Picnic at Asgard

"Don't anger the Gods!"

Writer: Jenny T. Colgan

Format: Short Story

Released: February 2016

Printed in: The Legends of River Song 01

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, River Song

Synopsis

"Hello, sweetie!"

Melody Pond, Melody Malone, River Song... She has had many names. Whoever she really is, this archaeologist and time traveller has had more adventures (and got into more trouble) than most people in the universe.

And she's written a lot of it down. Well, when you're married to a Time Lord (or possibly not), you have to keep track of what you did and when. Especially as it may not actually have happened to both of you yet.

These are just a few of River Song's exploits, extracted from her journals. Sometimes, she is with the Doctor. Sometimes she's on her own. But wherever and whenever she may be, she is never far from danger and excitement.

This is just a tiny portion of her impossible life. But it will reveal more than you've ever known about the legend that is River Song.

Verdict

Picnic at Asgard was a good start to The Legends of River Song collection of stories! It feels a little weird to actually be starting a volume of adventures in a book that I actually own rather than a library copy, and who better to base a series of stories around than River Song? Her Diary of River Song audios from Big Finish have been wonderful in having her meet other incarnations of the Doctor from the Classic series, but here we got a bonus story with the Eleventh Doctor and her! This picnic at Asgard, although we didn't really see anything of the picnic despite the story's title, obviously came from a mention in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and I am sure I will watch that story again in the future and I do hope I am able to recall this short story when it gets mentioned. It really is just fantastic to have an Eleventh Doctor and River story together on their own in the TARDIS. It is something I always wanted on screen and I guess I technically got it with Rain Gods but that barely lasted five minutes so I'm not counting it. They were wonderful together but I thought it was probably a mistake to have River narrate the adventure. I do hope the rest of the book doesn't follow in that vain with it being extracts from her journal. It wasn't bad at all but I think intermingling speech of a character who is also narrating can get a little messy and it didn't quite work for me. That's intriguing on a personal level as when I started reading and saw that River would be narrating, I was very excited but I actually turned out changing my mind. The Doctor and River going to Asgard was an incredibly good concept and obviously it wouldn't be the realm of Thor and Odin but instead was a giant theme park. You can just imagine how excited this incarnation of the Doctor would be in this environment and that definitely permeated across the pages which was positive. I found it really interesting that this particular tale certainly took place late in River Song's life as she was putting things into perspective and wanted to bring up the possibility of having children with the Doctor. I thought that was pretty extraordinary to be honest. I just wish they could have had the conversation instead of having to deal with a young hacker! I must admit, I wasn't a huge fan of that being the reason for the park's malfunctions and after a shaky moment in the middle where the story went a bit mad, I thought this was very good and initially well paced. The Doctor and River's reactions when the robot wiped out a row of the crowd was fantastic and I liked how even at short notice, the Doctor was always one pace ahead at minimum. That's exactly where he should be. His convincing in getting Caius a job at the park in the security department and patching up the faults that he broke through was a nice way to end things, but I do think Posthumus should have been killed when the cart went over him to make things more impactful. I am always in favour of characters dying/staying dead rather than being given a happy resurrection. It's happened far too often. Overall though, a fun little tale that was just delightful to have the Doctor and River travelling together. It just needed a bit more consistency in the middle for my liking to improve.

Rating: 7/10