Rivers of Light (audio story)

Rivers of Light
Main character(s):	River Song
Featuring:	Third Doctor, Liz Shaw, the Brig
Main enemy:	The Master
Main setting:	Yorkshire, 1970s
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Lisa McMullin
Director:	Ken Bentley
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Howard Carter
Sound:	Howard Carter
Release details
Number of parts:	1
Release number:	9.4
Part of:	New Recruit
Release date:	27 October 2021
Format:	1 CD Download 4th of 4 stories
Production code:	BFPDWRIVER09
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-83868-726-7 (physical); ISBN 978-1-83868-727-4 (digital)
The Diary of River Song
← Previous	Never Alone
Next →	The Two Rivers

Rivers of Light was the fourth and final story of The Diary of River Song audio anthology New Recruit. It was written by Lisa McMullin and featured Alex Kingston as River Song, Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor, Daisy Ashford as Liz Shaw and Jon Culshaw as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and The Master.

Publisher's summary

In a Yorkshire mining town, strange temporal distortions and rivers of light crossing forests are enough to get the Brigadier’s attention, and UNIT is mobilised.

But the Doctor is back, and he wants to know who’s been messing around in his laboratory. River’s reasons for being on Earth are about to be revealed...

Plot

to be added

Cast

• River Song - Alex Kingston
• The Doctor - Tim Treloar
• Liz Shaw - Daisy Ashford
• Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart / The Master - Jon Culshaw
• Gemma - Dominique Moore
• Simon - James MacNaughton

Worldbuilding

Time Lords

• Unbeknownst to the Third Doctor and UNIT, River Song pretends to be working with the UNIT-era Master. She then proceeds to hand him over to the Time Lords.
• Rather than tell the Doctor her true identity and relation to him, she claims that she is from the Celestial Intervention Agency.

Species

• River sends the Doctor on a wild goose chase hunting for Sensorites.

River Song

• Yet again, River ends her meeting with the Doctor by erasing his memory in order to keep their personal timelines intact and paradox free. This time around, she uses mnemonic wine.
• The Doctor accurately surmises that River will be quite an important person at some point.
• During her time at UNIT, River has been charging her vortex manipulator. During this adventure, she uses it as a means of transport. The Doctor sees this transport as crude and warns Liz Shaw against joining River on her travels.

Notes

• River Song gives up trying to date this adventure and references the real-life UNIT dating controversy, which was initially created by Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart's impossible retirement date given in the TV episode Mawdryn Undead. Numerous other adventures, whilst on television or in other media, also add to the problem. It has since been made somewhat "official" in the lore of Doctor Who and has been referenced in works such as The Split Infinitive, which sees the sixties and the seventies being pulled towards one-another. The Eighth Doctor Adventure novel Interference shows Sarah Jane Smith uncertain as to which decade the UNIT adventures took place from her own point of view, with the Doctor simpy using "temporal slippage" as an explanation. What makes Rivers of Light unique is that River Song herself is within the paradox and notices its effects first-hand.

Continuity

• River has been charging her vortex manipulator since she's been at UNIT. (TV: The Pandorica Opens et al)
  • The Third Doctor scoffs at the usage of a vortex manipulator as a mode of transport. The Tenth Doctor will do much the same at Jack Harkness' vortex manipulator, much to the amusement of Martha Jones. (TV: Utopia)
• The Doctor has been off hunting Sensorites. (TV: The Sensorites et al)
• River has reinstalled the TARDIS control console in the TARDIS. (TV: The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno)
• River says she's from the CIA. (TV: The Deadly Assassin et al)
• The Doctor finds River's handcuffs. (TV: Forest of the Dead et al)
• The Doctor warns River that she could have died. Upon hearing this she jokes "not today". (TV: Forest of the Dead)
• This isn't the first time the Master will meet River Song. They will meet numerous times in his future, and in four other incarnations. (AUDIO: The Bekdel Test, et al)
• River wipes the Doctor's memory once again to maintain the stability of the timeline. (AUDIO: The Eye of the Storm, et al)
• The Third Doctor will later share an adventure with River Song without even knowing. (AUDIO: Peepshow)
• River finds it impossible to accurately date this episode due to how the UNIT dating protocols work. In 2013, Kate Stewart also found it similarly difficult to locate one of "her father's old files" and suggests the UNIT employees try either "the seventies or eighties". (TV: The Day of the Doctor) Other such people to notice this phenomena were Sarah Jane Smith, and the Seventh Doctor and Ace. (PROSE: Interference, AUDIO: The Split Infinitive)

External links

• Official Rivers of Light page at bigfinish.com