#chronic pain related to the reasons she's infertile. whatever Kovarian was doing during that whole pregnancy!

[seaweedstarshine]

Hello, moot! How are you? I'm rewatching THORS (once again) and I'm ugly crying while mouthing along their lines but that has nothing to do with my ask. Just thought it would be nice and polite to say hello.

Anyway my ask is I've seen people (official DW/BF people and fans) call River a Time Lord, human+, Proto Time Lord, and not a Time Lord because it's a title not a species. Personally, I've gone with human+. But another moot argued she's a Time Lord. What's your take on it?

Hiiii great to hear from you :D My name’s Tree by the way! Aaaah good for you, I got a love-hate relationship with that episode but those last ten minutes are 😭 *chef's kiss* I should rewatch it, it is that time of year, and I haven’t seen it since my Doctor Who Christmas Specials Rewatch last December!

Anyway!

I most often call River a Proto-Time Lord, or sometimes a part Time Lord/part human. (I’m not sure Proto-Time Lord is accurately descriptive, since it kinda sounds like it should refer to ancients like the Founders who weren't born with regeneration, but it’s the word I generally use because it feels closest to capturing the complexity of River Song!) Human+ sounds cool too though! (Especially as in, human+Time Lord.)

Because — while yeah, she is a genetically modified human with no known Gallifreyan DNA — it’s clear Kovarian did a lot more to deliberately make her resemble a Gallifreyan than just the Time Vortex related things like time-sense and regeneration. Her two hearts! Her respiratory bypass! No way those are related to Time Vortex exposure — it's Gallifreyan biology. Kovarian wanted her to be a match for the Doctor in every way.

Honestly, since there's no one really like her (apart from her clones), I think a lot of it's down to how she relates to herself and her identity.

I think the Doctor was really excited to learn that she's like him, in many ways — and that kind of affirmation would mean a lot to someone who grew up feeling like an outsider, having been told she was a just weapon, so she would have a connection to her Time Lord-ness as well as her human-ness.

But that doesn't mean she wouldn't still introduce herself a psychopath long before attempting to explain her species to a stranger.

(I don't think most qualified Academy graduates would consider her a Time Lord, though. Eyyy, nine times out of ten, they're too dead to say.)