Friend of the Family: The Rules of the House

"This family has been haunted by a woman."

Writer: Tim Foley

Format: Audio

Released: January 2023

Series: Diary of River Song 11.01

Featuring: River

Synopsis

River Song decides to investigate a temporal anomaly after a Luna University expedition makes some odd discoveries in an old Earth house – pages of her own diary with an inscrutable riddle written across them.

However, her investigation goes badly wrong when she is transported back into the past of the house and gets trapped within its grounds.

The house is the home of the Mortimers and with a limited ability to travel back and forth in time across eighty years and multiple generations she finds herself witnessing key moments in their family history.

If she wants to escape, the words in her diary are not the only riddle she has to solve. But not everyone in the house will survive what's coming. And not everyone is on her side.

Verdict

The Rules of the House was an excellent start to the Friend of the Family eleventh series of The Diary of River Song! Eleven series! River Song really is the gift that keeps on giving and I like how this series feels like it's going to be something different. It does have the feeling of being one singular story over the course the boxset and that's certainly how TARDIS Wiki has it, but with the separate titles I felt like it had to be blogged per episode. I don't think all four episodes being by a singular writer changes that either. In terms of setting things up for the boxset to come, this was brilliant. It really set the scene of the Mortimer household and River bouncing around in time within that house was such a fascinating concept. I like the idea of her testing a prototype but the whole thing actually turning out to be a trap is intriguing. She suspected as such but still couldn't resist and I wouldn't expect anything else from River. Her interactions with Hugo were a delight and I think he's going to be a fun little companion for the series in the form of the sometimes solid and corporal hologram. He has a lot of potential in being able to go incognito, take the form of literally anybody, and to be switched off. His reaction to River having done the latter for a not inconsiderable amount of time was tremendous. River wanting to be on a date with the Doctor was actually quite sad in having her denied and she was very protective of her diary which was lovely. She only inputted the adventures and dates she had with the Doctor rather than her solo travels, so that begs the question of the name of this entire spinoff audio range! I think the range of the timeline in which she is stuck going from 1936-2014 is very fun as that's a lot of history but also quite truncated at the same time. It's a few generations of Mortimers but not too many that River wouldn't be remembered. I like how she becomes something of a legend in the house with her constantly appearing and disappearing, and her doing things in the wrong order is a very good idea. She's usually seeing the Doctor try and connect the dots, but here she is not knowing if she is known to members of the household. The knowledge of the cook is fascinating and I like how she could even see Hugo when he was supposedly incognito. That served as a strong cliffhanger and I'm certainly hooked for the rest of the series in wanting to know who or what she is! The different members of the Mortimer family were good with Maddie being a standout. There's still plenty of time though to get to know the rest across the decades and River isn't going to have much of a choice. I liked how the titles of each episode were named as a potential puzzle for River to work out and potentially escape, but for now the mystery is set and that's more than enough for me. I am very intrigued and I like that feeling as I head into another audio adventure. River herself felt vulnerable here which is not something that happens often so I'm looking forward to having that explored as the series goes on. She has taken on many guises here with most of them actually assumed and imposed upon her, and she's going to have to embrace them! I look forward to that continuing and whilst I'm very excited and enjoying the premise that has been set up here, it does seem like three episodes to go has a lot of room to fill. Overall though, a terrific start to the series! 

Rating: 9/10