The Furies (audio story)

The Furies
Main character(s):	River Song
Featuring:	Brooke 2, Fifth Doctor
Main enemy:	Madame Kovarian
Main setting:	Concorde Well
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Matt Fitton
Director:	Ken Bentley
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Howard Carter
Sound:	Howard Carter
Cover by:	Tom Webster
Release details
Number of parts:	1
Release number:	3.4
Part of:	The Diary of River Song: Series Three
Release date:	23 January 2018
Format:	1 CD Download 4th of 4 stories
Production code:	BFPDWRIVER03
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-78703-493-8 (physical); ISBN 978-1-78703-494-5 (digital)
The Diary of River Song
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Next →	Time in a Bottle

The Furies was the fourth and final story of the audio anthology, The Diary of River Song: Series Three, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Matt Fitton and featured Alex Kingston as River Song, Frances Barber as Madam Kovarian and Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor.

Publisher's summary

Stories of the Furies abound across the cosmos: vengeful spirits hounding guilty souls to death. Madame Kovarian taught them to a child raised in fear, trained to kill, and placed inside a spacesuit.

Kovarian knows the universe’s greatest threat, the Doctor must be eliminated. An assassin was created for that purpose.

But if Melody Pond has failed, Kovarian will simply have to try again...

Plot

to be added

Cast

• River Song - Alex Kingston
• Madame Kovarian - Frances Barber
• The Doctor – Peter Davison
• Brooke 2 - Nina Toussaint-White
• H-One / H-Two / Mission Captain - Francesca Zoutewelle
• O / The Deterrent - Pippa Bennett-Warner

Uncredited cast

• Andrew Edwardson - Peter Davison

Worldbuilding

• Kovarian references implementing neural blocks on Melody and her clones to make sure they could never kill her.
• O is said to be able to take down a fleet of Sontarans with one arm tied behind her back.
• Kovarian and River recall the latter's parents as "the ginger one" and "the other one" respectively.
• Ancient Earth, Mars, Draconia and Sontar all have an equivalent of the mythological furies.
• H-Two suggests contacting Mother Lem.
• River notes that the Headless Monks and the Silence have "washed their hands" of Kovarian since the Battle of Demons Run.
• River characterises herself and her sisters as "Proto-Time Lords".

Notes

• This is the first Big Finish story to make direct references to Amy Pond and Rory Williams.

Continuity

• Madame Kovarian reminds River that she made River what she is. (TV: Closing Time)
• In a fit of anger, River warns Kovarian that she "can wait". Both of her parents were so notorious for their ability to wait that the Eleventh Doctor nicknamed them the Girl Who Waited and the Boy Who Waited. River also tells her clones that they get their patience from Rory. (TV: The Eleventh Hour, The Big Bang)
• H-One and H-Two have an argument over time sensitivity. (TV: Warriors' Gate) Brooke 2 announces to them that River is on board the ship and that she's "complicated". River has previously described herself as a "complicated space-time event". (TV: Flesh and Stone)
• River tells Kovarian she stole her childhood from both her as well as Amy and Rory. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War, WC: Prequel (Let's Kill Hitler)) River notes that she is a reminder of Amy's infertility. (TV: Asylum of the Daleks)
• Kovarian compares the Deterrent's arrival to the militarisation at the start of the Siege of Trenzalore. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
• River tells Brooke 2 she is no stranger to being imprisoned. (TV: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone, The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes to War, Let's Kill Hitler, Closing Time, WC: Prequel (The Impossible Astronaut))
• Kovarian shuts down the idea of contacting the Papal Mainframe. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)
• River asks her clones if they can have a discussion like civilised psychopaths. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler, The Angels Take Manhattan)
• Stars burn out across the universe as a result of the Doctor's premature death. River says this is what happens when you kill the Doctor. (TV: Turn Left, The Name of the Doctor)
• River expresses to Kovarian that Brooke, Tarn, Lake, and Lily were all special and worthy of love. (AUDIO: The Lady in the Lake, A Requiem for the Doctor, My Dinner with Andrew)
• River used her and her clones' psychic link, granted by the TARDIS, to telepathically haunt Kovarian by projecting images of the Doctor chanting variations of the "tick tock goes the clock" poem into her mind. Brooke 2, like River, also learned to fly the TARDIS without the Doctor's help. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War, Let's Kill Hitler, Closing Time)
• The Doctor can't find his Zero Room. (TV: Castrovalva)
• River tells Kovarian that Amy left her to die in an aborted timeline. The clones then electrify a force field and indirectly use it to electrocute Kovarian without violating the neural block. River quips they got that from their real mother, who used an electrified eyepatch to punish Kovarian for kidnapping Melody from her. Like Amy, River walks away from Kovarian as she's begging for mercy. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
• The last plea that Madame Kovarian makes to River before she abandoned her is to "Have pity", echoing what the Stone Dalek said in TV: The Big Bang.

External links

• Official The Furies page at bigfinish.com