A Gamble with Time

"I've seen the future."

Writer: Steve Lyons
Format: Short Story
Released: February 2016
Printed in: The Legends of River Song 03

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

A Gamble with Time was an excellent continuation of The Legends of River Song! I really enjoyed this adventure from start to finish and the 44 pages just seemed to fly by. It was an easy read and perfectly suited to one sitting with its pace and excitement. The pairing of the Eleventh Doctor and River Song rarely fails and this was another wonderful example of their time together. I was quite intrigued that things were relatively early on for the Doctor as for him, this story pre-dated the events of The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon and everything that went down at Lake Silencio. We haven't had a huge amount of encounters between the Doctor and River prior to that so it was good to get an addition there. I'm a huge fan of stories that play around with time and as its title suggests, this one did exactly that. The Doctor's coming to Stormcage to enlist River for what was dubbed a simple, but turned out to be extremely complicated, mission of essentially babysitting Martin Flint after he was thrown back in time by eight to ten hours thanks to a whirling storm that opened up access to the Time Vortex itself. Things got complicated in a good way then with all the timey-wimey stuff that was happening. It was a lot of fun and I thought the format of having the entire be told from River's perspective as an entry into her diary was brilliant. It worked tremendously well and I have to credit Steve Lyons for some highly skilled characterisation if the River Song character. Magnificent stuff. River rushing to try and prevent Martin Flint from meeting his future self was a lot of fun and her only answer was to plant a snog on the slightly older version who had gone through the time storm. He didn't seem to be complaining too much in some comical moments where River hoped her knowing that he was single was a rhetorical question. The emergence of 'Mr Smith' into the story was intriguing and I had hoped that a different name could be used purely for originality. However, the Doctor's enjoyment at meeting someone else going by that alias made up for that immediately. Even though he didn't appear in much of the adventure, the characterisation of Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor was also fantastic. Gharjhax turned out to be the giant, green slug behind the Mr Smith disguise and his distaste for Time Agents was very good indeed. He didn't seem the brightest bulb in the room though when it came to identifying them as neither River nor the Doctor were working for any time agencies. The race against time after the house scuffle to get the younger Martin Flint to his interview on time was terrific and I liked the dangers that came with the fact that he was late. The memories of the older Martin not concurring with what was happening was very interesting and his fate was soon sealed in quite saddening circumstances. It was known that the Doctor and Gharjhax would get into some sort of altercation at the back of Flint's interview site and with the Doctor on the brink of death, the older Flint was encouraged by River to go and save him as the only thing that was fixed was that Martin Flint saved the Doctor and ended up in the time storm. It didn't specify which version though. He would end up in a time loop which was a little sad and just a bit unfair after his efforts, but he had given his slightly younger self the edge by placing a sneaky bet and earning £20,000. Not too shabby! I thought the use of the hallucinogenic lipstick to warn the Doctor was marvellous and the summary of events to finish off the adventure and diary entry was very beneficial. That worked really well. As a whole, a really great short story!

Rating: 9/10