Doctor Who: Every Modern Companion's DEFINITIVE Episode

6. River – The Husbands of River Song

River Song is a great character, but, in almost every story, she is defined by everything around her. She's Moffat's big enigma, a slowly unwravelling story with her at the centre. For most of Matt Smith's run, the Doctor, like he is with Clara, seems mostly attracted to her because she's a puzzle to be solved. There's teases and spoilers and paradoxes, the reveal of who she is and why she's in jail, her wedding to the Doctor... ultimately, she's a plot device. Luckily, Alex Kingston plays her with such charm that you often forget she's just a pawn in other people's plans. 

The Husbands of River Song, casting off the shackles of the Smith era's timey-wimey series arcs, is a story that finally treats River as a person rather than a narrative device. The Husbands of River Song isn't about who River is in relation to the wider Doctor Who mythos, and it doesn't present any big mysteries, it's just about her, what the Doctor means to her, and what she means to him. To be more specific, the story is about what it actually means to love the Doctor. The Smith era presents them as being a couple but you never quite buy that Eleven loves River, not really. Here, she pours her heart out in that beautiful monologue, and, in that moment where Twelve reveals that he is, in fact, 'in love enough to be standing in it with her', it's the first time you can really see that he does love her too. 

There's no clutter in this story - there's no full time companion that needs to be juggled into the story and the threat is relatively minor and lighthearted, which befits both Christmas and the rom-com vibes the episode is clearly shooting for. River, for the very first time, is a co-lead and not a supporting character in this one (and Kingston finally gets her well deserved place in the opening credits). The story gives us payoffs that have been teased from as far back as River's first appearance in Silence in the Library, and they land precisely because they have been built towards for so long. The Singing Towers of Darillium and the Doctor gifting River her screwdriver are woven into the narrative in a more beautiful way than we might have imagined, culminating in the wonderful reveal that their final date night lasts not a few hours, but twenty-four years. 

Alex Kingston puts in her best performance here, unburdened by having to play the mysterious angle. She and the Doctor know each other all too well, and we, as the audience, do too. She's able to play River with a looseness and vulnerability that there wasn't space for before, and her chemistry with Peter Capaldi is far more electric than it ever was with Smith. I will forever commend Moffat for going against his instincts and not planning an overblown, crazy finale for River. The choice to make this episode a quiet, personal story that patches what was most lacking in River's character was an inspired choice that absolutely ended Kingston's time on the show on a soaring high.