Melody Pond = River Song = ???

Possible squick reaction but:

Ok, the Dr. Who series has established that Melody Pond is River Song, and that Dr. Who and River Song will have strong feelings for each other. Now, River is known to be able to write Galifrean and pointed to something on / in the Doctor's cradle.

What if the hints of Dr. Who / River Song romance are just there to throw us off the track. I give you a quote from the Dr. Who movie:

'I'm half human... on my mother's side'.

In trying to create a weapon to destroy the Doctor, they have instead created the woman who will one day give birth to the Coming Storm.

ugh I hate it when time becomes a timeywimeywibblywobbly ball.

All appearances in the new serials have indicated that The Doctor is pure Time Lord. They have essentially sent that line into Canon Discontinuity land. The female Time Lord in The End Of Time was listed as his mother in most media and what was told to her actress.

That's River's cradle, not the Doctors.

From the Wiki: "River appears, and the Doctor berates her for not helping. She tries to explain that she could not, and tells the Doctor how these recent events were brought about by those that feared the Doctor. The Doctor, angry and emotional, demands to know who she is. River shows the Doctor the cot, and The Doctor recognises River's identity. Elated, he goes off on his own in the TARDIS to rescue Melody, asking River to return everyone to their proper time stream. Amy demands that River explain what the Doctor learned, and she shows them the cot. Initially Amy believes River is referring to the Gallifreyan symbols engraved on it, but they cannot be read by humans even with the aid of the TARDIS translation systems. Instead River shows them Bucket's cloth charm with Melody's name still in the cot. As the Gamma forest people do not have a word for "pond" or "melody", Bucket used the closest approximations: "river" and "song". River Song re-introduces herself to Amy and Rory as their daughter."

"In mid-series finale "A Good Man Goes to War", Amy gives birth to Melody Pond, who is subsequently kidnapped by Madame Kovarian (Frances Barber) to become a weapon to use against the Doctor. Having been conceived on Rory and Amy's wedding night in the TARDIS whilst travelling through the time vortex, Melody's DNA was affected, giving her Time Lord traits. Multiple characters, including the Doctor, note that this origin resembles those of the primitive Gallifreyans. After Melody is kidnapped, the adult River appears and reveals to Amy and Rory that she is Melody; in the language of the Gamma Forest, the closest translation of "Melody Pond" is "River Song"."

She is Not his mother, or she would not have given him such an obviously sexual kiss in "Day of the Moon"

edited 7th Jun '11 10:22:29 PM by justaperson

Also: "I'm quite the screamer... how's that for spoilers?"

That is nothing but sexual.

I think that line has to reevaluated as just Moffat teasing fans now - it seemed sexual at the time but it's actually just referring to Melody's normal baby screaming.

Did I miss something or shouldn't the baby be named Melody Williams?

Forest of the Dead episode – River Song sacrifices herself to save the Doctor's life. In turn he is able to upload her consciousness into a computer, in which she is able to live on.

Maybe the mainframe is River Song's bitter consciousness.

It's an ongoing joke about who has the power in the relationship and who's taking whom's name. Recall in The Big Bang when the doctor congratulated "Mister Rory Pond," Rory corrects him, and the Doctor corrects him back.

When Rory, Amy and Melody are reunited, it comes up that Melody's last name is Pond. Rory wants her to be "Melody Williams," but Amy insists that's the name of a math teacher, but "Melody Pond" is... something more desirable, I forget what.

A superhero.

Am I the only one that is a bit disappointed that River is Amy and Rory's daughter? After building up this big huge mystery of who River really was, I was just kind of "oh, ok" after the big reveal happened.

Maybe I am just too jaded!

What sort of reveal wouldn't be a letdown, though?

To be honest, anything but the most obvious (which is what we got) I would have been happy with. Until a couple of episodes proved me "wrong" I wouldn't have minded River somehow being the Tardis.

She isn't 'just' Amy and Rory's daughter She is a proto-Time Lord who can regenerate, she is the little girl in the spacesuit, she may have killed the doctor, she may have been raised as a weapon to kill the doctor.

edited 17th Jun '11 8:39:54 PM by HistoryMaker

What if, in the impossible astronaut, the older doctor is giving himself (his ganger) up so that the young, weaponised River Song appears to fulfill her purpose, and Madame Kovarian no longer sees the need to keep her as a weapon. This is when the real older doctor launches a surprise attack.

I think that gangers are way too obvious a solution (if even the characters are thinking about it, it's too obvious), and if a ganger Doctor is involved in what we saw in The Impossible Astronaut, the original Doctor won't just ask him to die in his place, but rather to live in his place. This would possibly reboot his regenerations as well.

edited 18th Jun '11 6:06:42 PM by TParadox

I think we now know how River knows the Doctor's true name. It's established back in 'The Time of Angels' that she can read Gallifreyen. The Doctor's name is on the outside of his cot(cradle). She read it.

I don't understand how, when Rory was removed (temporarily) from the timestream, River Song didn't cease to exist. Does her proto-Time-Lord status give her some sort of protection? Amy didn't cease to exist when her parents were deleted because they had already had her. She didn't seem to know who Rory was when she "first" met (Auton) him in "The Big Bang". But she seemed to like Amy rather fast, and be very defensive of her in "The Time of Angels".

When Amy's parents fell into the crack in her bedroom they were removed from ever having existed. It's all timey-wimey.

edited 27th Jun '11 11:35:12 AM by TParadox

There are so many questions left!

• When did Melody fall into the hands of the Silence?
• When did she go back to 1969?
• When does the Doctor reunite with Amy and Rory?

The Silence could very easily have taken her from Kovarian given their memory-control powers, but as for time tracvel... the ship from The Lodger! I just realized mid-sentence that that project must have advanced to the point that they could travel in time! Now, why did they try to destroy the universe by blowing up the TARDIS? Argh, so confusing!

But, in my opinion, the biggest question is: was Melody in the space suit when the Doctor was shot? Octavian said that she killed a "good man and a hero to many". A Good Man Went To War. Those of you who got The Brilliant Book 2010 will know about the Dream Lord's spoilers. Among them was "The only water in the forest is the River". Half of the spoilers were true, and half false, and one of the ones that actually made sense was "Octavian wasn't lying".

I'm going to stop thinking about this for the time being.

Only a few weeks to Doctor Who, and we've got Torchwood to entertain us until then.

It's so refreshing to see someone who isn't dead sure that Kovarian is a knowing agent of the Silence. I'm certain that whatever the Silence is trying to do, Kovarian is independent or at least thinks she is.

I'm pretty well convinced that the Silence and Kovarian aren't working together. They may (or may not) be working to the same end, but they aren't working together IMO.

Of course, I could be wrong.

BTW, I also agree with History Maker about River knowing the Doctor's name. He never had to tell her—she just read it.

Who thought that Kovarian was working with the Silence? How would she even do that? Also, six days to Who!

Am I the only one who thought that the River is Melody revelation kind of made the River/Doctor ship a bit... Off? I mean, it makes the Doctor look a little perverse, getting with his friend's daughter, at least to me.

The Doctor is several centuries old, and has made out with several companions in their twenties. Isn't that disturbing?