The Timeline of River Song

This is a comprehensive and simple timeline of River Song's experiences on television and in the audio dramas in chronological order. Explanations of episodes' placing may be given in red.

• A Good Man Goes to War
• Melody Pond is born on Demon's Run. A ganger is created and given to Amy whilst the real Melody is taken away by Kovarian. (As mentioned in The Furies, she is later returned to Demon's Run, where she was kept in the Nightmare Room. Kovarian would read her bedtime stories about the Furies. Her first words were "kill the Doctor".)
• Prequel to The Impossible Astronaut
• Melody is later taken to Graystark Hall Orphanage in '60s Florida, where she is trained by the Silence to become a sociopath to kill the Doctor in a modified spacesuit at Lake Silencio. Wanting help, the suit calls President Nixon for her, given his authority. [This takes place shortly before The Impossible Astronaut.]
• The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon
  
• The Doctor investigates the calls to Nixon. Amy arrives at Graystark and shoots at Melody whilst she was in the spacesuit, but she is unharmed and escapes the orphanage. She later returns and meets Amy again, who is confused by the pictures of Amy and Melody. Melody asked her for help and, upon seeing the Silence, tore herself from the suit and ran away. She made her way to New York, where she regenerated to save herself from a terminal disease. [Melody is young and regenerates into Mels.]
• Let's Kill Hitler
  
• Melody regenerated into a toddler and spent years trying to find Amy and Rory. She finally managed to and attended school with them in Leadworth, becoming a close friend to both under the nickname of Mels. She dreamed of marrying the Doctor, but also blamed him for all of the earthly disasters that occurred that he didn't stop. After seeing Amy and Rory's message for the Doctor, she stole a car and met the Doctor once again, forcing him to take her to Hitler. Hitler accidentally shot her and she regenerated a second time, getting the Doctor to promise to marry her before doing so. Using the poison of the Judas Tree, she almost killed the Doctor. The TARDIS taught her how to fly it and then, moved by the Doctor's love for "River Song", she decided to use her remaining regenerations to save him. This left her unconscious. The Doctor took her to the Sisters of the Infinite Schism to recover, leaving her a diary. Hoping to find the Doctor, she later entered the Luna University to study Archaeology. [Mels regenerates into River.]
• Closing Time
  
• Going by the name of River Song, River receives a doctorate from the Luna University and is taken prisoner by Kovarian and the Silence, being told that she had never really escaped them. She is put in the spacesuit.
• The Wedding of River Song
• In the spacesuit, River is submerged in Lake Silencio to await the Doctor. He arrives but, to prevent herself from killing him, she drained her weapons systems. Averting the fixed point created a world in which all of time happened at once. In this world, she told the Doctor that she loved him and that she would suffer the most if he died. He married her and let her know that the Doctor that she had to kill was actually the Teselecta in his form. Knowing this, the two kiss (shorting out the time differential) and she shot the Teselecta. She is subsequently arrested and sentenced to twelve thousands life sentences in the Stormcage Containment Facility for the Doctor's murder, suffering it so that Kovarian would believe that he was dead. [This takes place shortly after River is put in the spacesuit in Closing Time.]
• First Night/Last Night
  
• On the first night of her imprisonment, the Doctor visits her and takes her to Calderon Beta, explaining what her diary was for. [As this is River's first night in the Stormcage, it must take place after The Wedding of River Song but before A Good Man Goes to War.]
• Rain Gods
• The Doctor accidentally takes River to the planet of the Rain Gods. [River is wearing her Stormcage dress, indicating that it likely takes place during her imprisonment between First Night and The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, although this isn't entirely certain. It can't be determined when in her imprisonment this might occur.]
• The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang
  
• In the Stormcage, River received a phone call from Winston Churchill, who had tried to call the TARDIS. She breaks out, acquires Jack Harkness's vortex manipulator from Dorium Maldovar, steals Van Gogh's painting of the TARDIS's explosion from Queen Elizabeth X and meets the Doctor dressed as Cleopatra after writing the co-ordinates on the universe's oldest planet. She gets stuck in the TARDIS as the Silence cause it to explode.The Doctor rescues River from a time loop in the exploding TARDIS and leaves her diary to remind Amy of the Doctor after he was wiped from history. She knows that she will tell the Doctor who she is at Demon's Run. [River acquires her vortex manipulator, so this story takes place before A Good Man Goes to War.]

• First Night/Last Night
• River escapes from the Stormcage and antagonises some Sontarans, fleeing from them to Calderon Beta where she meets the Doctor, who uses her vortex manipulator to send her back. Unknown to her, her past self from her first night at the Stormcage was in the TARDIS. [Given that River has her vortex manipulator, this must be after The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. She hasn't yet worn the gold dress so we can also safely say that it is before The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. However, it is uncertain whether it occurs before or after A Good Man Goes to War.]

• A Good Man Goes to War
  
• River has gone to the frost fair with the Doctor. Returning to the Stormcage, Rory asks her to join him at the Battle of Demon's Run, but she knows that she cannot be there until the very end. She reveals that she is the Doctor's wife and that she is Melody Pond. [River has her vortex manipulator, meaning that this takes place after The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. According to When Time Froze, this took place before The Impossible Astronaut. It could take place before or after the second River's First Night/Last Night.]

• The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon
  
• River receives a letter from the Doctor and goes to 1969 to witness his "death" at the impossible astronaut's hands. She visited Graystark and pretended not to know the identity of the girl who called Nixon. River helps to defeat the Silence. She returns to the Stormcage afterwards, telling the Doctor that she had made a promise and that he would understand soon enough. They share their first kiss from his perspective, and she worries that the kiss might be her last. [River has her vortex manipulator, which she acquired in The Pandorica Opens. This seems to be her last kiss with the Eleventh Doctor, meaning that it's unlikely that Rain Gods or any other dates occur afterwards.]
• The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone
  
• Hoping to be pardoned, River joins Father Octavian in locating a Weeping Angel aboard the Byzantium. She vandalises the ship's home-box with a message to the Doctor, who rescues her and joins the expedition into the crashed Byzantium. River offers to throw herself into a crack in time to save Amy and the Doctor. The angels are defeated and River leaves to be returned to the Stormcage, hoping for a pardon this time. She teases the Doctor about the Pandorica. [River indicated that she had not yet experienced this two-parter in The Pandorica Opens, meaning that it must take place after The Big Bang.]
• The Wedding of River Song
• Having received her pardon, River visits Amy and Rory, who have just recently watched the supposed death of the Doctor, and tells them that he isn't dead. [River has just climbed out of the Byzantium, meaning that this scene takes place not long after The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone.]

• The Lady in the Lake
  
• River has learnt of the existence of clones of herself and looks into them, wanting a family. She visits Terminus Prime to investigate and then sends a distress call to the Doctor, with the Fifth Doctor receiving it and taking her as a companion alongside Brooke. [In The Diary of River Song 3, River mentions the Byzantium and that she is a professor. She says that she has had eleven husbands, or more depending on how one counts. She doesn't mention Darillium when thinking of good times with the Doctor, again pointing at the set taking place before The Husbands of River Song, which her lack of a sonic device also supports.]
• A Requiem for the Doctor
• River travels with the Fifth Doctor and Brooke.
• My Dinner with Andrew
• River is a professor.
• The Furies
• River defeats Kovarian.
• Last Night

• Having learnt who River is, the Doctor plans to take her to Darillium. However, he ends up cancelling. [The Doctor knows from Forest of the Dead that the last time River saw him before her death was Darillium. This means that he would not have attempted to take her there until after she had seen him in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. This could be before or after The Diary of River Song 3, but since she says that he's been promising to take her for ages, it has been placed afterwards. It is before The Angels Take Manhattan because the said episode is her last meeting with the Eleventh Doctor.]

• The Angels Take Manhattan
  
• River watches Rory and Amy as they are sent back in time by a Weeping Angel. River declined the offer of travelling with him full-time. [River has been pardoned, meaning that it takes place after her visit to Amy and Rory at the end of The Wedding of River Song. The last entry in her diary before The Husbands of River Song is "Manhattan", so this must have occurred after her travels with the Fifth Doctor in The Diary of River Song 3.]
• The Husbands of River Song
• River unwittingly meets the Twelfth Doctor and visits Darillium, where they spend their last night, lasting twenty-four years. The Doctor gives her a sonic screwdriver, which he has altered so that he will be able to upload her in the library after she dies. [She doesn't seem to be in possession of her vortex manipulator, but it is later seen in The Sonomancer which was certainly after this episode. As such, the absence of her vortex manipulator this late in her timeline cannot be seen as a limiting factor.]

• The Boundless Sea
  
• River is working in academia in 1924. She meets Bertie Potts and is invited to a party held by the Rulers of the Universe. [In The Diary of River Song 1, River has entered something of a retirement, possesses her sonic screwdriver and is open to the existence of Doctors beyond the Eleventh, indicating that these stories take place after The Husbands of River Song.]
• I Went to a Marvellous Party
• River attends the party and meets who she believes to be an incarnation of the Doctor beyond the Twelfth.
• Signs
  
• River learns that "the Doctor" is a Kamishi and shoots him. She goes after the Rulers of the Universe. She references how she once killed the Doctor at Lake Silencio.
• The Rulers of the Universe
• River communicates with the Eighth Doctor through radio, using the name Miss Spritz.
• The Unknown
• River meets the Seventh Doctor aboard a spaceship. [River has her sonic screwdriver (meaning she is post-Husbands) and is no longer in retirement, implying that The Diary of River Song 2 takes place after The Diary of River Song 1. However, this is uncertain.]
• Five Twenty-Nine
• River tries to save the Burrowses.
• World Enough and Time
• River meets the Sixth Doctor at Golden Futures.
• The Eye of the Storm
  
• River has an adventure with both the Sixth and Seventh Doctors.

• The Sonomancer
• To stop the Eleven, River summons the Eighth Doctor by mistake and teams up with his companion Helen Sinclair under the name Melody Malone. She leaves after helping Helen find her way back to the Doctor. [The Sonomancer must take place for River before Doom Coalition 4, as she has already met Helen by then.]
• The Eighth Piece

• Posing as a nun and wearing a psychic wimple, River (known as Sister Cantica) almost bumped into the Eighth Doctor and met Liv Chenka. She had already met Helen.
• The Doomsday Chronometer
• River travels with Helen and saves Liv.
• The Crucible of Souls
• River helps the Doctor escape and witnesses chancellory guards killing survivors. The Doctor, Liv and Helen are sent into the future by Padrac.
• Songs of Love
• River pretends to ally herself with the Doom Coalition and is later sent into the Matrix. The Doctor remembers meeting her in Vienna (A Requiem for the Doctor) and the Great Storm (The Eye of the Storm). She feels that she is approaching her final destination.
• Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
• River is on an expedition to the library, where she meets the Tenth Doctor, who has never met her before. The two encounter the Vashta Nerada. River sacrifices herself, but the Doctor manages to save her by uploading her to the computer to live out a new life with her friends.
• The Name of the Doctor
• River is summoned from the computer to a psychic seance with Vastra, Jenny, Strax and Clara Oswald. She remains connected to Clara after the seance ends and follows her as she visits Trenzalore, believing that she was invisible to the Doctor. He later acknowledges her and finally says goodbye to her as she fades.