Cowboy Pete Attends the Wedding of River Song

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

So I kind of slapped around “Doctor Who” a few weeks ago. Let’s see how it turned out. In the words of River Song: Spoilers.

Remember how I was complaining about the claustrophobia and obvious lack of budget in the previous few episodes? Well, it was pretty obvious where all the money went: Into this episode, ranging from London to Egypt across a world where time has more or less ceased to exist. Writer Ray Cummings is credited with saying that time is what prevents everything from happening all at once; here we see what happens when time goes away/awry.

The reason for a world where Winston Churchill and pterodactyls coexist? The Doctor’s death, despite what we saw in the season opener, is prevented by a smug River Song, who finds a way to avert being his assassin. Since, we are told, the Doctor’s death is a “fixed point in time” (the story-convenient “this must happen” type of event cited in such episodes as “The Fires of Pompeii”), his not dying sends the entire universe completely off its axis.

The Doctor, self-sacrificing and insistent, keeps telling River she shouldn’t have done it. That he has to die. The universe is expecting him to die; requires his death at this time and this place in this way. There’s no real explanation as to why this has to be other than that it has to be. Que sera sera as a season-long arc.

Ultimately, as is typical with anyone faced with dealing with a terminal situation, River works her way through denial and bargaining to acceptance. The Doctor dies…

…except he doesn’t. It turns out that the Doctor had a way out all along.

Now I admit that I was fully engaged with the episode. I was right there all the way through the end.

And then I spent some time thinking about it. And I realized that basically what we had was:

Fifty minutes of story caused by River’s interfering with the Doctor’s plan that’s revealed in the last ten minutes. If River had done absolutely nothing the Doctor would have been fine because hew as able to…

Well, I’m not sure what he did. He tricked the universe? I mean, if he’d kept saying “History records that I die,” then it makes sense. Kind of. But instead we’re sold on a sort of cosmological absolute. We’re told that the Doctor’s time is coming to an end. Except it turns out that, no, a simple bait-and-switch solves the problem. Except the Doctor apparently now has to keep a low profile so that…what? The universe doesn’t notice him? Isn’t it kind of everywhere?

A “Doctor Who” episode doesn’t have to make sense. But what we have here is an entire episode that was fundamentally unnecessary if River had just stayed out of the Doctor’s way. What it comes down to is that the Doctor’s season worth of personal jeopardy was an illusion, a big shaggy dog tale. He was never really in any danger, and he pretty much knew it. To quote that master of evil, Professor Doofenschmirtz: Really?

I will give props to Moffat for “the question,” though. The question right in front of you that must never be answered. The question, as it turns out, is: “Doctor Who?” Should’ve seen that coming. Fortunately we already know the answer: 42. So I guess we now know how many incarnations of the Doctor there will ultimately be.

PAD

70 comments on “Cowboy Pete Attends the Wedding of River Song”

  1. I don’t totally agree. My opinion is that the doctor was resigned to this being his death for the last half of the season. From the previous episode, I believe he really expected to die, I don’t think he had a way out till near the end.

    I always figured it would be a skin job that died, from the first part of the year, props to Moffat finding another path to the end.

    Love the question hidden in plain sight, however not so happy with the “at the fall of the 11th”… The internet chatter is anticipating that the events of the question will be part of the 2013 anniversary series and I really don’t want to see Matt regenerate that soon. David Tennant is my favorite Doc and Matt is right behind him.

    As for the season as a whole, loved it. Even the worst episodes were far better than the worst episodes of a Davie’s season. We got answers, to major questions which organically grew into new questions, where other shows like How I Met Your Mother would still be dragging the original questions out and out and out.

    The one major disappointment I had was the regeneration of Melz into River. That actress was great, the character was fun and we spent way too little time with her. I would have preferred having that version around for several episodes if not a season or two.

  2. I’ll admit to getting a little misty-eyed when the Brigadier’s death was mentioned. I have a suspicion it’s the only scene people will remember/talk about long after this episode has aired.

    1. I darn near cried at that bit. It was so wonderful that they were able to put in that goodbye to the Brig. I sure hope that they’ll have another memorial mention next year after the final episodes of “The Sarah Jane Adventures” have aired.

    2. Odd. While I appreciated the nod to the passing of a wonderful guy (who I was once was lucky enough to lunch with, courtesy of Jo Duffy), my immediate thought was, “Good thing he’s in a time machine so he can roll back a few years and visit with the Brig before he died.”
      .
      Again, it was a great “in the moment” thing that, a moment later, I went, “Wait…what?” I mean, anytime he moves beyond the 21st century, 100% of his companions are dead, aren’t they?
      .
      PAD

      1. Actually Peter, I took it as the fact that the Nurse told him the Brigadier always kept a brandy out in case he dropped by. She was inadvertently telling him that he never did drop by. Thus, the events became part of the timeline. He wouldn’t go back to see the Brigadier, because he knows he never did.

      2. In 1986 Nicholas Courtney and Patrick Troughton were guests in St. Louis at a convention. I asked from the audience, “It’s 1986. Halley’s Comet is approaching the sun, and the Cybermen are attacking from Mondas — but The Doctor and the Brigadier are in St. Louis. Who’s defending London from the Cybermen?”

        Without missing a beat, Mr. Courtney smiled and said “Mr. Benton!”

        That’s the kind of cool guy he was.

      4. It’s the same reason he didn’t go in the TARDIS to pick up Marie Antoinette it’s a paradox. He was motivated to go to an earlier time by the fact that he never went back at all.

        The TARDIS hates Paradoxes inside her.

      5. Supposedly the Doctor COULD revisit the Brigadier prior to his death if he wanted to, but I think the pain of that particular scene stems from the fact that things would never really be the same again even if he did. There would be an additional melancholy to their meetings, since the Doctor now knows when and where Time will come calling for Lethbridge-Stuart.

        I guess the Doctor could try to “trick” Time to preserve the Brigadier’s life the same way he “tricked” Fate at the end of the episode to save his own, but why? The Brigadier died peacefully in his bed from simple old age- probably surrounded by friends and family – not killed or murdered in some ghastly unjust fashion. I don’t believe even the Doctor has the right to interfere with something that’s pretty good for what it is.

      6. There would be an additional melancholy to their meetings, since the Doctor now knows when and where Time will come calling for Lethbridge-Stuart.
        .
        You mean like there has been for every single one of the meetings between the Doctor and River since her first appearance? 😛

      7. [i]You mean like there has been for every single one of the meetings between the Doctor and River since her first appearance?[/i]

        Hey, don’t blame bad scriptwriting on me! 😛

        But seriously, I don’t see an uptight fellow like the Brigadier getting up to the same giggly antics as River Song would with the Doctor, do you?

      9. Starwolf, I don’t know how to break this to you, but Leela was left on Gallifrey. She’s dead, as are all the residents on Gallifrey.

      10. I think many people may have misunderstood the impact of the Brigadier’s death. While it was obviously a tribute to him, it was also the point where the Doctor acknowledged his mortality and accepted the inevitability of his own death. He was in the middle of a rant of defiance when he got the call. Afterwards, he was ready to lay it all down and proceeded to get his affairs in order. Also, I agree that he did not have a way “out” until the opportunity presented itself toward the end.

  3. Ben and Jeff, I agree with you both. It’s silly I know, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the Brig. Nick Courtney was my very first interview 25 years ago, and he went way out of his way to help an over-enthusiastic Doctor Who fan. I’ve probably done close to 3,000 interviews since then, but if it wasn’t for Nick, I might not be doing this for a living.
    .
    As for the episode itself, I wasn’t overwhelmed. Some good stuff in there, but I still find River Song too creepy and cougar-like against Matt Smith’s Doctor. Yes, I know he’s six jillion years old, so he’s much older than he looks, blah,blah blah, but those scenes still feel creepy to me.

    1. Might I ask your opinion of Tom Baker and Lalla Ward (the Fourth Doctor and the Second Romana)? Baker was a full 17 years older than Ward, yet they actually got married in real life (even if it was very short-lived). Alex Kingston (River Song) is 19 years older than Matt Smith. Interestingly, in real life, Arthur Darvill (Rory) is the same age as Smith while Karen Gillan (Amy) is five years younger than both of them.
      .
      Also, Billie Piper (who played Rose) was a full decade younger than David Tennant and 18 years younger than Chris Eccleston. Did you feel creeped out by Rose’s crush on the Doctor(s), especially Eccleston?
      .
      Honestly I have no problem with Kingston’s age in comparison to Smith’s. (I *am* more creeped out by the revelation of River Song’s parentage and how she and the Doctor end up married. I mean, honestly, marrying the guy who’s largely responsible for your conception–it’s kind of like marrying your dad’s best friend who introduced your folks to each other.)

      1. “It’s ind of like marrying your dad’s best friend who introduced your folks to each other.”

        Makes you wonder if Doc Brown in “Back to the Future” might some how be related to the Time Lords.

        (I also suspect the same thing of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka.)

    2. Personally, I was more creeped out by the Buffy-Angel back on BTWS. It’s creepy to see an 80-year-old man with a woman in her 20s — but someone in theur hundreds dating someone who’s still in high school? And then getting them into bed the day they turn 18? Ick.

      1. You want me to crank up the ick factor even more for you there, James?
        .
        Buffy wasn’t eighteen. “Surprise” occurred on her 17th birthday. The perfect gift for the girl who has everything: statutory rape.
        .
        PAD

      2. To be fair as a vampire Angel stopped aging (in the human sense) the day he was turned. Also Angel grew up in a world where a 40 year old man marrying a 16 year old girl wouldn’t have caused anyone to blink.

        It’s hard to believe now but at one time a 30 year old unmarried woman was considered an “old maid”.

      3. Nowadays, older males attracted to teenage girls is viewed as borderline pedophilia, our biggest taboo, but it wasn’t always so.
        .
        I was watching “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” recently, and Jack Nicholson’s character, the guy we’re supposed to sympathize with, was in prison for having sex with a 15-year old girl (or 14?), and it was treated as a very mild crime by all the characters and shrugged off with a “she looked much older.”

  4. They actually *did* reveal the Doctor’s real name once. Back in the original series — I think when Tom Baker was the Doctor — a fellow Gallifreyan sees the Doctor and says something like “It’s you, [weird alien name].” (And yes, I forget what the name was, but it was something suitably strange.) For some reason there’s some behind-the-scenes excuse why that wasn’t his *real* name, and the mystery continues.

    And I’d love to see Dr. Doofenschmittz in the Masters of Evil. He’d be effective, too, if he’d just lay off those self-destruct buttons!

    1. James-
      That was his school name not his real name as stated in the episode. It was Theta Sigma which was shorted to Thete around campus. That was back in the Armageddon Factor.

      Kath the Wife

      1. Indeed, when River Song left a message for him carved on the cliff face of the oldest planet in the universe, she addressed him at “Theta Sigma”, so Mr. Moffatt remembers that episode.

  5. Amy and Rory may go down in the annals of the Whoniverse as the Doctor’s most famous Companions – i could hear the capital letters as he looked at them and said “The Last Roman and The Girl Who Waited”…
    .
    Put me in mind of Cordwainer Smith’s “The Lady Who Sailed the Soul“, the story of Helen America and Mister Grey-No-More…

    1. Hmmm.
      .
      If the TARDIS is the Doctor’s wife.
      .
      And River is the child of the TARDIS…
      .
      Does that make the Doctor his own father-in-law?

      1. I was watching the finale with a friend, and when Amy realized that she was now the Doctor’s mother-in-law, we turned to each other and stared for about five seconds before bursting out laughing. It’s such an obvious thing, but that facet of River and the Doctor marrying didn’t solidify in our heads until it was spelled out in dialogue.
        .
        Something that did occur to me, though, is what could be considered a minor detail, brought to mind when Dorium’s head mentioned River spending “the rest of her days” in prison. What was River’s legal status in her first on-screen/final chronological appearance in “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead”? Was she on another legal “furlough” (as in “The Time of Angels”/”Flesh and Stone”)? Had she escaped on her own, either on another unsanctioned absence or permanently? Or does she eventually serve her sentence and earn release? And for that matter, which planet’s/culture’s legal system held her accountable for the crime of killing the Doctor?
        .
        Chuck

      2. I was watching the finale with a friend, and when Amy realized that she was now the Doctor’s mother-in-law, we turned to each other and stared for about five seconds before bursting out laughing.
        .
        Best moment in the episode. She played it perfectly.
        .
        PAD

  6. I actually enjoyed the episode, but about 2 hours later, something hit me.

    If the Doctor had to touch River to reset the time loop, and the Doctor was inside the time traveling robot, then how did he touch her?

    Then I came up with a possible answer. If the robot assumes the identity of who it replaces, then, just possibly, it was the Robot Doctor who was always set to die at that time (the fixed point) and never the real doctor. Thus, River touching RoboDoc was the right approach to resolve the timeline issue. So the Doctor was never really fated to die at all, everyone just thought he was, and at some point, after being prepared to die, he somehow figured that out.

    Of course, this means he simply could have told River this and touched and poof. But that would make for a very short episode.

    1. That’s my thought on it too, that The doctor was never going to die there, but that it’s still a fixed point because of what that moment will eventually lead to. And that, up until he talked to the Tesselecta to have it mail the letters, he believed that he was walking to his death.

      As for why he kept it secret from everyone bar River, and even then only at the very last, was that he wanted the universe to believe he was gone. It’s obvious that The Ponds and River, at the very least, remember the bubble, so who knows who else does.

  7. I kept thinking of “why” as the question. Seems to me it’s the oldest, unanswerable question. Not until the very end did it occur to me that the question was an in-universe one: the one implied by the series since 1963.
    .
    James Lynch, you’re thinking of “The Armageddon Factor.” The Time Lord Drax refers to the Doctor as “Theta Sigma.” However, there’s nothing to indicate “Theta Sigma” is anything but a nickname.
    .
    I agree with Brian that the Doctor expected to die, and saw no way out of it. Until certain someones asked if they could do anything for him (or if they could help, I forget the exact question). In that moment, I think the Doctor hit on a way out of his predicament.
    .
    I don’t think the Doctor maintaining a low profile is to keep “the universe” (as a sentient entity) from noticing him. Obviously, that’s impossible. I think he’s decided that maybe it’s best if it’s generally believed he’s died.
    .
    And maybe as far as “the universe” is concerned, the widespread belief that the Doctor died is sufficient to meet the “fixed point in time” criterion.
    .
    I also liked the nod to the Brigadier and Nick Courtney.
    .
    Rick

  8. I actually loved this episode, but a few things bugged me.

    1) The “wedding” and how the Doctor treated River throughout the episode was horrible. I was expecting a more “romantic” sort of affair, where people might’ve been a little bit happy before everything goes to hëll, but everyone was miserable, even River.

    2) We’re led to believe (at the end) that the thing that the Doctor whispered in her ear was not his name (but is somehow something telling her that he will remain alive) – how does that fit in with River in the Library episodes when she speaks in David Tennant Doctor’s ear (supposedly speaking his name)? Confused me.

    I don’t believe the Doctor always had a way out – he definitely expected to die, but I had figured once we saw the Teselecta in the episode that they’d stand in his place.

    And really touched by the reference to the Brigadier, and Matt Smith played the reaction perfectly. Made me tear up a little.

    As for the question … it was both a good question and a silly question. I had said to myself throughout “Could the question be Doctor Who? No, that’s just silly, why would that have any effect on anything” And I’m still wondering. Surely the Doctor’s real name isn’t a key to anything, that seems ridiculous. I’m looking forward to finding out if it does have any relevance to anything though.

    And will River be back? I really like her, and wish she’d pop up regularly. Gosh I hope so. Alex Kingston is awesome!

    1. #2 is very plausible. The River of David Tennants time hasn’t happened yet in the Matt Smith timeline. Some time in the future (perhaps at the fields of… and the fall of 11) she finds out and uses that to prove she knows who he is. The Doctor, being who he is knows she has to have knowledge from down his timeline and thus pretty much assumes he will tell her someday.

      1. @Kylie, io9 actually has a great review on the episode, which talks about the Doctor and River and what her character has become. You’re right, the daughter actually says he’s embarrassed by her. And her obsession with him really is just a representation of a fractured psyche. I get the feeling that their relationship is never mean’t to be particularly romantic, at least not from the Doctor’s perspective. He married her because that was the only way to get her to cooperate.

  9. “He was never really in any danger, and he pretty much knew it.”

    It’s my understanding that the Doctor didn’t know he was going to make it all along. It’s my understanding that he did not have a way out and he was certain that this was the end for him up to the point where the captain of the Robot Ship asked him if there was anything they could do and then he came back trought the door and said “actualy there is”

    That’s the moment where he got his out. Up to that point he was sure he wasn’t going to make it.

    I could be wrong but that’s the way I saw it.

  10. But what we have here is an entire episode that was fundamentally unnecessary if River had just stayed out of the Doctor’s way
    .
    After watching the episode, I wrote up a bunch of stuff on this story and the season in general to post to a couple of places. And yet the above, which summarizes the story so succinctly, never even occurred to me. Sigh.
    .
    In the end, I have not been wow’ed by the Moffat era as I had hoped to be. While I give him credit for trying to create some over-arcing stuff, I think it’s mostly fallen flat (although not with the thud as much of RTD’s stuff did).
    .
    Again, it was a great “in the moment” thing that, a moment later, I went, “Wait…what?”
    .
    This was my immediate reaction as well. Any of that “fixed point in time” stuff is just that: nonsense to fit whatever story the writers came up with. The Doctor breaks the supposed rules often; there is truly nothing to prevent him from visiting the Brig if he should choose. (Thankfully, nobody has ever wanted to save Adric.)
    .
    So while I appreciate the acknowledgment, it felt to me like an admission that they (the production team) knew that they missed the chance to bring him back to Who proper.

  11. This past season was definitely confusing. How much of it was a natural progression and how much of it was part of the Doctor’s “Farewell Tour”?
    For what it’s worth, I expected a Ganger too instead of the Teselecta, but I honestly think the Silence had the Doctor (at least psychologically) convinced that he had to die until the offer.
    We have a 2011 Christmas movie and a 2012 Spring/Easter movie before Season 7 next fall. I’m sure we’ll see River Song at least once more before the 50th anniversary. After all, even if she’s not at the critical moment, technically she doesn’t know his real name yet.
    As for the rest, Smith is guaranteed through the end of season 7, and has expressed an interest in “being part” of the 50th anniversary.
    Unsure of Amy and Rory, since the actors have made other commitments and won’t be part of the 2011 Christmas movie, but I do hope the rumor is true about gathering every surviving Doctor performer, if not the rest of the living companion portrayers, for 2013.
    But knowing Moffat, the “fall of the eleventh” does not necessarily mean the end of the 11th Doctor. It could be like the fall of the 11th Regiment in some crucial battle, or the fall of the 11th realm of some empire/government critical to the universe. Maybe even the fall of Liz 11.

    1. There are multiple reports of Rory and Amy being on set for the Christmas movie, in fact they filmed outside of the house the Doctor gave them. If they aren’t in the whole thing they do make an appearance.

  12. Ok, I’m new to the Whoverse (at least through the three most recent doctors) and I’m curious how the answer to the question is 42? Or is it something I’m missing?

    Thanks!

      1. And in case you haven’t, to elaborate a bit more with not too much of a spoiler: One of the plot points in the book is an ancient race trying to find out the answer, THE answer. To the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. Which turns out to be 42.
        .
        Having the answer, they realized they didn’t actually know what the Question was…

      3. We know than answer, that is true.
        It’s been determined: 42.
        But here’s our confession
        We don’t know the question.
        Perhaps we should ask “Doctor Who?”

      4. We know the answer, that is true.
        It’s been determined: 42.
        But here’s our confession:
        We don’t know the question.
        Perhaps we should ask “Doctor Who?”

  13. A long time ago, I wrote a story which had the Pertwee Doctor visiting the Brig on his deathbed. I wrote it after being inspired by his appearance in “Battlefield” and something Doctor #7 said to him about dying in his sleep. After being healed from his illness, the Brig went with him on one last adventure together against a bunch of old enemies. The big reveal at the end was that it was a hypnotically induced dream from the Doctor and the Brig died quietly in his sleep with no one else aware that Doctor #3 was even there.

    I’d like to think it actually happened in the Whoniverse. 🙂

  14. My favorite Brigadier line:

    Just once, I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets.”

    Andy

  15. When the Doctor woke up on that train, I immediately thought/wished for, “An Egyptian goddess…loose on the Orient Express…in space.” Yes, I know that I’m never going to get that.

  16. This is directly on point, a timeline of River Song – it covers a few of the points we addressed and when you watch it you see how her story was put together, and it definitely seems to indicate there is a time lag between The Wedding and Silence in the Library (intentional title???) where more things can and will happen.

  18. One thing Moffat missed is that Matt Smith is not the 11th Doctor, he is the 12th. Tennant regenerated twice. The first time he just pushed the energy into the jar with his hand so he would not have to change form, but it was still a regeneration.

    1. I think even for Doctor Who,that’s nitpicking. If he didn’t change form, then as far as I’m concerned, he’s the same incarnation.
      .
      PAD

      1. Yeah, I opened that can of worms on another DW forum.

        I compared the Valeyard of the old series to “the Dream Lord” of the new, I pointed out Smith’s Doctor was the ’12th’ and the very incarnation that would appear just prior to the ‘in-between’ that would be the Valeyard.

        Good LORD the venom thrown my way. Despite my assurances that Moffet would never address it as it WAS too nitpicky to be good Who.

  19. Did I miss someone mentioning the regeneration energy? Did it not manifest in the final version of events? And if so how and why?

    1. Yeah, that was my question too. That robot was regenerating when River shot it the second time.

    2. No, I noticed that. So did Kathleen. Bothered her. Didn’t bother me. If you buy the premise that a tiny Doctor was able to hide inside a gigantic (relatively speaking) robot that could flawlessly mimic him, you buy the notion that the robot is capable of mimicking regeneration for a few seconds. Drawing the line at fooling his companions and River with a light show just seems kind of arbitrary to me.
      .
      PAD

      1. Whether one can look over them or not, the one thing that Doctor Who stories have consistently had since it’s return are planet-sized plot holes.

      3. Yeah, ’cause there was NEVER any plot inconsistency prior to the relaunch.
        .
        I never said there wasn’t. But with New Who, it seems as if plot holes are delivered with the morning paper.
        .
        There just seems to be no effort to disguise them or deal with them. After awhile, it’s just laziness.

    1. Ahh but the best was last week’s Supernatural where Jewel Staite’s alias was Amy Pond.

      .
      TAC

  21. Yeah, I was a little iffy on the whole “River refusing to kill him is bad, but faking his own death is just hunky-dory” bit. The “fixed points” seem just as wibbly-wobbly as the rest of the timey-wimey stuff. Heck, in the fixed point “Waters of Mars,” 10 flat out changed history, saving two “little people” astronauts and relocating the famous one so that she dies on Earth. It seems the Universe only cares that either the events play out properly (as in “Wedding”), or the major consequences do (like “Waters”), not both. All said, I’m just not sold on the resulting certain doom scenario, and I’m not impressed with how he resolved the whole mess, although I did like that it turned out to be the Tesselecta instead of a flesh-ganger. Nice little fake-out there.

    Another small point: River just casually dismisses the fact that Amy up and wasted Mme. Kovarian by saying, “eh, different universe, compressed time bubble, whatever, never happened,” then turns around and goes all giddy about being the Doctor’s wife when her marriage happened in the exact same different universe. Uh . . . sorry to burst your compressed time bubble, but that never happened either, Mels.

    One major point of approval, though. You complained about it in your previous review, but you didn’t note it here: they gave Rory his bad@$$ back. He’s taking direct electro-shock to his central nervous system, and he’s just gonna stand there and take it and cover your escape and pretend it ain’t even happening, because he’s just that much of a tough-as-nails captain mo-fo.

    1. On the fixed point, I think the deal is that you can’t change what happens without risking major consequences, BUT the out is that what people believe happened isn’t necessarily what actually occured. So River openly refusing to kill the Doctor definitely contradicts what happened AND what was perceived to have happened by those who observed events, while faking your demise by using a Tesselecta ship and having River tell everyone “no, this is the real Doctor who died” doesn’t actually change what really occured, but ensures the perception matches what people thought had happened. Since the Silence could potentially be watching, the Doctor had to make sure it all looked right, down to keeping his companions in the dark; if the Silence knew his demise was faked, they’d try again. As for maintaining the illusion that he’s dead, he doesn’t really need to, at least not until he regenerates – he’ll keep a low profile, but the odd occasion where his turning up gets noticed is okay. The Silence believe he died at the lake, and, because he’d claimed that a couple of hundred years had passed since he’d last travelled with Amy and Rory (whether or not that is actually true is anyone’s guess), any subsequent sightings of the Doctor can be written off by the Silence as simply having taken place earlier in the Doctor’s personal timeline.
      .
      Likewise, the repercussions for changing a fixed point don’t need to always be the same, though it’s clearly always dangerous and risky. In Waters, it seems the specific event that had to occur was Adelaide’s death, as it spurred her descendents on as pioneers of human space exploration. Here we had a “still point” that was artificially turned into a fixed point – given the effort the Silence went to make sure River was in the spacesuit, presumably her presence in the suit was needed for that, perhaps because she’s charged with temporal energies from the TARDIS, perhaps because she was present twice and thus weakened the fabric of time (cf Father’s Day). Whether it was down to it originally being a still point, or the weakening effect of two versions of the same person being there, or the fixed point being artificially induced, or something else entirely, messing with this fixed point proved to be much more dangerous.
      .
      As for “what happens in bubble timelines stays in bubble timelines” that’s just River being like a lot of people, selectively picking and choosing what she wants. Amy is upset over killing Kovarian, so River tells her it doesn’t count, but River wants her marriage to count, so never mind where it happened, that it was actually the Tesselecta she was tied to, that it may well not be a recognised marriage ceremony, etc. She’ll blythly overlook any and all impediments because it suits her to do so.

      1. RE Fixed Points: Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s a dozen ways to explain WHY it works one way in one scenario and a different way in another. What I’m saying is, they did a pretty miserable job of actually explaining/showing it. It was sloppy execution. My thought has always been, if the only way your plot can be explained is though days of arguments and conjecture by the fans on internet message boards, you did it wrong.
        .
        RE River and Amy: Yeah, I get the selective history angle. I just would have expected Amy to point out the contradiction to River.

      2. If the Doctor was captaining the Tesselecta, then it was him taking the marriage vow and whatnot. Legal authority, he had the intent to carry through on the vows, and you can guess the rest of my logic from there.

  22. Anyone watch Grey’s Anatomy last night? The plot revolved around the bloody aftermath of a mass stampede caused by a comic book convention giving away free TARDISes.

  23. Minor typo in your original post. “because hew as able to…”

    I thought after seeing the episode with the people made from the solution that somehow not only became clones of people, but had all of their memories and personality, as well as their clothing somehow, he’d just use that to take his place.

    —
    Also, when they met Hitler that time, the people in the robot said they went to the end of someone’s life to punish them. So Hitler normally would’ve died had they not shown up and saved him?

    1. “Also, when they met Hitler that time, the people in the robot said they went to the end of someone’s life to punish them. So Hitler normally would’ve died had they not shown up and saved him?”
      .
      No. One of the people in the Tesselecta realized they had arrived too early, that they should have arrived in 1945. Had the Doctor and company not shown up, the Tesselecta people probably would have wiped Hitler’s memory of his encounter with them, and left.
      .
      Rick

  24. I said in the comments on my own “Doctor Who Season Six Post-Mortem” that the episode wasn’t about whether or not the Doctor would find a way to cheat death (and the fixed point wasn’t literally his death, it was the event that River and the others had already seen. Time-travel rules are a bit wibbly in Doctor Who…which makes perfect sense to me, because let’s face it, they shouldn’t be easy to understand if you aren’t 900 years old or so with lifetimes of education and experience and weird Time Lord senses…but in general, interfering with your own, personal past is a big no-no. Once the Doctor’s future death had become part of his personal past, it was fixed. That’s why the Doctor doesn’t travel with a history book, to answer Rory. The more he knows about history, the less he can change.)
    .
    But to get back to what I was saying, the point of the episode wasn’t whether or not the Doctor could cheat death. That was a given. The point of the episode was whether the Doctor could bluff River into letting him die so that he could continue with his plans without his friends knowing he was alive.
    .
    And he couldn’t. All his tricks, all his manipulations, even his outright demands could not budge River. His outburst is borne of the frustration that he’s finally met his match…she is not going to be his murderer, even if the universe has to die. He has to give in and tell her the truth because this is not a woman who is willing to buy into the whole “Doctor Knows Best” bûllšhìŧ, who is perfectly satisfied to play the game on his level.
    .
    Naturally, he has to marry her. 🙂

Comments are closed.