Doctor Who: 8 Reasons Why River Song HAS To Come Back!

8. She Only Appeared In 14 Episodes

For a character with such a detailed and complicated storyline, River Song actually only appeared in 14 episodes over the course of seven years. Of which, more than half were two-part story arcs and so, technically count as one extra-long episode.

Of course, if we’re being pedantic, there is that one scene at the end of Closing Time and a handful of DVD minisodes but it still seems like a very low figure considering the journey this character takes us on and the fact that she is one of the very few characters to have encountered three incarnations of the timelord. (On screen at least!)

From a production perspective it makes sense that she doesn’t appear ‘full time’ when you consider the fact that Steven Moffat wouldn’t allow other writers to include her in their story concepts. It figures that he wouldn’t want anything to conflict with his master plan but that did limit us to only a handful of River centred episodes per series.

Since his departure, Steven Moffat has allowed Big Finish the rights to continue writing audio adventures for the character and so there is still hope that he might pass the baton of ownership over to Russell T. Davies when the time is right!