Ryan's Gulch Application
Jun. 4th, 2013 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riverborntorun☞ Player Information;
Name: Bri/Bri-Chan
Player Journal: N/A
Age: 23
Contact: PM this journal - we can communicate through that or AIM, which I'll give on request
Other characters currently played at Ryan's Gulch: N/A
☞ Character Information;
Character Name: Dr. River Song
Canon: Doctor Who
OU or AU?: Original Universe canon
Canon point: After Darillium and just prior to her expedition to The Library ("Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead"), which is late in her life.
Setting: River primarily hails from planet Earth, though being a time traveler she's lived in several different centuries. She's well-versed in the history and pop culture of 20th and 21st Century Earth (i.e. President Nixon quips, hating the nickname 'Mrs. Robinson', etc). Much of her later life however is spent in the 51st and 52nd centuries - she's extremely familiar with advanced technology, and shows somewhat more liberal cultural ideas: "I've dated androids/I dated a Nestene Duplicate once. Swappable heads did keep things fresh." For a general idea of the universe, see this link about the television series.
History: (I just wanted to write it out myself rather than rely on a wiki)
Melody Pond was born at the asteroid base known as Demon’s Run in the 52nd century. Her parents, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, were companions of the Doctor (in his eleventh incarnation) originally from the year 2010. After rebooting the universe (a very long story, see "The Big Bang”), newlyweds Amy and Rory spent their wedding night aboard the TARDIS. A child conceived while the TARDIS was in flight made for a special human being; post-birth scans would later reveal Melody was a human with triple helix DNA, a genetic pattern usually only seen in Time Lords.
Amy Pond was kidnapped shortly before she and Rory rejoined the Doctor for a 2011 adventure in America and was replaced with a duplicate made from Flesh. This duplicate, mentally connected to the real Amy, traveled in the TARDIS unaware of her purpose in a plot by The Silence. When the Doctor figured out how to block the signal to the Flesh, the avatar disintegrated and the real Amy (now very pregnant) awoke and went into labor. Named after a childhood friend of her mother’s (“Let’s Kill Hitler”), Melody Pond was born and then shortly taken from Amy’s arms.
The Doctor gathered an army to rescue Amy and her child, and at first it appeared successful. Through use of another Flesh duplicate, Madame Kovarian escaped with the real baby Melody who was then raised and brainwashed as a weapon to kill the Doctor.
While in the hands of The Silents (and somewhere in Florida, U.S. in 1969) Melody was forced into an Apollo astronaut spacesuit that had been modified and upgraded with advanced alien technology. Part of the tech enabled the frightened child to directly phone President Richard Nixon and ask for help. Nixon asked two questions, “Where are you? Who are you?”, to which she answered “Jefferson Adams Hamilton”. The President mistook this to mean it was a little boy calling, and this phone conversation was later replayed for the Doctor. In fact, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton were the three street signs that little Melody could see from wherever she was being held.
The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and River Song (Melody in the future) found the warehouse where the three streets converged. They found a version of the spacesuit and analyzed it; it was River Song herself who commented that the girl must be “incredibly strong” to have ripped herself free from the suit. Then they were attacked by the Silence, and also encountered Melody who was in the spacesuit and begging for them to help her. The spacesuit was in control, and she raised her arm to shoot at the Doctor. Amy Pond (technically the Flesh avatar of her mother) fired a gun at her and missed.
The Doctor and company spent the next few months independently investigating the Silence. Melody, meanwhile was held in an Florida orphanage. Three months after the first encounter, the spacesuit-bound Melody met Amy Pond again, who apologized for shooting at her. In Melody’s bedroom, Amy found a photograph of herself and a baby (canon never states who took this photograph; my headcanon says Lorna Bucket). The Silents then awoke and kidnapped Amy, meanwhile Melody ripped herself free of the suit and escaped.
Six months after that, Melody found herself on the streets of New York City. A homeless man asked if she was all right. “I’m dying,” she said. “But I can fix that.” Then she regenerated. Though it isn’t shown on-screen in canon, Melody regenerated in a toddler. Still, she had all her memories and brainwashing, and took it upon herself to find her parents. By the late 1990s she was in Leadworth and attending school alongside young Amelia Pond and Rory Williams. Melody, or ‘Mels’ as she most often went by (Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia lists her surname here as Zucker, but it’s never heard in canon) was a huge trouble-maker. She became obsessed with Amelia’s ‘Raggedy Doctor’ story, and often protested in her history class that certain events could be blamed on the Doctor for not intervening. As she grew older, her actions grew more reckless and illegal. One positive thing she accomplished was giving her future parents a helpful nudge into confessing their feelings for each other.
In Leadworth 2011, Amy and Rory finally got the Doctor’s attention and he landed the TARDIS in a field. They questioned him about his search for Melody (for their timeline this was a few months after her kidnapping from Demon’s Run). Then, Mels, brandishing a gun and on the run from the police for a stolen car, arrived on the scene and held the Doctor at gunpoint. She coerced him into taking her aboard the TARDIS.
They traveled back to Berlin, 1938, specifically Adolf Hitler’s office. Mels fired off her gun inside the TARDIS, which made the landing rocky. The TARDIS crew accidentally thwarted the efforts of the Teselecta to torment Hitler, and in the fray the Fuhrer fired a bullet that struck Mels.
Though she’d frustrated and threatened him moments before, the Doctor tried to comfort the young woman in her dying moments, saying he’d fulfill her dream of marrying him. Mels then mentioned how convenient it was that her parents were already present, revealing herself as the Melody. Though the three knew from their own timeline that baby Melody eventually became River Song, the fact that Amy and Rory obliviously grew up alongside their daughter was a shock.
While a stunned Amy, Rory, and the Doctor barely had time to swallow this new information, the reckless Mels regenerated into a very familiar face.
While she broke in her new body and the others dealt with the reveal of her identity, Melody pulled out all the stops to try and kill the Doctor. All the while she was questioning this ‘River Song’ the Doctor kept mentioning, almost out of jealousy. Though they kept matching each other in a battle of wits and deception, Melody poisoned the Doctor with a lipstick kiss, then jumped out the window to go wreak havoc on Berlin.
She beat up a few Nazis, stole a motorbike and some guns, and then threatened an upper-class party because she didn’t “have a thing to wear”. The Teselecta then came after her, as its records indicated she would kill the Doctor at Lake Silencio, Utah in 2011. The poisoned Doctor intervened in its torture of her, most likely motivated because he knew the good woman she would become in the future. The Doctor’s pleas roused enough empathy in Melody to save her parents from imminent death inside the Teselecta by piloting the TARDIS to rescue them.
Still dying, the Doctor asked Melody to pass a message on to ‘River Song’. Hoping to stir something in her daughter, Amy demanded the Teselecta to show them who River Song was, and the assassin was shocked to see it take her new face. In another moment of compassion, she asked her parents if the Doctor was “worth it”, and when they said yes, she kissed the Doctor, using the power of her remaining regenerations to save him.
Once fully revived, the Doctor took an exhausted Melody/River to ‘the best hospital in the universe’, the Sisters of the Infinite Schism, somewhere in the early 52nd century. They would help her recover not only physically, but mentally from years of being bred into a psychopath. The Doctor left her a TARDIS-shaped diary as a gift, reflecting on her future with the words “she will be amazing.” After her recuperation, now going by River Song, she enrolled in Luna University on the Moon in the year 5123, planning to study Archaeology. Her reasoning was “I’m looking for a good man”.
River spent the next few years studying for her degree, as well as researching the Doctor, with whom she’d become infatuated. The day she received her doctorate, Madame Kovarian (whom River did not remember from her youth) appeared, flanked by two Silents. “You never really escaped us, Melody Pond … we were always coming for you.” They forced her into a new version of the Astronaut suit and submerged her in Lake Silencio for April 22nd, 2011.
The Doctor, now aware of his death, invited his friends (including a future version of River) and then bravely walked to his death when the spacesuit-bound River emerged from the lake. She cried to the Doctor that the suit was in control, and that he should run. He refused, and told her to look at the beach and see her future self.
“Why would you make me watch?” She asked tearfully. The Doctor wanted her to know that this was inevitable, that it had to happen. He also wanted her to know that he forgave her.
The Doctor prepared to be shot, but River ended up wresting control from the suit and draining the weapons systems. Because she blatantly changed what was supposed to be a fixed point in time, River plunged all of space and time into an alternate reality where every aspect of time was happening at once (pterodactyls in the park, Roman chariots driving alongside cars, etc).
In this alternate reality, River was one of the few people who remembered the other timeline, and with the aid of her hallucinogenic lipstick and her gun, she secured a facility for Area 52 inside an Egyptian pyramid to contain and monitor the Silents. When Amy (who also had some memory of the other timeline) brought the Doctor to Area 52, River was careful not to touch him, as they were the epicenter of what was rippling across time. Touching would return time to normal - a time where the Doctor was dead on the beach.
Atop the pyramid, River showed the Doctor a ‘timey-wimey distress beacon’, which she had been using to send a message across all of time, asking people to help the Doctor. And millions had responded in the positive. “I can’t let you die without knowing you are loved,” River said, confessing the depth of her feelings to him. “-and by no one more than me.”
With the attacking Silents getting closer, the Doctor married River in a handfasting ceremony as a symbol of trust. Once they kissed, time righted itself and returned to Lake Silencio, where River shot the Doctor. Or what appeared to be the Doctor. She kept it secret for several years (in her timeline), but when they exchanged vows, the Doctor let her in on a plot that involved faking his death. The man she shot on the beach was The Teselecta with the real Doctor hidden inside with his TARDIS.
River was imprisoned in The Stormcage Containment Facility in the 52nd century to serve several life sentences for ‘killing’ the Doctor. However, her first night in jail the Doctor visited her, beginning a series of adventures where she would break out of jail, travel with him, and then break back in. It was also at this point where the Doctor told her to use the diary he’d given her years ago to keep track of their differing timelines.
After one adventure, a celebration for River’s birthday which included a Stevie Wonder serenade in 1814, she returned to her cell and was met by her father, asking for her help at Demon’s Run. River had to refuse, knowing that the Doctor (and her parents) would learn her true identity and she couldn’t be there until the end.
Still serving her time, River received an invitation from the Doctor with coordinates to meet him in America. Lake Silencio, Utah on April 22, 2011. She watched the Doctor walk to his (fake) death, and had to keep secret that he was alive and that the assassin from the lake was a younger version of herself.
After giving the Doctor a funeral, River, Amy, and Rory (unaware that she is their future daughter) encounter a younger version of the Doctor; they end up traveling to 1969 and searching for the mysterious little girl (young Melody) who phoned President Nixon. River got to take some revenge for her childhood when she shot several Silents after the Doctor used the moon landing to thwart their plans.
The Doctor returned River to the Stormcage upon her request (she said she had a promise to keep), and she kissed him. Something she apparently had done a lot. But for the Doctor it was their first kiss, signaling to River that her time with him (on the romantic front) was likely dwindling.
River met up with the Doctor again when the TARDIS rerouted a call to her Stormcage cell. She hastily broke out of prison via hallucinogenic lipstick, snagged herself a Time Vortex Manipulator, and got her hands on a lost Van Gogh painting to show the Doctor in 102 AD (after she graffitied the oldest cliff face in the universe and impersonated Cleopatra for a bit, of course). The painting foretold of the TARDIS exploding and causing cracks in time. She accompanied the Doctor and Amy to Stonehenge, where they discovered The Pandorica, a mythical prison for the most feared creature in the universe. Stonehenge was transmitting a signal to all of the Doctor’s enemies, who showed up and imprisoned him in the Pandorica ‘to protect the universe’ from the exploding TARDIS. River, however, was piloting the TARDIS at that time, when an external force took control.
Unable to escape what was certain death, River was put into a time loop by the TARDIS to protect her from the explosion. She was rescued by the Doctor, where she found that Earth (in 1996) was in an alternate timeline where there were no stars, as the whole of reality was beginning to collapse. Again, River had to pretend not to know her parents. After seeing the Doctor shot by a Dalek, she annihilated the enemy in cold blood. She would bear no mercy to anyone who harmed her loved ones.
The Doctor was forced to restore the Universe in a series of actions that would erase himself from existence. River was unspeakably pained by this, and could not even share her grief with her parents, who did not yet know her. She left her diary (now blank) at her parents’ wedding in 2010 to help Amy remember the Doctor back into existence. After the reception, River met the Doctor and dropped hints of her marital status, meanwhile warning him that he would learn who she was “very soon”.
River arrived at Demon’s Run after Kovarian escaped with baby!Melody and revealed to Amy and Rory that she is their daughter. In terms of River’s timeline it is unclear specifically where this event goes - however, there are two context clues. One, she is wearing her outfit from "Day of the Moon", putting it after those events. Secondly, she arrives by Vortex Manipulator, thus putting it also after the Pandorica events for her.
Back to serving time in the Stormcage in the 51st century, River, along with Father Octavian of the military-church, began a mission that she hoped would grant her freedom. She infiltrated the Galaxy Class ship Byzantium, which was carrying a Weeping Angel in its cargo. She inscribed coordinates on the ship’s Home Box in Old High Gallifreyan, telling the Doctor to come pick her up. Then, she jumped out of the spaceship.
The Doctor, accompanied by Amy (who met River for the first time) rescued the femme fatale who informed them of her mission regarding the Weeping Angel. They ended up defeating an army of Angels on the planet Alfa Metraxis, and River, handcuffed, said her goodbyes. Not without hinting that the Doctor would see her again soon at the Pandorica.
It is possible that after these events River Song earned herself a pardon for her crimes. Directly after the Byzantium events, she reveals the truth about the Doctor’s ‘death’ at Lake Silencio to her parents. “The Angels Take Manhattan” was her next adventure, taking place in New York in April 1938. Under the alias Melody Malone, she worked as a detective, one that apparently inspired a book in the Doctor’s possession that he was reading to Amy before Rory ‘disappeared’.
In fact, Rory was sent to 1938 New York by the Weeping Angels. There, he encountered River who was investigating the Angels’ presence. Upon arriving in 1938 to help with the investigation, the Doctor learned that River was free from jail (all records of his existence have been erased, she killed a man who never existed) and now a professor of Archaeology.
After her father’s future death became a ‘fixed point’, River encouraged her parents to create a paradox and break the time trap created by the Weeping Angels. Amy and Rory jumped off the Empire State Building together, successfully breaking the time trap and returning everyone to New York 2012. The happy family planned an outing, only to have things turn tragic when a surviving Weeping Angel returned Rory to 1938 New York with a single touch. A nearby gravestone indicated Rory lived out the rest of his days there.
Distraught, Amy refused to get in the TARDIS with the Doctor and River, and instead bid her goodbyes, as she wanted to be with Rory. River encouraged her mother’s decision, promising to look after the Doctor for her. Amy looked away from the stone assassin and was taken, her name joining Rory’s on the grave.
Despite the loss of her parents, River was more occupied with consoling the Doctor than dealing with her own grief. She left to compose the Melody Malone novel, promising the Doctor that she would travel with him whenever he wanted, but she could not be a permanent companion.
River had one last date-like night with the Doctor (presumably the Eleventh, as implied by the mini-sode "Last Night"); he took her to the Singing Towers of Darillium. The Doctor, for reasons unknown to River, cried and gave her his sonic screwdriver.
River then went on an expedition of The Library, sending a casual message to the Doctor’s psychic paper to join her in solving the mystery of the Library’s final transmission, “4022 saved, no survivors.” Unfortunately, the Doctor that arrived was not her doctor, the one she knew her entire life. Rather, it was the Doctor in his tenth incarnation, before he ever met her. The day she dreaded had finally come to pass; she tearfully looked into his young eyes and pleaded for him to recognize her.
As River, the Doctor, and their companions were besieged by the Vashta Nerada, beings that dwell in shadows and who sought to reclaim their “forests” – the books of the library – she found herself constantly butting heads with the younger form of her husband. She kept her tongue quiet about the nature of their relationship, but the fact that they squabbled “like an old married couple” did not go unnoticed by the others. To prove her trustworthiness, River whispered the Doctor’s true name in his ear, much to his shock.
Once they determined that the computer core of the Library had literally “saved” the 4022 former inhabitants as data, the two of them descended to the core to free them. However, the Doctor planned to hook himself up to the terminal to do so, even though it would spell his death. River punched the Doctor out and handcuffed him, taking his place at the terminal. Tearfully, she bid him goodbye, having realized the truth of their differing timelines, that the Doctor she knew had always known this was her fate. She kept the truth of her identity a secret in her final moments, wishing him to enjoy all the times he has to look forward to with her.
Personality: River Song is, in a single word, complex. She has a knack for keeping the Doctor on his toes. This stems from the fact she has intimate knowledge of the future that she must conceal, and often lies or puts on an act in order to do so. She’s a relentless flirt and fan of innuendo, and she will resort to any means necessary to get what she wants. She isn’t quite as prone to mercy as the Doctor is, though she’s likely more mellow now compared to her younger years. Being raised as a psychopath and an assassin makes you a bit…feisty.
In her younger years, she had less respect for the laws of time (well, laws in general really). It is likely that because she did not have a stable childhood, River behaved as if she were above the law, thus constantly getting into trouble. Truthfully, she often felt that she didn’t belong anywhere in the universe, hence why very few can actually get close to her and why she often prefers to travel the universe rather than stay in one place. Even while jailed she couldn’t stay still. Her life as an archaeology professor hasn’t been explored in canon, but my thoughts are that River teaches in between adventures with the Doctor and prides herself upon being the eccentric but well-loved professor. She has great stories to share with her students, but she can also come down hard on them, because she’s challenging them to think.
Though she was reckless and impulsive in her youth, older River is daring but respects the rules laid down for her by the Doctor. While she may bend them once in a while, she never breaks them. The risk to the universe is too great.
More than anything, River wants two things out of life – freedom and love. Though she experienced a fair amount of independence growing up in Leadworth, her primary objective was always related to killing the Doctor, an order imposed upon her by her captors. Captors who meddled in her life again years after she thought she had escaped them. She never wants to be held down like that again. River fears being a slave to anyone’s will but her own. She prefers to go by River Song rather than her birth name because she associates it with her past as a pawn to the Silence (head-canon).
As for love, it has been the one ‘constant’ in her life. Raised as a weapon to kill the Doctor, he became her obsession, one that eventually backfired for the Silence as those intense feelings for the only man in her life became love. She lives for the days when the Doctor comes to her with an adventure, and she knows that he’ll always catch her when she falls (whether it’s out of a spaceship or off the Empire State Building). However, their adventures are bittersweet due to their twisted timelines. “Each time I see him, I know him more. He knows me less.” She dreads the day that she’ll look into the eyes of the Doctor and he’ll look at her as a complete stranger. “..And I think it’s going to kill me.”
Abilities: As a time traveler, River has intimate knowledge of alien life and future events, especially those of the 51st and 52nd centuries. She is an excellent marksman and gifted at lying. With her knowledge, she has to lie in order to protect the fragility of space and time. She has also dabbled in lock-picking, and can read and write in Old High Gallifreyan. Much to the chagrin of the Doctor, she is an excellent TARDIS pilot and appears to know how to operate the TARDIS better than he does. She also has very swift reflexes (evidenced in "Let's Kill Hitler"). Furthermore, she takes no responsibility if anything you say can be turned into an innuendo.
Though born of human birth, River’s triple-helix DNA made her capable of Time-Lord like regeneration. She has since lost that ability, but her genes will still look veeery interesting under a microscope! In addition to that, the fact that she was conceived in and has had countless adventures in the TARDIS means she’s been soaked in Artron Radiation, which has altered her biological makeup and made her highly resistant to illness. Furthermore, it enables her to remember alternate histories/timelines that have occurred, and gives her Temporally Active Biodata. This refers to her ability to influence time to a greater extent than others. This, according to head-canon, is why the Silence needed her as an assassin for the Doctor – they could take advantage of her ability to influence time in order to make the Doctor’s death a fixed point.
How did your character arrive in Rapture? Plasmid went awry and somehow pulled her from her home
Why are you choosing to continue your character's development here from another RP? N/A
Network sample: An example post to the Rapture Hotline of at least 100 words.
[Three hours and River’s had enough sight-seeing. The entirely too convenient communication device she got upon arrival is now looking like her best option. It takes her a few moments to familiarize herself with the device – she’s used to her scanner and having a lot more technological options. First comes audio, and then visual.] Excuse me, hello?
…Ah, finally! Look, not that I’ve got anything against roaming about unfamiliar cities, but I didn’t even get the luxury of a hangover and a stranger in my bed this time. [She smirks a little – was she serious or joking? That’s entirely up to you to decide.]
Besides, I think I’ve gleaned all that I need about this place – lovely folks you’ve got here, actually – except for the one thing I need. A way out.
[There’s always a way out, after all. Still, she’s quite calm and is treating the situation with a bit more grace than the average person. Almost like this is simply a mild inconvenience.]
I’m a busy woman, and while a random vacation is very tempting, I’m not about to skip the expedition I’ve been fighting for for the past eight months. So if you could please direct me to somebody in charge who can arrange my transport, I’ll make it worth your while.
Ta! [She places her hand to her lips to blow a kiss to the camera before ending her transmission. Clearly the people around here weren’t stupid if they had technology like this – surely someone could track her down, or at least reach her via the communicator.]
Log sample: An example prose post of at least 300 words.
The two of them have been through a lot together. Never in the proper order, but where was the fun in that? None, and it wasn't like she was about to stop now.
She would never dream of stopping. Stopping meant acceptance. Meant saying good-bye to adventure and sinking into a permanently dull little life. If she’d been a different woman – or rather born under different circumstances – maybe that would’ve been something she wanted. But not in this life. No, this was the life for which River Song had been destined.
She’d never had a chance.
From her office at the end of the corridor, Professor Song had an exquisite view of the Luna University courtyard. But it wasn’t so much the courtyard she was interested in – over time the natural lunar surface had fallen prey to the administration’s need to look good and prevent so many accidents with drunken, stumbling students, thus the establishment of proper, paved pathways, accented by the senior projects of graduated art students. But the beloved archaeology professor cared more about the view beyond the courtyard – the sight of planet Earth below. It was a different Earth than the one her parents knew, the one she visited in the 21st century. But it was still Earth. No matter how much pollution diminished the annual winters or how many people emigrated to other ends as the sun grew, Earth was Earth. And it was the only real home she had.
Wordlessly, she turned from the window and back to her desk, where a yellowed page sat waiting. She picked up her pen and began to scrawl: ”Some days I think I understand why the Doctor loves that little planet, and other days I think he must look at us and feel so ashamed. Like we’re wasted potential. But potential what?”
“Uhhh…Professor Song? Professor?”
River’s head snapped up from her writing, a clearly uncertain student sitting in front of her.
“Um, am I all set for registration, or…?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course!” River replied quickly, leaning over to sign off the young man’s late-enrollment. “I look forward to seeing you around the halls,” she added as she amiably bid him good-bye.
She hadn’t a moment to return to her previous thoughts before her associate Joan poked her head in with a knock. “Hey, Rivsie—“
“How many times have I told you not to call me that?” She didn’t even look up from her desk, her eyes scanning from the open journal on her desk to a folder of notes.
“Not enough to make me stop. Anyway, about lunch-“
“I’m having a working lunch today, dear. Afraid I won’t be able to make it.”
“Don’t tell me you’re spending another afternoon cooped up with that thing again? I swear you treat that book better than a person sometimes. ”
“It’s more than just a book, Joan-“
“Yeah, yeah, heard it all before, Song. Your stories, your magnum opus, blahditty blah. Let me know when it gets steamy and maybe I’ll give it a read.”
“Oh, get out of here, you!” River laughed, waving Joan off dismissively. As far as colleagues went, Joan certainly was good for a laugh. And she had a point – River had been spending a lot more time with her nose in a book. Not just any book.
She closed the age-worn blue book with a smile, lovingly dragging her fingertips down the TARDIS cover. Her one constant companion. Her journal. The spine was breaking, the pages were weathered and nearly all used. She didn’t know if the Doctor would give her a new one or if she was going to have to add in more pages. She still had so much more to do, after all.
Her eyes returned to the folder, reading over the cryptic message once more. ”4,022 saved. No survivors.” The Library, her next great adventure.
She couldn’t wait to start writing about it.
Name: Bri/Bri-Chan
Player Journal: N/A
Age: 23
Contact: PM this journal - we can communicate through that or AIM, which I'll give on request
Other characters currently played at Ryan's Gulch: N/A
☞ Character Information;
Character Name: Dr. River Song
Canon: Doctor Who
OU or AU?: Original Universe canon
Canon point: After Darillium and just prior to her expedition to The Library ("Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead"), which is late in her life.
Setting: River primarily hails from planet Earth, though being a time traveler she's lived in several different centuries. She's well-versed in the history and pop culture of 20th and 21st Century Earth (i.e. President Nixon quips, hating the nickname 'Mrs. Robinson', etc). Much of her later life however is spent in the 51st and 52nd centuries - she's extremely familiar with advanced technology, and shows somewhat more liberal cultural ideas: "I've dated androids/I dated a Nestene Duplicate once. Swappable heads did keep things fresh." For a general idea of the universe, see this link about the television series.
History: (I just wanted to write it out myself rather than rely on a wiki)
Melody Pond was born at the asteroid base known as Demon’s Run in the 52nd century. Her parents, Amy Pond and Rory Williams, were companions of the Doctor (in his eleventh incarnation) originally from the year 2010. After rebooting the universe (a very long story, see "The Big Bang”), newlyweds Amy and Rory spent their wedding night aboard the TARDIS. A child conceived while the TARDIS was in flight made for a special human being; post-birth scans would later reveal Melody was a human with triple helix DNA, a genetic pattern usually only seen in Time Lords.
Amy Pond was kidnapped shortly before she and Rory rejoined the Doctor for a 2011 adventure in America and was replaced with a duplicate made from Flesh. This duplicate, mentally connected to the real Amy, traveled in the TARDIS unaware of her purpose in a plot by The Silence. When the Doctor figured out how to block the signal to the Flesh, the avatar disintegrated and the real Amy (now very pregnant) awoke and went into labor. Named after a childhood friend of her mother’s (“Let’s Kill Hitler”), Melody Pond was born and then shortly taken from Amy’s arms.
The Doctor gathered an army to rescue Amy and her child, and at first it appeared successful. Through use of another Flesh duplicate, Madame Kovarian escaped with the real baby Melody who was then raised and brainwashed as a weapon to kill the Doctor.
While in the hands of The Silents (and somewhere in Florida, U.S. in 1969) Melody was forced into an Apollo astronaut spacesuit that had been modified and upgraded with advanced alien technology. Part of the tech enabled the frightened child to directly phone President Richard Nixon and ask for help. Nixon asked two questions, “Where are you? Who are you?”, to which she answered “Jefferson Adams Hamilton”. The President mistook this to mean it was a little boy calling, and this phone conversation was later replayed for the Doctor. In fact, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton were the three street signs that little Melody could see from wherever she was being held.
The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and River Song (Melody in the future) found the warehouse where the three streets converged. They found a version of the spacesuit and analyzed it; it was River Song herself who commented that the girl must be “incredibly strong” to have ripped herself free from the suit. Then they were attacked by the Silence, and also encountered Melody who was in the spacesuit and begging for them to help her. The spacesuit was in control, and she raised her arm to shoot at the Doctor. Amy Pond (technically the Flesh avatar of her mother) fired a gun at her and missed.
The Doctor and company spent the next few months independently investigating the Silence. Melody, meanwhile was held in an Florida orphanage. Three months after the first encounter, the spacesuit-bound Melody met Amy Pond again, who apologized for shooting at her. In Melody’s bedroom, Amy found a photograph of herself and a baby (canon never states who took this photograph; my headcanon says Lorna Bucket). The Silents then awoke and kidnapped Amy, meanwhile Melody ripped herself free of the suit and escaped.
Six months after that, Melody found herself on the streets of New York City. A homeless man asked if she was all right. “I’m dying,” she said. “But I can fix that.” Then she regenerated. Though it isn’t shown on-screen in canon, Melody regenerated in a toddler. Still, she had all her memories and brainwashing, and took it upon herself to find her parents. By the late 1990s she was in Leadworth and attending school alongside young Amelia Pond and Rory Williams. Melody, or ‘Mels’ as she most often went by (Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia lists her surname here as Zucker, but it’s never heard in canon) was a huge trouble-maker. She became obsessed with Amelia’s ‘Raggedy Doctor’ story, and often protested in her history class that certain events could be blamed on the Doctor for not intervening. As she grew older, her actions grew more reckless and illegal. One positive thing she accomplished was giving her future parents a helpful nudge into confessing their feelings for each other.
In Leadworth 2011, Amy and Rory finally got the Doctor’s attention and he landed the TARDIS in a field. They questioned him about his search for Melody (for their timeline this was a few months after her kidnapping from Demon’s Run). Then, Mels, brandishing a gun and on the run from the police for a stolen car, arrived on the scene and held the Doctor at gunpoint. She coerced him into taking her aboard the TARDIS.
They traveled back to Berlin, 1938, specifically Adolf Hitler’s office. Mels fired off her gun inside the TARDIS, which made the landing rocky. The TARDIS crew accidentally thwarted the efforts of the Teselecta to torment Hitler, and in the fray the Fuhrer fired a bullet that struck Mels.
Though she’d frustrated and threatened him moments before, the Doctor tried to comfort the young woman in her dying moments, saying he’d fulfill her dream of marrying him. Mels then mentioned how convenient it was that her parents were already present, revealing herself as the Melody. Though the three knew from their own timeline that baby Melody eventually became River Song, the fact that Amy and Rory obliviously grew up alongside their daughter was a shock.
While a stunned Amy, Rory, and the Doctor barely had time to swallow this new information, the reckless Mels regenerated into a very familiar face.
While she broke in her new body and the others dealt with the reveal of her identity, Melody pulled out all the stops to try and kill the Doctor. All the while she was questioning this ‘River Song’ the Doctor kept mentioning, almost out of jealousy. Though they kept matching each other in a battle of wits and deception, Melody poisoned the Doctor with a lipstick kiss, then jumped out the window to go wreak havoc on Berlin.
She beat up a few Nazis, stole a motorbike and some guns, and then threatened an upper-class party because she didn’t “have a thing to wear”. The Teselecta then came after her, as its records indicated she would kill the Doctor at Lake Silencio, Utah in 2011. The poisoned Doctor intervened in its torture of her, most likely motivated because he knew the good woman she would become in the future. The Doctor’s pleas roused enough empathy in Melody to save her parents from imminent death inside the Teselecta by piloting the TARDIS to rescue them.
Still dying, the Doctor asked Melody to pass a message on to ‘River Song’. Hoping to stir something in her daughter, Amy demanded the Teselecta to show them who River Song was, and the assassin was shocked to see it take her new face. In another moment of compassion, she asked her parents if the Doctor was “worth it”, and when they said yes, she kissed the Doctor, using the power of her remaining regenerations to save him.
Once fully revived, the Doctor took an exhausted Melody/River to ‘the best hospital in the universe’, the Sisters of the Infinite Schism, somewhere in the early 52nd century. They would help her recover not only physically, but mentally from years of being bred into a psychopath. The Doctor left her a TARDIS-shaped diary as a gift, reflecting on her future with the words “she will be amazing.” After her recuperation, now going by River Song, she enrolled in Luna University on the Moon in the year 5123, planning to study Archaeology. Her reasoning was “I’m looking for a good man”.
River spent the next few years studying for her degree, as well as researching the Doctor, with whom she’d become infatuated. The day she received her doctorate, Madame Kovarian (whom River did not remember from her youth) appeared, flanked by two Silents. “You never really escaped us, Melody Pond … we were always coming for you.” They forced her into a new version of the Astronaut suit and submerged her in Lake Silencio for April 22nd, 2011.
The Doctor, now aware of his death, invited his friends (including a future version of River) and then bravely walked to his death when the spacesuit-bound River emerged from the lake. She cried to the Doctor that the suit was in control, and that he should run. He refused, and told her to look at the beach and see her future self.
“Why would you make me watch?” She asked tearfully. The Doctor wanted her to know that this was inevitable, that it had to happen. He also wanted her to know that he forgave her.
The Doctor prepared to be shot, but River ended up wresting control from the suit and draining the weapons systems. Because she blatantly changed what was supposed to be a fixed point in time, River plunged all of space and time into an alternate reality where every aspect of time was happening at once (pterodactyls in the park, Roman chariots driving alongside cars, etc).
In this alternate reality, River was one of the few people who remembered the other timeline, and with the aid of her hallucinogenic lipstick and her gun, she secured a facility for Area 52 inside an Egyptian pyramid to contain and monitor the Silents. When Amy (who also had some memory of the other timeline) brought the Doctor to Area 52, River was careful not to touch him, as they were the epicenter of what was rippling across time. Touching would return time to normal - a time where the Doctor was dead on the beach.
Atop the pyramid, River showed the Doctor a ‘timey-wimey distress beacon’, which she had been using to send a message across all of time, asking people to help the Doctor. And millions had responded in the positive. “I can’t let you die without knowing you are loved,” River said, confessing the depth of her feelings to him. “-and by no one more than me.”
With the attacking Silents getting closer, the Doctor married River in a handfasting ceremony as a symbol of trust. Once they kissed, time righted itself and returned to Lake Silencio, where River shot the Doctor. Or what appeared to be the Doctor. She kept it secret for several years (in her timeline), but when they exchanged vows, the Doctor let her in on a plot that involved faking his death. The man she shot on the beach was The Teselecta with the real Doctor hidden inside with his TARDIS.
River was imprisoned in The Stormcage Containment Facility in the 52nd century to serve several life sentences for ‘killing’ the Doctor. However, her first night in jail the Doctor visited her, beginning a series of adventures where she would break out of jail, travel with him, and then break back in. It was also at this point where the Doctor told her to use the diary he’d given her years ago to keep track of their differing timelines.
After one adventure, a celebration for River’s birthday which included a Stevie Wonder serenade in 1814, she returned to her cell and was met by her father, asking for her help at Demon’s Run. River had to refuse, knowing that the Doctor (and her parents) would learn her true identity and she couldn’t be there until the end.
Still serving her time, River received an invitation from the Doctor with coordinates to meet him in America. Lake Silencio, Utah on April 22, 2011. She watched the Doctor walk to his (fake) death, and had to keep secret that he was alive and that the assassin from the lake was a younger version of herself.
After giving the Doctor a funeral, River, Amy, and Rory (unaware that she is their future daughter) encounter a younger version of the Doctor; they end up traveling to 1969 and searching for the mysterious little girl (young Melody) who phoned President Nixon. River got to take some revenge for her childhood when she shot several Silents after the Doctor used the moon landing to thwart their plans.
The Doctor returned River to the Stormcage upon her request (she said she had a promise to keep), and she kissed him. Something she apparently had done a lot. But for the Doctor it was their first kiss, signaling to River that her time with him (on the romantic front) was likely dwindling.
River met up with the Doctor again when the TARDIS rerouted a call to her Stormcage cell. She hastily broke out of prison via hallucinogenic lipstick, snagged herself a Time Vortex Manipulator, and got her hands on a lost Van Gogh painting to show the Doctor in 102 AD (after she graffitied the oldest cliff face in the universe and impersonated Cleopatra for a bit, of course). The painting foretold of the TARDIS exploding and causing cracks in time. She accompanied the Doctor and Amy to Stonehenge, where they discovered The Pandorica, a mythical prison for the most feared creature in the universe. Stonehenge was transmitting a signal to all of the Doctor’s enemies, who showed up and imprisoned him in the Pandorica ‘to protect the universe’ from the exploding TARDIS. River, however, was piloting the TARDIS at that time, when an external force took control.
Unable to escape what was certain death, River was put into a time loop by the TARDIS to protect her from the explosion. She was rescued by the Doctor, where she found that Earth (in 1996) was in an alternate timeline where there were no stars, as the whole of reality was beginning to collapse. Again, River had to pretend not to know her parents. After seeing the Doctor shot by a Dalek, she annihilated the enemy in cold blood. She would bear no mercy to anyone who harmed her loved ones.
The Doctor was forced to restore the Universe in a series of actions that would erase himself from existence. River was unspeakably pained by this, and could not even share her grief with her parents, who did not yet know her. She left her diary (now blank) at her parents’ wedding in 2010 to help Amy remember the Doctor back into existence. After the reception, River met the Doctor and dropped hints of her marital status, meanwhile warning him that he would learn who she was “very soon”.
River arrived at Demon’s Run after Kovarian escaped with baby!Melody and revealed to Amy and Rory that she is their daughter. In terms of River’s timeline it is unclear specifically where this event goes - however, there are two context clues. One, she is wearing her outfit from "Day of the Moon", putting it after those events. Secondly, she arrives by Vortex Manipulator, thus putting it also after the Pandorica events for her.
Back to serving time in the Stormcage in the 51st century, River, along with Father Octavian of the military-church, began a mission that she hoped would grant her freedom. She infiltrated the Galaxy Class ship Byzantium, which was carrying a Weeping Angel in its cargo. She inscribed coordinates on the ship’s Home Box in Old High Gallifreyan, telling the Doctor to come pick her up. Then, she jumped out of the spaceship.
The Doctor, accompanied by Amy (who met River for the first time) rescued the femme fatale who informed them of her mission regarding the Weeping Angel. They ended up defeating an army of Angels on the planet Alfa Metraxis, and River, handcuffed, said her goodbyes. Not without hinting that the Doctor would see her again soon at the Pandorica.
It is possible that after these events River Song earned herself a pardon for her crimes. Directly after the Byzantium events, she reveals the truth about the Doctor’s ‘death’ at Lake Silencio to her parents. “The Angels Take Manhattan” was her next adventure, taking place in New York in April 1938. Under the alias Melody Malone, she worked as a detective, one that apparently inspired a book in the Doctor’s possession that he was reading to Amy before Rory ‘disappeared’.
In fact, Rory was sent to 1938 New York by the Weeping Angels. There, he encountered River who was investigating the Angels’ presence. Upon arriving in 1938 to help with the investigation, the Doctor learned that River was free from jail (all records of his existence have been erased, she killed a man who never existed) and now a professor of Archaeology.
After her father’s future death became a ‘fixed point’, River encouraged her parents to create a paradox and break the time trap created by the Weeping Angels. Amy and Rory jumped off the Empire State Building together, successfully breaking the time trap and returning everyone to New York 2012. The happy family planned an outing, only to have things turn tragic when a surviving Weeping Angel returned Rory to 1938 New York with a single touch. A nearby gravestone indicated Rory lived out the rest of his days there.
Distraught, Amy refused to get in the TARDIS with the Doctor and River, and instead bid her goodbyes, as she wanted to be with Rory. River encouraged her mother’s decision, promising to look after the Doctor for her. Amy looked away from the stone assassin and was taken, her name joining Rory’s on the grave.
Despite the loss of her parents, River was more occupied with consoling the Doctor than dealing with her own grief. She left to compose the Melody Malone novel, promising the Doctor that she would travel with him whenever he wanted, but she could not be a permanent companion.
River had one last date-like night with the Doctor (presumably the Eleventh, as implied by the mini-sode "Last Night"); he took her to the Singing Towers of Darillium. The Doctor, for reasons unknown to River, cried and gave her his sonic screwdriver.
River then went on an expedition of The Library, sending a casual message to the Doctor’s psychic paper to join her in solving the mystery of the Library’s final transmission, “4022 saved, no survivors.” Unfortunately, the Doctor that arrived was not her doctor, the one she knew her entire life. Rather, it was the Doctor in his tenth incarnation, before he ever met her. The day she dreaded had finally come to pass; she tearfully looked into his young eyes and pleaded for him to recognize her.
As River, the Doctor, and their companions were besieged by the Vashta Nerada, beings that dwell in shadows and who sought to reclaim their “forests” – the books of the library – she found herself constantly butting heads with the younger form of her husband. She kept her tongue quiet about the nature of their relationship, but the fact that they squabbled “like an old married couple” did not go unnoticed by the others. To prove her trustworthiness, River whispered the Doctor’s true name in his ear, much to his shock.
Once they determined that the computer core of the Library had literally “saved” the 4022 former inhabitants as data, the two of them descended to the core to free them. However, the Doctor planned to hook himself up to the terminal to do so, even though it would spell his death. River punched the Doctor out and handcuffed him, taking his place at the terminal. Tearfully, she bid him goodbye, having realized the truth of their differing timelines, that the Doctor she knew had always known this was her fate. She kept the truth of her identity a secret in her final moments, wishing him to enjoy all the times he has to look forward to with her.
Personality: River Song is, in a single word, complex. She has a knack for keeping the Doctor on his toes. This stems from the fact she has intimate knowledge of the future that she must conceal, and often lies or puts on an act in order to do so. She’s a relentless flirt and fan of innuendo, and she will resort to any means necessary to get what she wants. She isn’t quite as prone to mercy as the Doctor is, though she’s likely more mellow now compared to her younger years. Being raised as a psychopath and an assassin makes you a bit…feisty.
In her younger years, she had less respect for the laws of time (well, laws in general really). It is likely that because she did not have a stable childhood, River behaved as if she were above the law, thus constantly getting into trouble. Truthfully, she often felt that she didn’t belong anywhere in the universe, hence why very few can actually get close to her and why she often prefers to travel the universe rather than stay in one place. Even while jailed she couldn’t stay still. Her life as an archaeology professor hasn’t been explored in canon, but my thoughts are that River teaches in between adventures with the Doctor and prides herself upon being the eccentric but well-loved professor. She has great stories to share with her students, but she can also come down hard on them, because she’s challenging them to think.
Though she was reckless and impulsive in her youth, older River is daring but respects the rules laid down for her by the Doctor. While she may bend them once in a while, she never breaks them. The risk to the universe is too great.
More than anything, River wants two things out of life – freedom and love. Though she experienced a fair amount of independence growing up in Leadworth, her primary objective was always related to killing the Doctor, an order imposed upon her by her captors. Captors who meddled in her life again years after she thought she had escaped them. She never wants to be held down like that again. River fears being a slave to anyone’s will but her own. She prefers to go by River Song rather than her birth name because she associates it with her past as a pawn to the Silence (head-canon).
As for love, it has been the one ‘constant’ in her life. Raised as a weapon to kill the Doctor, he became her obsession, one that eventually backfired for the Silence as those intense feelings for the only man in her life became love. She lives for the days when the Doctor comes to her with an adventure, and she knows that he’ll always catch her when she falls (whether it’s out of a spaceship or off the Empire State Building). However, their adventures are bittersweet due to their twisted timelines. “Each time I see him, I know him more. He knows me less.” She dreads the day that she’ll look into the eyes of the Doctor and he’ll look at her as a complete stranger. “..And I think it’s going to kill me.”
Abilities: As a time traveler, River has intimate knowledge of alien life and future events, especially those of the 51st and 52nd centuries. She is an excellent marksman and gifted at lying. With her knowledge, she has to lie in order to protect the fragility of space and time. She has also dabbled in lock-picking, and can read and write in Old High Gallifreyan. Much to the chagrin of the Doctor, she is an excellent TARDIS pilot and appears to know how to operate the TARDIS better than he does. She also has very swift reflexes (evidenced in "Let's Kill Hitler"). Furthermore, she takes no responsibility if anything you say can be turned into an innuendo.
Though born of human birth, River’s triple-helix DNA made her capable of Time-Lord like regeneration. She has since lost that ability, but her genes will still look veeery interesting under a microscope! In addition to that, the fact that she was conceived in and has had countless adventures in the TARDIS means she’s been soaked in Artron Radiation, which has altered her biological makeup and made her highly resistant to illness. Furthermore, it enables her to remember alternate histories/timelines that have occurred, and gives her Temporally Active Biodata. This refers to her ability to influence time to a greater extent than others. This, according to head-canon, is why the Silence needed her as an assassin for the Doctor – they could take advantage of her ability to influence time in order to make the Doctor’s death a fixed point.
How did your character arrive in Rapture? Plasmid went awry and somehow pulled her from her home
Why are you choosing to continue your character's development here from another RP? N/A
Network sample: An example post to the Rapture Hotline of at least 100 words.
[Three hours and River’s had enough sight-seeing. The entirely too convenient communication device she got upon arrival is now looking like her best option. It takes her a few moments to familiarize herself with the device – she’s used to her scanner and having a lot more technological options. First comes audio, and then visual.] Excuse me, hello?
…Ah, finally! Look, not that I’ve got anything against roaming about unfamiliar cities, but I didn’t even get the luxury of a hangover and a stranger in my bed this time. [She smirks a little – was she serious or joking? That’s entirely up to you to decide.]
Besides, I think I’ve gleaned all that I need about this place – lovely folks you’ve got here, actually – except for the one thing I need. A way out.
[There’s always a way out, after all. Still, she’s quite calm and is treating the situation with a bit more grace than the average person. Almost like this is simply a mild inconvenience.]
I’m a busy woman, and while a random vacation is very tempting, I’m not about to skip the expedition I’ve been fighting for for the past eight months. So if you could please direct me to somebody in charge who can arrange my transport, I’ll make it worth your while.
Ta! [She places her hand to her lips to blow a kiss to the camera before ending her transmission. Clearly the people around here weren’t stupid if they had technology like this – surely someone could track her down, or at least reach her via the communicator.]
Log sample: An example prose post of at least 300 words.
The two of them have been through a lot together. Never in the proper order, but where was the fun in that? None, and it wasn't like she was about to stop now.
She would never dream of stopping. Stopping meant acceptance. Meant saying good-bye to adventure and sinking into a permanently dull little life. If she’d been a different woman – or rather born under different circumstances – maybe that would’ve been something she wanted. But not in this life. No, this was the life for which River Song had been destined.
She’d never had a chance.
From her office at the end of the corridor, Professor Song had an exquisite view of the Luna University courtyard. But it wasn’t so much the courtyard she was interested in – over time the natural lunar surface had fallen prey to the administration’s need to look good and prevent so many accidents with drunken, stumbling students, thus the establishment of proper, paved pathways, accented by the senior projects of graduated art students. But the beloved archaeology professor cared more about the view beyond the courtyard – the sight of planet Earth below. It was a different Earth than the one her parents knew, the one she visited in the 21st century. But it was still Earth. No matter how much pollution diminished the annual winters or how many people emigrated to other ends as the sun grew, Earth was Earth. And it was the only real home she had.
Wordlessly, she turned from the window and back to her desk, where a yellowed page sat waiting. She picked up her pen and began to scrawl: ”Some days I think I understand why the Doctor loves that little planet, and other days I think he must look at us and feel so ashamed. Like we’re wasted potential. But potential what?”
“Uhhh…Professor Song? Professor?”
River’s head snapped up from her writing, a clearly uncertain student sitting in front of her.
“Um, am I all set for registration, or…?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course!” River replied quickly, leaning over to sign off the young man’s late-enrollment. “I look forward to seeing you around the halls,” she added as she amiably bid him good-bye.
She hadn’t a moment to return to her previous thoughts before her associate Joan poked her head in with a knock. “Hey, Rivsie—“
“How many times have I told you not to call me that?” She didn’t even look up from her desk, her eyes scanning from the open journal on her desk to a folder of notes.
“Not enough to make me stop. Anyway, about lunch-“
“I’m having a working lunch today, dear. Afraid I won’t be able to make it.”
“Don’t tell me you’re spending another afternoon cooped up with that thing again? I swear you treat that book better than a person sometimes. ”
“It’s more than just a book, Joan-“
“Yeah, yeah, heard it all before, Song. Your stories, your magnum opus, blahditty blah. Let me know when it gets steamy and maybe I’ll give it a read.”
“Oh, get out of here, you!” River laughed, waving Joan off dismissively. As far as colleagues went, Joan certainly was good for a laugh. And she had a point – River had been spending a lot more time with her nose in a book. Not just any book.
She closed the age-worn blue book with a smile, lovingly dragging her fingertips down the TARDIS cover. Her one constant companion. Her journal. The spine was breaking, the pages were weathered and nearly all used. She didn’t know if the Doctor would give her a new one or if she was going to have to add in more pages. She still had so much more to do, after all.
Her eyes returned to the folder, reading over the cryptic message once more. ”4,022 saved. No survivors.” The Library, her next great adventure.
She couldn’t wait to start writing about it.