Reading about the tropes and timeline of River Song made me realize something. These days, the character has become such a massive part of New Who mythology. Along with meeting three different Doctors on television, the character has also appeared in novels, comics, and even two audio spin-off series! Looking back, there’s no question that River Song has proved to be a massively successful character in her own right.
But if we think about it, that was never truly guaranteed. In 2008, River was introduced with a great deal of mystery. We knew she was from the Doctor’s future, and that the two would become very close. It was also strongly implied that the Doctor would one day marry her.
But with that first story, that was all we really knew. We didn’t know which Doctor she was mostly familiar with. It could have been the next Doctor, but it also could have been an incarnation from the distant future – one that we’d never get to see. We knew her last goodbye to the Doctor was at the Singing Towers of Darillium, but we didn’t know which Doctor said goodbye to her.
Retcons
To really highlight how vague and ambiguous even this information was, Steven Moffat himself retconned which Doctor took her there. We know from “The Husbands of River Song” that the Twelfth Doctor was the one who said goodbye to her and gave her the sonic screwdriver. But River also mentioned that he had come close to taking her before and had always backed out.
If this seems like an odd thing to mention, it’s because of two little minisodes called "First Night" and "Last Night". Recorded as special features for the Series 6 box set, these little scenes were a nice bonus (not to mention a good incentive to purchase the series on physical media).
These minisodes depict two key moments for the Doctor and River: when the Doctor visits River on her first night locked up in Stormcage, and the night he takes her to the Singing Towers of Darillium. Being a minisode, this moment wasn’t explored in detail, but one thing was clear: it’s the Eleventh Doctor who takes her there.
Or at least, that was the minisode’s original and admittedly extremely strong implication.
A mystery explained
As I mentioned, this moment was completely retconned when Moffat wrote “The Husbands of River Song”. We can’t really blame him, especially as it was a great opportunity to explore that final meeting on a far deeper level. But this goes back to how ambiguous River’s backstory was in “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead”. River could’ve easily been left as someone who was from far, far into the Doctor’s future. A mystery that would never be explained.
If you want proof of that, just look at the Curator from “The Day of the Doctor”. While the tiny hint of the Doctor revisiting old faces did surprisingly pay off in the 60th-anniversary specials, there’s still very little that we know about who or what the Curator is. To this day, it’s only implied that he’s a future Doctor. And, as we all know, time can be rewritten, and implications can be retconned.
So River could’ve been left as a mystery. Perhaps some fans would’ve even preferred it that way. But I’m still glad that Moffat made the bold choice of taking this mysterious character and exploring her history and her relationship with the Doctor on a deep level. Whether we enjoyed the answers or not, you have to give Moffat credit for setting up a mystery and delivering on the promise of that mystery in full.