turtle_goose asked for my top 5 ways to fix series 6. "CHANGE EVERYTHING" didn't seem like a good answer, so I tried to work within the constraints of the basic plot outline of this season. Obviously this is really a top 5 ways to tweak series 6 to my liking.


5. An actual exploration of the Doctor's dark side instead of two-second lipservice in a hypocritical speech.


"Doctor, you're such a jerk! It's totally hot though, negl."
Of all my suggestions this is the vaguest, but I do think it would've increased my enjoyment by like a billion. All the promo for this season said we would see THE DARK SIDE OF THE DOCTOR and this excited me because I love nothing more than seeing the dark side of the Doctor! And in the second episode we got the Doctor brainwashing humanity into committing genocide for him without even knowing it. Pretty dark, right? Except that was never ever discussed or brought up or criticized by the text or addressed and was in fact presented as a-okay and a super-clever trick. Ha HA! Take that, Silence! You brainwash humanity into horrible things like TECHNOLOGY and SPACE TRAVEL? Well I'LL brainwash them to SLAUGHTER YOU ALL! Who's the puppetmaster now?? Also, that time Eleven pushed the burden of leaving oldAmy onto Rory and then left Rory to explain the fuckery to youngAmy? Super douche move, dude! But it's okay, we'll have forgotten next episode anyway.

Meanwhile, the Doctor winning a bloodless victory to save his friend and her baby (ha ha, except not) earns him a slap on the wrist from River Song -- who, by the way, will praise him for the very same things later in the Library when she stans for Eleven. What? First off, if you want to establish the Doctor's ruthlessness when you mess with his companions, a bloodless victory where he says some mean things to that one guy is not really the most powerful way to go about it. But okay. Second, River's entire speech, which is otherwise well-written, is negated because it IS precisely what she praises Eleven for later in her life.

And then the season culminates in the entire universe telling the Doctor that he is loved AND BY NO ONE MORE THAN THE CHILD HE LOST WHO WAS RAISED TO MURDER HIM BUT NOW IS IN LOVE WITH HIM BECAUSE SHE READ HIS WIKIPEDIA PAGE and ... just... what? Is that supposed to be a consequence? WHY DON'T WE GO BACK TO THAT TIME HE BRAINWASHED HUMANITY???

4. Amy and Rory leave on their own at the end of The God Complex

"See ya, douchebag."
I actually liked The God Complex, more than I liked most episodes in series 6. I didn't even hate the ending. But I do think it would've been much stronger and worked just as well within the episode if Amy and Rory had chosen to leave. In the previous episode Rory gets furious with the Doctor and says he doesn't want to travel with him anymore. In God Complex, we see Eleven finally break Amy's faith in him by confronting her with who he really is and what their relationship really is. That's cool! But it would've been even better if Amy and Rory had said "okay, you know what, I think we need to go home while we're still alive and still sane". It would've confronted the trauma Amy and Rory were put through in series 6 and could've acknowledged the emotional damage that travelling with Eleven was doing to them. It would have given Amy back some of the agency she had brutally ripped away in this season, and it could have been just as -- if not more -- powerful than the goodbye we did get. And it would've helped with #5, since the Doctor would be facing a consequence for his actions as brought on by his companions and not his own self-loathing.

3. The Doctor re-writes River's childhood to give the Ponds their baby back.

"Turns out your baby was at Burlington Coat Factory! What a happy coincidence!"
Rewriting River's past so that Melody is raised by her parents and not by a crazy murderous organization was a possibility that I wish had actually been a possibility. I think the text wants us to accept that it's off the table without ever even discussing it, which is in my opinion a mistake. The Doctor saving Melody Pond as a baby to return her to the Ponds would've been interesting for a couple reasons -- first, it would get rid of the "why the fuck is she even their baby?" problem, it would give the Ponds a happier ending in a universe where they care about their baby, it would show that the Doctor doesn't just disregard a baby being stolen, and it could even be a gesture of the Doctor's love for Amy and Rory, sacrificing his own future happiness/relationship with River in order to give Amy and Rory their child back.

At the same time, it would be incredibly morally ambiguous. Is that a dark resolution, erasing a character we've grown to know for the happiness of other characters? Probably. Is it really the Doctor's right to decide? Well, probably not. But we've had two seasons of the constant refrain that "time can be rewritten". We've seen a precedent for this, both in A Christmas Carol and The Girl Who Waited. The Doctor does what he thinks is right even when the decisions aren't always his to make. Rewriting River could be very dark (again! Point 5!) and very emotional and would be payoff for those other times we've heard that "time can be rewritten".

2. The Doctor makes an explicit choice not to rewrite River's childhood in order to give the Ponds their baby back.

"Unfortunately, Ponds, it would seem I moral standards after all."
Okay, some of you are probably saying BUT THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED! But I don't think it is, not really. Sure, maybe the Doctor did decide that he couldn't erase River's life like that so the timeline had to stand. But we never see him explicitly state that choice on screen. We never see him weigh the options, or feel guilty, or discuss it with Amy and Rory. The storyline would have been VASTLY more interesting to me if the crux of the season had been a conflict between the Ponds and the Doctor over the right thing to do. Amy and Rory could've argued their point, because they want their child back and while they like River, their infant child should be more important to them -- and why would they want their daughter to have a terrible, traumatic upbringing? Besides, the Doctor has spent over a season now telling them that "time can be rewritten" and doing just that.

There's so much to explore there, all sorts of moral ambiguity and character conflict... and maybe in the end the Doctor decides that River's right to exist is more important, that it's wrong of him to rewrite people's whole histories as he sees fit like he did to Amy and even Kazran, and that not everything can or should be rewritten. Maybe in the end he makes the hard decision and has to try and explain to the Ponds that he can't give them their baby back because that would mean erasing River Song and he doesn't have the power or authority to do that. There's tonnes of stuff to explore in the decision that the Doctor apparently made this season, but we didn't explore any of it.

1. The Doctor rescues Melody, the Ponds raise their baby, and then she grows up to be River Song anyway because there's absolutely no reason that can't happen.

"PS I KNOW YOU USED TO EAT MY HALLOWEEN CANDY, I FOUND THE WRAPPERS."
Of all of these, this one is the one that makes me weep the most bitter tears because there's no reason this couldn't be true, the season could've turned out plotwise near-identical, and it wouldn't have made me want to punch as many walls.

So, scenario: Eleven actually does what he promises Amy he can do, and goes and rescues Melody Pond from the Silence so that the Ponds can raise their damn baby and Melody doesn't have a traumatic, brainwashed upbringing. SO THEY DO. Melody is raised by her parents on Earth and maybe she has some adventures with the Doctor, I don't know who cares. Point is, after a lifetime or so, she regenerates once or twice because she's a Time Lord for whatever reason, and eventually she becomes Alex Kingston and maybe hitches a ride to the 51st century and becomes an archaeologist (and hey! ofc she would be interested in "ancient" history if she's from the 21st century) who goes by River Song. She has a backwards relationship with the Doctor, marries him in a scenario that is not as fucked up as 6x13 was, and even gets a few adventures with her parents -- which, for her, are now infinitely more poignant and meaningful because her loving mum and dad are long-since dead in her timeline. IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, maybe she even agrees to help the Doctor fake his death and take the fall for it. Maybe. (And maybe he even argues with her because he doesn't want her to have to do that but it's actually her choice outside of him manipulating her via marriage?? MAYBE.)

NOTHING EVEN HAS TO CHANGE. NOTHING. BECAUSE MAYBE THIS IS WHAT HAS ALWAYS HAPPENED IN RIVER SONG'S LIFETIME. So she becomes sassy badass River Song on her own -- or with the influence of her badass parents and their awesome bedtime stories -- and eventually seeks a relationship with the Doctor on her own. And maybe chooses to help "kill him" ON HER OWN. And then we wind up with the River Song we've always had, but without all the icky brainwashing-turned-looooove and with some semblance of a life outside the Doctor.

DONE.