A woman with a mass of curly hair holds a red diary and puts a finger to her lips in a vast lamp-lit library, a man in a dark suit beside her and a blue police box far down the hall.

Original artwork, not a still

River Song

Spoilers!

— Doctor Who ‧ 2005

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

A catchphrase as a promise: she knows how the Doctor's story goes and will not spoil it, because spoilers can collapse time. It marks her as the one person always ahead of him, and it is playful, intimate and slightly smug. Fans turned it into the standard reply to anyone asking what happens next in a story.

Context reviewed

In context

Spoilers for Doctor WhoShow the scene

River Song, the time-travelling archaeologist created by Steven Moffat and played by Alex Kingston, uses this word whenever she refuses to reveal the Doctor's future. She first appears in the 2008 two-parter "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead", meeting a Tenth Doctor who has never seen her before. At the end she sacrifices herself in his place; as he babbles questions, she smiles, says the word and dies. It returns later, for example in "The Name of the Doctor" (2013), when the Doctor asks how Clara can still be alive.

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