Talk:River Song

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Revisiting the split pages decision

Almost ten years ago, it was decided that River incarnations were to be all merged under a single page. However, more recent decision led me to propose we split the River pages again into new incarnations. They are as follow:

• Put simply, River Song is a name that applies only to her third incarnation. It's as wrong to call the baby Amy gave birth to, or the young girl that was Amy and Rory's childhood friend "River Song" than it would be to call the incarnation of the Doctor who fought in the Time War by "Twelfth Doctor", "the Curator" or "War Curator", even though these are all names used by future versions of him. In fact, this was one of the reasons I argued so hard that the Eleven's incarnations absolutely could not have a single page a few years ago. The same surely applies to River.
• As has been done with several Time Lords recently, splitting their incarnations into a single page allows better coverage and readability.
• Naming the majority of pages regarding this character would be extremely easy (something which was argued otherwise in the original discussion). It's very explicit that River/Melody had three incarnations:
  • From birth to the little girl from The Impossible Astronaut we see regenerating on the streets of New York
  • Mels Zucker, who grew up alongside her parents
  • River Song her third and final incarnation
• Now, that only leaves the problem of whether to use "Melody Pond" to her first incarnation or the overall page. As Mels also uses the name on her deathbed, and River Song also uses her real name on A Good Man Goes to War (TV story) to reveal her true identity, I'd vote for keeping Melody Pond for the overall page, while using "little girl" for the first incarnation (as she was credited as such).
• Mind you, it wouldn't be the first time we use credits/conjectural names for a Time Lord splitting, as per Renegade Time Lord (The Eleven). And, like that page, the bad term also happens to describe the exact subject we're talking about, as River/Melody was also the Impossible Astronaut.

As always, feel free to make any further suggestions and/or edit my sandbox pages. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 16:52, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I am in support of this split. I agree that Melody Pond should go to the overall page as it was used by all incarnations to a degree. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 18:52, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the split, and I agree that Melody Pond would be best for the overall page name. LauraBatham ☎ 07:47, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I also think this is a good idea, but why not use Melody Pond for both the main page and her first incarnation? "Little girl" will have to be dabbed anyway, so why not use Melody Pond (The Impossible Astronaut) instead? Danochy ☎ 12:39, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I think 'Little Girl' is better for the incarnations navigation template. It accords both with the credits of the episode, with dialogue to an extent (the characters do call her "the Little Girl" for lack of a better term at some points in the script of The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon), and with how non-Wiki-editing fans would usually speak of her if discussing River's incarnations. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 12:50, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

With the template, sure, but templates needn't use just page names. The name "Melody Pond" is more accurate than "little girl" in that regard, especially in light of her other appearance (albeit as a Flesh clone for most(?) of her on-screen time) where her identity as Melody is quite important. Also I just realised that her first appearance is actually Prequel (The Impossible Astronaut) which rather throws a spanner in the works for that dabbing. Danochy ☎ 13:05, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

When I was thinking on how to title the first incarnation page, I cycled through [[Little girl (The Impossible Astronaut)]], [[Melody Pond (The Impossible Astronaut)]] and [[Melody Pond's first incarnation]], but went with the former because it was the only one of these to already exist. In all honesty, I'm happy with either options.

As for the technicality of Prequel (The Impossible Astronaut).... yeah, it's not optimal. Using DPL, the only match for a page dabbed with a prequel is Silent (Prequel (The Impossible Astronaut)), so we could go with [[Little girl (Prequel (The Impossible Astronaut))]] or [[Melody Pond (Prequel (The Impossible Astronaut))]], but I half-think we "overlook" this mistake, in order to achieve a simpler dab and avoid the double parenthesis. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 22:20, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Of course Melody Pond's first incarnation is a good option if we want to avoid the dabbing dilemma. But otherwise I'm also happy to overlook the prequel or to otherwise consider it a part of the TV story for the purposes of dabbing the character. Danochy ☎ 23:08, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay, hold the phone, where exactly did we get Prequel (The Impossible Astronaut) from anyway? On the BBC website this is called The Prequel to Episode 1. That title's not going to win any awards, but we do have precedents for using such "functional" titles like we would normal titles, such as The Novel of the Film, so… why don't we call this thing The Prequel to Episode 1 (webcast)? Granted I'm not thrilled about the prospect of Little girl (The Prequel to Episode 1) but it wouldn't have any double-parentheses.

But… We also need to discuss the option of the Little Girl. There are other "little girls" in the DWU, but she is the only one whom the Doctor & friends referred to, for several months, over the course of The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, as the Little Girl. Interestingly, the adult River Song herself uses "the Little Girl" several times in dialogue in Day of the Moon, which is interesting if we want to talk self-identification…

Now granted, "The Little Girl" isn't intended to be, or presented as, a "the" name in quite the same way as "The Doctor" or even "The Editor — but I would point to The Woman (Hell Bent) and The Woman (The End of Time) as precedents for using the credited "the Something" descriptor as a page name even though it's unlikely the characters would introduce themselves with "Hello, I'm usually referred to as the Woman". Also, the way we titled our page about Tzim-Sha "Tim Shaw" for quite some time, for as long as we lacked certainty on the spelling of "Tzim-Sha", is precedent for the idea that when the other potential names are unviable,- we do sometimes use the name Team TARDIS give an entity, even if we have reason to suspect the entity called itself something else. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:26, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I would much rather the prequel name stay as it is, to be honest, and just bend the first appearance dabbing rule (if we were to go down that road). There are a lot of "episode 1"s, making the searchability pretty poor. Though we could always name it "Prequel to The Impossible Astronaut", such as it is on imdb. LauraBatham ☎ 02:07, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I think that the Prequel(s) current name(s) just come from a lack of title cards, and if they're Prequels to release X, instinctively they're titled [[Prequel (release X)]] (that's certainly what I did when creating a few of the recent Big Finish ones)

Now, as for using The Little Girl as a title... well, as you pointed you it could work, as precedent exists, but I think that works well enough in the lack of any other names. Like, if it was a random unnamed Time Lord Little Girl we saw regenerating, and then later in a spacesuit etc, I'd 100% agree with you. But as soon as we learn that Little Girl is actually Melody Pond/River as a little girl (sans capital letters), I personally think the argument looses strength a bit. Right now, I'm leaning either for Little girl (The Impossible Astronaut) (no capital letters), or Melody Pond's first incarnation, to circumvent the dabbing issues. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 02:23, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Well not this is a coincidence if I ever saw one. Big Finish has recently released a webcast (The Story of the Diary of River Song) which recaps a lot of River's adventures and her timeline and, little do we know, they mention both of their previous incarnations. Aside from referring the River by her birth name of Melody Pond, River herself calls her second incarnation Mels Zucker (the full name), while her first incarnation is called (guess what) little girl.

Now, I'll not give any rulings, given I was the one to start the discussion, but this serves as a quite nice food for thought, and a bump in the talk page as well. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 16:41, 3 August 2021 (UTC)