The Long, Timey-Wimey History of River Song

By Brian Long

The classic sci-fi TV series Doctor Who has long been a stable of British culture (special shout-out to our UK Wookiee Wednesday fans are, I believe, appropriate at this moment) and it has finally gained true notoriety and fandom here in the States. One of the major mysteries at the heart of this season is the enigmatic River Song. A character who could just as soon kill our hero the Doctor as she could kiss him. The following article contains some MAJOR SPOILERS for this season and past episodes of Doctor Who, so if you haven't seen the show yet then not only should you not be reading this article, but you should be watching it right now. The first five seasons of the new series are on Netflix. Don't let the nearly 50 years of continuity scare you, start with the new stuff and you'll be alright.

Now, let's start with what we know: River's true name is Melody Pond, she is part Time Lord, she has been held by a mysterious organization led by a woman named Madame Kovarian since she was young and she is the daughter of the Doctor's current companions Rory and Amy. And honestly, that's about it. We know she is in prison for killing, as she puts it, killing "a good man" who may or may not be the Doctor himself. Although the latest episode Let's Kill Hitler seems to suggest she is the one who does our dear Doctor in. Part of what makes this character so interesting, and confusing, is the random order in which she meets the Doctor. Her first appearance in the two-parter Silence in the Library/Forest of the Damned featured her death and since then we've been working our way backwards through her life. Being Wookiee Wednesday's resident Whovian, I have made this handy timeline of events that we've seen of River's life in chronological order. Well, chronological for her, anyway.

4037-Melody Pond is born. After being taken by Madame Kovarian, she is shipped off to be raised in the crazy scary orphanage seen in The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. (A Good Man Goes to War)

1969-Melody Pond is discovered by Team TARDIS (the Doctor, River Song, Amy, and Rory) in the worst orphanage ever. Unfortunately, she is decked out in the same space suit that was seen killing the future version of the doctor earlier in the episode so she is promptly shot by her mother. (The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon)

1970-Flash forward a few months to Melody Pond’s first regeneration into “Mels.” (Day of the Moon)

1996-2011-Mels (somehow) winds up in Leadworth with the younger versions of Amy and Rory. She grows up with one of them as a fellow student and, in a play right out of the Marty McFly handbook of time travel, gets her future parents to FINALLY realize their feelings for one another and fall in love.(Let’s Kill Hitler)

1938-After hijacking the TARDIS with the plan to assassinate Hitler, Mels is hit by a stray bullet and regenerates into the River we all know and love, officially meeting the Doctor for the very first time. (Let’s Kill Hitler)

5123- The Doctor leaves River in a hospital with the hopes of hiding her from Madame Kavorian and any other forces that may try to use her. Shortly after, River enrolls in the Luna University and we learn how River got her start in archeology. (Let’s Kill Hitler)

4037- River is now in prison for killing, as far as we know, the Doctor. This one is a bit trickier to place since we don't get any strong clues as to where the Doctor and River are at in their relationship, but this is undoubtedly the youngest we've seen River in the Stormcage Holding Facility. At the beginning of A Good Man Goes to War Rory tries to recruit River to save his daughter, who he doesn't know is actually River herself yet (ugh, my head). River is breaking back into her cell after spending her birthday with the Doctor which suggests to me that their relationship has gotten more serious, but not close to its "ending" yet where the Doctor doesn't know River as well. This is one of the few moments where they were experiencing an event simultaneously. River shows up again after the Battle of Demons Run has ended to reveal who she truly is to Amy, the Doctor, and Rory. (A Good Man Goes to War)

1969- Things begin to overlap as we loop back around to 1969 as River, now older, joins Amy and Rory at the shore of Lake Silencio to see the Doctor get killed by the mysterious “impossible astronaut.” We know this episode comes before any of the other events featuring River because this marks the first time the Doctor and River have actually kissed. So far, the Doctor and River have been meeting in reverse order so the Doctor’s first kiss with River would be her last with him. (The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon)

5145- River, still in prison, receives a phone call from Winston Churchill and breaks out of the Stormcage to steal Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Pandorica Opens” painting from the royal collection. I’m going to pause for a moment because that may be the craziest sentence I have ever typed. (The Pandorica Opens)

102 BC-With the painting in hand, River travels to the year 102 and hangs around with a camp of Roman soldiers while posing as Cleopatra. When the Doctor arrives, they seek out the greatest prison known to man: the Pandorica. River and the Doctor realize that the latter’s greatest enemies are interested in the prison as well, so River heads off to the TARDIS in the hopes of finding equipment to assist the Doctor. Suddenly, the TARDIS begins flying on its own to…(The Pandorica Opens)

2010-…June 21^st, 2010. Specifically, the date of Amy and Rory’s wedding. River realizes that the Pandorica is a set-up and quickly bolts back to the TARDIS without realizing that it is booby trapped (The Pandorica Opens)

Alternate 1996- The Doctor is placed into the Pandorica by his enemies and all of reality begins to unravel. Thanks to some clever timey-wimey, wibbledy-wobbledy thinking, the Doctor escapes the prison and rescues River from the time lock failsafe the TARDIS has installed in case of an explosion. Those Time Lords think of everything. (The Big Bang)

2010- Back to the happy day of Amy and Rory’s wedding. The Doctor has closed the cracks in time (YEA!) but he has erased himself from existence in the process (…boo). Luckily, River is there to drop off a gift with her mother-to-be to help her bring the Doctor back to reality. (The Big Bang)

Unspecified 51^st century dates- River’s final adventures with the Doctor (but for us, her earliest) involved investigating the crash landing of the spaceship Byzantium and fighting with the Doctor through a herd of Weeping Angels.

Finally, we get River’s meeting with the 10^th incarnation of the Doctor in The Library. A planet sized collection of books and every bibliophile’s dream. Here we first discover that River has not only met the Doctor previously but she also posses her own Sonic Screwdriver and knows the Doctor’s true name. (The Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone/Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead)

River’s sacrifice at the end of Forest of the Dead suggests that there is still a lot of her time with the Doctor that we have yet to see, but we will just have to wait until the end of the season, and probably the end of the 11^th Doctor’s run on the show to find out how it all comes together. We can’t peek ahead, after all. Spoilers.

The Top 41 Funniest Degrassi Moments

By Spence Blazak with help from Peter Long and Brian Long

I know what you’re thinking. “Spence, why the hell do you watch Degrassi? Why don’t you go volunteer....or go make some friends?” I’ll tell you. It is the best awful TV show ever filmed. Anyone who has ever had a conversation with me knows my obsession with “Schlock Value,” as Richard Roeper calls it. I am fascinated by the unintentionally funny, and the show that takes place in a school on the sunny beaches of Canada is the grandaddy of all things Schlocky. With the new season of Degrassi quickly approaching (July 18th), the writers at Wookie Wednesday have decided to put our heads together to countdown our all-time favorite funny moments. And if you don’t watch Degrassi, I think you’ll enjoy the list even more.

41. Everyone going to Yale/Stanford -100% Degrassi acceptance rate

40. “Always on my mind” by The Three Tenners -Dave made a rap group with Wes and the autisitc kid. This was their hit single. It had jazz flute. It had cheesy synthesizer drums. It had an autotuned Dave. I spent the entirety of last summer trying to get this as my ringtone. I can’t do the song justice with description so all you can do is pray that one day it comes onto the “Canadian Rap” XM radio chanel.

39. Frumpy (our nickname for Claire) sticking tongue out in the opening credits.

38. Natasha Bedingfield performing at prom

37. Liberty getting into a sorority because she's "black"

36. The Jane face -a cross between Jack Nicholson’s Joker and Kermit the Frog

35. The female attorney named....Toni Starke

34. The writers needing to have a token black guy...and have Emma hook up with him.

33. “High school is tough. Things like Algebra can be confusing. Heck. LIFE can be

confusing.” -The episode that is a PSA for transgender people.....

32. Toby pooping his way onto the wrestling team-Exactly what it sounds like, sadly.

31. Emma looking like a fetal pig in early seasons

30. Riley’s strong resemblance to Shrek

29. Eli’s secret in his room -He has a padlocked door to his room. No one knows what’s in it, but the writer’s keep inferring it is the body of his ex-girlfriend. Frumpy breaks in and sees his wicked secret: HE IS A HOARDER!!!!!

28. Sav’s song for Enya -I swear. This comes up waaaay too often. I guess the guy who wrote it for the show was so proud of it that he frequently holds a gun to the director’s head and says, “I think this episode needs some more of the Enya song....DONT YOU?!”

27. Billy Ray Cyrus as a limo driver -Also, he wore a tuxedo t-shirt to show that he was keeping it formal....but he was still there to party.

26. The fact that they got Jay and Silent Bob to do an episode

25. Craig on coke

24. Peter Stone on coke

23. Jenna pooping herself -She was on the top of the pyramid at cheerleading practice, and her diet pills didn’t agree with her. The rest is history.

22. “Chuck Palihaniuk’s characters are as dark and twisted as his prose!!!!”-Eli-My only explanation for this absurdity is that an underling writer was told “We need to make an allusion to that Fight Club guy. Anybody know anything about him? uh.....google Chuck Paliwhatever and hit the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button. Dark prose? Characters? Works for me!”

21. Drew looking like beloved Red Sox centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury

20. “You know whats great? Making out”-A drunken Toby to JT.....moments before JT gets stabbed and dies.

19. The pot brownie episode that somehow turned into a PSA on how weed could kill someone.

18. Fiona looking like the evil Taylor Swift in the “You Belong with Me” music video

17. (3 way tie) JT trying to figure out how to use a penis pump/ JT getting laid/ JT having a child

16. Connor almost being abducted by a fat woman -Conor is autistic and looks like a cross between Cookie on Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide and that Muppet Sam the Eagle. He meets a girl on World of Warcraft. Turns out she looks like an Orucai from the Lord of the Rings, is 45, and tries to steal him.

15. “Excuse me, Principal......what is ‘sexting’?”-Mr. Bendarhi -More famous for his role as the Fiber One guy. Imagine this quote in the thick Indian accent of the game show host from Slumdog Millionaire.

14. Peter Long meeting Sean-This is the stuff of legend. Our friend/sibling Peter Long was once on the NYC subway. Standing room only. He turns his head to the right, drawn by some other worldly sixth sense. There he is. Sean from Degrassi. They had a 45-second conversation. He was a nice guy. The greatest moment of his young life.

13. A pita maker burning down the Dot

12. Holly J’s fat Asian boss at Little Miss Steaks -What about this sentence isn’t funny? And yes, he has a moustache AND a tightly fitting cowboy hat.

11. The commercial where Declan thought he raped Holly J -It didn’t really happen, but in the commercial for the episode, they blew it so much out of proportion that Peter Long had to help me pick my jaw up from off the ground. Things turned black and white, and I’m pretty sure Declan was in a momentary slow motion at some point. “What do you mean? Of course it was consensual..............wait...............define consensual........” Rediculous.

10. “I think you have ‘roid rage, man....I googled it!”-Peter Stone

9. Dave tazering Wes....then getting tickled -Dave stole a tazer from his dad’s police car to impress the cool kids. Then, he tazered Wes to look even cooler. This was pretty funny, but not as good as when Dave found out he could only earn Wes’s forgiveness by letting himself be tazed. Dave shuts his eyes and braces himself for the tazing.....then Wes just tickles him in a scene that ranks between the volleyball scene in Top Gun and the training scene with Apollo Creed in Rocky III on the list of “least masculine things ever filmed.”

8. The province of Regina sounding ALOT like vagina -Oh Canada!

7. The first episode I ever watched. -Craig was high on crack and was attending the gay wedding of his girlfriend’s dad. He fell on all of the presents and broke a table. The moment where I lost my Degrassi cherry was everything I could have dreamed.

6. Shontay’s last name being “Black”-Degrassi finally gets a token black character with Shontay. She is sassy, stereotypical, and an all out racist portrayal. It gets worse. She does something that requires her first and last name to be put on a poster, the camera zooms into her name, and her last name....”Black”. The writers were working over time on that one.

5. Marco’s dream man turning out to be a male prostitute for a politician

4. Twincest -The sexual tension between twins Declan and Fiona finally erupts in a drunken kiss. Yet the funniest part is when the newspaper tabloids post a picture of it with the headline “Twincest.” Brian Long had been calling this moment for two seasons. This was the greatest moment of his young life.

3. The dildo episode -I can’t do this justice, but one of my favorite moments was when Frumpy’s purse starts vibrating in class, and the teacher thinks its her phone. He reaches in, pulls it out, and had a reaction shot that was the background on my phone for a month.

2. The zoom in shot on a young Holly J’s To Do list: Get purple scrunchies Learn new cheer LOSE VIRGINITY

1. Creepy Coach -Hands down the best moment in the show’s history. Okay here we go. KC is a tall, sad Justin Bieber (in the words of Peter Long). He decides to play basketball. He sucks, but soon the cool new coach helps him get better. He becomes the team’s star. The night before the championship game, KC tries to get laid. The loving coach says he can use his hotel room. KC and his wench go to the room....BUT THE COACH COMES IN. The dame runs away, leaving KC with the coach. Coach opens some beer, takes his shirt off, calls a 45-year old prostitiute, then orders porn. THIS IS REAL. The next day, KC tells the coach he is worried about the game. The coach responds by saying “whenever I’m worried, I like to remind myself I’m in control,” he then gives KC A GUN FROM THE GLOVE BOX. One of the things that increased my funniness factor was that the coach was a direct look alike to my Bulgarian boss at the time. Truly The Shawshank Redemption of Degrassi episodes.