Review: Doctor Who 6.13: The Wedding of River Song

Doctor Who?

Series Six will be remembered, in my mind, as the series of Moffat's Arc. Tacked onto the end of single episodes, this is an example of an arc that manages to be both intrusive and too light. It's as if Moffat only envisaged his episodes and unlike RTD didn't really touch upon the other scripts, which means that this series - already fragmented by a six-month long split - was incredibly inconsistent in quality. Now, after two years' worth of build up, is our climax.
     In many ways it was very similar to the finale preceeding it - a period of distortion where time and space were collapsing. But unlike The Big Bang, The Wedding of River Song answered questions, and in a way tht made them compelling rather than tedious. There were no big surprises, not really - everything panned out pretty much as most fans had expected it to, but the way it was handled felt fresh and so incredibly watchable.
     All of time is happening at once - pterodacyls fly over London as Emperor Winston Churchill sits inside Buckingham Palace surrounded by his Roman guard. The Doctor, kept as "the seer", recants to Chruchill how time froze in place when River emptied the cells on the spacesuit instead of killing The Doctor. The Silence infest the Palace but The Doctor is evacuated by a swat team led by Amy Pond, who in this reality is the head of a society fighting The Silence. At their base in one ofthe Cairo pyramids, River Song greets The Doctor with joy. He insists that he has to die or time will disintegrate, and the base is attacked by The Silents. River takes The Doctor up to the roof and reveals that she called upon everyone who ever loved The Doctor, and that there were so many they appeared to block out the sun. Eventually she gives in and The Doctor dies at Lake Silencio as in The Impossible Astronaught.

     However, as seen earlier in the episode, an older River reveals to Amy that the Doctor who died at Lake Silencio was in fact the Tesselecta from Let's Kill Hitler. This had always been a common fan theory ever since the device was introduced, and the fact that the device was given a lot of study in the "previously" intro made the solution rather obvious. However, I didn't feel let down by it. I've been very critical of this series, and for once this episode moved me. I was excited to learn the solution, no matter what it was, and that's either a testament to Moffat's writing or a critism of how intrusive the arc has really been that I can't wait for it to be over.
     And thus, like The Big Bang - the comparison is very worthy of thought, both set in a crumbling reality with River Song facing people who want the Doctor dead because he might destroy the Universe, with The Doctor appearing to sacrifice himself before being miraculously brought back - there isn't much more to say. Unlike Moffat's other efforts, his finales are so far have been rather simple tales and I've enjoyed them. For me, this climax wasn't truely mindbending or confusing, and the characters that I'd been getting tired of bowed out (hopefully) in a way which made me intrigued for next year. Thank you, and goodnight.

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Merlin 4.1 is coming tomorrow, and from then on will take Doctor Who's place on Saturday nights. Mondays will feature the Classic Doctor Whos that I mentioned in "High Turnover," as will Being Human Series Two on Tuesdays and Fades on Wednesdays. Thank you if you've read all of my Series Six reviews, and if you haven't then why not click on the "DW32" tag at the top of this post? Anyway.

Thanks.