The Wedding of River Song (TV story)

The Wedding of River Song was the thirteenth and final episode of the sixth series of Doctor Who.

Synopsis
As the Doctor makes his final journey to the shores of Lake Silencio in Utah, he knows only one thing can keep the universe safe – his own death. But has he reckoned without the love of a good woman?

Plot
As the War of the Roses enters its second year even as London picnickers are warned not to feed the pterodactyls and Charles Dickens is interviewed about his new Christmas ghost special, Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill returns to Buckingham Palace from a conference in Gaul with Cleopatra to wonder why it is always 5:02 PM on 22 April 2011. His Silurian physician, Dr. Malokeh, tells him it is always that time, but Churchill has his doubts and summons his soothsayer from the dungeon of London Tower. It is the Doctor, who tells him it is because of a woman.

In a flashback, the Doctor wants to know why he must die. Taking all the information on the Silence from a dying Dalek, he tracks down Father Gideon Vandaleur, actually the Teselecta, who points him in the right direction: the Silence's agent, Gantok, who almost electrocutes himself in a game of live chess with the Doctor. To avoid death, Gantok takes him to the head of Dorium Maldovar in the Seventh Transept.

Dorium explains that if the Doctor lives long enough, on the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question that must never be answered will be asked: the first question, hidden in plain sight. He asks the Doctor if he wants to know the question and he nervously agrees.

Taking Dorium's head with him, the Doctor determines to continue his farewell tour. However, when he learns that his old friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is dead, the Doctor's defiance crumbles. His time has come. He gives the invitations to the Teselecta to deliver and goes to Lake Silencio with Amy Pond, Rory Williams and River Song, where they drink a bottle of wine that Napoleon threw at him. An impossible astronaut rises from the lake and the Doctor goes to meet it. It is River Song, trapped in the suit by Madame Kovarian and the Silents. She has no control over the suit and is about to kill her love willy-nilly. He forgives her unconditionally and shuts his eyes as her arm rises to deliver the three killing blows.

There are five bursts that make him flinch. The Doctor opens his eyes to demand what she has done. She has discharged her weapons systems harmlessly and the world shatters about them.

The Doctor and Churchill discuss these events. Tally marks appear on the Doctor's arms. As the Silents on the ceiling prepare to attack the Doctor and Churchill, a grenade rolls into the hall and they are rescued by a company of soldiers under an eyepatch-wearing Amy Pond, who shoots the Doctor.

The Doctor wakes in Amy's office on a train bound for Area 52 inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. She grew up with a Crack in her wall, and remembers both timelines. She draws pictures of the other timeline, but cannot remember that her husband is Captain Williams in her force. They have captured more than a hundred Silents and walk past the prisoners to the King's Chamber, where River Song is trying to keep the Doctor alive. Madame Kovarian is their prisoner, too and they have used her eyepatch to create eye drives that let them remember the Silents even when not looking at them.

The Doctor goes to take River Song's hand, but she know that they are the poles of an explosion waiting to destroy this timeline. She has him handcuffed and tries to convince him to live. Even as she does so, the Silents begin to escape. It is their trap the Doctors' friends have fallen into and as the forces beat a retreat to the King's Chamber, their eye drives electrify and kill them. Madame Kovarian mocks them, until her eye drive begins to spark. As Rory prepares to hold off the Silents, River, the Doctor and Amy go up to the apex of the Pyramid to see what River has been doing. The door bursts open and Rory collapses to his knees as the Silents enter and begin to electrocute him, but Amy kills them all with a machine gun, then cold-bloodedly blinds a terrified Kovarian; River's psychopathic behavior did not arise solely from her rearing.

On the top of the Great Pyramid, River has built a distress beacon, asking the universe for help across all time zones: the Doctor is dying. Please help. The answer comes back: Yes, of course. The Doctor, however, insists that no one can help him. He must die. As River despairs and swears to suffer more than any living thing in the universe for him, the Doctor tells Amy to uncuff him. He takes off his bow tie and uses it to marry River in a handfasting with her parents' consent. The Doctor whispers a secret into his bride's ear and tells her that she must never tell anyone what he has just told her: his name. As she looks at him in wonder, the Doctor asks for her help. There is no other way.

They kiss and time moves again. The Doctor dies at Lake Silencio. River and Amy weep. Rory looks on in agony as the world vanishes.

Shortly after, River, fresh from the crash of the Byzantium, is at her mother's home, splitting a bottle of wine. Amy wonders what what the events from the aborted, frozen time line say about her, in particular her killing of Kovarian. She wants to talk with the Doctor, but he is dead. River disagrees. Amy notes that her daughter is still having adventures with her son-in-law in the hundreds of years before his death, but River tells her a secret which she probably shouldn't.

The Doctor didn't die at Lake Silencio. As Rory joins his wife and daughter, they jump for joy.

A Monk carries Dorium's head back to the Seventh Transept. Dorium realises it is the Doctor and demands to know how he escaped. The Doctor tells him: River actually shot the Teselecta, with the Doctor safe inside, waving happily at her. Now that the entire universe believes him dead, it's time for him to step back into the shadows.

As the Doctor leaves, Dorium shouts at him that Fields of Trenzalore and the first question still await him. As the Doctor pauses by the TARDIS, Dorium screams: "Doctor who? Doctor Who? DOCTOR WHO?"

Cast

 * The Doctor – Matt Smith
 * Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
 * Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill
 * River Song/Melody Pond – Alex Kingston
 * Madame Kovarian – Frances Barber
 * Winston Churchill - Ian McNeice
 * Malohkeh- Richard Hope
 * Charles Dickens - Simon Callow
 * Dr Kent - Emma Campbell-Jones
 * Gantok - Mark Gatiss (Credited as 'Rondo Haxton')
 * News anchor - Meredith Vieira
 * Dorium Maldovar -Simon Fisher Becker
 * Supreme Dalek voice - Nicholas Briggs
 * The Silence - Marnix Van Den Broeke
 * Carter - Richard Dillane

Crew
to be added

Individuals

 * Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness are mentioned.
 * Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is said to have passed away.

Technology

 * A Timey-wimey distress beacon is built.

Story notes

 * Following his death in February, this episode pays tribute to Nicholas Courtney, with the Doctor discovering that his character, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, died peacefully in his sleep.
 * A prequel for this episode was released online.
 * This is the first time an episode of Doctor Who has aired on the same night as an episode of fellow BBC Saturday night drama, Merlin. The first episode of Merlin Series 4, The Darkest Hour, was broadcast right after The Wedding of River Song.
 * Meredith Vieira, co-host of the American morning news/chat programme Today, filmed her cameo during a visit to the Upper Boat Studios as part of a profile of Doctor Who produced for Today. That feature, which aired on 9 May 2011, contained several minor spoilers for this episode, including revealing the cameo appearance by Richard Hope as Malohkeh.

Ratings
UK Overnight: 6.1 Million

Myths

 * The Doctor will get married. This was proven true.
 * Part of this episode will be set in Egypt. This was proven true.

Filming locations
to be added

Production errors

 * Mistaken for an Error: When Dorium's head is upside down, the brass plate his head is mounted on is visable below his chin, and can be mistaken for the actor's true skin.
 * The Doctor's reflection in River's helmet shield is not reversed, as it should be.
 * The Doctor marks his arm multiple times in the Buckingham Senate while seeing the Silence, yet there is no marker visible.
 * When The Doctor and River kiss, a clock is shown on screen, with time resuming from 05:02:00, but earlier in the episode, it was shown that time was frozen at 05:02:57.
 * When Gantok falls into the pit of skulls his hat falls off, yet its back on right before he's devoured completely.

Continuity

 * Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is said to have died. This is consistent with the Seventh Doctor's assertion in DW: Battlefield that the Brigadier would die in bed. As presented in this episode it does not contradict the post-2010 continuity established for the character in the Virgin New Adventures novels as no indication is given as to when the Brigadier died.
 * Charles Dickens appears. (DW: The Unquiet Dead)
 * Winston Churchill returns as the Holy Roman Emperor. (DW: Victory of the Daleks, The Pandorica Opens)
 * The Silurian scientist Malokeh returns. (DW: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood)
 * Dorium Maldovar returns as a head. He was beheaded by the Headless Monks. (DW: A Good Man Goes to War)
 * The Doctor mentions his former companions Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness.
 * Amy's drawings include the Krafayis, the Saturnyns, the Silurians, the Daleks, the Minotaur, the Cybermen and the Smilers, as well as a self-portraits of herself from DW: The Curse of the Black Spot and one of her emerging from the Pandorica (DW: The Big Bang).
 * The Teselecta returns, as does its captain. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
 * The Doctor again sports a beard. (DW: Day of the Moon)
 * When talking to Amy after the timeline has been restored, River mentions climbing out of the Byzantium and still wears her combat clothes, as well as mentioning that she had just met her when Amy had no idea who she was. (DW: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone)
 * Amy is partially protected from some kinds of temporal changes due to her long term exposure to The Cracks. (DW: The Eleventh Hour, The Big Bang)
 * Amy is disturbed when she realises that she is her best friend's mother in-law (possibly thinking of her actions at the end of DW: Flesh and Stone and Meanwhile in the TARDIS).
 * When River says to the Doctor that time can be rewritten, he responds with "Don't you dare." This echoes what River says to the Doctor in a similar situation. (DW: Forest of the Dead)
 * River mentions "Rule #1, the Doctor lies." (DW: The Big Bang, Let's Kill Hitler)
 * A Silent calls Rory "the man who dies and dies again", referring to his deaths in DW: Amy's Choice, Cold Blood, The Curse of the Black Spot, and The Doctor's Wife. Rory also remarked to Amy, "We're dead, again," in Night Terrors.
 * When the Doctor meets River in Area 52, he greets her by saying "Honey, I'm home." River replies, "And what sort of time do you call this?" The two shared the same exchange in DW: The Big Bang.
 * The Doctor mentions Elizabeth I waiting for him in a glade to elope with her. (DW: The End of Time)
 * The Doctor says "Geronimo" once more. (DW: The End of Time, The Eleventh Hour, The Beast Below, The Big Bang)
 * The Doctor asks River, "Why do you always have handcuffs?" (DW: Forest of the Dead, DW: Flesh and Stone)
 * The notion of "Doctor who?" being a dark secret rather than simply a question was previously explored in DW: The Girl in the Fireplace.
 * The first reference to the 11th Doctor's regeneration is made, "The Fall of the 11th".

For the Doctor

 * This story occurs after DW: Closing Time
 * This story takes place during DW: The Impossible Astronaut
 * This story occurs before: to be announced

For River

 * This story occurs after DW: Closing Time
 * This story takes place during DW: The Impossible Astronaut
 * This story occurs before DW: A Good Man Goes to War

For River in the final scene

 * This story occurs after DW: Flesh and Stone
 * This story occurs before DW: Silence in the Library

For Amy and Rory

 * This story takes place after DW: The God Complex
 * This story takes place during DW: The Impossible Astronaut

Home video releases
This episode will be released on DVD shortly after the airing of the episode.