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River Song is a highly mutated human who has Timelord-like traits. She, like us all, is in love with The Doctor. Though she could regenerate a few times, she is still primarily human. So, could the Doctor and River Song have a Timelord child?

Mind you, I’m also going by the idea from the 8th incarnation that The Doctor is half human and River Song is mainly human. If they could procreate, would their child be considered super human or Timelord?

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    From my understanding Timelords aren't born but are instead made. Perhaps I misunderstood, but the Doctor wasn't a Timelord under he looked into the vortex. River was only a Timelord hybrid because she was conceived on the TARDIS while it was in the vortex.
    – Xantec
    Mar 27, 2014 at 16:53
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    “I’m also going by the idea from the 8th incarnation that The Doctor is half human” — I’m going to need you to turn in your Doctor Who fandom card and your gun. Then I’ll escort you from the premises.
    – Paul D. Waite
    Mar 27, 2014 at 16:56
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    The half-human thing in the TV movie was retconned in the comic story "The Forgotten", where the Eight Doctor said he "convinced his arch-nemesis he was half human with a broken chameleon arch and a wide-eyed stare." Also, in "The Journey's End" we saw a half-human, half-timelord "Meta-crisis Doctor" who was portrayed rather differently from the real Doctor. And Russell T. Davies mentioned in The Writer's Tale-The Final Chapter that in an early draft of the script of "The End of Time" there was going to be a line where the Doctor said the half-human thing had been a "forty-eight hour bug".
    – Hypnosifl
    Mar 27, 2014 at 17:53
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    @Xantec, Indeed, "Time Lord" (at least, all of the TLs we are introduced to or are mentioned) is a subset of the dominant species of Gallifrey. All TLs that we know of are Gallifreyan, but not all Gallifreyans are TLs.
    – Brian S
    Mar 27, 2014 at 18:33
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    @PaulD.Waite: For your own sake, I hope the gun you attempt to collect is not a demat gun.
    – Codes with Hammer
    May 14, 2014 at 13:48

3 Answers 3

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Yes, she could. As we saw in "A Good Man Goes To War", she has the triple strand Time Lord DNA and all their biological traits. Hence, Vastra saying she didn't think Melody was human at all, how it was accomplished, and Kovarian confirmed it.

Also canon, both Classic and New Who, is that Time Lord/Gallifreyans do have babies the same way we do. It's why the show creators and other Classic showrunners established it in episodes (you can check Carol Anne Ford interviews on it) and both Davies & Moffat established it in canon with scenes in both their eras. (As well as their interviews.)

So yes, the Doctor and River could have Time Lord/Gallifreyan children. That was also confirmed in an interview and established as canon. If you'd like to see the interview, Google Moffat saying "Imagine those two as parents!" :)

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  • It's customary not to make someone reading your answer have to google anything...
    – AncientSwordRage ♦
    Mar 28, 2014 at 17:22
  • Its a custom not a rule... will wheaton 101
    – giacomo casanova
    Mar 28, 2014 at 17:32
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    And sorry I had to link it in my answer, never saw the interview or saw it online. Also looming as the norm for new people being born on Gallifrey as far as Timelords but then again New Who is all over the place and constantly rewrites old canon stuff.
    – DoctorWho22
    Mar 28, 2014 at 21:30
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Time Lords have not usually had children in a normal fashion for a while.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Pregnancy

According to one account, all pregnancies on Gallifrey ended in miscarriage when the Pythia cursed her world with sterility. Even Rassilon's wife was said to have endured this curse. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible) This required Time Lords to adopt the asexual "Looming" process of artificial genetic reproduction. This resulted in the elimination of direct, lineal familial relations, rendering all relationships collateral. In other words, Time Lords of the same family (or "Chapterhouse") could at most be only cousins of each other. However, the Pythia's curse did not seem to extend to off-worlders, as Leela was pregnant with Andred's baby. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)

It's possible for The Doctor and River Song to have a child, and it will most definitely be part Timelord. Now if the child will inherit certain traits of Timelords is more difficult to determine, I do not believe there are any legit half Time Lords in existence other than the Meta Crisis Doctor.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Meta-Crisis_Tenth_Doctor

The Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor was a Time Lord/human hybrid and a human incarnation of the Doctor, who possessed one heart, aged as humans did and had no regenerative ability to avoid death. He was created by an instantaneous biological meta crisis and was the final result of the Tenth Doctor's partly sidestepped eleventh regeneration.

This shows that at least in this scenario of a hybrid he doesn't have any distinguishable traits of a Time Lord.

As somebody stated there is an interview where Moffat talks about The Doctor and River having a kid.

http://lifeofwylie.com/2012/12/19/doctor-who-the-snowmen-qa/

Q: “Why does River and the Doctor have babies?” (laughter)

Matt Smith: “That’s a very good question.”

Steven Moffat: “Why don’t they? Well, who’s to say what goes on? We don’t see every chapter of the Doctor’s life. But heaven knows what they’d be like. Can you imagine those two as parents?”

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  • But Lungbarrow conflicts with the TV series--as mentioned at tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Loom in Lungbarrow "looming" was said to create new Gallifreyans as "full-grown adults", but in "The Time Monster" the Third Doctor referred to his having been a "little boy", in "The Sound of Drums" there's a flashback showing the Master as a child, and in "The Day of the Doctor" the Doctor says there were 2.47 billion children on Gallifrey when he used The Moment (and we see footage of some playing).
    – Hypnosifl
    Mar 28, 2014 at 17:56
  • Remember that not all Gallifreyans are Timelords though. It's also possible that The Doctor and the Master were born before The Timelords started looming.
    – DoctorWho22
    Mar 28, 2014 at 18:04
  • I haven't read Lungbarrow, but the plot summary at doctorwhoreviews.co.uk/NA60.htm says 'the TARDIS returns to Lungbarrow: the House where the Doctor was woven', and the "Continuity corner" at the bottom of the page says 'Lungbarrow explains that the Doctor was loomed one Otherstide Eve in the House of Lungbarrow, somewhere in Gallifrey’s Southern Mountain Ranges. In his formative “brain-buffing years”, the Doctor didn’t get along with his family.'Also, tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Pythia says that the infertility was a result of a curse by one of the "Pythia" in Rassilon's time.
    – Hypnosifl
    Mar 28, 2014 at 19:18
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she could not have a full time lord child but it could have time lord traits this similar to Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis because river songs child would probably only have one heart. Though i could be wrong this is a 50-50 percent chance here because if you think of it as breeds of dogs you could get for example one black Labrador and a white Labrador it could be white it could be black or it could even be in between (grey). back onto the subject though the reason i think river probably couldn't have a full time lord child and i say probably for a reason is because she is only part time lord her self not even half because both her parents are human. This also depends on who her other half is. for example if it is a human it is more likely to be more human, but if it was a time lord it could be more likely to be more time lord than human.

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    Could you edit this to explain why you think this is the case? Why would the child only have one heart? You might want to slow down on answering for a moment; quality is better than quantity.
    – TheLethalCarrot ♦
    Apr 3, 2020 at 12:49

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