"I don't want to marry you!"

[DAK]

That's what the Doctor said to River, in what I thought was a rather nasty tone of voice.  And then on the top of they pyramid he suddenly (and very reluctantly it seemed to me) performs a brief and rather lame marriage ceremony.  What was the point of that?  The first thing he says to her is something like "Wife, I have a request".  Is that why he married her - because he thought she'd then do as he asked?  I'm not feeling the love here!  At least not on his part.

Up to this point River has had a rather crummy history with him.  From her point of view he's abandoned her at a hospital centuries and light years from home.  On the day she gets her doctorate she's apparently still looking for him, so years would have passed.  She's then forced into a suit and taken to Lake Silencio to kill him.  How can she possibly be so deeply in love with him at this point?  And after all that she has to serve time in prison for a crime that was never committed.  I know she doesn't stay there all the time, but still ... what a horrible life.   

[Miss Wright]

I was a bit confused on his quick decision to marry her, but not upset by it. The wedding ceremony seemed like it was short, but not lame. Has there ever been a Time Lord or Gallifreyan wedding shown before??? The Doctor knew exactly what he needed when he asked for cloth. Besides, she's "not a wedding person." And if River has had such an awful experience with the Doctor, how did she fall in love with him?

And this is what was said in the scene where they get married:

Doctor: Now, there you go, River Song, Melody Pond, you are the woman who married me. Wife, I have a request...

From that context, it seems to me that they are kind of ridding each other of blame. River didn't want to be the woman who murdered him. Because she married him, she's not. He was asking her to do exactly the same thing he was before when he says "wife," just now, she is free of blame for doing it.

[DAK]

I was a bit confused on his quick decision to marry her, but not upset by it. The wedding ceremony seemed like it was short, but not lame. Has there ever been a Time Lord or Gallifreyan wedding shown before??? The Doctor knew exactly what he needed when he asked for cloth. Besides, she's "not a wedding person." And if River has had such an awful experience with the Doctor, how did she fall in love with him?

That's what I'd like to know, because at that point in her life she might have been in love with the *idea* of him.  But the man himself?  She'd hardly seen him!

And this is what was said in the scene where they get married:

Doctor: Now, there you go, River Song, Melody Pond, you are the woman who married me. Wife, I have a request...

From that context, it seems to me that they are kind of ridding each other of blame. River didn't want to be the woman who murdered him. Because she married him, she's not. He was asking her to do exactly the same thing he was before when he says "wife," just now, she is free of blame for doing it. 

He'd already completely forgiven her and freed her of blame on the beach.  He didn't marry her because he loved her.  It was more like "oh, all right, if it'll make you happy and do what I want then I suppose I'll have to".  He was so condescending toward her. 

[DAK]

Found an article ( http://io9.com/5844553/why-this-years-doctor-who-finale-was-mostly-better-than-last-years ) which describes very well how I feel about River's and the Doctor's relationship now.  Here are the relevant paragraphs:

"So in order to get River to restart the universe and set things right, the Doctor has to marry her — you'll notice the Doctor never says he loves her, and he makes fun of her for saying she loves him. Soon afterwards, the Doctor tells River, "I don't want to marry you." And then, right before he does marry her, he tells her, "You embarrass me," and he genuinely seems to be full of loathing for her in that moment. During the actual quickie wedding ceremony, River asks, "What am I doing?" and the Doctor replies, "as you're told." Awwww... so romantic. Finally, the Doctor tells her, "Now you're the woman who marries me," as if she's won the jackpot. (Plus of course, the wedding happened in a bubble universe that was erased.)

So what does River get for marrying the Doctor and taking the fall for his fake murder? She gets locked up in Stormcage for almost the rest of her life — apparently she gets out, in time to die in "Forest of the Dead." She's not only given up all her regenerations to bring the Doctor to life and given her final life to save him, she's also agreed to be locked away in prison and reviled as one of history's greatest criminals, just to help the Doctor lower his profile a bit. (Because even if the Doctor had to appear to die by that lakeside to safeguard the "fixed point in time," there's no law that says he couldn't show up at River's trial and say "Hello, it's me. Actually didn't die. Thanks.")

As a consolation prize, River gets to leave her cell every night and go traveling with the Doctor, in a series of adventures that we'll never get to see — since apparently, they all happened in the gap between "The God Complex" and "Closing Time." (Remember, in "The Impossible Astronaut," the Doctor who meets River in Utah has already lived through all the adventures in her magic diary.)

I'm sure we'll see River Song again, but I'm also sure that her story is basically played out. We've seen her birth and her death, and we've apparently gotten answers to all the major questions about her. And honestly, her character has lost most of its appeal at this point — she's now the psychopath who blackmailed the Doctor into marrying her by holding the universe for ransom, and then took the fall for him. Once she was locked up for a crime that the Doctor basically framed her for, he took pity on her and led her on some fun adventures."

So yeah, I am one disheartened Doctor/River shipper.   

[Aneurin]

I don't see the bad in it personally. It seemed to me that he was being sort of mean to her as a way of telling her he wasn't worth the trouble. Like he wanted to **** her off enough that she would agree to then go an kill him. If he really didn't care he wouldn't have told her about the Tesselector thingy, he would have just let her go on being angry at him or whatever. Also, in his conversation with Dorium, he seemed pretty happy going by the smile on his face, that he was still getting to spend time with her. I'd personally take all the mean things he said to her at the pyramid with a pinch of salt.

[Miss Wright]

One of the aforementioned "grains of salt" that we have to take in this situation, is that we haven't seen everything. River must have spent more time with him to fall in love with him like that. One of the impressions that I always had was that the Doctor fell in love with River was because she loved him, and that River fell in love with the Doctor because he loved her. If that makes sense.

Another thought, the Doctor lies, and he does things for reasons that don't make sense to us in the beginning(if at all!) quite often. The only way for really deep stuff to make sense some times, is to must take it entirely at face value. 

[Saber]

My thoughts are similar to Aneurin on this. I put the way he was treating her down to him wanting her to go ahead and follow through with the fixed point because he already had a plan to make things better, which he couldn't do if they were to be forever stuck on that timeline.

[Miss Wright]

Totally agree.

[Kovarians-Eye-Patch]

I put the way he was treating her down to him wanting her to go ahead and follow through with the fixed point because he already had a plan to make things better, which he couldn't do if they were to be forever stuck on that timeline.

This is exactly what I thought. It didn't even register with me that he was being 'mean' until someone pointed it out afterwards. I just automatically assumed the above.

[TheDoctorDonna]

It never really occured to me that he was being genuinly mean or spiteful. That really isn't how the Doctor works. I think he just said what he said and how he said it so that he got go about getting things back on the right track.

[Tardis-Console]

I'm sort of split with this. While I understand the Doctors reasoning behind what he said, I think the way he said it was a bit harsh, even to get his point accross. If I was River I'd have slapped his face.