'Doctor Who' Series 6, Episode 13: "The Wedding of River Song" - Recap & Review

***WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS***

The latest series of " Doctor Who " has come to a close. Goodbyes have been said, mysteries have been solved and brand new questions have been asked to be addressed by future series. After spending the last episode (and several hundred years) avoiding his eventual demise at the hands of the Impossible Astronaut, the Doctor is finally ready to meet his fate. The Doctor being gunned down by the lake in Utah is a fixed point in history, something that must always happen. However something has gone terribly wrong, the fixed point has been disrupted by the occupant of the astronaut suit: River Song.

By River's refusal to let events play out as they should all of time has stopped flowing. Everything is happening at once and the clock never moves forward. It has created a world of steam trains on elevated tracks dashing through London as Winston Churchill negotiates with Cleopatra while being advised by a Silurian. Everything is wrong and only a few can sense that, Churchill being one of them. He summons a still living Doctor to try and devise a solution, but the only way to fix things is for the Doctor to die as he was meant to. Enter Amy Pond, who retains nearly full knowledge of how the world was supposed to be, and a rag tag team lead by River Song who have gone about capturing the Silence and trying to fix the world.

As is often the case with episodes scripted by Steven Moffat, there is a great deal going on in this episode and most viewers will probably have to watch it twice to fully wrap their heads around it. There are quite a few wonderfully intricate and bizarre concepts at play, but they are well balanced. The episode is very reminiscent of the finale from the previous series: "The Big Bang." Both were complicated episodes which had a great deal to try and wrap up, however "The Wedding of River Song" feels more like a proper story than just tying up loose ends (which was pretty much all "The Big Bang" felt like.)

The biggest thing that this episode has to address is the death of the Doctor shown in the first episode of the series. In some ways the solution is a little bit of a cheat, but it's a well constructed cheat. The Doctor shown being gunned down is in fact the Teselecta, the shape shifting robot introduced several episodes ago in "Let's Kill Hitler." To fulfill the requirements of the fixed point in time the Doctor (miniaturized and inside the Teselecta) is in fact on the beach and gunned down, it simply doesn't prove to be as fatal as it appears to anybody observing it. The manner in which this is revealed, towards the very end of the episode, is a big part of why it works and doesn't feel like as much of a cheat as it probably should.

There are quite a few nice little touches featuring returning characters, many in very small parts (such as Charles Dickens as seen in the Series 1 episode "The Unquiet Dead") but enjoyable none the less. Most of them are crammed into the "everything is happening at once" portion of the episode. The concept that all of time has mashed together is quite a heady one and not easily realized. However Moffat managed to find a way to get this concept across in a relatable and entertaining way.

The episode also adds a few more layers to River Song herself as well as filling in a few more of the blanks in her timeline. While there was never any question that River loved the Doctor it had been an open question as to whether they would at any point actually be married, as had been hinted in Series 5. It now turns out that is the case, but it's at best an unconventional marriage. It was essentially the Doctor's way of getting River to let time happen as it was meant to and to gun him down at the lake. It's now been confirmed that crime River Song has been shown to be imprisoned for is the murder of the Doctor. It's not stated but possible (even likely) that the Justice Department which runs the Teselecta is behind her imprisonment. This may explain why the security around her cell seems so lax, as at least some of her jailers know she is in fact innocent and is serving a sentence for show. Also it's left open to interpretation as to whether River and the Doctor will ever actually consummate the marriage in the traditional sense. Though it's clear that they will still have many adventures together it's vague enough about the sexual aspects of the relationship for fans that don't care for such things can believe that they enjoy a loving but asexual marriage.

There is also a great deal of groundwork, both specific and general, laid for the next series. Firstly it does appear that Amy and Rory's time in the Tardis has come to an end, though future appearances are not impossible. River Song can of course continue to surface, however almost all the questions about her have been answered in some fashion. The only really big question remaining about her is under what circumstances she comes to know the Doctor's true name (a moment which was teased and faked in this episode.) This will likely be connected to the other big dangling thread which is the prophesied "Fall of the Eleventh" and the "asking of the question" since that question has now been revealed to be "Doctor who?" The implication is that when the time comes for Matt Smith to leave the part and the Eleventh Doctor comes to his end that these issues will be addressed at that point.

The other implication for the future seems to be a bit of a statement of purpose. Since the Doctor needs the Silence to believe that he is in fact dead he now has to keep a much lower profile, "return to the shadows" as he puts it. This would seem to imply that the next series will not feature the huge scale stories in which the Doctor propagates his own legend. This has been going on from the start but really started to kick on in Series 4. Now it looks like Moffat has set up the show to return to the more self contained and intimate stories that were seen in the original series. The Doctor will probably still show up and help but will try to stay more in the background and not drawn so much attention to himself or how great he is. Fans will have to wait until Christmas for the next adventure, and it does seem like Moffat has freed himself up to take things in quite a few directions from here on out.