Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: alex kingston, Audio Drama, bbc, big finish, doctor who, river song, steven moffat

Doctor Who: Big Finish, Alex Kingston Team for New River Song Stories

Alex Kingston will return as River Song for a new round of Big Finish's Doctor Who audio dramas set AFTER "Silence in the Library."

Now that Steven Moffat is back writing for Doctor Who, fans are speculating about whether River Song will be back.  Alex Kingston certainly hasn't made it a secret that she would love to play the character again. But River Song never really went away. She's been headlining a River Song series in audio dramas from Big Finish for years since she had her final story on Doctor Who. Now she will star in The Death and Life of River Song, a brand-new series of full-cast audio dramas coming soon from Big Finish Productions. It's like a whole new season of River Song adventures – and the latest.

In case you didn't know, River Song is an archaeologist from the 52nd century, born and raised to be an assassin, destined to marry her intended target, and to have many of her own adventures too – Professor River Song's very messy timeline began (or maybe ended) when she first appeared in the 2008 Doctor Who TV episode Silence in the Library. Since then, Kingston has reprised the role in her own series of Doctor Who audio spinoffs, including The Diary of River Song, which ran from 2015 to 2023. Now, in August 2024, she will return in a brand-new series, The Death and Life of River Song.

The first box set in the series, Last Words, is written by Robert Valentine. It begins with River, after settling down to an afterlife in the Library's computer core, finding herself waking up in Earth's future, her consciousness having been temporarily transferred to a new body.

Alex Kingston said that River's stories at Big Finish have moved beyond her death in Doctor Who: "We have gone post-Library! We've done another episode in the past where I was within the database, which I loved, and I thought that's the only way you could go forward with River, given her situation. So, I was actually really surprised when this box set came my way and that we are now so far advanced in the history of Earth that she is able to be brought out as data and put into a cloned body. So very, very clever!"

Producer David Richardson added: "When every single day during the recording, your leading actress says "This script is brilliant," you know you're onto a good thing. Even better, at the end of the last day, Alex popped the script in her bag and announced that she loved Last Words so much she was taking it home to keep and treasure."

The Death and Life of River Song: Last Words is now available for pre-order exclusively here, either as a collector's edition four-CD box set for £29.99 or as a digital download for £22.99 per volume. Big Finish listeners can also pre-order a bundle with Last Words as well as Volumes 2 and 3 of The Death and Life of River Song, which are both due for release in 2025, for just £80 (collector's edition CDs + downloads) or £66 (downloads only).

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