Would this explain why in The Big Bang, River can remember Amy before the Doctor is brought back in to existance, as by always being Amy's daughter she would always know who her mother would be....

In the eleventh hour that woman says something among the lines off "Don't I know you from somewhere?" and of course we are meant to believe that she knows about the Doctor because of Amy's stories. But perhaps it is because she has met him before and forgot (thanks to the silence or though this might be a stretch she is fobwatched).

But she dies in the Library! They can't change her dieing in the Library in changes how amazing and sad the River Saga is.

You know, I’ve got to admit, I’m thinking this is just the costume department making use of old bits of costume …

Unless someone’s being REALLY clever …

well, no one ever said that the only place you could store a time lord's timelordiness was inside of a fob watch, did they?

maybe lady time lords put it in broaches.

I don't think River will necessarily stay dead out of the physical world. Heck all a future Doctor needs do is show up at CAL with some ganger goo and connect the computer interface to it and out she comes, solidify her in the TARDIS and walla, Doctor Who pseudo-science save the day again.

If one can't think of at least 10 ways to get River's mind out of the CAL matrix thingy, you prolly aren't very creative.

I don't think the pin though was meant that the old lady was old River. Just recycling by the costume dept. But Moffat could always retconn it...

Oh I know she could come out of the Library, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I don't WANT her to come out of the Library. It puts a nice spin on the story.

Crikey you lot, it's probably very simple: Annette Crosbie's character, Mrs. Angelo, has obviously known Amelia a long time. She's knocking on a bit and probably leaves the brooch to Amy when she dies, and then when Melody/River grows up Amy gives her the brooch. That's probably the justification the props people used. I wouldn't read too far into it.

River is wearing it blatantly and openly in that scene though isn't she? Just sayin'...

When I watched The Eleventh Hour, I made notes about 'Dont I know you from somewhere?', the empty Duck Pond, and the fact that the Post Office is always closed.
I said then that I expected that the Doctor would go back to the village at an earlier time and interact with Annette Crosbie's character.
It would take a bit of explaining for her to be River, but what a joy it would be if thats the extend of Moffat's long game!

ok guys ive just remebered something AMAZING, the old lady in that episode said, "do i know you? i think ive met you before !"

Someone in the props department is having a really good laugh at this one.

Surely this is just reusing a small bit of costume. And I agree, the River storyline is made interesting precisely because we know her ultimate destiny (and that the Doctor also knows, yet lets himself fall in love with her). To mess with that would be highly stupid.

River may have visited a Leadworth charity shop where the woman deposited some things?
Now that's a twist!

In the Forest of Dead, there is no body when River dies.
Thus
A) Has she regenerated and moved on using the vortex manipulator
or
B) She is a ganger and turned to goo when she died....

As this is the first point the Doctor meets River he has no idea who she is, but to stop a paradox he would need to give her a sonic screwdriver in the future...

Maybe River is lying about being Amy's daughter...

Nah. I bet its just reusing of costume the same way a bit of the TARDIS was in Torchwood.

As for I River I think it goes:
[Amy's Baby]>
[Spacesuit Girl]>
[Regeneration]>
[As Yet Unseen River (that will maybe be be next year's companion)]>
[Regeneration(s)]>
[River as we know her]>
[Permanent Death in the Library]

I think she would remember completely, don't you?

It does make one wonder.....
happenstance, significant, or red herring...curiouser and curiouser, as is the mind of Moffat.

During the HBO free-preview weekend last night I caught "The Time Traveler's Wife" which I haven't seen in a while. Many parallels to the River Song thing meeting each other all out of sequence. I was reminded of a dimly remembered bit from the book not in the movie where the wife in extreme old age gets one last visit from her time traveling husband. It's one of those sorts of things that would be interesting to see with River, though maybe not possible if she's a full-on Time Lord genetically.

But if the Doctor resurrects her from the CAL matrix thingy in the Library and she goes on but loses her Time-Lord genetics to regenerate over her lifetime. It would then in the course of the over-arching story be interesting that the Doctor was not only there at her birth (well he was puttering around doing something while Amy & Rory were conceiving!) - well then it would have a full circle closure that the Doctor is also there when River dies of old-age as well.

An aged, Alzheimer suffering River isn't out of the question for the old lady character really. If and old River is there on her deathbed totally forgotten who the Doctor is, or rather tells this 'stranger' "you remind me of someone I used to know - oh he was marvelous - I just can't remember his name." Matt's proved he can do the blubbering, make everyone else cry buckets scene just as well as Tennant could. It's a good idea that Moffat could use.

And one prompted by nothing more than a recycled reuse of a broach prop.icsite

@Mike The Doctors 909, and he doesn't have Alzheimers. And River's, what, 99, and she does?! Regenerate!

mujie, I think you missed my point. What if River's genetic make-up being a sort of proto-Time Lord from human DNA only gives her a couple of regenerations before exhausting that power? The Doctor already said that traveling with those Vortex Manipulators was bad news long term, something to the effect 'time travel without a capsule, nasty business' when he Jack and Rose traveled back from the end of the Universe.

While I don't think the little old lady in Leadworth is an old River, I was just saying I could imagine that River could exhaust whatever Time-Lord like powers she had quickly, age and die like a regular human. And that would be an interesting story to tell, A companion who he did spend a whole lifetime with from literally cradle to grave.

If it's prolonged exposure. That's what makes a vortex manipulator so dangerous. You're going right through the Time Vortex. Remember, the Doctor didn't know she was a Time Lord at that point.

Please tell me you're not being serious in suggesting this...

Well, the make-believe physics of sci-fi in Doctor Who aren't well defined if at all on any subject. I always sort of hated the idea of a wristband time-machine as it sort of demeaned the whole idea of a TARDIS. But it was a deus ex machina kinda thing that RTD loved to use. If it was a 'remote' to signal some sort of mechanism elsewhere in the Universe, a sort of hack technical 'outlaws' like Jack and River used to get around that would be a little less hard to believe. I mean can you imagine the BATTERIES the thing must need?

But that wasn't the thrust of my point, just digressing.

Moffat raises a HUGE detail never before explained about how a Time-Lord becomes a Time-Lord in that episode - that it in some fashion was a progressive natural side-effect of time travel itself. I would have preferred myself if it was some sort of hubris; that the Gallifreyans had used their knowledge to tinker with their own DNA and would explain the at least two class hierarchy seen in the old Baker serial that not all Gallifreyans were time-lords. The idea that this was either done to children or family lines were expected to be proper Time Lords had that imperialistic, pompous sort of feel that a vagabond spirit like the Doctor would rebel against. In a way he becomes like other archetypes, especially in sci-fi. The Doctor is much like Spock for example in many ways. In fact when he invokes the "I'm a Time-Lord" routine to enemies he's really just blustering because he's nothing like their aloof remove from dealing with little people and small problems.

That the Doctor has as he said 'cooked' up a Time-Lord letting Amy & Rory conceive on the TARDIS in flight is a little too pat of a reason why Melody/River seems to be a Time-Lord.

OTOH, one of the puzzling things is River has always talked in the past about the Doctor finding out who she is as though it was going to be a horrible reveal. Even in the episode she says this to Rory like it's going to be a horrible moment! And yet it's a joyous one.

So is another shoe about to drop in the conclusion of this cliff-hanger? Is it about who she kills? Why is she in prison for it if it's the Doctor who clearly can't be dead? Are wall going to join hands again and wishing him back alive? Will his ashes turn back into Matt? WTF?

Regardless of anything else, my money's on River being in the space suit on the beach shooting the Doctor 'dead'. And the TARDIS is under the lake. You heard it here first.

So if River is Melody & we are to believe Melody was in the astronaut suit, and she regenerated in the alley, then what is to say that the old lady isn't in fact a younger River in an earlier regeneration? I'm leaning towards costume malfunction, however. The fob watch, I'm thinking more and more, is unlikely to return under the Moff.

Isn’t River Song the Doctor’s daughter too? Although River can’t be considered a full-blooded Time-Lady (that would diminish what a Timelord is in my humble opinion), the Doctor, the snake lady and the eye batch woman, were all looking at images of the infant River Song’s DNA which included Timelord DNA, so what other Timelord other than the Doctor was on the TARDIS when River Song was conceived?

However, none of this explains why the Doctor is running away from River Song or the great low the Doctor is due to experience, yet it could be the realization that River is partly his daughter and that she killed herself to save him in the Library in Series 4. Which brings up the issue of why didn’t River regenerate after being electrocuted in series 4 if she regenerated in the alley scene when she was a child in series 6? Since River is not a full-blooded Time-Lady her regenerations are limited?

River Song is Rory's daughter, thus the jokes about the name being Melody Williams or Melody Pond.

@Mike I believe when you use a vortex manipulator, you literally thrust yourself through the time Vortex. The TARDIS protects you from the time vortex, but a vortex manipulator doesn't. If you're not partially Time Lord, it could easily kill you.

@mujie That's not true at all. By that logic every single Time Agent like Capt Jack & Capt John (who, as Time Agents, have both been given their own Vortex Manipulators) would ALL be part Time Lord. Remember, the Vortex Manipulator's are Time Agency technology, not anything more fancy like Time Lord or anything.

I said incredibly dangerous. It could have been modified by the Time Agency to make it safer.

@mujie May I ask where you got that info? Your imagination or an actual canonical episode? I certainly havn't ever heard that mention in post-2005 Who, which of course is the only time other that Torchwood that Vortex Manipulators have turned up.