[Warning: Star Wars and Doctor Who spoilers!]

A post on Barnes and Noble's sci-fi-fantasy blog had an interesting observation about Mara Jade:

Introduced as the would-be-assiasin of Luke Skywalker, she ends up marrying him. (Did Steven Moffat base River Song from Doctor Who off of Mara Jade? Hmmm…)

River Song and Mara Jade do seem to be very similar:

• trained to assassinate the main hero
• fell in love with target instead
• ends ups marrying target
• still managed to fulfill assassination mission by instead killing a decoy/duplicate of the target
• red-ish hair (Mara has red hair, River is a sort of strawberry-blonde)
• is a fan favorite warrior
• posseses rare skills the main hero also has (Mara wields a lightsaber and uses the Force, River can fly the TARDIS and is part Time-Lord)

I could go on, but basically these two characters seem way too similar to be just a coincidence. Is River Song based on Mara Jade?