Who Is River Song?

(Containing spoilers for both The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone.)If you've been reading along with this blog's Series 5 Doctor Who reviews, then you've been waiting more than two weeks for my analysis of The Time of Angels (and now Flesh and Stone). Truth is, I'm not sure what to say because these episodes have been truly MADDENING. Moffat is clearly having fun with the mystery that is River Song, and I'm having just as much fun having my mind screwed with. There's no simple answer to any of it, and possibly there never will be! But before we can even attempt an answer, let's get the personal appreciation out of the way...

I loved it. Some are calling it possibly the best televised Doctor Who story ever, which is of course debatable, but it's way up there. It has the advantage of not unraveling when it comes to production values, which much of the original series' classic stories did, nor fall into the silliness the new series so often dished out. Then again, it can hardly be called a stand-alone story (River, the crack in the universe, the wedding jitters epilogue). Whether the best or not, it has sparkling dialog and performances, mysteries aplenty, comedy derived from the characters and not the situations, a chilling alien threat, lots of tension, actual revelations about the bigger arc, and things that MATTER. From River's mission impossible message to the future to "That's a fairy tale" "Aren't we all?", The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone is wonderful.
The Weeping Angels could have been one-note monsters not worthy of a return visit, but Moffat adds to their mythology. I'm a bit sorry to see them move, because up 'til now, we the television audience have been able to "see" them and stop them from moving, which I thought was a wonderful meta-textual touch. Other than that, excellent moments for all three recurring characters. There has been some grumbling (to put it mildly) that the final scene, in which Amy throws tries to seduce the Doctor has ruined her character (at its mildest, "oh no, haven't we had enough with Rose and Martha?"). I don't agree, or at least, I'm willing to see where it's going. Amy's not in love or even starstruck. She says she's not looking for something long-term. She's only trying to do something to make sure she can't marry Rory. You don't easily walk away from cheating on your wedding night. It's the classic "trying to make HIM break up with ME". Let's not forget that while Amy isn't the "village bicycle" (going by older people's reaction to her), her job as a kissogram definitely marks her as someone who doesn't give a lot of importance to intimate activity.

The Mystery of the Crack
Moffat is moving this along a lot faster than RTD's Bad Wolf Scenario etc., with important reveals even before the half-way point. If there are cracks (or a moving crack), it's because the universe is going to blow, and it happens on 26 of June 2010 - Amy's wedding day AND, amusingly, the date the series finale will air. Cute. More importantly perhaps is the revelation that the crack is consuming parts of history, which is why Amy doesn't remember Canary Wharf of the Stolen Earth, and why there is no record of a giant Cyber-mech stomping through Victorian London. Is Moffat aggressively retconning the RTD era? Will history be restored by the end of the crack arc, or will we be left to wonder if now Rose never left the Estate? (Or as time travelers, companions would be immune to changes in the timeline?)

Even if Moffat is remodeling the Whoniverse "permanently", we can't cry foul like it's the first time it's happened. RTD's Time War is itself a massive retcon, or doesn't remove the Daleks from history create massive and unexplainable changes? "History can be changed" is not something new to Flesh and Stone, it's been with us since the Hartnell era. RTD himself created paradoxes when he had the Daleks come to Earth long before their invasion in 2163. It doesn't even make sense within New Who itself. Why would Henry Van Statten in 2012 not recognize a Dalek and call it a "Metaltron" if the Earth suffered a couple of big Dalek attacks only a few years before? So it's not just the Great and Bountiful Human Empires that shift, it's us too. It doesn't mean the stories never happened, just that the timeline has. Heck, I don't remember planets in the sky either!

But of course the greatest mystery of all is River Song, and since there's no easy answer to that, the SBG presents:
Who or What is River Song: 11 Possibilities
1. A companion we meet in random order. Simplest explanation and a bit obvious. She has traveled with the Doctor and has therefor had lessons in TARDIS piloting and other skills. As an archaeologist, she would have been interested to learn ancient Gallifreyan. After her actual voyages aboard the TARDIS (she says she's traveled in time and could make good crack food), she continued to meet the Doctor(s) in random order and likes to tease him about his lack of knowledge of her past, plays with his head, etc.

2. The Doctor's wife. She acts like they're an old couple, and both Tennant and Moffat call her his wife in the commentary tracks to Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead (which doesn't mean anything). Amy spots it right away, so everything points in that direction, which means it's either a red herring or a reverse-red herring to confound the audience. Both the Doctor and River obfuscate on this point, and the Doctor at least, doesn't actually know for sure.

3. A grifter playing the longest con of all. We know she's capable of criminal acts, and in both her stories, admits to being a liar. If later versions of the Doctor knew her from his past, she may be manipulating his younger self. The relationship hinted at would turn out not to be true at its base, but all we have to go on is her lies and the Doctor accepting them as truths. In time, she may have come to trust him and love him, but it all started with a con.

4. The Doctor's killer. Flesh and Stone strongly hints at the idea that her prison sentence was the result of her killing the Doctor (the best man she's ever known). The Doctor doesn't flinch, but does reflect on the possibility of changing history. First, is he really killed-killed? Or is she just responsible for the death of one incarnation, which doesn't matter to the authorities who don't understand regeneration? Second, does she then spend the rest of her life trying to redeem herself by helping the Doctor, drawing his attention to evil, etc.?

5. A dupe. Maybe she isn't the conwoman, maybe she's been conned. Because Doc10 was the first to meet her and there are theoretically only 13 possible Doctors (though I expect that to be easily undone) and presumably, Moffat won't stay on until Doc13 is killed and yet would want to wrap up his River story, we have to wonder about that "spotter's guide". She's unlikely to meet Pertwee or Troughton, though she may have assembled the guide from historical records (lending more wait to her con) and not been given it. Is it possible that all her Doctors are not THE Doctor and that part of her relationship is with a con man, possibly another Time Lord impersonating the Doctor? She might have married the Meddling Monk, for all we know. In this version of events, River is not lying, but neither is she telling the truth, and still, the Doctor can't know.

6. A paradox. My personal favorite is that the only reason River knows his name (to take one example of her intimacy with the Doctor) is that she told him his name in Silence in the Library. He then felt he had to tell her that name (teach her to fly the TARDIS, give her a sonic screwdriver, etc.) because not doing so would change his personal timeline. Moffat is the king of timey-whimey, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was it. She's a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Now let's get crazier...
7. The Doctor's mum. Calling people "Sweetie" is not something that only spouses do. If the dissenting Time Lady in The End of Time was his mother, then her "being lost, once" might refer to time spent as River Song. People have made something of her wearing a wristwatch (Who fans, you're so kooky!). Possible, though the double-entendres are a bit creepy if it's the case.

8. The Doctor's daughter. And even creepier still if it's a regenerated Georgia Moffat. We don't know if his daughter CAN regenerate, but she has two hearts.

9. Another Time Lord. She can fly the TARDIS and write in Gallifreyan. The watch. The attitude. No inherent creepiness in being someone unrelated by blood. A pretty simple idea really, and one might suppose the Susan's grandmother could be out there if you wanted her to be his wife. Other possibilities include Romana (but why would she hide her identity?) or the Rani (who's turned a new leaf after killing the Doctor then regenerating herself). One Time Lord-related character she cannot be is the Doctor-Donna, since she didn't recognize Donna but had heard of her in Library.

10. The Doctor him/herself. He finally regenerates into a woman (Moffat did this in his Comic Relief Doctor Who special), which may or may not be the "murder" of a good man, and having lost his TARDIS in the same adventure, uses himself to right wrongs... or to rewrite them? His greatest failures undone by his naughty feminine side.

11. The TARDIS. Or a second TARDIS grown from the Doctor's. Sentient TARDISes have been a staple of the Doctor Who novels, and we know she's a "she" with an intimate relationship with the Doctor, like some people have with their cars. Crazy? Or crazy-awesome? I'll let you decide.

Which is YOUR theory?