Doctor Who, Season Nine

[Esquilax]

That's because the first time we meet River Song, she is basically from the furtherst part of the doctors future. She knows everything about the doctor, and all the adventures they've had. She gets progressively less confident and independant the more we see her, because every time we see her, she's had less and less adventures with the doctor, she has less experience and she is younger.

I'm actually okay with that aspect- seeing a character's growth in reverse is interesting, as is their reliance on another character in that chronological order- but what really bothers me about River is how her backstory serves to reduce both her and Amy. River doesn't just get less independent, her entire character is literally wrapped around the Doctor's through no choice of her own, and her whole relationship with him turns out to be weird, mind-controlled wife grooming. And notice that once she reaches the end of that relationship, once she's fully confident and surpasses the Doctor... she's killed off. Her whole life- and death- is nothing but a tool for the male protagonist's story.

And I shouldn't even have to point out the problems this raises for Amy; she spends basically a whole season with her sole utility being her womb, and the show goes on to intimate that since she can no longer have kids, she should divorce her husband, as though the entirety of her value as a person is tied up in her ability to be a mother. Not to mention, she's a character who is entirely informed by two other male characters, and seems to have no interests outside of them that actually persist beyond one episode stints, mostly to justify the plot.

This is something that Doctor Who's been getting better at- Clara's actually got some shit of her own to deal with these last two seasons, though even she started out as an extension of the Doctor- but it's not all there yet. I think part of the problem is that the character writing is so loosely sketched and overshadowed by plots that the characters mostly just walk into, as opposed to actively instigating. It's harder to give protagonists rich inner lives when they spend the majority of their time oncsreen completely isolated from their home environments and the things that inform who they are as people.