Doctor Who series finale: The Wedding Of River Song – Episode review
So, that’s it wrapped up then. Doctor Who’s sixth series ends with The Wedding Of River Song and – of course – the non-death of The Doctor.
It’s at times like this that I’m reminded Steven Moffat once wrote some of the most clever, exciting episodes of Doctor Who. But that was when Russell T Davies was running the show. Now that Moffat’s at the helm, every time he writes a premiere or a finale episode, all hell breaks loose. It’s funny how his writing style has gone from being smart, edgy episodes to these strung-out overwhelmingly crammed episodes that feel like you’re standing in front of an ideas firehose. It’s like being bombarded by every zany sci-fi idea that popped into Moffat’s head while he was writing the episode.
And honestly, I think he needs an editor. Someone to rein in the craziness and concentrate on the quality of the episode.
We’re plunged into a bewildering storyline where The Doctor is in two places – as the Soothsayer Doctor in the dysfunctional “abortive” timeline, and as himself in the moments before his death. There are maneating skulls, eyedrives that help you remember The Silence, The Doctor pulls apart a Dalek looking for information, and Amy has an office on a train and has no idea who Rory is.
End result? By about the halfway mark of this episode I really couldn’t care less how it ended or how well the series arc was wrapped up. Doctor Who – especially in its series finales – has become utterly tedious. It’s simply too much work to watch – impossible to keep pace with the story with hot-air balloon cars and Silurians (surely Earth’s new slave class) popping up everywhere.
And let’s talk about how The Doctor survives his death. There were always two possibilities, barring a clever bit of timey-wimeyness. One was the gangers from The Rebel Flesh and the other was the Tesselector from Let’s Kill Hitler. Either one could produce a perfect replica of The Doctor for a fake death. And Moffat went with option B – the Tesselector.
Which posed a little problem. Because when River helped The Doctor cheat death earlier in the episode, time began to “disintegrate”. But, by replacing himself with a robotic version, this somehow ‘cheats’ time and allows the natural order of the universe to resume? That’s weak.
What’s also weak is that somehow the effects of The Doctor’s death were localised to Earth. The rest of the universe were out there, responding to River Song’s bonkers distress beacon that contacts all of time and space, past, present and future. Um…and no past, present or future Time Lords (including The Doctor) ever received these distress calls? And the effects of an intergalactic time traveller dying were only felt on Earth?
The significance of the episode is not lost on me: the universe believes The Doctor is dead, which means they won’t be calling the TARDIS hotline while he’s in bed at night, demanding to be rescued from the latest intergalactic threat. Which means a more low-key Doctor Who, the space-time adventurer who can now travel incognito without having to avoid mysterious, Pandorica-shaped boxes. Fair enough. Each year Doctor Who’s stakes have been raised to impossible-to-top levels – end of the world, the universe, REALITY ITSELF! Yawn.
But am I looking forward to the seventh series? Meh. I’ll certainly tune in. But for my money, Doctor Who has fallen by the wayside. Certainly, the last four episodes of this series have been missable. I’ll undoubtedly tune in, but the series needs to make some big changes. And before the hailstorm of flame-mail beings, let me just point out that your opinions are welcome, but please accept my right to be disappointed by the direction Doctor Who has taken. Alright? Fire away…
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Perfect review.
the doctors death was not the fixed point in time, it was the act of river shooting and destroying the tesselector that was fixed, thats why time went haywire and it is never stated that the effects are local to earth, river says ‘time bubble’ all this means is that the reality outside of the aborted timeline is where river sends the distress signal. The way i see it, theres no point getting angry at ‘the direction moffat has taken doctor who’ if your a real fan you dont think about what could or should of happened you just accept the fact that that is what ‘did’ happen, in the same way bad things happen to us in life, u might not agree with it but you cant change it that is how things happened and always wil happen
The best bit in it was the little goodbye to the Brigadier. What with all the plot holes and scratty loose ends it was the only part that rang true.
I agree 100% with this review..
@Leon – I watched the episode twice. Whether it makes sense or not isn’t my point (though I don’t think it DOES make sense), it’s more that the execution, the pacing, the overall feel leaves me cold.
And as I’ve said before in connection with Doctor Who, even when a storyline makes sense, if the execution isn’t convincing, then it’s still a failure. I still contend that the series finale has been a major disappointment.
Sorry, I’ve got to disagree with this though:
No, if you’re a real fan, you’ll want the series to be the absolute best it can be. If you blindly concede every episode to be brilliant without acknowledging any room for improvement, then I don’t know how to respond to that. Criticism is essential for improvement.
Clearly you have no idea at all what doctor who is.
It is not a soap opera like RTD envisioned.
Doctor who is mysterious, something RTD totally ruined in his portrayal.
What the hell are you even talking about in half of your finale, clearly you went into the episode not even wanting to enjoy it. The load of tripe you have filled this so called review with, is outstanding. The point was that there were so many crazy theories out there, that the doctor though of the simplest. Along with Moffat’s usual brilliant ending, there is a new type of brilliance in going for simplicity. I had an immensely elaborate idea, but in the end I didn’t even think of the beautiful simplicity.
3 cheers Moffat! Putting the who back into the doctor.
Completely agree. I’m a massive fan of DW, but I hate these overly-complicated, not quite pulled-off episodes that Moffat keeps throwing out, usually around the central plotline. I love a complicated story, but not when it’s rushed, half-hearted and half the time doesn’t even fall into place. Someone at the BBC needs to rein Moffat in – when your episode is called “Let’s Kill Hitler” and all you do with history’s most notorious villain is lock him in a cupboard… something’s going wrong. I know so many people who can’t be bothered to watch anymore after this season. Such a shame.
I agree 100% for me it is Moffat’s writing and the introduction of that horrible character River Song or Mary Sue, whichever name you would like to call her, which are the main problems… Doctor Who is no more a show about a lonely God, a Mad Man in a box… ‘He wears a nagging old wife now, Mary Sue wives are cool’ Series 7 will be like Bonnie & Clyde in space, waving their guns about and shagging on the console… Moffat HAD to go and ruin a decades long tradition… R.I.P. Doctor Who
I agree totally with this review.
I see all these people touting how Moffat’s stories are “complex” and “thought-provoking”, when they’re really just….all over the place. The beginning of this episode was okay for 2 reasons: Matt Smith was acting like Chris Eccleston’s Doctor, and the lack of story was made up for with background flash. The special effects and backgrounds were beautiful, and distracted you from the fact that there was really nothing sensical going on. In my opinion, the only part of this episode that was worth watching was the small tribute to Nicolas Courteney.
Steven Moffat proved in in the first four series that he was a good writer for one-off episodes. All of the episodes he wrote are among my favorites (Except Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, they were okay, just not favorites). But he doesn’t seem to have any idea on how to handle a broad, arcing storyline without focusing most of the series on it. The success of “Blink”, while well deserved, should not have earned him the helm of the show.
At this point, I’m pretty sure that Moffat is intent on being the man who ends Doctor Who, on his terms, and the fans be damned (he’s already stated that, not in so many words, he doesn’t care what the fans like, he’ll do what he wants). I just wish that if he was going to kill my oldest fandom, he’d do it instead of torturing it first.
This is the episode on top of all of season 6, which is the reason I can no longer watch the show.
It was frustrating and all over the place. While not as bad as the writing Colin Baker received during this time, this was a different kind of terrible.
Moffat is incapable of telling a story from start to finish without the end affecting the start, the middle affecting the beginning and the universe not holding together towards the end.
Every episode speaks to this theme and it stops being a surprise. It becomes a pain and deeply hurtful to real fans.
If only the recession had caused Moffat to lose his job, we might all be better off.
RIP Doctor Who
to my great surprise and delight I actually like this episode! I pretty much found the new Doctor who episodes (from when Moffat to over) boring and more like a soap opera then RTD, I just could never get interested in any of the characters enough to care about them or the show and i did try each we i hoped that it would be better than the last for me but it wasn’t until this one, i found it fun and ingaging, just ashame the beginning and the middle let it down for me, but hey lets hope next series is upto the same standard as the wedding of river song or more, i’d love if he exceded my expectation again XD
here’s hoping a better season next year!
The problem I have with the show at the minute is that I can see it turning into a Lost type train wreck. Moffat has, during his time on the show, only answered ONE question of the dozen he has thrown our way; that was Rivers identity! Now we are left with TWO YEARS worth of unexplained questions with more sure to come! We still don’t know the truth behind the cracks or the TARDIS explosion, do we? And now there is the Silence etc! Moffat sounds like the Lost producers in every interview “answers are coming” but when?
There is no way he can answer all these questions because there are just too many now so we will end up, like at the end of Lost, with a lot of unexplained mysteries!
My final point is that I’m sick of Moffat discrediting anyone who questions where this show is going. We LIKE COMPLEX THEMES AND MYSTERIES! WE DONT LIKE THEM UNEXPLAINED OR CONSTANTLY ADDED TO!
lol i guess im one of the few people who thought this episode was a pretty cool way to wrap up a season that was also pretty cool.
Moffat doesn’t write soap operas? AHAHAHAHAHAHA How can you say that with a straight face given his marriage wifey baby crap with Amy and River et al?
Seriously, bring back RTD. Even with the angst at least you had a decent, coherent plot, a show that was actually about the DOCTOR being the DOCTOR, and intelligent, 3D companions worth giving a damn about.
I believe that Russell T. Davies needs to come back as head writer because with Moffat in that position DW has gone all haywire! So I 100% agree with this review
just how much is moffat paying all of you half-wits to babble about how “brilliant” moffats rubbish is? His stories are so stupid and insulting to the intelligence of anyone with an IQ higher then 60.
River is as vile as ever. Glad the real dr avoided the fate worse then death by not having to marry the vile river.
Even the first Dr on his worst day could have done better then this unappealing,unattractive sociopath. EW.
Who cares anymore about this once great quirky show? It is all over the place and the problem with Moffat is that he is so smug and full of himself that he actually has the audacity to think that everyone will be so easily bowled over by his childish writing gimmicks. and while he may think this never ending story is so “fascinating” the truth is that most of us have simply stopped caring. The old Dr Who wrapped up most stories within 4-6 1/2 hour episodes. Only a few times have they tried for a much bigger arc and those attempts were received with a lukewarm response at best. Truth is, Moffats ego far exceeds his talent. He has some talent to be sure but nowhere near enough to warrant being the head writer and sure as heck nowhere near enough to warrant the size of his massively overstuffed ego. rme
Thank you so much for this review! It made me so happy to see that other people feel the same way. So many reviews of Moffat’s episodes have been amazingly soft. He is messy,disorganized, a little insane (and not in a good way) and his characters are usually boring and you don’t ever have time or interest to really care for them. I like Rory, but that’s about it. Amy started out in a good place, but then never ever evolved, and her only place in the series is being a damsel in distress. She may be very “fierce” but she needs to be saved every 15 minutes.
Agreed. There are a lot of people who think Moffat can do no wrong in writing for DW. But I disagree. It seems that Moffat wrote better episodes when RTD was head writer and the such. To me Moffat has created more questions than answers. They are too many story arcs and unnecessary characters in the episodes. Amy either needs to evolve as a character by either learning how to to have to be rescued evey 15 minutes or by staying home and not travelling with the Doctor.