2.1 The Unknown by Guy Adams
A planetary anomaly. A scientific impossibility. A mystery to be solved. Of course, River Song expects to be consulted. She expects her valuable knowledge and experience will help the crew of the Saturnius unlock the strange phenomenon that has appeared in Earth’s solar system. But what River doesn’t expect is a stowaway. An infuriating little man, calling himself the Doctor.
2.2 Five Twenty-Nine by John Dorney
River has made a terrible discovery. Billions of lives hang in the balance. But if she can save just a few, then it might just help her solve the conundrum of Earth’s destruction. But how can she win when survival becomes a race against time itself? A race against Five Twenty-Nine?
2.3 World Enough and Time by James Goss
When it comes to bringing down corrupt and exploitative regimes, there is no-one quite like River. Until she arrives at Golden Futures and discovers that someone else has already taken on her job. Someone with almost as much style and panache as herself. The Doctor is about to get the shock of his lives.
2.4 The Eye of the Storm by Matt Fitton
The Great Storm of 1703 approaches. The fate of planet Earth hangs in the balance. The only person who can save it is the Doctor. Or River Song. Or quite possibly another Doctor. Or maybe this whole situation is their fault in the first place. Two Doctors. One River. An infinite number of ways to destroy the world. It’s going to be a bumpy ride…
THE DIARY OF RIVER SONG: THE UNKNOWN
The second River Song box set from Big Finish wastes no time: the first story, “The Unknown” by Guy Adams, throws us right into an adventure. River is accompanying an experimental Earth ship as it investigates a strange phenomenon and in the process it collides with something in the time vortex. That something turns out to be the seventh Doctor’s TARDIS, and so the two must work together with the ship’s crew to solve the problem. “The Unknown” is basically “Nightmare of Eden” without any of the interesting subplots – it’s only worthwhile because it puts Alex Kingston and Sylvester McCoy together and lets their characters interact. And even this isn’t that interesting: he’s not a big fan of her methods, which provides some sparks, but the story doesn’t draw much of a contrast between this Doctor and his other incarnations. It also plays around with memory, naturally, which means that by the end nobody remembers anything about what happened. I know, I know, they have to keep continuity consistent with the TV show, but what’s the point of the story if you’re going to delete everyone’s memory? Nobody can learn anything from or be changed in any way by their experiences. In short, a mediocre runaround.
5/10
THE DIARY OF RIVER SONG: FIVE TWENTY-NINE
So what happened to all life on Earth? After “Five Twenty-Nine,” a concept piece by John Dorney, we don’t exactly know – but we do know that whatever happened most likely killed everyone on the planet. The effect is circling Earth, killing everyone in each time zone in sequence. While this is a good twist on an “encroaching doom” scenario, I am forced to wonder if this effect basically just hits 1/24 of Earth at a time, or if it actually respects the utterly arbitrary, human-created time zone borders. It must, because doomsday strikes at 5:29 in each time zone, right? That’s not that important, though. Dorney tells the story by matching River up with a small family living on an island, making the script a race against time: she can’t save everyone, but can she at least save these people? As it turns out, she can’t – and she’s most frustrated by their willingness to give up and surrender to their fates. I was, too, but it makes sense, as long as you don’t wonder why they wouldn’t want to keep fighting for their child – but that’s why the script contrives to make their daughter an android, so they can rest assured that she’d survive the purge. (A married couple tries desperately to have a child, but for whatever reason, they are unable to. Naturally, the next step is to… sell all their possessions and use the proceeds to buy an android child? Eh? Is adoption not a thing in the future?) Still, Dorney makes it work – he’s very good at these small, personal stories – but the side is let down significantly by Salome Haertel, whose performance as the android Rachel is more wooden than the desk I’m sitting at. Some will argue, I’m sure, that this is deliberate, that this is an attempt to sound “robotic” – but if it is, it doesn’t work. Frankly, it sounds like she’s just reading off the page. I know she’s Alex Kingston’s daughter, and I know she doesn’t have many acting credits, but this was bad enough that it basically ruined the story for me. Aside from that, though, this is an effectively emotional, character-driven story that works as intended and features a great ending. It’s not Dorney’s best, but it’s a step up from the first story.
6/10
THE DIARY OF RIVER SONG: WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME
I have no idea if this is true, but “World Enough and Time” from James Goss seems as though it started from two particular images and built a story around them. The first image is the Doctor working as the managing director of a modern corporation, which is interesting; the second is the Doctor and River on a date quoting Andrew Marvell at each other, which is not. The biggest problem with the story, by far, is that the sixth Doctor is wildly out of character throughout. There’s a constant implication that something is keeping him from acting like his usual self – perhaps something is done during his regular trips into the dream machines – but it’s never spelled out and, more importantly, we never see him go back to normal. It’s an interesting idea for an episode in a continuing serial – think “Mindwarp” – but for his first appearance in the River Song series, it’s a horrible misstep. But that might be tolerable if River wasn’t also out of character: she spends the majority of the story believing the Doctor is in on the conspiracy underlying Golden Futures and thinking he’s betrayed her. Why? It’s never clear, which is a mistake for a character defined in part by her trust in the Doctor. Add to this the pretentious, unnecessary Marvell quotes – “To His Coy Mistress” indeed – and you have a recipe for a surprisingly poor story from a typically strong writer. Hopefully this set will rebound in the final story, because this has been very disappointing thus far.
4/10
THE DIARY OF RIVER SONG: THE EYE OF THE STORM
This second Diary of River Song set has attempted to thread an arc through its four stories, and unfortunately it has failed in this attempt. When “World Enough and Time” ended, countless alternate Earths were spilling through into our reality; when “The Eye of the Storm” picks up, all but one of those Earths has been sent back. Eh? How did that work? This is the problem with “Eye” as a whole: it doesn’t make much sense. The Speravore plan seems both overly simplistic – they just want to feed – and yet overly complex, and it doesn’t help that writer Matt Fitton tries to boil the whole thing down into one moral choice. The alternate Earths split off from one point in history, see, and we spend the first part of the story getting to know the (irritatingly overwritten) young couple at the heart of the split. So with two Doctors involved, they approach the problem from different angles: the sixth Doctor throws himself into danger, thinking of sacrificing himself to save the couple, while the seventh Doctor stays behind, orchestrating a means to save the universe by deleting them from the timelines. This is the dichotomy Fitton illustrates between the Doctors: the sixth doesn’t think of the consequences while the seventh thinks of nothing else. And River is in the middle, imploring them to act more like their future selves and find the third way out – but since she’s the only representative of the modern TV series, she has to do it herself. This would all be fantastic but for one problem: her brilliant third solution is to convince the young couple to voluntarily commit suicide rather than let the seventh Doctor take them unawares. Really? We’re back to innocent people sacrificing themselves so the Doctor doesn’t have to kill them or die himself? That’s the better way? It’s a shame, because I like some of the character stuff, like how River has a romantic thing going on with the sixth Doctor, or how her charms are completely ineffective when turned on the seventh. The final conversation over tea is an entertaining cap to an otherwise weak story which serves as the finale to a weak, disappointing set. I can’t help but notice that, with one or two rare exceptions, Steven Moffat wrote every single line of River’s TV appearances. Perhaps that was for the best.
5/10