River Song

 Photo copyright Lisa Hazlegreaves

Finally, finally I get to write about the opulent River Song.  River is the character in Doctor Who played by Alex Kingston.   I will have to admit I have a rather large girl crush on River Song, this doesn’t happen very often to me, I mean I am most definitely heterosexual,  I don’t often fall in love with other women.  This shows the power of the writing in Doctor Who, Alex Kingston I remembered fondly (but not adoringly) from ER as simply a good looking woman but not sexy in that way   However in Doctor Who she wears a gun, in a holster, on the top of her thigh.  She talks to The Doctor, that good man that no other comes close to, that omniscient man with two hearts, she talks to him in such a compelling way it makes me clap my hands like a seal. I absolutely adore her. 

We first meet River in an Episode called The Silence In The Library the first part of a two part story in series four with Tennant as The Doctor.  You know immediately that this woman is different, her very first words to The Doctor are ‘Hello Sweetie’ I love it when she says that.  She has this diary that looks like a TARDIS, a very old looking book and well used.  She keeps referring to it and will not let The Doctor look because of ‘spoilers’  The Doctor doesn’t know who River is but it clear that she knows him very well.   River dies in the second part of this story saving The Doctor and this is very sad but is much harder to bear when you re-watch on DVD after knowing her full story. 

River Song is actually Melody Pond, the daughter of Amy and Rory, The Doctors current companions.  This is where her time-line and story get pretty complicated, when I read the entry about her in my cherished Doctor Who Encyclopedia I was a little confused to say the least, when I gave it to Father to read, him of little faith in Science Fiction I thought his head was going to explode, he drooled for about three hours after.  Therefore I am not going to try and write it here for you, let me suffice to say she was in prison for murdering The Doctor and also married him, after she was put in prison for murdering him....oh my!

I simply love her, I love her huge mop of curly hair and the sexy way she swishes it about.  I love that she carries a gun, when The Doctor hates guns, and that she looks absolutely wonderful using it.  I love the way she talks to The Doctor in such a commanding way that you just know they have history, or future, or something.  I love that she went back to the beginning of time and wrote ‘Hello Sweetie’ in huge letters on a cliff for The Doctor to read.  I love that she has a diary that looks like The TARDIS that she won’t let The Doctor look at because of spoilers and I love how she says ‘spoilers’.  Let’s face it, I just love her, every single little thing about her and if the writers do not bring her back in series seven I WILL be taking a letter.

Excitement

Saturday  24^th March 2012 is a date that will be burned into my memory forever.  It is the day that as a family we visited the TARDIS.  That’s the real TARDIS, where they actually film Doctor Who, where The Doctor, Amy and Rory cavort with levers and bells and telephones.  The build up to this visit was intense in the extreme, it was exciting anyway because we flew from Newcastle to Cardiff and flying always adds to the sense of adventure.  We flew down on the Friday morning so we had a day to get our bearings.  Our Convention day was the Sunday so we still had that excitement to come but the Saturday, well, the Saturday was TARDIS set tour day.

Our coach for the set tour was due to leave at 11.30am and we were there at 10.30am to hassle the lady in the yellow t-shirt and clipboard, waving our tickets in her face like demented lottery winners.  She gladly gave us our wristbands and told us to return in forty minutes or so to await our coach.  We sat outside the Millenium Centre to wait.  What a wonderful place it was, we saw so many small Doctors  with their Who goodie bags hanging from shoulders right down to their knees and Ood or Silurian lanyards swinging like pendulums from their necks, teasing us with glimpses of the Convention that for us was yet to come.  As we walked back over to join the small queue that was forming for the coach I had that fluttering in my stomach that only comes with such quantities of excitement, were it alcohol you’d be poisoned.

Sitting on that coach was the most thrilling time, you could almost see the excitement crackling in the air,  we were told that once at the BBC Studio we would be split into two groups, our group would be taken to The Blue Box Cafe initially whilst the first group went to the set.  Then they put The Doctors Wife DVD on for the rest of our journey.  I love this episode, I may discuss it at a later letter.   Sitting in that little cafe with twenty or so other excited fans was a real buzz and as we were lead through the BBC centre, down a corridor covered in huge framed pictures of Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane I thought my head was going to blow off.  We were bundled into a room with a wooden ramp, at the top of this ramp was the door...that door...the BLUE door, then we were in.  Inside the TARDIS.  I really wanted to try and explain to you all how brilliant it was but I know I do not have the words.  I can tell you this though as I walked through that door I got a lump in my throat and my eyes were prickling with tears such was the intense emotion I felt actually being there.  I thought perhaps some of the pictures I took would make you understand.

 

Photos copyright Lisa Hazlegreaves

Even though I know it’s a television show, a production, a made up world in some clever writers head, there was a tiny part of me that expected to walk back out through that door on an alien planet or in another time, and I can tell you, I’m still a little disappointed that this was not the case.