40
votes
Why was River Song so slow?
Why didn't River recognize him?
Because he's not supposed to exist. This is highlighted at least once in the episode itself:
[Alphonse pulls out a stack of pictures of the Doctor, from William ...
- 163k
30
votes
Accepted
Why is River Song surprised when the Doctor doesn't recognize her?
She's not sure that Darillium is their last night together.
From The Husbands of River Song:
RIVER: There are stories about us, you know.
DOCTOR: Oh, I dread to think.
RIVER: I look them up sometimes....
- 134k
22
votes
What events was River referring to?
This image might help:
It shows the Doctor's timeline (in blue) and River's (in orange) and how they interact.
The only time the Tenth Doctor meets River is in Silence in the Library and Forest of ...
- 134k
20
votes
Why is River Song surprised when the Doctor doesn't recognize her?
The implications of meeting a younger Doctor didn't immediately set in.
When she sent the message to the Doctor's psychic paper, she was expecting it to go to a different incarnation of the Doctor. ...
- 6,214
20
votes
Why was River Song so slow?
This all seems to stem from what River believes to be a solid fact about The Doctor. The fact that he only has 12 faces or 12 regenerations.
She has pictures of all of his faces which she believes ...
- 15.9k
19
votes
How does River Song know The Doctor's name?
It seems it is still unknown, but...
ALMOST CERTAINLY: The Doctor did not tell River his name during their wedding.
At the end of The Wedding of River Song, River comes to Amy, at her Garden:
...
- 1,477
18
votes
Why not just download River Song?
The library saved those other subjects while they were still alive. It had a complete memory of their living bodies to reconstruct; this is made clear by Donna's outright disappearance and her face's ...
- 14.1k
18
votes
Accepted
How did River Song’s neural relay stay online that long?
"You always knew how I was going to die" - River Song, Forest of the Dead
"The thing is, future me had all that time to think about. To think of a way to save her" - The Doctor, ...
- 20.2k
17
votes
Don't the events of "Forest of the Dead" contradict the fixed point in "The Wedding of River Song"?
Time can be rewritten. At least sometimes.
The whole idea of a "fixed point in time" is that it's one specific event which cannot be changed or rewritten. No matter how much time travel happens ...
- 134k
16
votes
Accepted
Why not just download River Song?
Since River's Physical Body is Dead, Let's Examine Cloning Technology in the Doctor Who universe:
Sontarans: In "The Sontaran Stratagem", the Sontarans are seen to create human clones by growing them ...
- 3,555
14
votes
Who came up with the name Melody Pond?
There is no easy answer
Welcome to the wonderful world of paradoxes.
The naive answer is that Amy and Rory chose the name, on behalf of their childhood friend Mels:
Doctor: Mels, short for...
Mels: ...
- 163k
12
votes
Accepted
Why does this person not try to kill the Doctor at the field?
She answers this rather flippantly in the episode itself:
Doctor: If you were in a hurry, you could've killed me in the cornfield.
River: We'd only just met. I'm a psychopath. I'm not rude.
Doctor ...
- 163k
10
votes
In "Angels Take Manhattan", why couldn't The Doctor just shatter/laser-cut the angel's stone arm and release River?
An Angel survived crashing into a planet during the events of the Byzantium.
There's one survivor. There's a thing in the belly of that ship that can't ever die.
The Time of Angels
What makes you ...
- 4,886
9
votes
Accepted
What events was River referring to?
That won't be revealed until the 2015 Christmas special The Husbands of River Song, so if you haven't watched that far everything here's a spoiler:
Fortunately,
- 4,574
7
votes
Accepted
Are Time Lords vulnerable or invulnerable during regeneration?
As usual, Doctor Who always plays fast and loose with the rules, but there is a bit of consistency here over how this regeneration works.
The general idea appears to be, if you can kill a Time Lord ...
- 103k
7
votes
Accepted
How did River Song know about the meta-crisis Doctor?
There's at least a couple of different ways she could have known about this.
The Doctor told her.
Why wouldn't he tell her? They must have spent a lot of time together prior to "The Husbands of ...
- 134k
7
votes
What events was River referring to?
She is referring to the doctor and River's time spent together. This is her past, but the 10th doctor's future (ie the future of the 10th (David Tennant), 11th (Matt Smith) and 12th (Peter Capaldi) ...
- 3,276
7
votes
Accepted
Why is River Song surprised the ship is heading for Darillium?
It's explained by River's next line after the part you quoted:
RIVER: I had this book. History's Finest Exploding Restaurants. The best food for free. Skip the coffee.
She dug up the ship Hermione-...
- 16.2k
7
votes
Why was River Song so slow?
Hope can twist your mind.
River wanted this badly. She knew she wanted it badly. She probably suspected very early but ignored the voice screaming "it's him" in her mind because that voice sounds ...
- 350
7
votes
Why not just download River Song?
In this story, we see evidence of three different methods for entering CAL's cyberspace world. There is CAL herself. There are the 4,023 (including Donna) who were physically teleported.&...
- 1,072
5
votes
Who came up with the name Melody Pond?
Nobody: it was a bootstrap paradox.
From the episode Let's Kill Hitler:
DOCTOR: Mels. Short for ...
MELS: Melody.
AMY: Yeah. I named my daughter after her.
DOCTOR: You named your daughter ...
- 134k
5
votes
Accepted
When has River met with the 8th Doctor, in her timeline?
River's line in "Silence in the Library" cannot be literally true.
During "The Husbands of River Song," which is chronologically very shortly before "Silence in the Library" in River's timeline, she ...
- 9,433
4
votes
Accepted
Why didn't the Judas tree poison kill River too?
I think I finally worked it out.
The poison itself couldn't trigger the regeneration, that's why the Doctor was dying. But Melody/River was already regenerating. That enabled her to use the Judas ...
- 1,040
4
votes
How does River Song know The Doctor's name?
He whispers it in her ear during The Wedding of River Song.
DOCTOR: Amy, uncuff me now. Okay, I need a strip of cloth about a foot long. Anything will do. Never mind.
(The Doctor takes off his ...
- 9,110
4
votes
Accepted
Is Lorna Bucket actually Melody Pond AKA River Song?
I am wondering if you have seen the whole of the rest of the season. If not, stop reading and carry on watching as below are spoilers that show exactly why this cannot be the case.
In a word, no, she ...
- 19.4k
3
votes
Accepted
How does the Silence train / raise this person?
She has been brainwashed
From "Let's Kill Hitler" (S06E08):
MELODY: Well, now, enough of all that! (pulls a gun and aims It at the
DOCTOR) Down to business.
DOCTOR: Oh, hello. I thought we ...
- 115k
3
votes
How does the Silence train / raise this person?
Well, we aren't shown a lot of the time that the character in question is held by the Silence.
However, in Let's Kill Hitler, we see that the character has a very clear compulsion - which was ...
- 45.5k
3
votes
Is River Song based on Mara Jade?
No. In Love with the Mark (warning: TvTrope) is a common trope and there is no reason for River Song to have been specifically based off of any previous iteration of that trope.
- 32.5k
3
votes
Accepted
Who was girl that regenerated at "Day of the moon" from doctor who
It's River Song, as explained later in the season during the episode "Let's Kill Hitler", as Mels starts to regenerate after being shot:
(Emphasis mine)
DOCTOR: Back! Back! Back! Get back!
...
- 7,093
2
votes
How did River Song know about the meta-crisis Doctor?
I believe that River knew because of the constant diary comparisons with the Doctor. I believe he let something slip, like how River mentioned the crash of the Byzantium in "Silence in the Library".
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