The one we've been waiting for: see the Doctor die, can he be saved, what is the question that can never be answered, does River marry her Doctor, will Silence fall...
London 5:02pm 22nd April 2011: Cars fly on the end of balloons, a stream train storms through the Gherkin. Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) on the news, interviewed by BBC journalists Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams, telling them of the ghosts, past, present and future all at the same time. Children are chased by pterodactyls. Meredith Kieira, speaks of Emperor Churchill (Ian McNeice). There's a Roman centurion on guard outside the Palace, but it's not Rory (Arthur Darvill). Churchill is being attended by Mahlokeh (the Silurian doctor from
5.8 The Hungry Earth and
5.9 Cold Blood) and he asks why the time is always 5:02 and the date is also stuck. He summons the Soothsayer held in the Tower.
Enter the Doctor (Matt Smith) all beard and chains. (He also sported a beard in
6.1 The Impossible Astronaut, when Canton Delaware III (Mark Sheppard) had him tied to the chair. Churchill reminds him of the rhyme, "tick tock goes the clock" is what they say, only these clocks don't tick, "all of history is happening at once." What happened to the time? Doctor: "A woman." Yes that's right, blame a woman for all of the world's woes!
Earlier: The Doctor asks what you would do if you were afraid, away from home and "saw the face of the devil himself" donning his Stetson. He approaches a wounded Dalek to retrieve info from its datacore about the Silence. So how come all of these various species all knew of the Silence and yet, they Doctor himself, doesn't know of the Silence. Would've thought he'd have known about them since he's been around forever. Cos you don't remember them that's why, but the Daleks with their memory core would. But Amy had that photo of them on her phone from
6.1.
The Doctor meets with Gideon (Niall Greig Fulton) - former envoy of the Silence who has been dead for 6 months. Then goes about reeking havoc on the Teselecta's systems with his Sonic (
6.8 Let's Kill Hitler). They're investigating the Silence and he asks about their weakest link. The Doctor then plays live chess with Gantok (Mark Gattis) where all the pieces are electrified. Gideon and Gantok all wear eye patches. So naturally there had to be a reason behind it. Gantok works for the Silence. The Doctor will die soon and he'd rather know why he has to die. Dorian Muldovar (Simon Fisher-Becker) is the only one who can help. He was killed at Demon's Run (
6.7 A Good Man Goes to War) by the Headless Monks. He's kept in an obelisk, at least his head is. The Doctor says he hates rats, a line from Indiana Jones. Gantok exclaims no one wins him at chess, pulling his gun on the Doctor and falls into a pit of live skulls, as opposed to snakes (as in Indy Jones again.) Also there was Indy Jones style music there.
The Doctor tells Churchill in another reality, they're friends. Churchill demands to know who the woman is. Doctor: "Hell in high heels." (His torment cos she won't let him die.) Dorian tells him the Silence is a religious order and he is a man with a "long and dangerous past" but the Doctor's future is even more terrifying. "On the fields of Transelor at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer a question that must never be asked or answered. The Doctor will never reach Transelor." The oldest and first question hidden in plain sight. The Doctor asks what the question is - he has to die. The Doctor asks Churchill if a man knew a secret that must never be told, what would he do? Churchill would destroy him. Doctor: "I never realized it was my silence, my death. The Doctor will fall."
Dorian tells him Utah is a still point in time, it's easier to create a fixed point, the Doctor's death is a a fixed point. In the TARDIS, the Doctor calls Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and finds out he's dead. Then looks at the envelopes, "it's time." He has to accept his fate. He asks the Captain to deliver his messages for him and the Captain then asks, "Is there nothing we can do?" The Doctor tells Churchill he had to die, "but I didn't have to die alone." So he planned a picnic with his friends, remember planned is the operative word here.
Some more clips/flashbacks to
6.1 at the Lake. He invited River (Alex Kingston) and she came twice. This scene wasn't filmed in Utah, when River and the Doctor speak with each other, as the background is CGI and they're in front of a green screen. River in the spacesuit claims she can't stop it, he must run. He did run and ended up here, it has to happen, "this always happens." She won't recall serving time for his murder. Doctor: "You are forgiven, always and completely forgiven." Now would someone who was dying at her hands actually forgive her, even if it is the Doctor. River still claims time can be rewritten, she fires her weapons and drains them and he's still alive. "Hello sweetie." Fixed points can be rewritten. The Doctor disagrees, everything is happening at once and can't be stopped. "Time is dying."
The Doctor has a mark on his arm, he and Churchill have been defending themselves against the Silence in the Place, he has more than a few marks on his arm and there are hundreds of the Silence on the ceiling. Cue, "Pond, Amelia Pond;" with eyepatch. The Doctor wakes on a train to Cairo. He tries to explain to Amy (Karen Gillan) that she knows him. She has sketches of everything she's come across, Daleks, Amy as a pirate (
6.3 The Curse of the Black Spot) and she gives him his suit. Doctor: "Geronimo." He said that in the season 5 finale too. She tells him it's not an eyepatch. They've noticed that time's gone wrong. The Doctor's never had an office before, or and he wants an office/train office. She has an idealistic sketch of Rory, cos it doesn't look like him. Cos she doesn't remember Rory. She recalls the Doctor's death twice, but in different ways, two versions of the same event.
He tells her time is disintegrating and reality will fall apart. (Same as season
5.13 and he was the only one who could save it by not existing anymore and here he has to save it by dying. We could call that two versions of almost similar events too.) Rory enters, also with eyepatch and calls Amy, "Ma'am." He's Captain Williams. The Doctor tells her she'll find her Rory, she always does but she doesn't look hard enough. The Doctor is the epicentre of the explosion, he's the cause of it cos he's still alive. The train enters the pyramid with Area 51 written on the side and an American flag. They're not eyepatches, but eye drives and act as external storage devices. The Silence are held inside the pyramid in tanks of water. The Doctor wondered what they looked like. But after what they went through, they still had no way of recalling their appearance. They're in tanks as they draw electricity from anything and that's how they attack.
Rory doesn't like the way one looks at the Doctor, with menace in mind. He suggests Rory should ask Amy out, she calls him "Mr Hotti-ness." They should go out for texting and scones. Rory says the Doctor hasn't done this dating thing before. That was the TARDIS bell sounding again when they show the Silence after the Doctor and Rory leave. Wonder if this was in response to what the Doctor saw in room 11 in
6.11, maybe to subtly or cunningly signal to us that's what he saw.
Doctor: "Hi honey I'm home." River: "and what sort of time do you call this?" Which they said to each other in
5.13, when he rescued her from the TARDIS. Kovarian (Frances Barber) wonders why he didn't just die. River and the Doctor flirt. She used hallucinogenic lipstick on President Kennedy and Cleopatra to cause this pyramid to come about. The Doctor tells River he doesn't have time for dinner. River refused to "kill the man I love." She knows what will happen when they touch. The Doctor comes closer to her, "so you love me." Ooh Doctor! He grabs her arm. They short out the differential if they touch - time will mend and there's no other way, she'll be killing him at Lake Silencio.
River tells him of the theories about the woman who married him or murdered him. The Doctor doesn't want to marry her. Water leaks from above and Kovarian tells the Doctor the Silence weren't trapped, but waiting for him. Which means when she took River from the university, (
6.12) she knew all along River would find ways to save him and thus the Silence would be waiting for him, or rather it appears to be the Silence who are in control of Kovarian and not the other way round.
The Silence attack through the patches, which the Doctor tells them to remove. Kovarian tells them the effect of the patches vary from person to person and can cause death or extreme agony. Kovarian is also attacked through her patch, poetic justice really. The Doctor wants this stopped now. Amy is doing this for him. He's angry, people are dying because of him and he won't thank her for that. (He doesn't like people making choices for him, as we know from
5.2.)
Rory can't remove his eyepatch as it's been activated, he's holding down the fort. Amy remembers Rory and comes back to shoot the Silence and save him. Amy won't help Kovarian. She took her baby and hurt her, she'll never see her baby. Kovarian insists Amy will save her cos he would. The Doctor is precious to Amy but he's not here.
River built a distress beacon, the universe is still turning outside their bubble and she sent a message everywhere. "The Doctor is dying, please, please help." He tells her she embarrassed him. The solar flares were actually full of a million voices of help. he touched their lives. He may have decided the universe is better off without him, but the universe has not. He insists he must die. She can't let him die without knowing he is loved by so many and so much, including her.
He asks for a strip of cloth a foot long, then uses his bowtie (cos they're not only cool but come in handy.) He wraps it around River's hand and asks for permission from Amy and Rory to marry river. He whispers into River's ear and she must remember it, "tell no one what I said." He told her his name he says out loud and has a request from his wife, "you're the woman who married me." The world is dying and he can't bear it, she must help him and there's no other way. They kiss and he promises to make it a good one. Time begins to move and he dies, and his body is burnt at the Lake. Doctor: "you are forgiven, always and completely forgiven."
Another verse of the rhyme; "Tick tock goes the clock
he gave all he could give her [his life and/or his love too]
Tick tock goes the clock
and prison waits for River."
River returns to see Amy from the Byzantium (
5.5 The Time Of Angels, 5.6 Flesh and Stone) and she lets her know where Amy is now and she doesn't know who River is. Amy says he's dead and she killed someone in cold blood. Then River already knows that and tells her it was in an aborted timeline in a world that never was. So the Doctor can't be dead, if you think about it and they aren't really married. She calls Amy 'mother' and blabs to her about him being alive. He didn't want her to tell anyone. She asks if she wants to know the Doctor's last secret, but he didn't tell her his name, Rule number 1, he lies and so does River, she "has to lie all the time - Spoilers." But she eventually does know his name. He's one step ahead of everyone, always has a plan, which is what I said last episode. River's his wife and Amy's his mother-in-law. Hey she does know his name since in season 4, this was mentioned, only she doesn't tell Amy, cos of 'Spoilers' and it's River's past.
The Doctor as a monk, puts Dorian back. The Captain made a Teselecta version of the Doctor and he told River to look inside his eye when he whispered to her. "A Doctor in a Doctor's suit," he tells Dorian. He dressed for the occasion. He got too big for his boots and had to "step back into the shadows." River gets out on days and nights, "well that's between her and me, 'ey." Dorian tells him everything is still waiting for him at Transelor and the first question, the one that can never be answered, is hidden in plain sight, the one he's been running from all his life, "Doctor Who, Doctor Who, Doctor Who?"
So there you have it, season 6 done and dusted. Some good stuff in this episode and some, well some repetition and yet we still ended up with more questions than answers, some reveals, some spoilers, but we're not all that wiser. As for a double of the Doctor's getting killed, always knew that was up Steven Moffat's sleeve. He had everyone speculating on the Flesh Doctor, but here it was a Teselecta Doctor, but a double's a double so we were right! That was apparent when the Captain asked him if there was anything they could do for him and as I wrote last episode, the Doctor's got a plan - he's always got a plan and River said it too here. Remember he had a plan at the end of the season 5 finale too, too putting all those 'blue' thoughts into Amy's head so she'd remember him.
As for the question that should never be asked/answered, that was galling: Doctor Who? - should've spotted that right off. Oh well, should've could've, would've. Should've known from the episodes
The Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, when the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) said there was only one way River could have known his name and here we finally find out how that came about: that only when he marries can he reveal his name. But here, Dr Eleven didn't tell River his name, cos he only whispered "look into my eye." So it leaves open the question of, which can be interpreted in any number of ways, of whether they really married. Since River tells Amy she's his wife and River in that episode from season 4 knew his name. So even if they didn't marry, strictly speaking in this episode, they must have somewhere along the way, along one or other of their timelines. Then the Doctor says she wanted to marry him and at the end he says how she spends her nights is between them.
As for the title, at least it wasn't merely suggestive this time (or is it) and gave us a wedding, though River would have expected something more bigger and flamboyant. Now we know why the Doctor was so insistent in having River go through with killing him cos he had a plan! Also she had to live up to her destiny. Irony: they had to keep it hush, hush and she end up in Stormcage for a crime she didn't commit. At least she gets to escape. So anyway, back to the marriage they couldn't have genuinely married yet; since she'd know his name, he didn't tell her yet and that's the question, staring us in the face: "Doctor Who." Oh well at least I was kind of right about the question, in a way; no?
River in
6.7 said this is where he forgets her, after their first kiss (for him that is) but she'll go on remembering. Now we wait to find out WHO the Dr Doctor is as another future plot line is set up as to what will happen at Transelor when the Eleventh Doctor falls. Though this sets up future plots and ensures they never run out of stories.
In the prequel to
6.13 - the rhyme is sung: "tick tock goes the clock, tick tock goes the clock, tick tock goes the clock, Doctor brave and good, he turned away from violence, when he understood the falling of the Silence." Hey that's even more confusing. However when he found out (and he said it often enough) that he MUST die for time to continue - that was how life would continue and not be stuck in stasis, therefore he had to die in order for the Silence to be brought down. But they're not all dead. The line: "he turned away from violence" has a double meaning - he doesn't go around killing if it can be prevented. remember he's a healer, a doctor whose Hippocratic oath is: first do no harm.
That didn't stop Amy from being violent. First she shot the Silence with a machine gun and then she put the eye patch over Kovarian's eye, so she'd meet her end. Amy always packed a punch and had the potential to do anything to survive, as we saw in
6.10 The Girl Who Waited, when she was left behind, but many couldn't think she'd resort to cold blooded murder, including Amy herself and not behind the Doctor's back. Then remember Kovarian said that whatever happens to the person wearing the eyepatch varies, as it can cause death or pain. Leaving open the possibility she isn't dead. Rory didn't object to Amy putting the patch over her, then, Rory didn't do much this episode, aside from attempting to take the final stand against the Silence.
Simon Callow reprises his role as Charles Dickens from the episode
The Unquiet Dead. Malohkeh (Richard Hope) was treating Churchill, but he was killed in
5.9. The Doctor finds out Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart has died, after the passing of actor Nicholas Courtney. This gives him the incentive to soldier on and meet his death.
In
5.13 the species/enemies gather to ensure the Doctor is put into the Pandorica so reality doesn't end and they all mass together. Here River builds the beacon so all of the Doctor's friend, people he's helped, gather to say goodbye and show him he's loved. Yet in
6.7 River tells him the Battle of Demon's Run occurred cos of what the Doctor does and has done, that they are afraid of him. He's no longer known as a healer but as a warrior and perhaps here this is what the Doctor was trying to achieve, that he can still continue to help, but without being boisterous and loud about it.
So for a little bit, he'll be 'incognito', in the shadows (but for how long). Probably this was needed after
6.11 The God Complex where he's woken to the fact he's always the one to save everyone and he can't help but interfere, as he told baby Alfie in
6.12 Closing Time. Get the feeling if the Doctor wanted Amy to know he was still alive, he'd have told her or shown up, yet River went and told when he asked her not to.
Oh and a damaged Dalek had to make an appearance for the Doctor to take info from its memory core on the Silence. The last time we'll be seeing a Dalek. So the Doctor knows more about the Silence than we do, they're a religious order like the Headless Monks. Maybe the Monks are headless, cos they are the silence. This episode was a little deja vu to
5.13 The Big Bang, in that the Doctor goes back in time to get Rory the Roman centurion to rescue him, creating a paradox. Here he does much the same thing, in that he's a prisoner in the Tower and he has to relay events to Churchill as a soothsayer, yet all of history is a mish mash of events colliding and occurring together. History was also mentioned in
5.13, regarding the Pandorica. What does occur when a fixed point in time is undone, now we know. That was one question answered. More continuity from
6.1/6.2 with the use of the marks on the Doctor's arms everytime he's seen the Silence.
Also what did the Doctor see in room number 11 in
6.11, that too was not resolved. As for him eating an apple in that episode when he hates them, take it that was a red herring then and he wasn't a double there.
Matt and his brilliant acting had us completely convinced about the Doctor's death, his destiny and having to meet it. All those scenes where we empathized with him, felt sorry, sad, mixed emotions and him accepting death with open arms, with a plan up his sleeve, I should say, Fez, or bow tie instead; only for the Doctor to be given a new lease of life. Well that was inevitable. Which he happily embraces, as do we, though in our off screen reality he was never going to die and intends to live in the shadows. Must be hard with the Blue Box .
Then River's timeline can be a tad confusing - especially if you haven't been following closely, all this time she knew the Doctor would survive; that's what she didn't tell Amy he would die in
6.1/6.2, not in so many words anyway, but that he'll be fine. But she's the one who has the horrible event waiting for her, which we think is her being imprisoned for murder. Actually it's when she died to save the Tenth Doctor in the
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, to save the man she loved, who didn't know who she was. Then he saved her, putting her memories in a computer, so technically, a Doctor did die - back then - but not THE Doctor. Semantics, ha.
Doctor Who Confidential did an excellent segment on the Life of River song. Oh hey, River's memories in a computer, the Doctor inside the Teselecta, more deja vu?
There were some aspects of this episode that stood out, firstly the oldest question of 'Doctor Who?' at the end, typical for two reasons, since the series first started in 1963 without any explanation as to who the Doctor was, it wasn't until the end of season 6 in 1969 that it was revealed he was a Time Lord; so this brings us back full circle as it was kind of suggested back in 1989 that the Doctor was half-human, half Gallifreyan and that the human side of him was, none other than Merlin the magician! This was from the episode
Battlefield in 1989.
Leading towards two nice possible connections. Merlin season 4 returned just after
Doctor Who finished, thus the question: who is Doctor Who...and here's
Merlin on UK screens. The episode
Battlefield featured the final appearance of the Brigadier, mentioned here. It was also speculated, but not confirmed, that the Doctor visited the Middle Ages and became Merlin when he first arrived on Earth. Another Time Lord, the Meddling Monk disguised himself as a monk during that time when the Doctor was undergoing his first regeneration.
The Silence in their tanks was reminiscent of the episode
Earthshock, from 1982, with the Cybermen. Everyone wearing eyepatches was reminiscent of Inferno and the pyramids from the episode Pyramids of Mars. When the Doctor talks of everything g he could have done with the TARDIS being able to time travel - he thinks of seeing Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) when younger, so he could help her with her homework; attend Jack Harkness' (John Barrowman) stag parties in a night and mentions Elizabeth 1 again. River pretended to be Cleopatra in
5.12.
One of the Silent refers to Rory as "the man who dies and dies again." We know how many times he's died. Also
5.12 The Pandorica Opens was about the destruction caused when when River tries to re-write a fixed point in time - she tells the Doctor here that it can be done. the tenth Doctor tried rewriting a fixed point in time in
The Waters of Mars, but this backfired and failed. Fixed points in time were also alluded to in the episodes
The Fires of Pompeii and
Cold Blood. Mark Gatiis here was credited as Rhondo-Haxton. Also '
Death Is the Only Answer' was premiered on
Doctor Who Confidential, a brief episode written by school children after a competition. This was about Albert Einstein accidentally entering the TARDIS whilst working on his own time machine, sporting a Fez. In one scene he turns into an Ood.
Doctor Who is one question that will never be answered - so there's no danger of the show ever ending...
There's so much that can be written about this episode, but it'll turn into a case of overkill if I keep doing that here and believe-you-me, I can write about this show all day, all night and beyond...
