It also helps that he’s playing himself.
This is exactly why I come to SDMB - you people are clever.
And the Doctor Tesselactor didn’t drink wine. He spit it out. (Back in the very first episode of the season.)
Need to watch this one again. And again. With CC at least one of those times.
I know that Everything Happening At Once was A Bad Thing–but I really liked that world!
Remind me.
The brigadiere? Is that the old guy with a telescope, the father of the previous companion, Donna, who said he would always watch the sky for the doctor and praying for him?
damn, I have something in my eye now…double damn, now I realize they may also mean the actor in real life…
The brigadiere was the leader of Unit back when Pertwee was The Third Doctor in the early 1970’s. Unit was a military organization and Pertwee’s Doctor was their adviser. The Third Doctor was trapped on earth and couldn’t time travel except for his last season. He even drove this really cool car.
The guy with the telescope was Donna’s granddad Wilf.
Well, that was a great run.
There’s a Christmas Special and then no more Doctor Who until Fall, 2012.
I hope they don’t lose a bunch of viewers. They had just barely started building an audience in America. Now it all stops for a year.
Oh okay.
But I think I saw a dedicated to X born 19early somthing died 2000 something in the credits. I think that was probably the actor for the brigadiere… 
So does this mean that Amy and Rory will continue as Companions in the next series?
Based on the events of the finale, a few questions spring to mind.
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River, as an adult, shoots the Doctor at the lake. So why is the little girl in 1969, presumably Melody, in the astronaut suit, and how did she get there?
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At what point in Amy’s timeline did River, who had just come from the Byzantium, visit her?
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Assuming the original timeline was restored, if Amy has retained her memory of the altered timeline in which she kills Madame Kovarian, did all events up to and including “Closing Time” still happen?
On another note, IMHO the Silence are becoming as annoying a villain as the Daleks are to some. Sadly, since they are still around, as is Madame Kovarian, I’ve a feeling that Moffat will keep milking these characters well into Series 7.
And on a completely irrelevant note, I strenuously object to the marriage of the Doctor and River Song. Having Amy and Rory aboard the TARDIS worked, but now he’s got the wife AND the in-laws traveling with him. A bit “domestic”, no? Now all they need is a baby, and you’ve got The Wacky Adventures of the Family Who…In Spaaaaaace.
(Of course, I may just be pissed 'cause I’m a die-hard Doctor/Rose shipper. Curse you, Moffat!)
Yes, it was a tribute to Nicholas Courtney who passed away earlier this year at the age of 81.
I didn’t catch that, but the actor who played Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was Nicholas Courtney.
There was another audience zinger besides the “oldest question”; the comment on all the theories about the Doctor and River seemed a sly nod at all us Whovian geeks who spend hours online chewing over each episode ad nauseam. Thanks for the love, Moffat!
Beaten to the punch with the Who trivia! Damn!
She was being surreptitiously programmed for her future role to kill the Doctor.
Maybe a few months after the restoration of time.
Amy is unique because she retains everything, even the alternative timelines, whether they actually “happened” or not. That’s how she saved the Universe at the end of the last series; though it was suppressed in her, she remembered everything after the right prompting. That’s the ability that makes her special, that the Doctor was trying to figure out for so long.
Zing!
This episode’s Confidential is worth watching, and not just because it’s the last one ever, but for the fifteen minute segment "River Song: Her Story’ which puts together her life from her POV from her birth to her well, “death.” Or one can just read her Tardis Wiki entry which pretty much does the same thing.
Really? They’ve only been in the season premiere and finale (plus at the tale end of Closing Time, which was really more of a lead in to the finale). We’ve barely seen them compared to the Daleks or the Cybermen.
I was kind of disappointed. Some of this episode was great and pretty emotional. But, overall…
I wonder if future episodes will answer any questions still unanswered.
It was nice to see Charles Dickens again. I also enjoyed the shout-out to Rose and Captain Jack. Rory, of course, was pure awesome (I’m glad they didn’t kill him again, that would have been irritating). And I’d like to feed pterodactyls in the park.
Overall I was really satisfied with it; it tied up loose ends nicely, although the bit with the distress beacon on top of the pyramid seemed to go nowhere. Was its only purpose really just to enable River to prove to the Doctor that hey, dumbass, not everybody hates you, stop crying emo kid? Anyway, it leaves next season wide open; we’ll probably see more Silence, I’m sure, but I’m hoping maybe they can get back to the way they were in season 1, where it was less of a season-wide story arc that overshadowed everything and more monster-of-the-week with occasional bits seamlessly woven in that tied in to the finale. (I love Eleven, truly, but I’m still having a bit of Ninestalgia.)
Well that was… I don’t know. Underwhelming. I chuckled at the “oldest question, hidden in plain sight” gag, but this whole season has been really disappointing and the finale didn’t help to change that much. Episodes written by Steven Moffat used to be my favorites, now they’ve become tiresome and not really that fun or entertaining. It’s all about Moffat trying to show how clever he can be.
Your wishes have been answered:
I loved Amy’s reaction when she realized that she was now the Doctor’s mother-in-law.
I’m getting a headache as I write this, so please bear with me. 
(Such a timey-whimey mess.)
Just to clarify. So she’s being programmed, escapes long enough to call the President, gets shot at by Amy, then later meets Amy’s flesh avatar in the orphanage, escapes the suit, winds up in New York, regenerates, and ends up in Leadworth growing up with Amy and Rory. Correct?
I realize with them being time travelers this could all be a moot discussion, but could the time of the visit be narrowed down by using events in the series as a reference?
Maybe I phrased the question wrong. Since Amy, in the restored timeline, remembers killing Madame Kovarian and presumably the reason why, wouldn’t she recognize the Eye-Patch Lady who kept appearing randomly, even if it was only her Flesh avatar that was seeing her? If Amy remembered killing her and why, wouldn’t she know what would transpire at Demon’s Run? This was the reason for asking the previous question. River casually mentions to Amy that she’s had to lie constantly about knowing Amy’s her mother and knowing the astronaut was her and being married to the Doctor. I wondered if she hadn’t inadvertently given Amy foreknowledge.
Now for the Silence. They were a great concept as a monster-of-the-week. Creepy, terrifying thought that they’re all around you and are forgotten the instant you look away. But then what? They’re just there. Huddled in sewers. Sleeping on ceilings. They seem more like parasites. They don’t seem to want to annihilate the human race. They’re not shown as brutally enslaving the human race. They’re just…there. Like their only function is to look menacing with their identical suits and filtered voices. What?!
All I can say is next time Moffat wants to write a multi-season story arc, he should give J. Michael Straczynski a call to see how it’s done.