River Song.
Possibly the character
most ‘like’ a female version of the New Who Doctors before there was a female version of the New Who
Doctors, she was a character born in complexity: the child of two Tardis
companions, imbued with the regenerative properties of Time Lords, but stolen
from her parents at an early age, and trained to be a Doctor-killing
psychopath, who eventually fell in love with her prey, gave up her remaining
regenerations to cure him, and went on to marry him, serve time for his murder
and eventually die to save his life in the Library. River Song was the ultimate
Steven Moffat instance of having your cake and eating it too – she was
everything, killer of the Doctor, wife of the Doctor, time-travelling
psychopath redeemed by love and ultimate hardcore fangirl.
Series 3 of the Diary of
River Song from Big Finish deals more directly than ever before with the part
of her psychology that is frequently ignored since her redemption - her
relationship with the woman who stole her away from her parents, Madam
Kovarian, and how her existence and her use for the fulfilment of a psychotic
goal impacted the universe.
As draws for an audio
series of River Song stories go, that’s pretty high up there, giving River more
in-depth character context than she’s often allowed.
In The Lady In The Lake, Nev
Fountain poses the question of why, if you were Madam Kovarian, you’d settle
for one proto-Time Lord assassin when you could have a whole stable full, and
what such socially-dislocated proto-Time Lords might think about their ability
to apparently cheat death.
In a story that’s
death-heavy but manages to punch at a solid comedy weight into the bargain,
Fountain pulls the threads of his central story tight in both the first and final
reels, delivering a body-blow of emotion that deepens the reality of the world
of River and Kovarian far beyond anything that appeared on TV, while showing
how important River’s redemption was, by the sharp contrast of showing us what
life is like for those who are like her, but who never found their way past the
psychopathic religious zealotry of their wicked foster mother.
A Requiem For The Doctor,
by Jac Rayner, is more of a traditional Doctor Who story, with a few River
bends along the way. River joins up with the Fifth Doctor and his companion
Brook to investigate whether Mozart finished his Requiem, and whether in fact
he died of natural causes or was poisoned. The story quickly moves on to uncover
a market in special poisons that help battered or abused wives to deal with
their repugnant husbands, and there’s at first a seeming murder mystery which
evolves into something rather deeper and more meaningful.
There’s no real disguising
the fact that Peter Davison’s Doctor and River Song feel like an odd pairing,
with nothing like the chemistry of Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor and River in the
second box set. As he himself says in Rayner’s episode, ‘River doesn’t need me.
And I quite like to be needed.’ He’s the young Doctor with the grandfatherly
soul, more comfortable acting as a guide to the universe for younger ingénues
(like Nyssa, Peri and Brook), than he is dealing with the ballsier type of
women who occasionally plague him (like Tegan and River). It’s an awkwardness
that is thrown into sharp relief in My Dinner With Andrew by John Dorney, as
Davison plays a number of roles in what is essentially The Restaurant At The
End Of The Universe, only with more attempted assassination. It’s a comedy romp
with a funny French waiter, numerous versions of several people all in the same
place at the same time, only hiding in different rooms, and for most of its
length it plays distinctly as trans-temporal farce, only occasionally slipping
into pathos as innocents are drawn increasingly into the dance of Kovarian and
River over whether the Doctor lives or dies.
Oh and as an extra-special
bonus for Hitch-Hiker’s fans, it has Peter Davison eschewing meat and ordering
a green salad. It’s the little touches that matter.
The lightest episode in
terms of tone, it’s by no means a straightforward one, and the phrase ‘timey-wimey’
might have been invented to describe it, but in terms of episodes to re-listen
to, My Dinner With Andrew is probably your go-to on this box set because of the
speed at which the farce is played.
Matt Fitton’s capstone to
the set, The Furies, is a curious story that brings River home to her younger
self’s bedroom, complete with disembowelled teddies and throwing stars. It
shows an aspect of her character frequently forgotten or thrown away – the
training she received as a child in the art and mentality of psychotic killing,
so she’d be able to destroy the Doctor at any opportune moment. The chance to
meet up with the ‘next generation’ of River-alikes, including H1, H2 and O
(yes, really) shows us the different ways in which elements of her essential
personality, before it was broadened by experience of the Doctor and his
universe, were foregrounded. It also shows us Frances Barber’s Kovarian in fuller
flight than at any point in the box set so far, as she experiences not only the
likelihood of destruction by the main branch of her own church, but rebellion
in her ranks, the possibility of a poltergeist and the personal hell that is
bad dreams. There’s lots to enjoy in The Furies – including the apparent
breakdown of Kovarian’s always edgy personality, taut as it is on the very edge
of religious terror every second of the day. That taut determination is tipped
over into madness in The Furies and it feels like the right complement to
everything we know about River and Kovarian from their on-screen adventures.
Series 3 of The Diary of
River Song is a slick production that sees Alex Kingston increasingly at home
in the audio medium, and takes River back if not all the way to her roots, then
to the place where her early psychology was formed. It gives her origin an
expanded reality that you only realise it needed once you’ve heard it. More
than either of the previous box sets, it feels like part of the TV chronology
of her story, just a part we never got to see on screen. That makes it a set
you’re going to need to listen to if you’re any kind of River fan, because you
currently don’t know all of the story.
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