Excellent River Song from Big Finish

[beccaelizabeth]

I have just listened to
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-death-and-life-of-river-song-series-01-last-words-3027
The Death and Life of River Song series 01
which is set after River dies at the library.

So the first question is, why wouldn't the Doctor redownload her if it is at all possible?
And the answer is, getting her out nearly crashed the library, and everyone else in it.
An answer that preserves the status quo.

I just deleted a lot of me poking the wiki and quibbling the timeline. But this is Doctor Who, so time works on vibes and the general feeling it probably fits in somewhere. So that's okay...

River is woken up just before a scheduled apocalypse and the story ends with Nerva Beacon and the solar flares. And I really liked the ending. River brings her life experience and her belief in What Would The Doctor Do, and does amazing things.

The interesting bit with this set of stories is: her diary is full. She died, and he knows that. And she has been living on in the afterlife he found for her, but without him.

Basically we've seen how the Doctor copes when he finally loses River, but this is River when she has logically lost the Doctor.

And she keeps on telling her diary that this is how it works, someone lives on, and that's okay.

... she's really working on it being okay.

And you get some compare and contrast in ways that would be Spoilers.

There's a lot of running around and spending four discs in one set of weeks at the end of this particular version of Earth, so we get an interesting slice of viewpoints there.

It's just very very good.


I want to stop reviewing it and tell you to go listen to it.

Many big feelings and excellent angles.




Also this week I listened to two of the Main Range for the first time:

Muse of Fire with 7 Ace Hex, which was an Iris Wildthyme adventure and... she's always a lot and not quite my thing.

and

The Quantum Possibility Engine, 7 Ace Mel when Big Finish had Mel rejoin them after Hex left.
... the plot doesn't suck or anything and it does use the uploaded into alternate versions of their lives to say something about them, but I'm not quite keen on what it did there.
Also the way Mel behaves I cannot make sense of in my head, it was just lead up to the Doctor telling her not to make secret plans and be manipulative.
7, saying that.
And Ace calling him out on the absolute whopper of a hypocrisy.
So it leads up to a done as you did, sure, but to get there it puts Mel in trouble an earlier story got her out of and then has her try to fix it by getting people out of danger by putting them in danger.
So I didn't really follow it around that corner and the story felt a bit wrong because of that.

I did like the bit where one set of aliens are always on camera so they do three different takes of every reaction so they can control their image later. That was funny. Can use that for mirrors.

So, good bits but didn't grab me.



I still listen to audios more than I do most things, so I like them plenty well enough.


Also, I have realised I'm not reading much fanfic at all lately.
Because all I am read listen watching is Whoniverse, and I am not running out of that any time soon.

Which is ace.

Comments

[anne_d]

It’s good someone’s thinking about River’s side of the story.