The Doctor knows what that means: In the Library, River’s first appearance (for us) and the last place she was really alive (instead of just a computer simulation and/or a ghostly afterlife self), she told him that their last date was at the Singing Towers. Because the ship is about get hit by a meteor and crash (that was River’s escape plan), and the planet they’re crashing into is Darillium, home of the Singing Towers. But the episode has something else in store. This scene would have been enough of a Christmas present. Of course, there he actually is, standing right next to her, in the pickle with her after all, and the irony is both delicious and heartbreaking. Loving the Doctor is painful, because she can never bring herself to believe he is capable of loving her back. Her flippant attitude toward him this whole time has been a defense mechanism against feeling alone and abandoned by the one she loves. He’s off doing his own thing, like always. They can search all they want, because there is no way the Doctor would find himself in such a pickle with her. Since River is the “known consort” of the Doctor, it should be a simple matter to use her to discover where he is.īut River doesn’t know, and her speech to that effect finally shows us the truth. In exchange for sparing his life, the ship’s smarmy concierge promises Hydroflax’s robot body the best possible head to replace that of (the soon to be deceased from acute diamond-in-the-brain) Hydroflax: the head of the last of the Time Lords. It is only when the caper looks like it might threaten the Doctor that she reveals her true feelings. Even when the Doctor correctly surmises that she realizes she is probably going to die soon. She maintains her breezy, devil-may-care attitude the whole time. And so on.Īnd at every step of the way, through every reversal, River believes she is basically in control, or that she can regain it. They trap it in the cargo hold, but then the buyer turns out to be a devotee of Hydroflax, so they can’t show him the head with the diamond in it. But his robot body turns out to have a mind of its own, and it pursues them to the ship where they’re meeting the diamond’s buyer. There are a lot of twists and turns in the story: Hydroflax’s head turns out to be detachable, so they take it while he is still alive. River’s not only admitting that she’s been using him, she’s telling him exactly why he’s most susceptible to believing her lies.īut then the script is flipped on us. Perhaps most tellingly, when asked how she got Hydroflax to fall in love with her so quickly, she says that men “will automatically believe any story they’re the hero of.” The look on the Doctor’s face when he hears this is utterly heartbreaking. Asked whether she loves him, she replies no, but he’s terribly useful at times. She admits that she has often stolen the TARDIS and used it for her own purposes, returning it to the same place and time so that the Doctor never knew. And indeed, not knowing she is talking to him, she reveals all sorts of terrible things. Worse than any of that, though, is the notion that she’s been lying to the Doctor all along, using him, the same way she’d been lying to and using Hydroflax. Which frankly makes it seem at first less like a love story and more like a romantic nightmare. And not without a big heaping helping of misdirection. The romance comes all wrapped up in a ripping caper storyline. Of course, we don’t know that’s what it is at first. After the intensity and complexity of the last few episodes (Clara’s dead! The Doctor is tortured for billions of years! Gallifrey’s back! So’s Clara! Sort of!), it feels like the perfect gift. No, this year, instead of giving us a Christmas-themed story, the writers instead decided to give us all a Christmas present: the missing final chapter in the love story of the Doctor and River.
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River Song makes her appearance in a red cloak trimmed in white, but then it’s never seen again. The Doctor shows up wearing holographic antlers, but just for a second. But I do enjoy when the Christmas aspect of the seasonal special is a bit lower-key, as in this year’s installment, “The Husbands of River Song.” The episode begins and ends with scenes set during Christmas, but it’s almost coincidental, and has no real effect on the plot.