniel to stop her, River suddenly realized the main core of Daniel's ship was built out of one of the rooms of the Doctor's TARDIS , and that the man who welcomed her and who she helped was actually the Master in Bruce 's body.

He allied himself with Kalopi to kill her, but River instead persuaded Alison to take off her stabiliser, thus reverting her to her original form, a Vortipoda cub; while it was attacking the Master, River escaped from the Vortex in Eno's ship, telling her to land someplace where she could repair the manipulator. Detecting a power surge on Syra , River visited and investigated Ruslan 's mining activities, sending a message to the Doctor which accidentally arrived when he was in his eighth incarnation.

Ruslan locked River in a mining capsule from which she managed to escape thanks to Helen Sinclair , whom she told about her asynchronous relationship with the Doctor. Avoiding him, she handed Ruslan over to the Syrans , contacted Galactic Heritage and fought the Eleven before leaving. River in her psychic wimple. Arriving in in a psychic wimple , River saved Thomas Cromwell from a Solver , preventing them from taking a piece of the Chronometer.

She then went to 15th century Prague Castle where she was reunited with Liv Chenka and identified Syran metal as having been used by the Clocksmith to create the Chronometer. Returning Helen and giving her the piece, River went back to Prague to save Liv and took her to the Science Museum where the Doomsday Chronometer was completed.

After River and the Doctor found the Chancellery Guard killing temporal refugees, she gave the Doctor a psychic cloak to disguise himself as the Clocksmith, allowing them to infiltrate the Doom Coalition.

She pretended to have been loyal to Padrac following his ejection of the Doctor, Liv and Helen into the Time Vortex in an escape shuttle. River on Gallifrey. Her identify confirmed by Councillor Volstrom using her biodata , River was taken to Gallifrey and given a tour during which she stole Volstrom's passkeys.

She remained in the Time Vortex as it seemingly collapsed, feeling that she would soon be visiting her final destination. She put together a team of Charlotte Pollard , Liv, Helen and Bliss , who, as she expected, were able to escape whilst she distracted the Nine by sending him after Katarina where he encountered her past self. However, she could not find her vortex manipulator. River travelled to Gallifrey before it was destroyed to "rescue" the Black Scrolls of Rassilon , which contained a history of the Dark Times.

She then met up with her "occasional wife", the Thirteenth Doctor , and they authored The Dark Times Times based on the Scrolls and on the Doctor's memories of travelling back to the Dark Times in her previous incarnations. The Doctor penned a quick introduction on Page 1, while River served as the one-issue newspaper's editor under her pseudonym of "Melody Malone".

Whilst waiting on a beach for the Doctor to turn up for one of their dates, River encountered Jack, who asked her to run away with him. However, she turned him down. River instead attempted to visit the Face of Boe , but accidentally arrived at his funeral. River was part of a deep space exploration mission on the Utorpy. On the return journey, the ship began to malfunction, with its computer turning on the passengers, and an additional life sign appeared onboard which River mistook for the Doctor.

River denied him his victory by setting the ship to self-destruct and they were forced to escape together in an escape pod. Info from A Stitch in Time needs to be added. River convinced the Tenth Doctor to take a bath with her after he sought her out for her expertise on Zygons.

After unsuccessfully trying to get him to take off his suit, she revealed she already uploaded her intel to the TARDIS for him and left him a note saying she planned to accept an expedition job from the Felman Lux Corporation. She promised to invite the Doctor if anything exciting happened.

River in the Library. TV : Silence in the Library. In the 51st century, River led Strackman Lux and her team into the Library to learn what had happened there a hundred years earlier. A cryptic message had been sent: " saved. No survivors. The version of the Doctor who turned up, again in his tenth incarnation, had not yet met her. Bewildered, he agreed to help and discovered the Library was infested with a swarm of Vashta Nerada.

River still had her battered diary of her life with the Doctor. She tried to use it to find the Doctor's place in his timeline, but realised he was a far younger version who neither knew nor trusted her.

As the threat of the Vashta Nerada worsened, River knew she must prove she was someone the Doctor 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. The Doctor planned to rescue Donna , Strackman and more than four thousand others trapped in the Library Data Core by adding his memory space to the Library computer's. Removing the four thousand minds trapped inside the Data Core CAL would reset the computer and stop the countdown to the Library's autodestruct after it had been activated, but also sacrifice the Doctor's own life.

River knocked the Doctor out, handcuffed him and took his place.