This is what I got from this, but looking at other threads I'm not so sure:-

River's DNA is human+ - a mutation that causes similarities and characteristics to Time Lords due to coitus during travel in the Time Vortex, not actually part Time Lord.

The reason I'm confused is that others on this forum believe that her DNA is actually part time Time Lord and causes her to be able to:-

Read Gallifreyan
sense other Time Lords,
be time sensitive etc.

The only sign that she has anything special about her is her ability to Time Travel using a vortex manipulater without ill effects and - if she is the young American girl - regenerate and have increased strength.
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Also, some posters are pointing to the fact that her DNA is "half Time Lord" that Rory isn't the father (even though it's shown that he definitely is the father in the episode)

Well such posters are chosing to ignore everything we have actually been shown so far.

e.g. The doctor stating "She's Amy and Rory's baby" or the scans showing she was "Not Time Lord, but Human Plus" or "Well how close is she then? Could she even regenerate?" or the many discussions about how she was conceived by Rory and Amy during flight and not conceived by the Doctor having sex with Amy.



Also has it been actually stated that you need Timelord DNA to read Galifreyan? I mean I understand it's a bloody complicated language what with being pictures of circles and all but I've assumed that given enough time, a talent for linguistics and either a Rosetta Stone type object or a teacher who already read it anyone could learn.

I think as I understand it Galifreyans became timelord via being exposed to the untempered scizum over a billions of years. River is definatly human yes but just has that little bit extra DNA that makes you Timelord. River has had a massive injection during conception because she was concieved whilst they were travelling in the time vortex.
I have a feeling Madame K has been playing mad scientist injecting the feotus with all sort of things.
River has also shown to do the following things.
1. Being a crack shot with a gun
2. Fly the TARDIS better than Doctor (At the moment anyway.)

I thought that River is to Humans what Timelords are to Gallifreyans. So some of the stuff that timelords do (such as regenerate, be really smart and be time sensitive) she can do, but some of the Doctors traits probably come from being from Gallifray rather than being a Timelord (such as having two hearts perhaps? seeing as the people who'd been scanning river since birth didn't notice a second heart).

So yeah, Timelord is a mutation. When it happens to Gallifreyans one thing happens, when it happens to humans something slightly different happens.


I assume. Wildly.

1. Many full humans can do that with practice
2. Didn't Romana say that the Doctor's TARDIS skills were seriously lacking?

From what I have read the first two docs only had one heart?

Pretty much how I saw it, too.

I'd always assumed that because she spent so much time with the Doctor , and the fact he was the last of an ancient race and that she was an archeologist it was natural for he to have gone off and learnt Gallifreyan.

Now we know exactly who she is it seems even more logical she learnt the language because he taught her as she was growing up!

It's what some posters are suggesting ("She pointed to the cot, showing she could read Galifreyan - proving she's part Time Lord") - I just though she learnt it through a lot of hard work (like someone taught to write in the Latin alphabet learning written Chinese) Being half-Chinese doesn't mean you can automatically write Chinese.

Well again, this has pretty much been cleared up (largely by a Twitter post by Mr Moffat) that what she was doing was poiting to the prayer leaf inside the cot which had her name on it and nothing to do with the Galifrayan writing on the outside.

Only the first Doctor, in fact. It was later suggested in one of the novels that Time Lords gain their second heart when they first regenerate.

I agree with this speculation.

The Doctor has had many human companions with him throughout all his incarnations, did he expect the males and females who fancied each other to refrain from getting it on in the Tardis, and would he expressly try to stop them, because of how it might affect their offspring?

I know this sort of thing was not supposed to happen in Classic Who, but say Ian and Barbara or Jamie and Zoe had sexual congress in the Tardis when travelling with the Doctor. Would Baby Chesterton or Baby McCrimmon be part Time Lord? I don't think so, I think the the few Time Lord elements present in the DNA would quickly dissipate as the foetus grew. I believe this was not the case with Baby Pond because of Madame K's intervention.

When the doctor found out River was melody he did the whole "but then..do we... mwah mwah mwah" thing. Which I took to mean their DNA would be compatible and they could carry on the timelord race, so she is effectively part timelord.

Maybe I misunderstood

you misunderstood although so many people seem to. He just found it a bit cheeky he kissed and will kiss his friends' daughter

It makes me somewhat nervous how many people on the fourm seem to use a kissing mime to represent full on sex. I hope I never meet any as the possibility for a serious misunderstanding seem rather high.

Well, I doubt the doctor would get his penis out and start thrusting if he wanted to ask the same thing. Kissing mimes can mean lots of things.

Not really an issue though, since neither of those couplings would be even remotely likely-they'd be totally out of character for the companions concerned, particularly 18th Century innocent Jamie and fifties holdovers Ian and Barbara.

Do we know she can read Gallifreyan?

Knowing what's written on the cot she was in as a child doesn't mean she was reading it - she could simply have been told what it said when she was a kid.

Fron what we've seen of Melody and River on screen, there's nothing at all that hasn't been completely human in terms of behaviour and "talents". River's a bright, tough woman but she's not actually done anything alien.

We know she knows High Gallifreyan.

Indeed - she graffiti'd Planet 1 with it (not to mention the box in the museum...)

I agree on the biology - River is to human as Time Lord is to Gallifreyan. She's got the extra bit that the Time Lords tack onto their DNA that allows them to bond with a TARDIS and do Time Lordy stuff. Whether they name it explicitly, I'm going to carry on thinking it's the Rassilon Imprimatur.

I shudder to think what these people thought the Doctor was up to when air-kissing all those people (even the footballers ) in The Lodger.

I guess you have to be able to appreciate context

Made me smile. Yeah, there is a lot of -there must be Timelord babies now threads.

If there is yay, but not happening soon if his technique of kissing is any indication!

He was adorably embarrassed.

Of course not but there are many other universally recognised signs for "how's your father" that just about anyone would use before relying on a kissing mime.

For example...

...placing one hand in the crook of the other arm and raising the held arm in a clenched fist ("WAY-HEY" noise optional).

...cirlcing the thumb and forefinger of one like a doughnut and then repeatedly inserting and removing the index finger of the other hand.

...nudging the other person with your elbow whilst winking theatrically and inclining your head.

...using such phrases as "You know what I mean, Ay, ay, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more" or "hibbity-gibbity". Note that this can be performed alongside the previous action.

...holding one hand in front of your mouth in a clenched fist whilst pushing your toungue in and out of your cheek.

...chenching both hands into fists, holding both arms at the side of your body with the elbow at ninety degrees so that your forarms extend in front of you and moving your hips back and forth.

...Holding one hand palm down in front of you whilst the other loosely swings from side to side above it as if you were waxing a table or perhaps admonishing a dog or urging a horse to run faster.