The Wedding of River Song

Dear Gary—

After watching The Wedding of River Song I know exactly how the next season will open—with River waking up to find the Doctor in the shower. That is the only way out. Most of the season, and the entirety of this grand finale, has been a dream. That is the only explanation, because not for one minute do I believe any of it. It is not real. It never would have or could have happened.

But, you say, this is fiction; not just fiction, science fiction. However, I counter, in order for a piece of fiction to get me to suspend my disbelief it must remain true to its own framework. It must set up rules and work within those parameters, no matter how outlandish. Then I can dive right in and say, OK, yeah, this might never happen in the real world, but within the confines of this show I can accept it.

I can’t accept anything that happens in The Wedding of River Song.

It all starts with the fixed point theory that Doctor Who has gone to great lengths to establish. All of history is in flux; an ever-changing canvas of fluctuating colors for the Doctor to dabble in and shape and change and mock to his hearts delight; except for those few and rare instances when the show tells him ‘No!’ Instances that are sacrosanct and untouchable. Instances that must not alter no matter what. OK, this theory has been concocted and rammed down our throats, and in order for The Impossible Astronaut through to The Wedding of River Song to work we must believe this to be true in the Doctor Who Universe and we must further believe that the Doctor’s death at Lake Silencio on April 22, 2011 by the hand of River Song is one such fixed point. We must not only believe that this is a fixed point, but that tampering with this point will result in the collapse of all reality.

OK, I believe that if the show sticks to the concept; except the show doesn’t. At least it hasn’t been consistent with it. The Doctor himself changed one of those precious fixed points back in The Waters of Mars and nothing dire happened. There was some history bending around it, but nothing of drastic consequence. You can argue that this was because Adelaide Brooke compensated by killing herself; she was the center of the fixed point; her death was the crucial factor; therefore she corrected time by her act. OK—there’s your out, Doctor. River cheated fixed history by sparing your life. So commit suicide already and life will resume for everyone with only a slight alteration in their memories. Why put River through the agony of killing you when you can achieve the same result with a simple flick of your own wrist? But I can believe that the Doctor is selfish enough and cruel enough to force River to go through with the Lake Silencio scenario to put things back to rights.

Even accepting that, though, I still have to accept that the Doctor’s death in Utah in 2011 is a fixed point; that it will always happen in every iteration; it has always happened and always will. Except guess what—it doesn’t. There is at least one reality, one universe, one whatever it is, in which River does not kill the Doctor, and that plays out before our eyes in The Wedding of River Song. The death of the Doctor at Lake Silencio on the 22^nd of April in the year 2011 is not a fixed point. If it is not a fixed point, the world would therefore not go haywire and none of the events in The Wedding of River Song would take place. Or, if it is in fact a fixed point that has been altered, no amount of compensation will ever put it back to normal. River can kill the Doctor a million times over and there will still be that one time that she didn’t and therefore all of the devastating consequences will continue.

So there you have it, right off the bat I can’t believe anything that is put before me in this episode, and I haven’t even started in on the whole Teselecta cheat.

For most of the episode the Doctor is not the real Doctor but rather Teselecta Doctor (hereinafter referred to as T Doc). My first question is: how and why does T Doc grow a beard? But that is minor compared to some of the mind boggling and complex questions that arise from this. I’ll start with some relatively simple ones like: Is the marriage legal; is River really married to T Doc; or was T Doc standing in as proxy? I have to say that River really threw herself into that man-and-wife kiss even knowing that it was T Doc and not the real Doctor. And how and why would the eye patch work for T Doc, both as a Silent reminder and as a death trap?

The real question, however, is this: Is the fixed point actually the death of T Doc and not the real Doctor? I won’t even get into the time traveling paradox of the fact that the only reason T Doc was on that beach is because the real Doctor was forewarned of his death on that beach and therefore all of the eyewitness accounts and the historical records were referring to T Doc’s death before the real Doctor ever got the bright idea to dress up in a Doctor suit. What I will ask, though, is that if the Doctor knows all along that it is T Doc who dies on that beach (at least during the events of The Wedding of River Song), and if the death of T Doc would put reality back in order (assuming the suicide theory postulated above), why not destroy T Doc and be done with it? I suppose because the Doctor wants the universe to believe he is dead, and he wants the Silence to believe they have succeeded, and so he goes through with the charade.

But now I have to wonder again about this fixed point involving the death of T Doc. Is this universal, hard and fast Law of Fixed Pointiness really concerned with or fooled by a Teselecta? What exactly constitutes a fixed point? What are the criteria? And is it really so easy to manufacture a fixed point as the Silence apparently has done? Is all you need to accomplish this monumental feat simply a still point in time? Does that mean that anything that happens at Lake Silencio becomes a fixed point?  

But wait a minute. The Silence is taking credit for creating this Lake Silencio fixed point, however it is the Doctor who gathers all of the relevant people together on that date and time. The Silence has nothing to do with that. All the Silence does is take advantage of their presence to somehow send a spacesuited River there. How did they know from the beginning that the Doctor would be there? Because it is a fixed point? But it is a fixed point of their own making, or so we are to believe; an artificial fixed point that they manufactured out of—what—sheer luck? They stumbled into it? The only reason the Doctor assembles the cast is because he has been told it is inevitable, and that information came not from The Silence but from bits and pieces that his friends let slip and then from his own investigations. How exactly did the Silence manipulate all of these actions to get the Doctor where he needed to be for their convoluted plan to work?

Too many fundamental questions and the production’s over the top silliness can’t distract me.

It is the very nature of this ridiculousness, in fact, that brings me to my dream conclusion. All of history is happening at once, but it is Doctor specific history; in particular, New Who Doctor specific. Thus we have Charles Dickens and Winston Churchill and Malohkeh and Romans inhabiting this world of River’s creation. And we have key individuals—River, Amy, Rory, Eye Patch Lady, the Doctor—all meeting up despite the fact that some of them at least don’t remember each other from the real world. In fact it is rather fast and loose who remembers what and when. Rory and Churchill don’t remember anything; Amy remembers most of it but not Rory until the last and most dramatic minute; River and EPL and the Doctor remember everything.

As long as I’m talking about memory—can we at last admit that the Silents are idiotic? Oh so cool looking, and what a neat concept, but it just doesn’t work; out of sight out of mind just doesn’t work. People need the eye patches to retain the memory of the Silents; so can somebody please explain to me how it is that Amy takes off her eye patch and abandons Rory to face the oncoming Silents alone only to return to the room she has left to shoot down the Silents that she can’t remember are there?

The Silents. The Silence. Eye Patch Lady. Does any of this make sense? The Silents and EPL are members of The Silence, a religious order dedicated to the principle of concocting elaborate schemes to kill the Doctor when they could have killed him many times over, but then it wouldn’t be a fixed point that really isn’t a fixed point (or is it?) and it wouldn’t be a challenge I guess. A religious order that worships at the altar of the holy NASA spacesuit. (Hey, are these guys affiliated with Leela’s Sevateem tribe? Wouldn’t that be a hoot; all of history is playing out at once; why not the Silence and the Sevateem merging?) A religious order reading from the sacred scrolls of The Ambiguous Future of Trenzalore.

You know what sounds like a fixed point, Gary? This whole first question, Fields of Trenzalore business. It seems that everyone and his uncle has The History of the Universe textbook open before them and knows what is in store, at least as far as the Doctor is concerned.  “On the Fields of Trenzalore,” Blue Dorium Head intones, “at the Fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely, or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered.”

OK, then who is asking it and why? Maybe The Silence should go after the questioner instead.

Maybe the Doctor is the one asking the question. All of the big shiny arrows are pointing to the Doctor as the answerer; maybe he is the one asking the question.

At any rate, what this all boils down to is that The Silence is one elaborate religious order founded on the notion that if and when The Question is asked at some point in the future it should never be answered. Now the Teselecta in Let’s Kill Hitler had no clue what the question could possibly be, even though they were reading from the same history book as everyone else in which the question has apparently already been asked and answered. Just ask any inter-galactic school kid. Blue Head Dorium knows The Question and now, thanks to Blue Head Dorium, the Doctor also knows what The Question is. The First Question. “The oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight.”

If the question was posed when the universe was in its embryonic stages, who asked the question; who is continuing to ask the question; who will ask the question; and why? That is the real question. And the answer? Who cares?

What is this? A pass/fail quiz? If the Doctor answers he passes and the Silence fails and vice versa? Will the consequences of the answer being spoken aloud be any more devastating than what is happening to time now as a result of The Silence trying to keep the Doctor silent?

“The question you’ve been running from all your life,” Blue Head Dorium informs the Doctor. And then . . . oh, hidden in plain sight . . . “Doctor Who?” . . . how cool . . . how clever . . . Doctor Who.

Oh please. Who cares? Are we supposed to believe that is The Question? The Question that must never be answered? Doctor Who? Doctor Who Cares. Feet, alright? His name is Feet. Or Thete, or Theta Sigma, or John Smith, whatever.  Asked and answered. Bring back the inane question marks on his vest and be done with it already.

That is my biggest complaint against New Who these days, Gary. It’s self-reverence.

I cannot take this story seriously, but as a collection of random events as concocted in River’s mind I can enjoy it.

Chess to the death: cool. Munching skulls: cool. Blue Head Dorium on his head: funny. The It’s a Wonderful Life, ‘Who loves you, baby’ cry out from the Universe: emotional. Pterodactyls in London: cool. The passing of Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart: touching.”It would involve crossing my own time stream; best not:” hilarious. “Rory Williams, the man who dies and dies again:” clever. Amy reflecting on her murder of Eye Patch Lady: moving. Amy’s reaction to the realization that she is the Doctor’s mother-in-law: amusing. The Doctor giving Rory dating advice: comical.

But that is all it is; a collection of cool and clever and funny and emotional scenes.

I’m not even going to ask why the marriage ceremony is necessary. It’s necessary because it is River’s fantasy. I will ask this one last question, though: why is River imprisoned in the 52^nd Century when she supposedly kills the Doctor in the 21^st? Beyond that, I won’t get into who exactly put her on trial and why her lawyer didn’t bring up the ‘the suit made me do it’ defense; and I won’t get into how exactly she was free to study archeology or why she never ran across the fact that she killed the Doctor in all of her scholarly research into the Doctor.

One last stray thought, though, Gary. It is curious how common time travel has become in the Doctor Who universe. It really makes one wonder why the Doctor made such a fuss about the Time Lord secrets of time travel being discovered back in The Two Doctors. Not to mention the fact that ubiquitous time travel belittles the Doctor. Who needs a blue box anymore?

“I got too big,” the Doctor tells Blue Head Dorium. Doctor Who has gotten too big, Gary. Big and bloated and weighted down.