Review: The wedding of River Song

Greetings all, Angry Systems Administrator here. It may come as no surprise that I’m a long time fan of Doctor Who. Recently, the seasons finale was aired on BBC America.

The title was “The wedding of River Song” and it cleared up a lot of plot lines that the producers have been working on for the last few years.

Now, to quote River Song,

**SPOILERS!!**

If you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to know what happened, bail out now or forever hold your peace. 😉

A quick background to refresh your memories.

River Song and the Doctor have been coming in and out of each others lives for a long time. The main problem is that River is coming from the Doctor’s future and the Doctor is coming from River’s past. Because of this, she knows what is going to happen to the Doctor and must keep him from finding out.

Last season, it was determined that River Song is actually Melody Pond, daughter of Amy Pond and Rory Williams. Shortly after Melody was born she was kidnapped and turned into a psychopath and sent to hunt down and kill the Doctor. River had, in the past, been doing time for “Murdering a very good man”, but whenever she feels the need, she escapes from Prison to help the Doctor and her Parents.

In a previous episode, we see River, Amy and Rory meeting the Doctor in Utah. They are having a bottle of wine and discussing things when out of a lake an Apollo astronaut appears. The Doctor tells everyone to stay back and approaches the astronaut. A few moments later the astronaut shoots the Doctor and kills him. However, this turns out to be a future version of the Doctor. Amy, Rory and River understand that the Doctor must never know he will die on that day in that location.

Now the seasons finale.

In this episode, we find out that River is the one in the Apollo space suit. She meets the Doctor and desperately tries to not shoot him. The Doctor tells her not to worry, and that she is forgiven. The Doctor closes his eyes, there are several flashes, but the Doctor isn’t dead. This causes the creation of a temporary alternate time line where it is always April 22, 2011 at 5:02PM.

In this time line all time is happening at once. You see many really odd things, such as Winston Churchill as the Holy Roman Emperor. He summons the Doctor and the Doctor brings everyone up to speed on what’s happening. It turns out that “The Silence,” aliens who have been interfering with humanity since forever, are trying to kill the Doctor.

The Doctor and Churchill are walking around when they realize The Silence are chasing them. ((The Aliens make people forget them if they aren’t looking at them)) All of a sudden a grenade rolls in and the Doctor knock Churchill down just before it goes off. In walks Amy Pond who promptly shoots the Doctor with a stun gun.

When the Doctor wakes up, we find that Amy is the only one who knows things aren’t right but even she is having trouble remembering. She leads the Doctor to meet the person behind all this. At first he thinks it’s Madame Kovarian, the woman who kidnapped Melody as a baby and setting her to kill the Doctor. She is tied to a chair. Then River turns around and it comes out that she is the only other person, (Other than the Doctor) who has full memories of the other time line. She wants to maintain this time line because she loves the Doctor and doesn’t want to kill him.

The Doctor grabs River and time starts moving again. River breaks free, time stops and she has the Doctor handcuffed to keep him from grabbing her again and causing the original time line in which he is killed, from proceeding.

Meanwhile. Hundreds of The Silence aliens have attacked the building everyone is in. Everyone wears a special eye patch that allows people to remember The Silence when they look away from them. It turns out that the eye patches are rigged and people are being electrocuted by them. River, Amy and Rory, who is known as Captain Williams.

Rory tells Amy he will stay behind to by time. Amy tells Rory to take his patch off before it starts affecting him. He says its to late and tells her to go. Rory turns to face The Silence aliens, but collapses in pain from the eye patch. Just as the aliens are about to kill him Amy comes in and shoots them, saving Rory. She pulls his patch off and as they are about to leave, Madame Kovarian calls her and asks Amy to release her. Madame Kovarian’s eye patch is partially removed and Amy tells puts the eye patch back in place, telling her that not all of River’s violent tendency’s came from Madame Kovarian. Some of it came from her.

Amy and Rory make their escape and Madame Kovarian screams in pain and dies.

At the top of the pyramid, River has set up a distress beacon. She tells the Doctor that millions of people are replying to the call offering to help. The Doctor finally convinces River that he must die in order to save all of time. He then marries River. The Doctor leans forward and whispers something to her and River smiles. He tells the others that he has told River his true name. They then kiss, time restarts and the Doctor is killed.

Later on we see Amy wrapped in a blanket looking at the night sky in her back yard. There is a flash of light and River appears to see her mother. Amy is in really bad shape. She is feeling remorse over killing Madame Kovarian. River tells her mother that there is no reason to feel guilty because the event happened in a time line that never occurred. Amy is still not able to resolve this in her mind and wishes she could talk with the Doctor.

River decides that the time is right and tells her mother that the Doctor is alive. Amy is shocked to hear this and demands to know how. It turns out that the Doctor was actually inside a robot that took on his appearance. As far as the flow of time is concerned, the Doctor was on the beach at the appointed time and was killed. In fact the robot took the blast and wasn’t damaged.

Rory comes home and see’s Amy and River dancing around. He goes out and they tell him the Doctor is alive.

Meanwhile we see the Doctor talking to someone. He tells him how he avoided both death and wrecking the time line. He thinks that it would be better if he goes back into the shadows for a while. As he leaves, the being he was talking to tells him he still has a destiny to deal with. He must go to a place where any question asked must be answered, and now the Doctor knows what the question is. As he leaves he hears the alien shouting “Doctor who? Doctor who?” implying that the question is what is the Doctor’s real name.

This is the last scene until the next season starts.

I loved this episode. One of the best scenes is where Amy, Rory and River are talking about how River is the Doctor’s wife. The look on Amy’s face when it hits her that she is the Doctor’s Mother inlaw was priceless. Karen Gillian must have spent hours working to get it just right.

I’ve been watching Doctor Who for more years then I’ll say. I’ve watched them all in reruns. I still want to take the idiots at the BBC who first decided to erase the original episodes to save space, as well as those that canceled the series back in the 80’s out and nail them to a tree.

No, I don’t dress up as the Doctor and I don’t go overboard on it. I just like the show and I hope you do as well.

Thank you

~The Angry Systems Administrator~

(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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