Overanalysis Of and WMG About River Song

My dears, I am far overdue for another Doctor Who-themed post. I'm sorry if you do not watch or do not like Doctor Who—in the case of the former, it's a great show and you should give it a chance; in case of the latter, I cluck my tongue at you in disappointment (unless I've forced you to watch it, in which case I'm now spending a moment feeling sorry for you.) Later I'll post a very lazy post about some short stories I wrote a couple days ago while waiting to tour a brewery. Aw yeah.

The spoilers for series four, five, and the first half of six start here. I haven't seen any of the second half of series six yet, so these theories might already have been jossed. Please to not tell me. I'd like to stay in my fluffy cloud of frantic not-knowing for the next year until Netflix gets series six part two on streaming. Dayum.

Anyway, I've spent some time obsessively analyzing some of River Song's Doctor Who episodes, including the Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead and The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone two-parters, and most of series six part one. Wikipedia and other such sources contributed to my theories. By now, I've come to some conclusions.

• *ahemahem* SILENCE in the Library, FOREST of the Dead, and FLESH and Stone. Silence: series 6 baddies that look like the Slender Man. Forest: The only water in the forest is the river, a clue to River's true identity. Flesh: flesh avatars, otherwise known as a clever way to explain the fact that Amy has been pregnant for the entire sixth series without, like, doing another Amy's Choice thing. Clever, Moffat, clever. 

• Let's consider the background detail/nerd hook of the spacesuits from the Library episodes being in the dropship in The Time of Angels. This may imply that River goes to the Library soon after the Angel episodes, except that she's a doctor in that episode, not a professor. How long does it take to get a professorship? 

• Melody's life-support unit is a spacesuit. In the Library episodes, River wears a spacesuit. Foreshadowing/backshadowing/symbolism?

• Although an astronaut does shoot the Doctor, and Melody was living in a spacesuit at the time, I doubt that the killer astronaut is River. It seems a little obvious, and there are some details that just don't work out. 

• Related to the above, WHY did River shoot at the astronaut after it shot the Doctor? If she really was the astronaut, she would have been around eight or nine at the time. Little Melody probably would have remembered shooting the Doctor twice. Perhaps when she regenerated, she lost her memories for some reason. Maybe she knew/remembered that Eyepatch-Lady-I-can't-spell-her-name turned Melody into a weapon, but that still doesn't explain why she shot at herself. 

• In The Impossible Astronaut, what's with the picture of Amy and her daughter? Amy looks really happy, so I doubt it was taken around the time of A Good Man Goes To War. Logically, it must come from the future, most likely after the gang rescues Melody. ('Cause they're totally gonna.)
• Off-topic, but Moffat confirmed that River's sonic squareness gun from the Library episodes is Captain Jack Harkness' from his first episodes. Even if he left it in the TARDIS, it was probably lost when the TARDIS regenerated. Maybe Idris!TARDIS will return somehow, and for some reason she'll give River the gun. Maybe Jack and River meet, and she gets the gun from him. I'd like to see that episode. 

We know that Moffat was planning all this right from the beginning, the brilliant troll. Therefore, everything could mean something. Not every detail, but any detail. (<-- Obligatory Library reference)

In conclusion…this. Which also doubles as today's Awesome Thing. Does that still exist?

"What does it mean? What does it mean?"

Ireland, pt 5: I Lost My Notebook

Look, I'm just going to stop making excuses for not writing. Camp has been controlling my life. But now I'm back on track, so I'm good. It's cool, it's cool! Right?

What's not good is that I lost my notebook. Hey, I don't claim to be a person who can hold on to something for half an hour without losing it in the deep, dark abyss that is my room. I'll try to write from memory, but, as we all know, my memory is crap.

Okay, let's see… Oh! I remember what I did that day! We went back to the Tall Ships Festival and while we was selling CDs, Dean and I got hassled by a small group of ten-year-old Irish boys. It was hilarious!

…

That's all I remember. What else did I do? Think, think…

I think…I woke up. Yes, I'm fairly sure I did that. I remember having breakfast, but…let's just say I had yogurt. When in doubt, I had yogurt for breakfast. That was my staple food in Ireland.

Yogurt.

Yogurt.

Well, after that…I went and picked strawberries! Let's just say I picked strawberries. And while I was picking those strawberries — which tasted really nasty, because I had just brushed my teeth — in came the peacock, over the garden wall!

This story interesting so far? Good.

While I was shying away from said peacock, him ignored me and walked through a clump of vines on the wall.

"Since when were there vines on the wall?"

Aw, crap. The exorcism didn't hold. Shut up a minute, Claudia.

Curious, I followed him and found myself in a glade of pine trees.

"Here we go again…"

Pine trees, yeah? So I followed the peacock to a river, where there was a dock and a tiny boat. I got in the boat with the peacock, and then he bit the rope keeping us by the dock and we sailed down the river. Well, boated. There wasn't a sail.

Later, we drifted to a stop next to a large, gleaming city populated entirely by tiny owls. Owls, yeah. While the peacock and I were walking around the city, it became apparent that the original human inhabitants had all died and disintegrated for some reason.

"Now you're just quoting the synopsis of your original novel idea, the one you dropped in favor of that superhero story."

The peacock and I entered the royal library, where we found a scroll. This scroll explained what happened to the citizens of Pelycis —

"You're going to have to get going if you want to make it back in time to be hassled by small Irish boys."

Oh no, I forgot!

Um, then the peacock turned on me and chased me into a portal, which brought me out in the living room of my cottage. I got dressed and then we went to the Tall Ships Festival. The end.

[DISCLAIMER: None of the above may be true.]

Ireland, pt 4: Ships Are Tall

I wrote most of that morning, as Camp NaNoWriMo had just started and I was freaking out that I wouldn't be able to finish. Later, we went to the Waterford Tall Ships Festival very very early, because the people we were going with were playing music and stuff.

After walking around for a while and going on a pretty cool ship with an unfortunate name (the Christian Radich/Radish), I complained of hunger. My parents, being the indulging parents that they are, bought me a banana and Nutella crepe. Have I ever mentioned that Nutella may be the best food on the planet?

Oh my gawd. WANT.

By this time, I was starting to feel a leetle bit sick to my stomach. It wasn't the Nutella and banana-y goodness, I promise. As we walked around town I slowly turned into a tiny, flesh-eating ball of rage and stomach pain. Or maybe that's just because we stopped at a library (a really COOL library) and I read the beginning of a zombie novel.

And then, we went to a chip shop. I did not have chips, as I was in pain. At the beginning of the trip, at least, it seemed like the universe was conspiring against me, and I would never have any chips. EVER. (But then a few days later I had cheese chips on an Irish beach. BOO-YAH!)

Funny how the first picture on Google Images of "chips" is of British chips, and not Pringles or something.

And then we walked back to the place where the people were music-ing and I sat on a brick. And then I got to sit on a chair and then we left.

THINGS SEEN AT WATERFORD:

- Japanese Teletubby balloons
- People dressed as giant blue bird-alien things
- A Guinness picnic in front of the stage
- Creepy stalker bees

And then we played International Rummy until midnight while others were at a pub. I lost.

Ireland, pt 3: Butter

(Sorry to leave you hanging like that. It won't happen again, again.)

So, I woke up pretty early the next day. Before anyone else did, I mean. Waaaay before everyone else did. I snuck downstairs like a secret agent, using a trick I learned from Nancy Drew, and spent several long, antagonizing minutes trying to open a granola bar as quietly as possible. After The Parents woke up, I had toast and took a shower before going strawberry picking.

It should be noted that I have absolutely no memory of this. I'm just getting it from my carefully jotted down notes.

That day we took a car ride to Cork, and it apparently took long enough for me to initiate Emergency Boredom Buster Level 5: Hangman on my dad. I do remember that it took us a while to find a parking space for our giant epic van.

Let's just pretend it looked like that, all right?

And so we went to the mall. There was some really cool and very well done graffiti in the ladies' room, and I can assure you that I'm kicking myself for leaving my phone in Indianapolis and therefore not getting a picture. There was also a really cool escalator.

I got a cheese and onion sandwich for lunch—it's better than it sounds…kind of—and then I, my parents, and some other people set off for the butter museum!

Yes, there is really a butter museum in Cork.

Anyhoo, I spent most of my time there sitting in the back stairwell listening to a repeating radio short about butter. I thought it was awesome. That's just the sort of person I am.

After leaving the butter museum, we walked around Cork for an eternity. While we were in a bookstore we saw some guy get arrested in front of the camera store across the street, the same camera store where my mom's camera was getting fixed. …And that's all I remember from Cork. La-di-da!

Well, that and the fact that the parking garage must have been designed by B. S. Johnson. It took us ten or fifteen minutes to maneuver our large van out of that stupid parking space. But we did it! Specifically, Deb, the driver, did it. She must be some sort of goddess.

Okay, so my notes say we went to a museum. What museum? I can't remember what museum we went to! But, apparently, we went back to the cottages afterwards and stopped for a bite to eat on the way. And we stopped at one of those roadside castle once owned by Sir Raleigh. They're everywhere in Ireland. It's like a plague.

Hmm…a plague of castles. I like it.

Got home. Slept. The end.

Ireland, pt 2: Sleep Much Want

Sorry to leave you hanging like that, but I was really tired and stressed after being awake for 20 hours straight. Now I'm not as tired and stressing over only having about five thousand words done for Camp NaNoWriMo. Eep.

What's more fun than going through airport security? What's fun to pretend to crush while looking out an airplane window? What would I rather do than have jet lag?

The answer to all three is "anything and everything." It also pretty much sums up that whole thing that was happening that very annoying and stressful Tuesday.

Well, I left the plane minus one cell phone carrying pictures of the Epic Emily. (Which, I have recently found out, never actually made it on the plane. It's still in the States somewhere, and Friends are looking for it, after finding and losing it again. I love them.)

I waited and waited and waited at three different airports, a car rental place, and at the cottages for some reason I can't remember I was sleep deprived stop looking at me like that!

Anyway, cottages. Five of 'em. With a sheep/goat/cow pen adjacent. I just can't enjoy farm animals anymore, after having cleaned up after them for… Wait, was that only two years? Wow. Seemed like longer.

Not very much like that at all.

But that's a story for another day.

There's also the peacock, which makes this ungodly noise like my cat crying to be let into my room while I'm trying to write because I'm so behind on my word count *sob*, and a lot of other birds.

Pretty bird.

After pretty much passing out in my bed, I was dragged, feebly kicking and screaming, for a hike. Well, hike doesn't really do it justice. It was more wandering around with my parents and the lone other under-18-year-old of our giant group, trying to find a ruined castle.

Guess what. There wasn't a castle.

(Actually, my dad and I found the castle later, but that's another day. And it wasn't a castle, it was a church.)

So we walked back to the cottages and had soup and cheese and bread with the rest of our group. Then I kind of passed out in my bed again. The End.

Next time on Newfallen Mystery, Omnia climbs out the living room window and runs around the farm barefoot.