The Lady in the Lake

"Here you can end your life in anyway you choose."

Writer: Kev Fountain
Format: Audio
Released: January 2018
Series: The Diary of River Song 3.01

Featuring: River Song

Synopsis

On Terminus Prime, clients choose their own means of demise. Something exciting, meaningful, or heroic to end it all.

But when River discovers that there are repeat customers, she knows something more is going on.

She begins to uncover a cult with worrying abilities. Its members can apparently cheat death, and that's not all they have in common with River...

Verdict

The Lady in the Lake was a great start to the third series of The Diary of River Song! It saw River kick things off by herself and she was dealing with unknown effects following on from A Good Man Goes to War. I thought the whole concept was hugely intriguing and the idea of Madame Kovarian having experimented on River as an embryonic Time Lord and creating seven other Time Lord prototypes if you will was most unexpected but something I really liked. I didn't expect it at all and it was quite monumental. I'd have liked to know how River came to learn of her siblings' existence but I think that might come a bit later in the series. The link between the start and end of the audio was good and I thought Alex Kingston gave a stellar performance. I particularly enjoyed the conversation between the two Rivers and just imaging them together is wonderful. The great Lake was an excellent enemy and his connection with River was pretty good. The idea of him experimenting on all of the prototypes concerning regeneration was horrific enough, but his selfish reasoning was just appalling. River was disgusted by him and even though he knew he had other lives to live, he needed to know his limit. But given the nature of Kovarian's experimentation and the very essence of the Time Lords, their regenerative capabilities were not typical. Lake was disgusted that he didn't know and throughout I really liked his calm demeanour, particularly with his voice recorder. Lily was a lovely character and her relationship with River was wonderful. She really did love her and that made the ending all the more surprising. River taking great satisfaction in murdering Lake was good as she really was disgusted with his actions but I did not expect him to regenerate into Lily! River's reaction was fantastic and it tied in nicely with what we heard at the start of the story. Kevin was a very good character and I thought the whole setting of Terminus Prime was very good. The prospect of people paying for their deaths was hugely interesting and I'd like to see a story there again. River faking her death was genius and I really liked that she was investigating the impossibility of repeat users. How could anyone die more than once? Tarn and Rindle were some more good characters and I loved the water theme with the names. River really needing the Doctor was lovely and heartfelt but I bet she wasn't expecting his fifth incarnation to show up. Her wanting to travel with him for a bit was nice but I'm not sure how it won't contradict Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, but there are three more stories yet to prevent that. I look forward to finding out who Brooke is and I can't wait for an adventure with the Fifth Doctor and River Song! Overall, a terrific start to the series.

Rating: 8/10