Profile

Disclaimer: This journal is intended solely for writing, prompting and RP, no profit is being made from it. Doctor Who in all it's forms is the property of the BBC, the writers, and Sydney Newman. Alex Kingston is, sadly, the property of herself. No copyright infringement is intended.

Background: Melody Pond was kidnapped as a baby and then raised and conditioned by the Silence to kill the Doctor. Much of her memory of this time is fuzzy, possibly due to the effect of long term exposure to the Silent on her memory and the brainwashing she underwent to turn her into the perfect weapon against the Doctor.

Nearly twenty years later – having regenerated so that she was still a child – she made her way to Leadworth and befriended her parents as children, knowing that eventually the Doctor would arrive and give her a chance to kill him. Her impulsivity and the recklessness that came with knowing you can regenerate instead of dying and her conditioned psychopathy made Mels a bit of a hellion who was frequently in trouble with school officials and the police.

She eventually helped Amy and Rory become a couple and thus ensured her own existence, which may have ceased without her intervention. She skipped their wedding but followed her parents to a cornfield where she knew the Doctor would be and held them at gunpoint demanding to be taken to kill Hitler. A series of mishaps, a stray bullet and the interference of the Teseleca resulted in her being shot forcing her to regenerate into the form the others knew as River Song. The Teselecta decided to punish her for the murder of the Doctor, but he stopped them with the assistance of her parents from within the ship. The Doctor ignored his own pain for the sake of saving Amy and Rory and after much pleading for River to help them Mels entered the TARDIS to rescue them for him.

This was the beginning of the birth of River Song as the Doctor knew her. After confirming that Amy (her mother and best friend) thought the Doctor was worth saving she used her remaining regenerative energy to save his life and they left her to recover and make her own way in the universe. With no connection to her family or the Silence, River became an archaeologist, ostensibly to track the Doctor through time. The day River received her doctorate she was kidnapped (again) and submerged in Lake Silencio to await the Doctor and kill him (again).

When the time came, River drained her weapon pack refusing to kill the man she now loved despite his death being a fixed point in time. As a result time shredded into a reality where all history happened at once putting them at odds with each other once more - but he had a plan to use the Teselecta as a protective suit to escape his own death and after a brief argument, and a marriage ceremony they kissed and returned time to its natural state.

Though actually unsuccessful, River was convicted of his murder and was sentenced to twelve thousand consecutive life sentences in the Stormcage Containment Facility for it; a punishment she accepted to convince the universe that the Doctor actually was dead. This confinement was made more bearable by escaping frequently to go out on adventures with the Doctor which she meticulously recorded in her diary.

Some of these adventures included warning the Doctor of the imminent explosion of the TARDIS, rebooting time at her parents wedding, and the Crash of the Byzantium. Following this adventure, she visited her parents following their own visit to Lake Silensio and exposed some of the truth behind her many lies and the Doctor’s death. She later received her own invitation to Lake Silencio where she was forced to watch herself kill the Doctor and took a trip back to 1969 where she returned to her own past, this time as an adult. Later she joined them at Demons Run to reveal her true identity to the Doctor, Amy and Rory after it was too late to save herself from kidnapping ensuring her past remained as she knew it.

River was later pardoned and released from the Stormcage Containment Facility after it was discovered that there was no evidence of the man she had murdered having ever existed. As a result of this, she returned to Archaeology and became a professor.

After the loss of Amy and Rory a devastated Doctor asked River to travel with him and though she agreed to join him at any time she refused to join him all of the time and returned to her own life, occasionally stealing the TARDIS without the Doctor being aware of it. She called him as part of a ruse to steal the Halassi Androvar diamond but she didn’t recognize his new face, finally realizing the familiar way he looked at her and his use of her catch phrase: Hello Sweetie just before they both escaped certain death (again).

Knowing her time with him was short as her diary was running out of pages he took her to the Singing Towers of Darillium which he knew would be their final night together before she went to the Library. A night that lasted 24 years.

Personality: River Song, excavator, professor, writer, adventurer and preeminent authority on pretty much anything you care to ask about and a bunch of things you probably don’t. As a person, she is pert, direct, often brusque, but her enthusiasm for life and her varied passions compensate for her sometimes highly opinionated nature, making her an unusually interesting and powerful individual.

She adds to this a sarcastic wit, and a delight in the absurd or in unusual situations. Over the course of her lifetime, River Song has been the Doctor’s assassin, his savior, his bane and his wife. She told him that he is loved and that he is feared. She is a woman who watched herself murder the man she loves, a woman who kept her eyes on a Weeping Angel after the loss of her parents because the Doctor couldn’t, a woman who knew a Silence was behind her and killed it sight unseen and without being able to remember what it was because her father looked scared. She finds particularly striking the idiosyncrasies of individuals or of events and her observations are often cutting and insightful.

She can be alternatingly abrasive, flirtatious, and self deprecating, and shows a keen insight and quick intellectual mind. River is brave, extremely clever, and very loyal – but only to a select few. Her allegiance lies where she chooses, because she hasn’t always had the choice. She abides strictly by her own moral standard rather than those imposed by society, a liar and a thief and sometimes a hero. She is a force of nature with her own gun. She doesn’t try to please anyone by being polite or appropriate.

Many of River’s attachments are sentimental and symbolic. She is a woman who is slowly losing person she loves most, and gaining one who mistrusts her explicitly and her diary is a symbol of that relationship.

Physical Description: River is fit, and well built for a woman approaching middle age. She is of average height and her creamy complexion is beginning to show signs of age, though her thick russet colored hair has resisted graying. She keeps her hair long, in an effort to contain the curl, and it is most frequently pulled back. Her hands are calloused from years working excavations, her nails short and her green eyes sharp.

Special Powers/Abilities/Disabilities: River is human plus. In her case the plus is Timelord, due largely to her conception within the time vortex and interference by the Silence. This gives her some of the same abilities as the Timelords; regeneration, long life (she is approximately 200 years old by her own admission) and an intimate understanding of space and time. She can pilot the TARDIS, is a crack shot and has a doctorate in archeology.