sailing the fingers of the dragon

I also thought of your story! It's really a brilliant piece of work.

But I wanted to ask you about the whole River-runs-backward theory, which I think this episode disproves. Because River buys (or extorts, if you rather) her vortex manipulator from Dorium Maldovar, but he dies in this episode, which is also set on the actual day of her birth. And then River shows up, from the future, wearing the same vortex manipulator he sold her.

Which proves that her meeting with the Doctor at the end of 6x07 has to be later than the Pandorica stuff in 5x12. Except for the fact that if Dorium died on the day of River's birth, he can't be around to sell her a vortex manipulator forty or fifty years later. Argh.

And she's also wearing her vortex manipulator all through "The Impossible Astronaut," which would explain how she got from the 52nd century to the 21st, but puts that episode post-Pandorica, too.

Wow, I thought I had something that made sense when I started typing, but I seem to have succeeded in confusing myself. But I really do think Moffat has written himself in a corner and at the very least River's appearance at the end of this episode is later in her timeline, not earlier. So your theory that she doesn't always appear previously in her own timeline holds true.