In “A Good Man Goes to War” we discovered that one of the reasons River is the way she is is that she was conceived on board the Tardis, which made the Doctor ultimately responsible for a lot of her power in a way which made me deeply uncomfortable; in this episode we discover that her personality was created through conditioning and her skills taught to her specifically because of the Doctor, to kill the Doctor, and that she had spent all of her life up to this episode preoccupied with the Doctor, and that every choice she has made that has shaped her as a person was about the Doctor — that she became an archaeologist because of the Doctor, that she went through her life trying to find the Doctor. Everything about River which was interesting, which made her paradigm-breaking as a female character, has been stripped away: she is entirely defined, from her skill set to her personality to her career choice, through her relationship with the Doctor. It’s all about him. Moreover, despite being part-Time Lord she is now less powerful than the Doctor, because she used all her power (her regenerations) to bring him back to life.

Review: Doctor Who 6.08, “Let’s Kill Hitler”