This year was a first for me. After spending the last year watching all of the Doctor Who since the 2005 revival, I had finally caught up enough this fall to actually follow the show when it returned from hiatus. I've talked before about the benefits and disadvantages of watching a show during it's airing vs watching it all later, but I enjoyed being able to stay current on Doctor Who.
Staying current allowed me a spoiler free experience in watching last night's season (or series, if you prefer) finale, The Wedding of River Song. Here's what I thought.
 |
| Presenting, Your Holy Roman Emperor, Winston Churchill |
Eye-Patch Lady, Madam Kovarian, has been recurring all season, seeming very strange with her eye-patchiness. Last night, we were finally treated to an explanation to those pesky eye-patches. Promos for last night's episode showed all of the principal characters sporting similar eye-patches. I don't want to brag, but at that point I was pretty sure I had figured out the purpose of them. They were indeed (*Spoilers*) designed to allow people to remember the silence after they stopped looking at them!
Since River's first appearance, I haven't really been a fan of her character. I felt the that the show was forcing me to immediately fall in love with this character I knew nothing about. I was always interested in her story, but didn't like her. I didn't like the hints that she was the Doctor's wife. I didn't like the special place that she held in the show despite the fact that she came out of nowhere. Last night finally resolved the mystery of River Song. She did indeed get married to the Doctor. Out of necessity. In an aborted timeline that never existed. Sure, as Amy pointed out, they all still remembered it, so it still happened for them, but it's enough to make me feel better about the whole thing.
The oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight. Did anybody not think it was going to be about the Doctor? I don't think so. Making the question, "Doctor Who?" though? Well played Steven Moffat. Well played. I had already started assuming it would hinge on the Doctor's true name, but to actually phrase it that way was quite fun. I can't wait to see where they take that set up when the show returns, though I'm pretty skeptical that after all of this time, they're just going to tell us his name.
Spoiler free thoughts resume here:
What's most important is that last night's episode was satisfying. Series 6 was often chaotic. For the most part it was complex and exciting, but at times it became confusing, twisty, and well....wibbly wobbly, and timey wimey. As with all time travel stories, I always wonder if there wasn't a simpler way to fix all that, but Moffat wrapped all of the important threads up while leaving an interesting set up for the next series. The show has been criticized at times for being overly complicated just because they wanted to, so it was really important that they found a satisfying conclusion to all the twisty-turny plot points this season.
