Here’s a place to discuss the latest River Song series from Big Finish.
The Diary of River Song is over, and it’s now time for The Death and Life of River Song. Her adventures after being saved in the Library.
There will be Spoilers!
6 Likes
If you’ve listened to this box set - what are your thoughts?
I enjoyed the stories but ultimately thought the overarching plot fell a little flat to me - especially as a prequel to The Ark in Space. I thought a lot more would be done with it, and thought we would see something about the Wirrn.
But as a character piece for River I thought it was really beautiful.
How did people feel about the ending? She got saved back into the Library with billions other people. I guess it was poetic but how is she going to get out again for the next box set?
4 Likes
Like I’ve written previously, I agree with your takes. The story is good but nothing exceptional; the performances and production are top-notch, and the fact that it turned out to be a prequel to Ark in Space is interesting but ultimately amounts to pretty little.
I was also thinking about the ending and how it affects further sets. This is BF we are talking about, however, so they probably came up with yet another clever idea to bring River back! Maybe it involves time travel, Autons, Madame Kovarian, a Quark, the Sisterhood of Karn and Metebelis III, who knows?
6 Likes
I just thought that it was a good opportunity, maybe she could have figured out a way to get past the ‘built-in expiry date’ and then carry on, I think having there be ANOTHER way of coming out of the Library, maybe even a different way for each box set, would be a bit silly and repetitive!
4 Likes
I finally listened to these today, and I think they’re quite beautiful. Likewise, I didn’t think the overarching plot or the action was anything particularly special but it was good nonetheless.
Where these stories shine, in my opinion, is examining a post-library, well sort of, or really rather post-doctor River Song. I really liked how they explored her emotional state following the events of the library, and her forced removal from there. Character exploration is one of the things in fiction I enjoy most, and River Song is such an interesting character, too. I especially liked how they used the ‘everything ends’ speech, that’s one of my favourite parts of the library two-parter. Emotionally, this was much more a library sequence than a arc in space prequel, though the doomed world served as a good backdrop and was quite nicely developed. I liked how the last story mirrored silence of the library too. It’ll be interesting to see where they go next in this series, whether they’ll remove her from the library again or perhaps a story inside it would be more interesting, after all there are more than just a handful of people in there now.
5 Likes