Which story should've been River Song's last appearance?

Pretty self-explanatory...

Was River fun or interesting to have around at first, or did you never like her? Are you happy with how her arc developed or would you rather it'd been nipped in the bud earlier, and if so, where? What would've been a good swansong for her? What was the last story of hers before she became annoying to you?

Silence in the Library.

She irritated me from the start and I never thought she was worthy of return stories.

She should never have existed.

Time of Angels/Flesh & Stone for me.

A nice, welcome return appearance (just to show the events of Silence on the Library weren't just forgotten), and a good story. Probably among Moffat's last real greats.

River didn't really start to significantly annoy me until Let's Kill Hitler. Up till then she'd seemed a welcome part of the ensemble, but there she started to take over the show completely and in doing so, managed to actually burn out the show's whole momentum in just one episode, and render the show completely vacuous.

That said, her arc was always completely pointless. I never for the life of me, got why she needed to be Amy and Rory's daughter or for that matter, why such effort was made to give her Time Lord powers only for them to be taken away instantly the next episode.

Particularly, when everything prior had merely suggested she only had to be a human from an advanced future who'd had a typically exceptional future education.

So, I would've welcomed nipping her arc in the bud before we got too deep into it.

Or maybe Stengos is right that it would've been better had her character just been a one-off.

Tanmann wrote:Time of Angels/Flesh & Stone for me.

A nice, welcome return appearance (just to show the events of Silence on the Library weren't just forgotten), and a good story. Probably among Moffat's last real greats.

River didn't really start to significantly annoy me until Let's Kill Hitler. Up till then she'd seemed a welcome part of the ensemble, but there she started to take over the show completely and in doing so, managed to actually burn out the show's whole momentum in just one episode, and render the show completely vacuous.

That said, her arc was always completely pointless. I never for the life of me, got why she needed to be Amy and Rory's daughter or for that matter, why such effort was made to give her Time Lord powers only for them to be taken away instantly the next episode.

Particularly, when everything prior had merely suggested she only had to be a human from an advanced future who'd had a typically exceptional future education.

So, I would've welcomed nipping her arc in the bud before we got too deep into it.

Or maybe Stengos is right that it would've been better had her character just been a one-off.

That's Steven being edgey, thinking out of the box, subverting expectations. Its great.

Or shit - depending on your own point of view.

stengos wrote:That's Steven being edgey, thinking out of the box, subverting expectations. Its great.

Or shit - depending on your own point of view.

Might sound strange of me saying this now, but at the time I really thought Steven Moffat was better than that, and that he had something more up his sleeve than the insipidly obvious thing to do.

Tanmann wrote:Time of Angels/Flesh & Stone for me.

A nice, welcome return appearance (just to show the events of Silence on the Library weren't just forgotten), and a good story. Probably among Moffat's last real greats.

River didn't really start to significantly annoy me until Let's Kill Hitler. Up till then she'd seemed a welcome part of the ensemble, but there she started to take over the show completely and in doing so, managed to actually burn out the show's whole momentum in just one episode, and render the show completely vacuous.

That said, her arc was always completely pointless. I never for the life of me, got why she needed to be Amy and Rory's daughter or for that matter, why such effort was made to give her Time Lord powers only for them to be taken away instantly the next episode.

Particularly, when everything prior had merely suggested she only had to be a human from an advanced future who'd had a typically exceptional future education.

So, I would've welcomed nipping her arc in the bud before we got too deep into it.

Or maybe Stengos is right that it would've been better had her character just been a one-off.

Essentially my thoughts, although her character has proven exceedingly irritating on repeat viewings of the Smith era for me. Whether this is down to hindsight and what her character devolved into later on or down to my becoming increasingly negative towards NuWho as a whole isn’t exactly clear to me at the moment, but her character simply fucks me off in every capacity now. But yes- The Time of Angels is still one of the absolute best NuWho instalments and Moffat’s best script, so I’ll give it my vote.

Bernard Marx wrote:Essentially my thoughts, although her character has proven exceedingly irritating on repeat viewings of the Smith era for me. Whether this is down to hindsight and what her character devolved into later on or down to my becoming increasingly negative towards NuWho as a whole isn’t exactly clear to me at the moment, but her character simply fucks me off in every capacity now.

She basically feels like the same joke that's gotten old now. An exhausted novelty that was never really worth the excess indulgence she got.

Add to that, even when she wasn't there, she virtually still was, since basically Missy was just a more annoying variation on her 'jolly hockey-sticks' character, and she's probably not the only one. And I do think after that, it became very hard to revisit River's character and not be reminded immediately of Missy's worst, obnoxious excesses too, and not already feel sick of her archetype having been done to death.