User blog comment:Morgana High Priestess/Could have Morgause brainwashed Morgana?/@comment-5102537-20130311075520/@comment-5674726-20130319000309

''As you know, I don't consider The Death Song of Uther Pendragon as an epsiode that fits the context of the show because to me it was all only a big and silly farce. They could have eplained it by the things you mentioned in your excellent post, but they didn't because, obviously, Arthur didn't achieve much on his own but simply continued what his father had started. Not to mention that, the more we saw of magic and learnt about the Old Religion, Uther was not so wrong after all. Therefore Arthur needed to shine in comparison to Uther. In order to to this, they turned Uther suddenly evil instead of turning Arthur into the Once and Future, honourable king.''

Had they wanted to, it would have been very easy to explain that being forced back from the dead had a serious negative effect on a person. All it would have taken would be an extra line from Gaius, when he was telling Merlin about the priestesses being taught never to look back, with him elaborating that the reason for this was that a dead soul who is forced back into the world will return as their darkest self, that they'll be unbalanced, or something along those lines, something that would make it clear that Uther had changed for the worse thanks to being dragged back from the Spirit world.

They wouldn't have needed to spell out that something similar happened or could have happened to Morgana, if they didn't want to. They could leave viewers to decide for themselves if she was dead or alive when Morgause whisked her away at the end of The Fires of Idirsholas - I side with dead since Morgause undid the spell on the Knights of Medhir, not the separate enchantment she cast on Morgana, yet everybody started to wake up.

Unfortunately, I think you're right that they wanted to vilify Uther and downgrade his very substantial achievements as a monarch so that Arthur would look better by comparison.