S06E13 - The Wedding of River Song

With Steven Moffat’s second series of Doctor Who now under wraps, as a regular viewer and fan I have to pose just one simple question to the man: Will the finale of series seven (series three for the Moff) included a complicated plot, an alternative/aborted timeline and an epicenter to a time-explosion of sorts being close to the Doctor? The reason being is that this is the second year in a row to include a similar story, as last year proved with the TARDIS exploding (still not answered/looked into by the way) creating an alternate universe with just the Earth and the time machine’s explosion being the only thing in existence – the TARDIS being the epicenter of that new, lonely, universe. Okay true, the results of this year’s ‘big bang’ meant that all of time converged on one point but again that raised questions for, if all time IS happening at once, the universe would be created and simultaneously destroyed in one go and that would be it.

Moving on… this episode was good to prove what would happen should a fix point in time be changed but in all respects to Steven Moffat, it was completely, utterly pointless. True it gave a few answers with the purpose to Madam Kovarian wearing an eye-patch and created a reason for River to really KNOW the Doctor and also to show the man how much he is loved, but the way the episode was executed was all wrong – very similar to the finale of ‘Torchwood: Miracle Day’ to be honest. Now, I know many of you will disagree – indeed, two friends of mine whom I discuss this with on a regular basis liked the episode, so no disrespect to them or anyone else who appreciated ‘The Wedding of River Song’ but for me it was a reasonable amount of dung (bar the last five minutes, though).

Given the chance of a rewrite, the episode would for me include the ‘pre’-stuff the Doctor alluded to via flash-backs in the episode aired, then have River finding out of the Teselectra Doctor pretty quickly (before she shoots him obviously), have River and the Doctor (as the Teselectra in disguise as Rory or Amy) running from the Shadow Proclamation (or whomever it was who arrests River for killing the Doctor) so as to get Kovarian and the Silents once and for all. They would most likely get caught in a sticky situation near the end and forced to marry in a comical-yet-binding way with River getting arrested and the Doctor returning Dorium’s head, as seen, in the final moments of the episode with the whole Question thing AND have the same post-Byzantium River meeting her parents bit – as that was done brilliantly. With that idea in mind it would definitely involve less ‘modeling Silents in water tanks’ and more ‘mindless adventure and laughs’ which Doctor Who is actually meant to be about, believe it or not.

Now, one thing I have to wonder from the episode shown though; Alternate-Amy killed Madam Kovarian which real current-Amy can remember, so does that mean Kovarian IS dead now or what? Presumably if she’s not seen again then we have to presume that despite the fact she was killed in an aborted timeline she remains dead, which would be a shame as she was/is such a genius character and an actual rival to the Doctor (think of the implications! Like a newer, better Rani – NOT the SJA’s Rani Chandra - only not Timelord and less… rash) who doesn’t have to be behind everything like ‘Saxon’ was a few series back. That said and wished, Kovarian was/is only one aspect of the larger organization NOW called the Church of Silents, a cult dedicated to destruction of the universe when the Doctor tells someone – obviously River considering the implications of her gaining the Tenth Doctor’s trust in ‘Silence in the Library’ – his real name, and most likely doing that by exploding his very own TARDIS, which is old news now.

A typical Moffat timey-wimey move though, wouldn’t you say? We’ve seen how epically the Silents failed when exploding the TARDIS, so let’s see how they became such failures. It’s like River’s out-of-order Timeline (not VERY back-to-front, but close to). Moffat does like to mess about with things which are good for the show in respect that it has an Executive Producer who’s not scared to playing with fire, but by doing so may very well be driving the audience away with the mad plots and hard-to-describe time frames. An example of this is, knowing Moffat’s recent track record (okay, mainly ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ as Part Two of Series Six was proving a bit of a let-down anyway), as a viewer I went into ‘The Wedding of River Song’ with low expectations and was STILL disappointed – now whether that says something about me as a viewer, Moffat as a writer or the BBC as a production company in general I cannot tell but I hate placing blame on the Moff-ster so will have to leave that thought in the air…

What about the episode can I say? Well firstly they wasted a good use on money bringing back stars whom needn’t have been part of the episode (Simon Callows as Charles Dickens and the Richard Hope as Silurian Doctor Malokeh to name two), then they continued wasting money with ridiculous CGI (cars flying via balloons, trains spiraling around the Gherkin – out of proportion to the real Gherkin might i add – and the pyramid ‘Area 52’) and finally dressed many tall thin actors in uncomfortable suits only for them to point and do… well, very little. With those negative notes out there now, having some strange alternative Amy and Rory (even though this is set AFTER series five for everyone involved) was pretty awesome to see – Karen as a sexy commander and Arthur as an equally sexy solider, bringing back Dorium as just his head-in-a-box was absolutely hilarious and helped move the plot along nicely (I REALLY hope he continues returning as Dorium is a character with a real history to be explored anyway), and the Teselecta’s introduction earlier this series proved not to be a pointless factor but actually one of the most important objects of the series.

I have to admit though that it WAS clever to have the Doctor as a Soothsayer in the aborted timeline, with him bearded and in rags (even though he’s still the Teselectra), telling the story of how he got to where he was then and marking off Silents in the telling – really cleverly done when he notices the tag on his arm and the slow introduction of himself and Churchill’s weapons! Really, despite its many faults, I can see the potential of the episode with the way it was presented, the cleverness of a progressing story and the ability not to give the viewers the straight-up facts and see how the protagonist deals with it (which was kind of my suggestion for the alternative story).

Also to note: the Doctor and Asto-River’s conversation by the lake was a little too long for my liking; that and the lighting of the scene, trying to match to the actual light of Utah during the time of filming the original scene, with a blurry background was terribly done and reminded me of something from old Who done worse than it could be done. But hey, was all about lighting and the ability not to be able to shrink a conversation to a few lines each instead of massive paragraphs per character.

What else is there to say? Oh yes! How could I forget?! With the loving tribute seen to Elizabeth Sladen just before ‘The Impossible Astronaut’, the Doctor Who Team really outdid themselves with a dedication to Nicholas Courtney’s Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart by having the Doctor call the nursing home where the Brig had must have retired to, only to find the man had passed away, the nurse noting that the Brig never gave up hoping that the Timelord would return for one last visit… so sad yet so lovely – no one could change that bit of script for the world.

And here we are again…

• The Doctor = 10/10 – Although mostly the Tesadoctor, it was a very cleverly scripted episode for the Timelord and explained away a good deal of questions built up throughout the series, though not a lot of back-storage from the previous series…
• Amy = 10/10 – Sexy, stunning and amazing as ever! Now although I do love the Ponds I have to hope that someone new is introduced as fulltime companion next series as it’s starting to get rather…stale with the same lot episode after episode.
• Rory = 10/10 – Poor Rory almost-sacrificing himself again for Amy; he really will do anything for her whether he knows he loves her or not! And that final scene with the three Ponds was lovely, although Rory missed the bulk of it; it was just so beautifully done.
• River = 10/10 – Well it’s official – her mother’s guess way back in ‘The Time of Angels’ was correct and she’s his wife, though I have to wonder by what custom? Would, say, they be married on Clom or Skaro or even Earth with just those few words? How serious WAS the Doctor in marrying this woman or was it all just so he could get back to pretending to be dead? Then again, it did all happen in an aborted timeline AND to the Teselectra…
• Kovarian = 10/10 – I really want to see more of this lady, although I doubt it. Frances Barber is simply a superb actress!

Episodic Rating: 5 out of 10. Disappointing I know, but like I’ve said; it went off on one and couldn’t get back until the end, with the main points of the episode being represented at the start and within the last five/ten minutes. Yes, it was definitely different to  last year’s ‘The Big Bang’, but it wasn’t better – indeed, I preferred last year’s finale to this year’s but you’ve got to take the good with the bad and with such a fantastic mid-series finale, it’s fair to say that nothing could ever follow so greatly in the same complete series.

And so there we have it, another series of Doctor Who complete for the year. With next year only presenting us with half-a-series in preparation for 2013’s fiftieth anniversary (though let us not forget this year’s Christmas Special), and with the rather wobbly series we’ve just had, maybe a cut-down is generally needed; a time to take a breather and assess one’s priorities. Depending on how many episode class as ‘half’, we’re looking at an good five to seven next year, so not a complete Who-draught as 2009 saw, with RTD promising ‘the formula would work’ before scarpering good and proper… anyway, for the Who Review, either a full series review or two half-series reviews will be posted up at some point between now and Christmas, so keep your eyes peeled for updates! But for now… happy soon-to-be-Hallowe’en!