It has been announced that River Song played by Alex Kingston will be returning to Doctor Who in this year's Christmas special which starts filming this week. She will meet Peter Capaldi's Doctor for the first time on Christmas Day. The character last appeared in the Matt Smith era episode The Name of the Doctor in May 2013. Alex Kingston commented on her return:
“To be honest, I did not know whether River would ever
return to the show, but here she is, back with the Doctor for the Christmas
special. Steven Moffat is on glittering form, giving us an episode filled with
humour and surprise guest castings. I met Peter for the first time at Monday’s
read through, we had a laugh, and I am now excited and ready to start filming
with him and the Doctor Who team. Christmas in September? Why not!”
The episode will be written by Steven Moffat and directed by Douglas MacKinnon. Mackinnon is Moffat's most trusted director having worked on the Power of Three, Cold War Listen, Time Heist and Flatline episodes and the new Sherlock special which is also be airing around the Christmas and New Year period.
"Spoilers!" - The Complicated History of River Song:
Steven Moffat created the character of River Song for his 2008 two-parter Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead. The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) met sexy archaeologist Professor River Song when visiting the largest library in the universe. This was the first time the Doctor had met River but she revealed that she already knew him very well. The story ended emotionally with River sacrificing her life and then the Doctor saving her memories and uploading her as a "data ghost" onto the library's computer:
The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) met a younger Doctor River Song in the 2010 story Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone while she was investigating the Weeping Angels:
At the end of this story River was returned to the "Stormcage" prison where she was serving time for the murder of a "good man".
The Doctor and River's timelines continued to move in opposite directions when they met again at a time before her imprisonment in The Big Bang / The Pandorica Opens.
When the Doctor met River for the fourth time on screen in The Impossible Astronaut / The Day of the Moon it was after the older River had escaped from prison . When kissing the Doctor, River realised she was near the end of their relationship from her perspective:
River again escaped from prison to meet the Doctor in A Good Man Goes to War. In this episode, she revealed one of her secrets - that she was the daughter of the Doctor's companions Amy and Rory:
In this episode the baby River (known as Melody Pond) is taken by the mysterious army led by Madame Kovarian who want to use her to kill the Doctor. As Melody was conceived inside the TARDIS she had inherited Time Lord powers which could be used as a weapon against him.
In Let's Killer Hitler, we learn that River can regenerate when Amy and Rory's friend Mels (Nina Toussaint-White) is mortally wounded and transforms into Alex Kingston's River. This young River then follows Kovarian's training and attempts to murder the Doctor. She poisons the Doctor but when realising she is meant to become a better person in her future, she sacrifices her remaining regenerations to save his life.
In The Wedding of River Song, the adult River is placed inside an astronaut's suit which controls her and is programmed to kill the Doctor. However, River resists the programming. This causes the universe to unravel because the Doctor's death was "a fixed point in time" which couldn't be rewritten.
To save the universe, the Doctor and River "marry" and return to the point in which she was meant to kill him and this time she does:
However, it is then revealed that the Doctor and River actually faked the death. The body River appeared to kill was really a "Teselecta" controlled by the Doctor rather than his real body.
The last time we met the living human River was in The Angels Take Manhattan in which the Doctor was forced to part with River's parents Amy and Rory:
In The Name of the Doctor, the Doctor meets the "data ghost" River who has somehow found a way to project herself out of the library computer.
River will also be featuring in an audio adventure with Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor and in her own series from Big Finish Productions:
It is as yet unclear where these stories and the meeting with the Twelfth Doctor will fit into River's complicated timeline!
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