As a waning Doctor Who fan, I can’t help but squeal with glee at the notion of River Song once again joining the Doctor for the Doctor Who Christmas Special this year. When we last saw River, she and Matt Smith‘s incarnation of The Doctor were confronting their feelings just before he jumped into his own time stream to save Clara (this is a bad thing in the Timelord world), in The Name of The Doctor.
I, and all other Whovians, watched in excitement as we realised this couldn’t be the end of River as she disappeared whispering her tag line ‘Spoilers’, meaning there was still more of her to come! And despite Matt Smith’s adorable pleas to keep River away from Peter Capaldi‘s incarnation, it seems Moffat has bowed to the fans’ desires rather than the former Doctor’s.
The River Song storyline was one of the most brilliant, intelligent, and best thought out stories in recent storytelling and arcs. Whether they planned exactly how River would pan out from her first episode with David Tennant‘s Doctor (Silence In The Library / Forest of the Dead), up to her latest (and potentially last), is uncertain, but in all the River episodes and the mini webisode series (Good Night and Last Night, that can be found and rewatched here), every question about River has been, and I believe will be, tied up.
Let’s just hope Capaldi can siphon the insurmountable tension and dynamic chemistry that was River and 11! Similarly to River’s exit, it seems Steven Moffat may also be leaving the Doctor permanently as a well. In an interview with the Radio Times, Moffat said: “I’ll be honest, I brought River Song back in because I thought there was a possibility I’d never write it [Doctor Who] again so that’d be my goodbye“.
Whatever my feelings about the last two seasons of Doctor Who, in that they have not lived up to the dynamic, writing quality, and story arcs of previous seasons, I can recognise writing talent when I see it. The season 3 episode Blink was and continues to be my favourite stand-alone episode of Doctor Who, and with the success and genius of Sherlock, I know that whatever Steven Moffat continues to do, he has a viewer in me.
#Peace.Love.RiverSong.
