River and the Zombies

[snorkackcatcher]

... would doubtless be a good band name, but in this case it's a meme and a thought:

Go look at your blog/journal. Find the last Fandom-related thing you posted. The characters in that post are now your team-mates in the Zombie Apocalypse. How fucked are you?

So I draw the Doctor (actually two versions, Ten and Eleven), River Song, Amy Pond, and Reinette.

It's not looking good for the zombies.

And while we're talking about River etc, a thought regarding The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, spoilery for A Good Man Goes To War:


OK, so we now assume River knew exactly who Amy and Rory were all along, although not necessarily what to expect from them at any given point, right? Now in The Big Bang, when the Doctor materialises with River (having used the vortex manipulator to get her out of the exploding Tardis), and Amy and Rory are facing the other way watching the explosion up in the sky, we have the following dialogue:

River (brightly): Amy!

*Amy and Rory turn round*

River (uncertainly): And the plastic centurion.

Doctor: It's OK, he's on our side.

River (apparently unfazed but with an odd tone in her voice): Really? (approaches them) I dated a Nestene duplicate once. Swappable head. Do keep things fresh. Right then, I have questions ...

*fezicide is committed*

The way River acts here always did feel a bit strange, but now we know it's not due to the fact that she wasn't sure if Rory was trustworthy -- it's apparently because she knew he was, but simply wasn't expecting to see him there in security guard uniform, and had to take a beat or two to think how to address him without giving the game away.

However, it strikes me that the way she does it isn't quite right. As far as I can tell from flicking through The Pandorica Opens, towards the end the Doctor and River have figured out that the Romans are fakes, but at the point it starts opening they haven't figured out exactly what's going on. When that happens, the Doctor drops his end of the comms link in order to do some sonicing, and River at this point appears too busy trying to escape the Tardis to listen anyway. The first specific mention of plastic Romans animated by the Nestene Consciousness is when the Doctor is being frogmarched towards the Pandorica. So River shouldn't immediately know that's what Rory is.

Admittedly it's a lot less clearcut than I thought it was going to be before I 'played the tapes' to check, but it still seems to stand up. In short, I'm wondering if this is merely overanalysis, or a slight writing slip -- or if it was actually meant to be a Clue indicating that River knew far more than she was supposed to?

Comments

[malinbe.livejournal.com]

Well, my last fandom post was about Pottermore- if that means the entirety of the Potter crowd is with me, then those zombies are screwed. Unless Voldemort decides he should be on the zombie side, in which case we have to fight Voldy, DEs AND zombies. That doesn't sound good.

If I have to go back a bit more, I'd have Snape. Still, not a bad character to have around when the zombies attack.