The Eye of the Storm

The Diary of River Song #2.4

Released: 25 December 2016

Listened: 3/21/21

From one new-series tie-in to another. Normally, I credit multi-doctor crossovers to the “newest” Doctor involved, but this story is “owned” by River, so I’m just going to have to cover it twice. Looking at the story from the Seventh Doctor’s point of view, it seems appropriate that it should come at the end of his tenure. He’s not as much playing chessmaster as he’s demonstrating an inability to trust anybody else. He recognizes River, but still doesn’t trust her, so he tries to lock her out of his plan (literally), but it’s less because he’s inherently untrusting and more because he believes he’ll have to violate his code of ethics, and doesn’t want to burden anyone else with that. The story resolves rather abruptly, with River doing something that only River can, and bringing up her own backstory as part of that process. Personally, I’m not too fond of the resolutions where River sees herself as only a tragic adjunct to the Doctor, but this time it saves the world, so OK. And I still find her sparring with the Seventh Doctor while trying to erase his memory to be terribly funny, probably the best such sequence in her series.