Review: Doctor Who Series 6 Ep 13: The Wedding of River Song

April 22, 2011, 5.02 p.m. The time at which history stops, and time begins to die…

As insane in its own way as The Big Bang last season, The Wedding of River Song is a fun ride, and answers a lot of the questions posed over the past couple of years, especially regarding River Song (sort of – there are implications as a result of the information learned during the aborted timeline that will start to make your head spin if you think about them too much.)

The idea of the various pieces of history overlapping is brought to life well – little touches like the Latin name for the London paper helped to sell it where the flying cars didn’t – and there’s quite a bit of humour derived at the expense of the Doctor Who media circus. There are some laugh out loud and some cheer out loud moments, we get to see a quite different side to Amy – and there’s a lovely tribute paid to a key part of the Doctor Who saga.

But does this season work as a whole? It’ll certainly be looked back on as an interesting experiment, if nothing else, and for those who have kept up with the labyrinthine plotting (as most 8-10 year olds I know have managed without the slightest problem), it’s just about paid off. The question hiding in plain sight was pretty obvious, as was the fact that the Doctor would escape – it was more a question of trying to guess which of the different escape routes that were presented during the season he would use… and I’m not totally convinced the right one was chosen.

Matt Smith has certainly made his mark as the Doctor, but it will be a relief to see him in some standalone tales in future.

Verdict: Convoluted, confusing at times, but always entertaining.  7/10

Paul Simpson

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