"River Song didn't get it all from you, sweetie"

Hello Everyone :-)

Have we all brought new hats? Is the confetti on standby? The best man is stressing over his speech, it’s time for ‘The Wedding of River Song’.

This blog is spoilers galore so if you’ve not seen ‘The Wedding of River Song’ and don’t want to know anything about it, don’t read it.

We open in very confusing times. Winston Churchill is Emperor of the Roman Empire parading around London on a woolly mammoth and Charles Dickens is yet to write ‘A Christmas Carol’. All of time is happening at once and Churchill (in this reality he doesn’t know the Doctor) has our favourite Timelord held captive as his soothsayer. The Doctor explains to Churchill how he was searching for The Silence to ask them why he had to die and met the Teselecta when they were posing as one of The Silence. In flashback the Doctor is taken to the head of Dorium Maldovar who tells him "On the fields of Trenzelor, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked - one that must never be answered. And Silence must fall when the question is asked". The Doctor refuses to go to Lake Silencio until he’s told of the death of his old friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart which makes him reconsider his fate so he takes Dorium’s head and leaves.

The Doctor arrives in America and meets Amy, Rory and River and events unfold as they did in ‘The Impossible Astronaut’ until we see things from the perspective of the Doctor as he approaches River in the Astronaut suit. River is shown her future of imprisonment in Stormcage and then, to the Doctor’s surprise she drains her Astronaut suit of its power, time becomes stuck and all of everything happens at once, bringing us up to date and back with Winston Churchill and the Doctor. During the time the Doctor has been explaining what has happened to Churchill tally marks have begun to appear on The Doctor’s arm. He has no recollection of how they got there the pair look up to find a fuck load of Silence (that’s the collective noun of choice when talking about the Silence) are nesting on the ceiling.

Churchill and The Doctor are rescued by Amy and some soldiers then the Doctor is taken to a train where Amy explains that she is aware of the alternate reality because of her proximity to the crack in her bedroom wall growing up (however she’s not twigged that ‘Commander Williams’ is Rory), she then gives the Doctor an eye patch like the one worn by Madame Kovarian and informs him that it is an ‘Eyedrive’, an external memory that enables the user to remember what the Silence look like. They travel to ‘Area 52’ which is a hollowed out pyramid at Giza where Amy, River and her team of soldiers have got some of the Silence captive along with Madame Kovarian. It soon transpires that this has all been a trap set by Madame Kovarian and the Silence begin to escape and overload everyone’s eye drives, killing some of the soldiers. As the Doctor and River escape up to the top of the pyramid Amy and Rory hold the Silence back and Amy realizes who he is. Madame Kovarian discovers that her eye drive is also being overloaded so dislodges it, but Amy forces it back into place in an act of revenge.

The four convene at the top of the pyramid and River tries to convince the Doctor that he doesn’t have to die and that having history happen all at once is acceptable. The Doctor explains that the whole of time will tear apart if it carries on as it is then he marries River, whispers something into her ear and kisses her unsticking time, taking them back to reality and Lake Silencio where River seemingly shoots and kills the Doctor.

Sometime in the future River arrives at the home of Amy and Rory, in her timestream it’s just after the events on ‘Flesh and Stone’ but in Rory and Amy’s timestream it’s not long since they’ve been dropped off after the events of Lake Silencio. River tells them to remember rule number 1; the Doctor lies. It transpires that when the Doctor whispered to River he was actually telling her to look into his eyes and she saw that the Doctor had been shrunk and is inside the Teselecta so the effigy of the Doctor was safely dispatched without harming him.

Elsewhere the Doctor returns Dorium’s head and as he is leaving Dorium shouts after him the ‘question hidden in plain sight’, Doctor Who?

Let’s start with the positives. I loved Karen Gillian’s performance as suited and booted Amy. She proves that the old adage ‘Hell has no fury like a Woman scorned’ is wrong, it should be ‘Hell has no fury like a mother who has her timelord daughter stolen only to discover she was her childhood friend who regenerates into the woman who marries The Doctor’ although I don’t think that has the same ring to it…

It was lovely to see Rory in a different light and in uniform! I had to chuckle when the Silence called him “the man who dies and dies again”!

Unsurprisingly Matt Smith steals the show. I said the other day about how Smith is making his Doctor much more about the self-hatred and that’s very much the case in this episode. Not just that but he’s a man trying to out run the inevitable, he goes through denial, sadness and finally acceptance of his fate and Smith deals with it all with aplomb.

I knew, as soon as we saw the Teselecta again, how it was going to play out. Trouble is when that’s happened in renders the rest of the episode fairly irrelevant. Not just that but I’m not that bothered about what happens to River anymore, we’ve seen her birth, we’ve seen her death, we’ve seen her get married, the question of who she is has been answered and I don’t like her character enough to want to see her again, but I think I’m alone in this opinion.

In this episode the Silence prove themselves to be one of the scariest ‘Who’ creations of recent years. I defy you not to jump/squeal/hide behind a cushion (or like me, all of the above) when you see that shot of a nest of Silence on the ceiling on Churchill’s palace. They’re awesome.

Unfortunately, other than when the Silence were on screen and the last scene with Dorium, there was a total lack on tension throughout the episode. There was just too much exposition and not enough action. I applaud Captain Moff’s use of the wibbley wobbley timey wimey nature of ‘Doctor Who’. I think he uses it a lot better than Lord T Davies ever did (I found that Davies used time travel to set the scene of his episodes whereas Moff uses it as an integral part of the overriding story arc) but it shouldn’t come at the expense of drama. I spent so much time trying to straighten out who was when and which reality we were in that I couldn’t enjoy it properly.

When it all boils down I thought it was lots of information and not enough excitement. I was pleased with the ending, next series sounds very intriguing, but it wasn’t enough to redeem the whole episode.

So there we have it. Looking back, this series has been a bit up and down but I don’t think any episode has been less than ‘good’. A couple of episodes this series have been outstanding, the shades of dreamy fantasy clash with some very visceral horror in ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ and the Sci-fi heavy but emotionally charged ‘The Girl Who Waited’ were stand outs for me. All we have now are hints, hints at the eventual departure of Matt Smith at “the fall of the Eleventh” and a shadier, less ostentatious Doctor. I’ve got the proverbial hook in my lip!

The Doctor returns on 25th December in the ‘Doctor Who Christmas special’ :-)

Phew! Now all that’s out the way let’s do some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)

1. MISFITS IS BACK!!!! Yay! The well-publicised departure of Robert Sheehan was realised in the online mini-episode ‘Vegas Baby!’. I am sad to see him go but all good things must come to an end and ‘Vegas Baby!’ also served as an introduction to the new recruit to the ‘Community Blowback’ family, Rudy. Joe Gilgun will be playing Rudy and he’s previously been in ‘This is England’ and apparently Emmerdale (needless to say I’ve seen the former but proudly never the latter). The creators of Misfits clearly aren’t afraid of shaking things up a bit and hopefully Nathan’s departure and Rudy’s arrival will keep the show as fresh and exciting as it’s always been. Series 3 of Misfits starts on Sunday 30th October at 10 o’clock on E4.

2. Tintin is out today! I’m excited about this. It’s got a great cast, Jamie Belll, Andy ‘Lord of Mo-Cap’ Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Toby ‘Dreamlord’ Jones. Not just that but it was written by Captain Moff, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, music by John Williams,  produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Steven Spielberg. The caliber of talent on offer in this film is mind boggling. I’m planning (although I’m sure you’ve grasped by now that my plans do not always come to fruition) to go an see it on Saturday morning so I’ll let you know what my verdict is at some point next week, but if you want to know now read my lovely friend Mark’s review.

3. New trailer for 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists'! This looks like SO MUCH FUN! I can’t wait. With this and the Muppets (107 days!), 2012 looks set to be a cinematic hoot :-)

That’s all I’ve got for you!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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