Reminder: Doctor VERY Married

I have ambivalent feelings for Steven Moffat (I resent that he’s left River dead/”saved” in the Library while making Clara immortal and I resent aspects of “Husbands of River Song” even while I love others and I also resent how he sort of retconned the whole Doctor/River relationship into a dysfunctional/unhappy one in “Angels Take Manhattan” with just a few lines), but I gotta say . . . he sure is doing just about everything possible to make sure River Song, and her privileged position as the Doctor’s wife, is in the forefront of viewers minds before he passes the reins to the new showrunner Chibnall among rumors that BBC wants to return to ‘a dashing young Doctor’ + female companion formula, a rumor which to me suggests they also probably want a romancy-wancy dynamic between the Doctor and the companion . . . or the Doctor and someone. Chibnall and his writers can still just pretend River Song didn’t exist and never mention her, if they choose, as if that chapter never happened or is something the Doctor has put behind him and completely moved on from, but doing so will be a lot more noticeable to the general audience (as opposed to River fans in particular) now than it would have been if Chibnall’d been starting after S8&S9 when, excluding the Christmas special “Husbands,” River had been mentioned in two episodes over two and a half seasons and, most of the rest of the time, Doctor seemed to have forgotten her (especially when he was so keen to be Clara’s boyfriend and then jealous of Danny Pink). Even in “Husbands,” once he got to Darillium, he seemed all too okay with the idea that “times end,” all too resigned to letting his time with her end rather than fighting to avoid it. Now, 50 or more years after Darillium, he’s keeping her photograph in front of him and talking to it (and maybe more significantly, listening to it, illustrating on screen for the first time the truth of what he told her on Trenzalore: “You are always here to me. And I always listen. And I can always see you.”) and carrying her diary in his jacket (only makes sense that the real Doctor does that too) and talking about how what we’re all looking for is “someone who’s looking for us” and how “time doesn’t pass” and we can “stand together forever.” Plus, we now know that River Song, who knew she was going to die and made advance arrangements for the care and keeping of her Doctor, is still looking out for him, body and soul, from beyond the grave. And that her belief in him, her belief in what he believes about goodness and the fact she loves him for that belief, is enough to allow him to be the Doctor even when he’s not even real, is nothing but a “jumped-up little subroutine” in a computer simulation. She’s still saving him. And we’ve got another half a season of this--hopefully there’ll be more of this--to go.

Fan Theory: Tying the Vault to UNIT’s Origins and Alex Kingston’s Would-Be Favorite “Tom Baker” Episode and the S10 Return of River Song (Because I CAN--mwahaha)

There’s been a lot of discussion of what’s in the vault the Doctor is guarding, but it seems fandom hasn’t spent much time considering how he ended up with this obligation or when--or why he’s carrying it out on Earth.

Bill tells us that people at the university say the Doctor has been lecturing there for approximately 50 (or 70, according to Nabeela in the office) years. Presumably he only started lecturing at the university when he took up vault-guarding duties there. If Bill’s time is 2017, then that means the Doctor has been guarding the vault since 1947ish or 1967ish. Unless he time-traveled to a different year to begin guarding it, it might mean that whatever events led to imprisoning someone in the vault happened ‘round about either 1947 or 1967. If the events happened on Earth, the most conservative assumption is that the Doctor stayed there in that time and has been guarding his prisoner since then. If they happened elsewhere, of course, and the Doctor chose Earth as his prison venue, the Earth year he starts guarding in becomes pretty much irrelevant, so let’s explore the other assumption. SPOILERS ahead, sweeties. But only one and only about about the fact a certain organization is appearing in S10.

Enjoy this as the willfully, ludicrously wild speculation that it is. 

Her Nights Weren’t Enough

DOCTOR: “You could come with us.” RIVER: “I escape often enough, thank you. And I have a promise to live up to. You'll understand soon enough.” 

DORIUM: “And Dr. Song? In prison all her days?” DOCTOR: “Her days, yes. Her nights . . . well, that's between her and me, eh?” DOCTOR: *deletes himself from every database in the universe * RIVER: “Oh, I was pardoned ages ago. And it's Professor Song to you.” DOCTOR: “Pardoned?” RIVER: “Mmm. Turns out the person I killed never existed in the first place. Apparently, there's no record of him. It's almost as if someone's gone around deleting himself from every database in the universe.” DOCTOR: “You said I got too big.” RIVER: “And now no one's ever heard of you. Didn't you used to be somebody?” DOCTOR: “Weren't you the woman who killed the Doctor?” RIVER: “Doctor who?”

DOCTOR: “Travel with me, then.” RIVER: “Whenever and wherever you want.” DOCTOR: “What, in the end, are any of us looking for? We're looking for someone who's looking for us.”

BILL: “What do we do?” DOCTOR: “I don't know. She's not chasing you; she's inviting you. Release her! Release her from her promise.”

DOCTOR: “It's a big universe, but maybe one day we'll find her.”