The Eye of the Storm

The Diary of River Song #2.4

Released: 25 December 2016

Listened: 7/30/20

This story features both the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, but I can’t place it definitely in either timeline, because River is the main character. So I’ll just have to cover it twice. There’s an apocalypse going on, coinciding with the Great Storm of 1703, and both the Sixth and Seventh Doctors are trying to stop it, from opposite directions, with River caught in the middle. We haven’t seen these two Doctors meeting very often in this timeline, but at least here, they really don’t get along. This seems to be the “chessmaster” version of the Seventh Doctor, and he’s got no patience for anybody else trying to have their own plans. In fact, both the Doctors seem to be indulging the worst aspects of their personalities: The Sixth Doctor is arrogant, bombastic, romantic, and prone to large gestures, including the sacrifice play. The Seventh Doctor is cynical, scheming, and determined to work alone. And both of them think they know best, which is often true, but they’re unaware they’re in a River story. River gets to the core of both of them: she finds the Sixth Doctor’s confidence romantic, but needs to bull over him sometimes. She doesn’t seem to like the Seventh Doctor very much, but she’s aware that underneath, he’s not as ruthless as he acts, and she wants to rescue him from that. Big Finish seems to have realized, even in boxed set #2, that they can’t have River continually hiding her identity from the Doctor, so she’s more honest with them, and then cleans up at the end. That’ll become a cliche in itself, but the last scene with the Seventh Doctor is excellent. Like most new-series spin-offs, it has a faster pace and is more peril-driven than other stories, but it’s a lot of fun. And that’s the last we’ll see of River in this project for a while.