Review of The Wedding of River Song
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

While I will admit that I rather enjoyed (most of) the Series Six finale, and there were plenty of moments that felt epic, when you stop and think about it for a while, not much really got resolved. Moffat is a master at smoke-and-mirrors scriptwriting, like last year when the universe got “rebooted,” yet we didn’t learn anything about why the TARDIS blew up in the first place. In fact, we still don’t know the answer to that particular little puzzle.

Now we do have the answers to a couple of big questions: no, the Doctor didn’t really die on that beach (was anyone surprised by that?); and yes, River Song is his wife. Sort of. Actually, that wasn’t clearly answered, either, thank-you-very-much. I can’t imagine the Doctor actually taking that kind of thing seriously (especially since it was clearly used as a device to gain River’s cooperation). Perhaps that’s why they did a handfasting ceremony instead of an actual wedding. Are they really “married”? How binding/lasting is a handfast marriage? How did the Time Lords (does the Doctor) view such an interpersonal contract? Frankly, I was terribly disappointed to see these two get “married”; not only does it go counter to how I think of the Doctor, but it made River’s story overly predictable (“Of course she’s the Doctor’s wife! What else could she possibly be to him?” Yuck.). My own personal canon will look on this as a non-binding contract-of-convenience, and leave it at that.

So that’s where we stand on what actually came out of the episode: a non-dead Doctor (whom River did and yet did not kill – also disappointingly predictable) and a sort-of-married couple. There was more of portents to it all than of clarifications. Foremost, of course, is all of Dorium Maldovar’s gloom’n’doom prophecy quoting.

On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked; a Question that must never, ever be answered.

(No foreshadowing to Matt Smith’s eventual last series there…) Later, when talking to Emperor Churchill, the Doctor intimates that he knows “a terrible, dangerous secret.” Since we’re later told the Question is “Doctor who?”, we’re led to believe that the Doctor’s “true” identity is somehow ominous. (That also brings us back to the question of when/how River learns his name. Perhaps that’s not what he whispered to her before she transferred all her remaining lives to him, after all…) Maybe Moffat’s going to bring some of that man-of-mystery stuff that the production team was planning to inject into the Seventh Doctor’s era.

One thing I particularly liked about that final conversation was the way the Doctor suggested everyone could “forget me. I got too big … too noisy. Time to step back into the shadows.” If you’ve been a regular reader, you may have noticed how it’s bothered me for quite some time that the whole universe seems to know about the Doctor. Unless I’m much mistaken, that was not the case “back in the day.” Obviously, his regular enemies like the Daleks and Cybermen always knew him, but this thing where the general public can identify him with relative ease flies in the face of “tradition.” Here’s hoping that falls by the wayside.

Aside from the fact that we never actually see Mdme. Kovarian’s dead body (pics, or it didn’t happen!), there’s just one more detail I find worth mentioning. It’s quick, so it could easily pass below the radar if you’re not looking for it. Before time freezes, as the Doctor starts telling her off, a smug River proclaims that “fixed points can be rewritten.” “No, they can’t!” protests the Doctor. “Who told you th– ?!” I smell some more historical revisions in the making.

Realistically, in order to notice how much was (un)resolved, you have to stop and think about this episode for a while. As  you’re watching, though – especially the first time – it just whisks you right along on a grand old romp. Moffat does a lovely job of obfuscating the magnitude of the reveals, because it feels big – bigger than it really is. The opening sequence, where we see how all history is happening at once, is wonderfully realized, as are moments like pulling in to “Area 52” in an Egyptian pyramid, or the Silence breaking out (very Waters of Mars). The Pond/Bond crossover entrance of Amy in the frozen timeline is fun, as is the random cameo of sometime Who writer and actor Mark Gatiss as Gantok (the guy playing Live Chess with the Doctor). It’s also great fun to hear more of River’s lines crop up again (“Hi honey, I’m home.” “And what sort of time do you call this?” or “What am I doing?” “As you’re told.”).

For my money, though, none of it is so wonderful as that poignant little scene full of fan-service-win: breaking it to the Doctor that the Brigadier has passed. For those of you who might never have seen the Brigadier in action (he was first seen alongside Two in The Web of Fear (as well as later stories), and worked very closely with Three through his entire tenure; he was also seen onscreen alongside Four (a few times), Five (twice), and Seven (once), not to mention working with Sarah Jane Smith separately in The Sarah Jane Adventures), he was a close friend to the Doctor – perhaps the longest human friendship the Doctor ever cultivated. Taking the time to weave actor Nicholas Courtney’s own death (22 Feb 2011) into the plot of Doctor Who in terms of the Brigadier’s passing shows the depth of love and respect both man and character earned from fans. I can’t thank Moffat enough for that.

There’s epic stuff here: love transcending alternate universes (Amy/Rory as well as River/the Doctor), friendships that stand the test of time but are not immune to its passing, harbingers of Things To Come… But The Wedding of River Song is more notable for what isn’t there than what is. I suspect, with that inevitable 20/20 hindsight, we’ll all see it that way.