Two Rivers and a Firewall: Firewall

"It's just a bad dream."

Writer: Barnaby Kay

Format: Audio

Released: August 2022

Series: Diary of River Song 10.04

Featuring: River

Synopsis

River is living her dream life with her dream husband. But every paradise has a serpent and this husband might not quite be up to the task.

Verdict

Firewall was an excellent episode to conclude the Two Rivers and a Firewall tenth series of The Diary of River Song! Well, they certainly saved the best until last with this series as this was a magnificent listen. I love the idea of going beyond Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead with River Song because there's so much potential there with her essentially just existing as data and code. It's still incredible what the Tenth Doctor did to ensure her life lived on without him in the data core of the Library, but here we get a glimpse of how she might even go further than that. Of course, we get a little look into that possibility during The Name of the Doctor but we get an entire episode here. I really loved how the audio took that same jumpy feel from the aforementioned Series 4 two-parter as River was really starting to question her surroundings and the fabric of reality. How did they get from the stairs to the park and from one place to another in the blink of an eye? They just spoke something and almost immediately they were. The way that was captured was fantastic and really did honour the onscreen story. It was hugely impressive in capturing the atmosphere and as if that wasn't enough, we had two returning characters from it in the form of Charlotte and Proper Dave! I think it's fun to start things referring to River as a mother and with Charlotte as the child referring to her daddy as a superhero, you just naturally leant towards that being the Doctor. I was certainly leaning that way so to find out this was actually Dave was good fun. I think it's great to bring him back and whilst this tackles him after the Vashta Nerada encounter, there's a lot of potential to visit things immediately prior to the Library. They're an established team by then so that's definitely something I'd be keen to hear! The threat of Alan – or the Viper! – was almost amusing which makes it sound like he wasn't much of a threat at all, but with Mal infiltrating the system his unstable nature actually made things particularly dangerous. He seemed to believe that the Doctor had killed his parents despite official reports saying it was a medical error and whilst that surgeon was a John Smith, it was not the Doctor. That was a big mistake but the threat he posed was severe. The idea of him wanting the knowledge from the data core was enough of a recipe for disaster as the knowledge from every book ever written or that will be written is incredibly extensive, but he wanted the data that was River Song removed. That scarcely bares thinking about! It's a really strong threat that I enjoyed and I like how this episode essentially gave River her memories back even when within. I'm intrigued to see if this is any kind of loose pilot for The Death and Life of River Song series because I'm not entirely sure how that differs from this range, but I'm excited to find out! I thought the firewall was really good and an apt name and there's something special about a Dr Moon reference. He was a freaky character and Charlotte casually referring to how he saved her was eery in a story that was actually really nice with the family element. Dave and Charlotte's little takeoff roll call was a lovely little thing they had together. His wanting to talk about River's husband was amusing and there never was a right time to talk about it, but here they were still representing a family when the firewall threat was resolved. That was done well with the mistake being realised and the apologetic nature of Alan on the outside was somewhat comical. Overall, an exciting end to what turned out to be a decent little series! 

Rating: 9/10