DOCTOR WHO 6.13 - The Wedding of River Song Spoiler Zone (or Jim'll Fix it)

Shh! Spoilers sweetie!

My giddy aunt! There's been alot of toys chucked from prams over this one hasn't there! So before we get going - and note I speak as a life-long fan, one of whom's earliest memories is seeing the Sea Devils rise from the waves - I'll say this: 

Calm down dear! It's only Doctor Who! 

And to use Mr Danny Davies' wonderful phrase, a good blast from the Perspective Cannon is in order here! Yes, it's time to practise that ancient and noble, yet seemingly dying out, art of getting a frakking grip!

Now then in the interests of full disclosure, let's rewind to last Saturday night. The credits have just begun to roll and as per usual with a Moffat scripted episode, I wonder how the name of Azal am I going to review that with out letting slip the dogs of spoiler. However this time, I have an additional problem because I'm somewhat conflicted on the now infamous resolution, namely that the figure we saw die on the shores of Lake Silencio was not actually the Doctor, but our favourite Time Lord driving a Teselecta.

You see, I'm feeling disappointed as I was expecting the big reveal to be something I hadn't considered, and so there's an aura of 'oh, what that  it?' floating in the air. However I am of certain of two things - firstly that overall I rather enjoyed this episode but secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I really like the position Moffat has left the character pointed in.

While I'm trying to sort out and generally weigh up this mix of different emotions, I notice that the internet is already beginning to flame, with with all manner of folks screaming 'Cheat!' and some even transforming into the Comic Book Guy, and without a shred of irony, shrieking 'Worst. Finale. Evah!'. And this crowd saying  'Boo! Teselecta! Rewind!' also annoys me, and not just for reminding me of Craig Bloody David but for for reasons we'll get to later.

Anyhow, I pen my spoiler-free review basically saying 'fun episode, divisive end I'm not sure about yet' and leave it at that. Then I make another large pot of Earl Grey and sit down to start pondering this business properly...

Mr Jim's reasoning goes like this...

Sip 1 - As soon as they mentioned the Teselecta in the Previously montage, the thought occurred that this was probably how the Doctor was going to cheat to death.

Sip 2 - Though as the episode progressed and built towards the end, I was still wondering whether Moffat was going to the Doctor actually die... Now obviously he has to survive somehow as we know he's coming back for the Christmas special. But I had concocted a dubious theory - I'd read somewhere Moffat had said that this year's Yuletide special would be riffing on another classic Christmas story and as he'd done a Christmas Carol last year, the next obvious choice would be It's A Wonderful Life. And this tale concerns a fellow being taken out of time at the point of his death, I wondered whether Moffat would have something similar in store for the Doctor i.e. the Doctor would die but in the Christmas special a Clarence analogue would restore him to life...

Sip 3 - I quite liked that idea... that would have been brilliant! Stupid Teselecta!

Sip 4 - But it's not a cheat is it? Cheating would be altering how that death scene played out or making it not happen - but it does play out how we first saw it. Admittedly with a Time Crisis occurring within a split second we hadn't seen the first time, but  it IS the same - the difference is that now we know that the event has effectively been mislabelled - the Doctor only appeared to die or rather a decoy Doctor died. The fixed point happened, and the real Doctor was actually present too, but it's only historical archives that have wrongly recorded that he didn't survive.

Dunks biscuit - And of course that was the point - really like the way now the Doctor is set up to have small adventures - no more Lonely God hyperbole and everybody knowing who he is. Yes, back to being a mysterious man in a box. Me likee.

Sip 5 - And he did set it up too! It's perfectly in line with Chekhov's Gun isn't it - he introduced it five episodes ago and 'fired' it in the final act. Plus there was the business with the Gangers as a red herring. Yes, I did rule out the Teselecta as the solution originally (see here) as it wasn't exactly brilliant at mimicking natural behaviour... But I had considered what if a Doctor was driving it... And honestly as for all this blubbing about beginning of a regeneration means it can't have been the Teselecta, Moffat did deliberately shown us this android turning into a Nazi on a motorbike, so obviously some orange fireworks aren't stretching it's abilities very much at all. Especially with the Doctor at the wheel!

Sip 6 - So not a cheat - and it's not a rewind or reset either. During the Time Crisis, there's plenty of dialogue to confirm that all the events of this season have happened - the Silence's taunt to Rory was very cheeky but most explicitly the scene with Amy and Madame Korvarian... And how she deals with Madame, blimey that was COLD! Still in the words of the legendary Adham Fisher 'the bitch had it coming!'  Damn, she looked hot firing that machine gun... Do I have time for... No, moving swiftly on...

Dunks biscuit again - How does Amy not remember the Time Crisis before this episode though? Hmm... No, got it! It's a case of Who's Time-line Is It Anyway. And the defining time-line is the Doctor's naturally. At the start of the season, Amy meets Future Doctor and see his Teselecta gambit play out. What I'm calling the Time Crisis happens, but it's resolved and every one's none the wise. Her Doctor appears and the season unfolds, so then when he enters the Time Crisis the Amy he meets in that alternate world has shared all those adventures. And so Amy can only remember the Time Crisis after it occurred, which for her happens after at some point after The God Complex. More simply put - the Doctor's time-line sets the continuity for every one else as he's the focus of the Time Crisis!

None of that is probably very important... I should get out more... Where was I?

In the kingdom of Inferno, the one eyed Brig is king!

Sip 7 - Oh yes! Speaking of eye drives, very nice tribute to dear of Nick Courtney. I mean, aside from the lovely scene with the Doctor discovering the Brig has passed away, the whole business with an alternate world and everyone wearing eye patches was a very subtle tip of the hat to the old fella. He used to love telling that tale about the filming of Inferno, in which he played an evil version of the Brig who sported an eye patch and one day on set every one else donned on to surprise him...

Sip 8 - Yes, there was alot to enjoy in this one - live chess, Churchill, Area 52 - but it was not quite as triumphant a finale as usual. This prophecy about the fall and the fields of Trentzalore is intriguing. Now looking at the series timeline, effectively we've got one more series before hitting the 50th anniversary in 2013. So is this the middle section in a Silence trilogy to take us up to the big event? Yes, I think it could be - certainly would fit the tone of this finale... a moody one like the end of Empire Strikes Back!

Dunks biscuit again - Bloody hell! Just realised something - that shot from the 'Coming Soon' bit at the end of A Good Man Goes To War - you know the skeletal hand holding a dying sonic? Obviously that was NEVER any thing to do with the events at Lake Silencio... Is that yet to come?

Sip 9 - But what about the answer to the oldest question in the universe apparently being 'Doctor who?' Can't decide whether that's daft or just rubbish! Surely the oldest question would be something like 'Is there a God?' or 'Why are we here?'... But hold up matey! It's only the oldest question according to the beliefs of the Silence! And they're blatantly Doctor-obsessed nutters! So that does work... and on several meta-levels! You cheeky git Moffat!

Sip 10 - Still a bit disappointed by the Teselecta though. I'd thought of that one! It should have been something I didn't anticipate dammit!

Sip 11 - But I bet alot of other folks didn't see it coming, and most heavily I guess in the general audience... You know those millions poor sods outside the hallowed halls of nerdom, who are either wheeled out as victims of cruel scriptwriters and their complex plots, or the despised element that's making the show is now being crap because it's writing down for them.

Sip 12 -  Hang on! In that case, shouldn't I be patting myself on the back for being a clever dick rather than whinging? Me guessing and the set of expectations I cultivated aren't exactly Moffat's fault are they?

Drops biscuit in tea! - Thank Rassilon I didn't charge onto the net and start shrieking like a twat!

Sip 13 - We're a right pack of gits sometimes aren't we? We can't just say 'I didn't like that one' and move on, we have to make out it's an apocalypse event. And in doing so we're often missing important points. Just because we may feel let down that we guessed, we're too quick to accuse Moffat terrible writing, and  yet screaming 'cheat!' and 'rewind!' shows us to be guilty of the same sloppy thinking we're claiming he's guilty of.  In the case of this episode, the plot mechanics of the Doctor's survival aren't actually the most important thing. The fact is we've been mass debating his apparent death for so long, nitpicking over the scifi bullshit - and I stress I'm guilty of this too - we've forgotten to pay attention to the proper content of the story.

And that's partly why genre work isn't taken more seriously, why there's a split between art and pop culture. Because we're always claiming our favourite scifi deserves to be taken seriously, but when people from the other side of fence pay us a visit they find us squabbling over the specs of spaceships and what abilities androids have built in rather than discussing the themes and character development...

In this season, the real story has been the Doctor coming to terms with the consequences of his actions, of what he has actually become through blithely flying through time and space and helping out as he sees fit. And it has ended with the Doctor deciding to let the cosmos think he has gone and be far more circumspect in what he does...

 And I rather suspect that future Who fans, who will come to this season without the blinkers of expectations over the Doctor's death, will judge this set of stories on the above basis. And they'll find all this hullabaloo rather foolish and somewhat embarrassing, in much the same way we look back at the tantrums, or should that be fantrums over The Three Doctors which was absolutely despised for the heinous crime of making the Time Lords look a bit doddery.

Last sip - One of the great delusions of being in a fan is thinking we know better. However what we often forget is that Doctor Who isn't our show, it a god-damn British institution. And furthermore it's probably the most difficult program on television to write these days. Now there's no brief for the series at the BBC, but in the ruins of the Death Zone on Gallifrey - and yes, yes, I know it's not there any more but don't go missing the point again - there is an ancient prophecy carved into the primordial rock. And it reads thus...

For those who would chronicle the adventures 

Of the One they called the Doctor, 

Beware the legions of the Howling Halls,

For if it is too simple they shalt carp,

If it be too complex they will bleat,

If you recount tales in isolation

You will be accused of pandering to fools,

Yet if thou constructs a serial

They will complain said fools cannot follow it!

Should thou be witty in your tellings

Bile and venom shall follow,

Be thou serious, and kickings will descend,

Show a heart and thy name shall be soap,

And if it be terrifying, they shall bitch

'Won't some one think of the children!'

Yes, as Our Lord truly said "There's no pleasing some people!" (Brian 6 v2). And although I am undoubtedly an obsessive Who, there are still enough corners in my brain not stuffed with Daleks and wooly scarves to realise that I really wouldn't relish being in charge of the show and having to somehow balance these multifarious polarities and try to please millions of people. And obviously you can't please all of the people all of the time and sometimes episodes do falter. 

But more importantly, far too often we forget the fact that both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat have managed to pull off this Herculean feat on many many occasions. And as we always claim the Doctor is a great role model, we therefore should act with a little more grace when we perceive they do drop the ball...

Right, I'm putting the kettle again on, anyone fancy a cup? I've got a whole season to rewatch and some Jammie Dodgers...

DOCTORWHO 6.13 - The Wedding of River Song

So here we are at last! Not since Bad Wolf has a story arc generated so much interest, and considering how Mr Moffat set this plot running with a bang in The Impossible Astronaut with the Doctor's apparent death at Lake Silencio, The Wedding of River Song is probably the most hotly awaited, speculated and debated finale so far, eclipsing even The Parting of the Ways in Series 1.

The Radio Times preview article even managed to make this episode seem all the more tantalizing with the following quote -

"Loose ends are tied up and, more importantly, the series and its heroes are repositioned in line with Moffat’s vision. Sorry to be so cryptic."

As indeed am I! Now as this is was a Moffat scripted episode, I was fully expecting it to open with an almighty swerve. And indeed it does! And that probably the most plot detail you're going to get from me!

So then, yes there are answers, and yes there some old familiar faces making guest appearances as you'd expect in a series finale. And yes, the matter of the Doctor's death is dealt with.

Now for the most part this episode is a twisty, turny road to resolving THAT final question and ultimately how well you like the finale is going to depend on how well the last five minutes sit with you. And be warned, a quick look at my Twitter stream is showing extremely divided reactions to this one.

Now the thing is when you set up a massive dilemma like this, whatever solution you eventually present will leave a certain proportion people dissatisfied. Often it's a case of damned if you do and damned if don't - if you plan the seeds for the big answer and people can guess it, they'll be disappointed and cry 'cop out!', but if you pluck something new and mental out of the ether, everyone also will scream 'cop out'!

But even if your solution can avoid both the above reactions, it still might fall somewhat flat - falling prey to that old Buddhist concept that dictates that often the journey is more exciting than the destination. And I think in the case of The Wedding of River Song, the afore-mentioned high levels of expectation coupled Moffat's reputation of being an extremely clever time-wimey writer are probably going to work against it  for many viewers.

And personally, I will say I have mixed feelings on the resolution.

Now on one hand, we all know that the Doctor isn't going to REALLY die. Come on, we've always known that. And the method by which he gets out of this terminal fix isn't just pulled out of thin air. It's not an RTD deus ex machina - which instantly ranks it over some other previous season finales I could mention - and to quote another dying Doctor "the moment has been prepared for..."

But on the other hand, to paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi,  this was not quite the resolution I was looking for...

However I would stress I rather enjoyed the bulk of this episode's ride, and it's only the resolution I'm not sure about. And more on that in the forthcoming Spoiler Zone review after I've had more time to ponder all the ins and outs. (Time-wimey note for future readers - remember I am writing these spoiler-free reviews mere  minutes after the credits roll!)

Ultimately though, you're going to have to judge this one for yourselves folks! Some of you will love it, some of you will hate it and others, like myself, will be somewhere in between...

DOCTOR WHO Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon Spoiler Zone

Shhh! Spoilers!

Well, it certainly was a wild way to open your new season! The Doctor it would appear is dead, killed by the mysterious astronaut, River Song definitely seems to his (future) wife, there’s an enigmatic little girl would may or may not be in the space suited figure that slays our Time Lord hero, and Amy would appear to be potentially pregnant (and I’ll explain that later). Last summer, Moffat promised us that the mid season finale would be a “a game changing cliff-hanger that will change everything” and Series 6 of new Who has clearly begun with the kind of almighty set-up that such an epic storyline would need…

Now first of all, let me nail my colours to the mast (Getting ahead of yourself there Mr Jim, the pirate ship’s next week! – Ed) – this brace of episodes really impressed me. Cunningly plotted and equally packed with scares and wit, this opening stories hits all the right marks for what I want from Doctor Who. But aside from all of that, I have nothing but admiration for the Grand Moff for kicking off the new season at the level most other series only climb up to for the closing episodes.

For example, the final cliff-hanger in Series 4 was the Tenth Doctor seemingly exterminated by the Daleks. However being an RTD story there was a convenient deus ex machine suddenly popping up in the form of some hitherto unknown wrinkles in the regeneration process to quickly tidy it up. However Moffat has significantly raised the stakes – the Eleventh Doctor is dead with no hope of regeneration and, more to the point, rabbit-from-the-hat solutions just aren't his style.

So therefore, I wasn't at all surprised that the Doctor’s demise wasn’t reversed by the end of Day of the Moon. However from sampling various reviews here and there across the net, it would seem a fair few were somewhat disgruntled that everything wasn't neatly tied up. Well sorry folks, we’re in a new age of Doctor Who now where’s there’s going to be proper story arcs, with episodes linked by a lot more than just dropping in a token reference here and there. And this is a good thing! No, honestly it is! Let’s address the various concerns…

The one I'm hearing the most is that “it’s going alienate causal viewers”. Well despite the now annual exercise in lazy journalism that claims that Doctor Who is falling in the ratings, if you visit the Doctor Who News page which regularly reports the stats, you’ll see that the figures are actually very, very healthy. Yes, the guesstimated overnight numbers are lower than usual but that is a combination of hot weather and both episodes falling in Bank Holiday weekends. However the properly calculated figures are a different matter demonstrating that the show is respectably holding its own, competing with those ratings heavy weights, the soaps, gaining a large share of the viewing audience and scoring very high on audience appreciation.

And all of this despite being screened after the TV train wreck that is Don’t Scare The Hare - if you are looking for a show that is really is well and truly failing, seek no further!

Plus The Impossible Astronaut is well on the way to breaking the record for most watched/downloaded show in iPlayer history and Day of the Moon in just fours days has clocked up over a million plays – and that’s nearly double the hits the Royal Wedding has got.

So can we finally put this one to bed? Next time some idle fuckwit at the Daily Mail or whatever starts bleating about how Doctor Who is dying, just remember there’s more chance of finding a Yeti in the loos at Tooting Bec than discovering a true fact in such vacuous scare-mongering rags!

But the figures, which you can check for yourselves, also effectively counter the other most heard complaint about Series 6 “that it’s getting too complicated for ordinary viewers”. As I stated in my review of Day of the Moon, we forget that the general public like serials; those oft despised reality TV shows only succeed because they are edited to make an on-going story line. And soap viewers are used to dealing with the kind of labyrinthine continuities that rival the complexities of the Marvel and DC Universe. So I doubt that more closely linked stories in Doctor Who are going to prove too much of a problem.

And it’s also worth paying close attention to what Mr Moffat says in the interview linked above. He clearly says that the epic cliff-hanger he’s planning is possible because of the two halves structure of Series 6. He understands very well that setting up big mysteries that don’t get resolved for ages is a sure way to alienate viewers.

For this whole business of long story lines in genre shows causing the ratings to haemorrhage like an impaled Cyberman in The Five Doctors isn't down to the general populace being too thick to appreciate scifi or any such nonsense, it’s due to shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica treading water and testing even genre fans’ patience by not developing the on-going plot lines swiftly enough. Now I'm not saying they were terrible shows here, but I can understand why viewers drifted away after being kept dangling for so long at certain points in their histories.

Rather there’s a fine balance between developing a satisfying story arc and telling individual stories, and Moffat understands this well. Consider, for example, how the last season played out – instead of the Cracks just being a repeated visual equivalent of past seasons’ catchphrases like ‘Bad Wolf’ or ‘Mr Saxon’, we actually continued to learn more about them and what they signified steadily throughout the series. So it’s safe to say that more will be revealed in the coming weeks and there will be some answers to the big questions by the June break rather than a big reveal in the final episodes in the autumn.

Now with all of that out of the way, let’s move onto the meat of the episodes themselves. Now to address another common issue, quite a few folk have remarked on the swerve Day of the Moon opens with – we rapidly jump from the cliff-hanger to ‘Three Months Later’. And naturally this has prompted a good deal of head scratching. Yes, the episode does give you enough detail to work out that Canton hunting down the Doctor and his friends is a ruse to fool the Silence, however many have felt that it was insufficiently explained.

And initially this was my reaction too. However having seen the rest of the episode and discovered exactly what is resolved, I’d have to say that why this start is a little jarring, it’s fairly clear that this missing chunk of time is going to be revisited later in the season. Remember how in the Weeping Angels story last year, we had the mystery of the Doctor’s reappearing jacket and the revisiting of those scenes at the conclusion? Well I think Moffat is doing much the same here as there is a lot still to be explained that we can’t pick up from Day of the Moon…

…The big one being the Doctor’s Area 51 cell being made of dwarf star alloy. Now this is an alien material and there are questions therefore on where it came from. Viewers with long memories may recall that the Tenth Doctor chained Father Of Mine with chains made from this substance in The Family of Blood, but long-time Who watchers will be thinking of the Tom Baker era tale Warriors’ Gate…

Now in this story featured a race called the Tharils, who could cross time lines at will, and also looked like contemporary popster (and later urban reformer) Daryl Hall … Well, it was the ‘80s!

Daryl Hall

A Tharil

But aside from cheap gags, the point of mentioning this tale is that it might have a clue or two for the current story line. You see the Tharils could cross time lines at will, and where being enslaved to use their innate abilities to power spacecraft across hyperspace. And they were being contained by dwarf star alloy which inhibited their abilities to cross into different dimensions of space-time. Furthermore this whole adventure took place in another universe called E-Space. Now obviously all of the above raises some interesting possibilities for resolving the Doctor’s apparent death…

…But of course it might not! It could just be one of Moffat’s call-backs to the classic series – the Doctor’s mention of being present at the Fall of Rome wasn't just a bit of showing off; he was there and we saw this in the William Hartnell adventure The Romans. But certainly there will more detail on the dwarf star alloy I'm sure. Moffat plays a long game!

Amy’s pregnancy is a case in point. Of course, there’s the obvious possible foreshadowing in Amy’s Choice in which one of the dream realities has her with child (quick aside: the mysterious Eyepatch Lady in Day of the Moon says “she’s still dreaming” - does this signify the hand of the Dream Lord at work?). But there’s another more sneaky reference in The Hungry Earth - if you care to recall the Silurians had sucked Amy down to their city and then scan her… And this is what results…

Yes, that is a heart beat appearing when they scan her stomach! Now I clocked this at the time and expected it was setting up getting her out of harm with the old “we will not hurt you as you have young” alien cliché, but the story didn't belabour that old saw and I promptly forgot about it… until last week that is!

You see, looooooooong game! Therefore the missing three months in this opening tale isn’t sloppy writing like RTD resurrecting the Master with a load of never to be explained smoking potion hugger mugger, it’s a deliberate omission; a piece of narrative sleight of hand.

Now I'm not going to speculate on the many mysteries this story presents. There are endless theories online as to what the regenerating child is, who River Song is and how the Doctor will escape – my favourite is the tongue in cheek suggestion made by Mike in the Bigger on the Inside podcast that River Song is the TARDIS - but as the wonderful Nuts4r2 sagely remarks in his own reviews of these episodes, it’s almost pointless to speculate as we don’t have enough pieces on the board yet. However I do think it’s worth mentioning the fact that the TARDIS scanner can’t seem to decide whether Amy is Pregnant or not. And this would suggest that perhaps the time-lines are currently in flux…

Similarly I'm not convinced we’ve seen the last of the Silence. For a start on a technical note, just having the Silence turn out to be just some skull faced aliens in suits is too much of a let down. Admittedly they were superbly scary but not quite big or bad enough to justify the previous season build up. And I'm not sure they are the Silence – they may be part of it but they are not the full deal. Remember what they say to Amy - “You are Amelia Pond…We do you honour…. You will bring the Silence….”

Perhaps we should be calling them the Silents… And also bear in mind that we never did discover what their plan was. And certainly they didn't build the mystery ship we saw in The Lodger or the dwarf star alloy – they definitively state that they use the technology of other races.

It’s an intoxicating brew alright! But the big questions aside, I’ll wrap this rambling up with a final point. If you have any doubts about Moffat’s plotting, consider how clever the resolution to Day of the Moon was. An on-going problem in the Doctor Who universe is that present day Earth has to remain very close to our own real-life continuum yet you have to wonder after all the invasions why the world in the series hasn’t become an alternate universe where every one knows that aliens are real. Yet for this most virulent infestation presented in this tale, Moffat has a very intelligent twist – we repelled the Silence but because of the way they operate no one remembers doing it. It deftly presents a global threat without destroying credibility or continuity, and is also wonderfully ironic dramatically.

Now next week, it would seem we have something of breather with a high seas adventure featuring “a stroppy, homicidal mermaid”. But I’m not ruling out a few more clues surfacing amid the cutlasses and tricorne hats! And if not, who cares – it’s the good Doctor tangling with pirates and Lilly Cole! All board? Yes, indeed!