The Wedding of River Song

Doctor who? Doctor who? Doctor WHO?

The Wedding of River Song is the final episode of the Series Six arc regarding the murder of the Doctor at Lake Silencio. Reaction to the resolution seemed to be rather mixed from a fan point of view as it didn't provide a lot of answers to the overarching questions, though it did address the immediate points of the series arc. I recall not having too many problems with it but still thought it a less than satisfying ending to a pretty good set up.

Plot Summary

In a reality where all time has merged into a single moment, Caesar Winston Churchill summons the soothsayer from prison to explain the lack of movement of time. The Soothsayer is the Doctor and he tells Churchill of how things happened.

After his adventure with Craig in Closing Time, the Doctor pursues various leads to help him track why the Silence are so intent on killing him. The trail leads him to the head of Dorium Maldovar, stored in the vaults of the Headless Monks. Dorium reveals that a prophecy was given regarding the oldest question in the universe and the fields of Trenzalore. Upon learning both the prophecy and the question, the Doctor takes Dorium in the TARDIS and begins to set a plan in motion.

The Doctor contacts the team of the Teselecta (Let's Kill Hitler) and has them send the four invitations to his death as seen in The Impossible Astronaut. All things proceed as expected until he meets River in the space suit coming out of the lake. She resists and discharges her weapon without killing the Doctor. However, as this is a fixed point in time, all things are enveloped in white.

The Doctor ends his tale to Churchill as they have come out of his office and into the main hall. They discover they have been fighting off the Silence, who are hanging from the ceiling in large numbers. The Silence are neutralized by a group of soldiers, led by Amy who is wearing an eye patch identical to that of Madame Kovarian. She stuns the Doctor and takes him to a private train for transport to Cairo.

On the train, Amy demonstrates that she remembers the Doctor but not Rory. Rory is serving as an Army Captain in her personal guard. The Doctor tries to make small jogs to her memory regarding Rory but nothing comes of it. Upon arriving at the pyramids in Cairo, they are taken into an American base where the Silence have been stored upon capture in tanks of fluid, though still sentient. Amy also reveals that the eye patches are actually computer drives that store the image of the Silence, allowing people to remember they are there.

At the base, the Doctor finds River with a captured Madame Kovarian. The two flirt a little while the Doctor tries to touch her and resume time. River resists, knowing that she would be forced to kill him if time resumed. They are interrupted by the Silence breaking out of their tanks and attacking the force. In addition to front attacks, they send pulses through the eye drives either killing the wearers or inflicting them with sharp pain.

River takes the Doctor to the roof, beckoning Amy to follow. Rory opts to stay behind but as the Silence break through, Amy returns and gun down those that attack him. She removes his eye drive but reattaches Madame Kovarian's, killing her.

They meet River and the Doctor on the roof where River shows the Doctor a distress signal asking for help for the Doctor throughout time and space. Embarrassed, the Doctor still insists that they must restart time but River still refuses. With no alternative, the Doctor performs a quick marriage ceremony between himself and River. He whispers into River's ear and then they kiss. The contact reestablishes the flow of time and everyone is transported back to Lake Silencio as in The Impossible Astronaut.

Afterwards River, fresh from teleporting from the Byzantium, meets Amy in her back yard. Amy is mourning the Doctor but River tells Amy that when the Doctor whispered in her ear, she looked into his eye and saw that the body of the Doctor was in fact the teselecta and that the Doctor was inside. Thus the "body" that was killed on the lakeshore was not the true Doctor and he has slipped away.

A disguised Doctor returns the head of Dorium to the vault, revealing himself to him. Dorium promises to keep the Doctor's secret but warns him that both the prophecy and the initial question are waiting for him.

Analysis

As a series ending story, this one is only okay. As an episode in and of itself, it's a bit better but still has it's flaws. Of course, it is nearly impossible to watch this one without having familiarity with at least the Eleventh Doctor era. There are all the points of Series Six that are addressed but there are also several other callbacks to prior stories which make the story flow a bit better if you know them.

In a way, I was reminded of Victory of the Daleks in this story in that it started well and was pretty engaging but then it lagged and resolved in an unsatisfying way. River refusing to shoot the Doctor and setting up the fusion of time into a single moment was interesting and gave some rather nice visuals, as well as some amusing throwbacks. Winston Churchill talking about downloads and Charles Dickens doing a modern media tour were particularly amusing. Where it started to go downhill for me is about the time they got to the pyramid. Not only did the narrative bog down but the circumstances of the Doctor's plan just seemed slapped together. Why have the marriage ceremony? The Doctor could have had a quiet moment with River and ordered her to look into his eye at any time without going through the ceremony. I don't mind that he married River but the circumstances of it seemed very forced.

I also didn't care for the slapdash nature of the Doctor's plan. He goes through this elaborate set up of saying goodbye to people he cares about, goes on a long chase to get answers, gets them, seems to resign himself to his fate but then changes his mind at the last minute at a chance offer of the captain of the teselecta. I think it would have worked better if they didn't include that quick seen where the Doctor comes back into the bar after the captain made his offer. If it had just shown the Doctor in the teselecta that would have been enough and we would have known that he took it from the captain eventually but would have been left to ourselves to determine when he entered and when he devised the plan to trick everyone. This is just a bit too much for me.

For the most part all the actors did well. The dialogue for River at the end got a bit saccharine and that led to some melodrama in the delivery but it wasn't too bad. Madame Kovarian's plea for mercy at the end was also a bit melodramatic for my taste but I think that was to be expected. What probably increased the melodrama was that the end felt a bit rushed. The Doctor's tale to Churchill was well paced and built the interest in what was happening. But the scenes at the pyramid took on a feel of hurry up and get this done which meant that the emotional resonance both between the Doctor and River and between Amy and Rory had to be crammed into about fifteen minutes. Emotional development usually takes a bit more time and while this was building on existing canon, it still felt rushed and undeserved. Especially as it did not require River and the Doctor to get married just for her to look into his eye. For the marriage, there should have been a deeper and less melodramatic scene between them so that the marriage was a natural outgrowth and letting River in on the Doctor's secret was secondary.

Even the scenery had it's let downs at points. The team travelled to Utah to film the lake scenes there but apparently the close ups between the Doctor and River didn't come out so they reshot them with a rather poor looking blue screen behind them. It was a decent effort but the contrast was just so sharp as to be very noticeable. Similarly, while the scenes in the pyramid worked well with that claustrophobic sense, the scene at the top looked like a basic set with a blue screen in the background. It was just another little addition that made the final scene between River and the Doctor feel rushed and somewhat poorly prepared. Other direction, such as in the great hall with the Silence by contrast, was quite well done and set up the scenes quite well.

Overall I'd say the fundamental story is sound and the actors did reasonable jobs, but there were little misses here and there. The ending needed either a couple more rewrites or another couple of minutes to breathe. There needed to be extra motivation to drive the conclusion as it felt unearned. Good performances from earlier in the story were undercut by lesser performances much as with shortfalls in the production. It is not bad, but it does feel like a truly satisfying conclusion that one might have hoped for given the scope of the series arc.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5