The Wedding of River Song
"The Wedding of River Song" concludes the story arc of the series and reveals what really happened at the start of the season premiere, "The Impossible Astronaut".
[3] It shows Area 52 with the clock stuck at 5:02 p.m., where the leaders of the religious order the Silence are kept in stasis and River Song is wearing an eye patch in the same fashion as Madame Kovarian.
To avoid crossing his own time stream, the Doctor gives the Teselecta crew four invitations to Lake Silencio in 2011 for Amy and Rory, River, Canton Everett Delaware III, and a younger version of himself.
On this "stuck" Earth (with all of time happening at once) Amy takes the Doctor to Area 52, a pyramid base where the Silence are contained in water-filled cells and Madame Kovarian is held hostage.
[6] Amy's office contains the model of the TARDIS she made as a child ("The Eleventh Hour"), along with drawings of various monsters and scenes from her adventures with the Doctor.
The concept of "fixed points" in history which may not be altered, even by the Doctor or his companions, was introduced in The Aztecs (1964) and was named and explored in the new series with episodes such as "The Fires of Pompeii" and "The Waters of Mars".
[9] Originally, the script did not include the brief scene with a Dalek;[9] Moffat had intended to rest the Doctor's most famous adversary for the sixth series.
[5] Several characters reappear in the episode, including Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) from "The Unquiet Dead", Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) from "Victory of the Daleks", the Silurian doctor Malohkeh (Richard Hope) from "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood", the Teselecta and Captain Carter (Richard Dillane) from "Let's Kill Hitler", and the Headless Monks and Dorium (Simon Fisher-Becker) from "A Good Man Goes to War".
[9] The script called for an Indiana Jones style tunnel for the Headless Monks' chamber, but as that kind of location was not available in Cardiff a set was built instead.
[19] Overnight ratings showed that the episode was watched by 6.1 million viewers, the third most-watched programme of the evening and an improvement upon preceding weeks of Doctor Who as well as the previous series finale.
[20] Final consolidated figures by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board were 7.67 million viewers, the seventh highest for BBC One and the second most-watched programme for 1 October.
Dan Martin of The Guardian gave a positive review, believing that the episode "moves along the bigger, 50-year story and effectively reboots the show".
[24] Rachel Tarley, writing for Metro, praising the "gripping race" against time and noting that the script was "snappy and witty throughout, but the episode had its eerie and touching moments where necessary, too".
[26] Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy wrote, "As a piece of Saturday night entertainment, it works — packed full of strong performances, stunning visuals and sharp dialogue.
[28] IGN's Matt Risley rated "The Wedding of River Song" 8.5 out of 10, writing it "managed to tie together plot threads and character arcs without too much Deus Ex Maguffiny predictability and with a whole host of trademark sci-fi spectacle to boot".
[29] Gavin Fuller of The Daily Telegraph called it an "uneven ending"; he praised it for being "visually clever" and liked the way the Silence were handled, but thought the Teselecta solution was "a bit of a cop-out".
[31] On the other hand, HitFix's Alan Sepinwall thought that the resolutions from the wedding on were "excellent", but felt it could have done without another alternate universe, as it was similar to the previous finale "The Big Bang".
[32] Maureen Ryan of TV Squad criticised the episode for having too many "bells and whistles" which undermined the emotional moments, especially the wedding, which she did not believe showed that the Doctor was really in love with River.
