Whovians everywhere love River Song, but not everyone knows where this iconic ‘Doctor Who‘ character got her name from. At the time of her creation, it appears that showrunner Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat were attempting to sneak some fun into the series in an unexpected way. Specifically, Moffat and Davies were trying to come up with rude acronyms for their episode titles!
Talk about an unexpected origin for a character’s name!
According to Moffat who revealed this tidbit on the Doctor Who Fan Show:
“Russell and I went through a phase of trying to work out Doctor Who titles with rude acronyms, to wind up people on internet message boards.
I thought up, ‘A River Song Ending’ – he said, ‘What’s a river song?!’ and I said, ‘Oh, I’ll just call somebody River Song… and she’d better die. That way we’ve got the acronym’.
[But] we didn’t use the title. ‘ARSE’ – we can’t do that.”
It looks like saner heads prevailed against trying to come up against the censors on that, but they apparently ended up liking the name River Song so it stuck! Can you even imagine Alex Kingston‘s character with another name at this point?
You can watch the full interview in the clip below:
Now it is going to be up to Whovians everywhere to comb through each of the episodes which were crafted under the guiding hands of Moffat and Davies to see if any other fun acronyms did make their way into the show. It wouldn’t surprise me if one or two episode titles ended up being a bit more revealing than everyone would have guessed initially.
Are you really surprised that River Song ended up with her name due to Moffat trying to sneak ARSE into the show as an episode title? What other character names could be used for creative acronyms? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Digital Spy
