Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song
By Angela Roberts
October 3, 2011
Well, this weekend was the season finale of Doctor Who! Entitled The Wedding of River Song, the episode managed to remarkably tie up several loose ends from throughout the season and bring up a multiplicity of new mysteries to make viewers eagerly await the next season, or the next Christmas Special. Eek! Ending in October like this, I hope there is a Christmas Special! You wouldn’t disappoint us like that, would you, Steven Moffat? Hehe. Kidding! Of course there's a special! As usual, for many Doctor Who fans, the wait will be long and difficult. Especially with a pretty awesome season finale like this one. It wasn’t quite the mile-a-minute thrill ride that last season’s was, preferring to be a bit more contemplative and to showcase Matt Smith’s ability to display the Doctor’s ingenuity. And while the episode really revolved around the Doctor, Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill’s Rory Williams really got some moments to sink their teeth into. And of course, River Song – the true crux of this episode – got the best parts.
Let’s talk about River for a minute. I wasn’t always enamored with the idea of the Doctor having a wife because I wasn’t sure how they were really going to play it. (Plus, hello, the series already established that he’s carrying a bit of a torch for Rose Tyler even though he did sort of give her up to his double at the end of Journey’s End. You’ll notice, even now, whenever the Doctor is under any serious distress, her name is the first out of his mouth.) But it looked like they were really seriously going to have a go with it, so I thought, OK, Moffat will come up with an explanation. And then he decided to make her back-story even more complicated, making her the long lost daughter of Rory and Amy, and super-charged with Tardis particles from, I guess, being conceived in the Tardis. And then, let’s make it even more complicated by seeing different versions of River, so many that, well, it’s a bit hard to keep them straight. Woo. Does that sum it up? But there is something attractive about River. You have to respect a woman who loves the Doctor so much that she screwed up time to keep him alive. Although we now know that River was raised to be a psychopath, so the question remains: Did she prevent his death because she loves the Doctor, or because she didn’t want to kill him and thus not only lose him but face punishment? And it’s fair to say that the Doctor knows that fine line exists in her, between love and self-interest.
It’s certainly one of Moffat’s gifts that we learn so much and yet are left so wanting. Do we finally learn what River whispered into the Doctor’s ear back in The Silence in the Library? Maybe. He hasn’t told her his name yet, as far as we know, but it’s coming up if the big mysterious cliffhanger at the end of this episode indicates anything. It has to be something he’d recognize as something only she would know. As the big blue head says, the Plains await! And an interesting mystery that is. What is so darn special about the Doctor’s true name? What about it will bring about the Fall of the Eleventh? We’ve seen nearly every villain already in Matt Smith’s short tenure; who’s next? Oo, will we see the Master and the Timelords return? Aren’t they just trapped? Hehe. Let the speculations begin!
And dear Amy and Rory. I was a bit puzzled at the end of The God Complex when the Doctor sort of dropped them off. I’ll bet the actors had a tiny panic moment too, frankly. But there’s no sign that new companions are on the horizon, except of course that River will probably get a bit more of a role in the next season. A permanent spot, perhaps? And though he’s not come back yet by the end of the episode, I think we know this Doctor always comes back. After all, Amy and Rory seem to have this affinity for the time space continuum that hasn’t let them go yet. And they are both rather good characters. Their romance is probably the best and most original relationship on this show in its entire history.
Even when at first glance things seemed rushed, when you really consider how it might have been accomplished, the episode was perfectly paced. One has to love all the little touches, the flashbacks, the way it was all structured to orchestrate that one final trick.
What are we all going to do till we can get our next Doctor Who fix?
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