That, plus the Gangers being really alive (they said they remembered every time they died) was a flaw in the process. The Doctor specifically said in that episode that they went there so he could check out the early versions of the technology. By the 52nd Century, Gangers were what they were supposed to be - simple remote controlled lumps of flesh.
Finally catching up…
Yes, I thought that was particularly evil - not the Minotaur, not to the Minotaur, but to all the innocent strangers who’d get sucked up and eaten simply because they weren’t “us”. It wasn’t just religious belief that got sucked in, it was any strong belief.
People keep asking this. I thought it was obvious. The TARDIS exploded when the Doctor was enclosed in the Pandorica. The Doctor was enclosed in the Pandorica because all the aliens saw the cracks and the signs of the cause being the TARDIS exploding. The Doctor even tries to tell them he’s the only one who can stop it as they close the doors on him, which is when River’s time loop begins. The aliens caused the TARDIS to explode by trying to stop the Doctor from causing the TARDIS to explode.
That episode she says he told her to find River Song. That’s when Amy has the Teselecta do the River reversion, and then Melody saves the Doctor.
River is in prison for killing The Doctor at Lake Silencio. Except that’s preposterous, because she’s trapped in an automated space suit that is forcing her to kill him. She at that point no longer wishes to kill him and is actively fighting it. She’s no more his murderer than a passenger on one of the planes that struck the twin towers is a murderer. (Passenger, not terrorist who takes over the cockpit and becomes the pilot.) Kinda messes up the whole point of her being in prison and all.
Someone we haven’t met yet.
I don’t think so. I don’t recall what happened to Future Amy’s sonic screwdriver, but think it was with her. Rather, The Doctor gets new sonic screwdrivers all the time, and it was given to River by the Doctor of the future who knew what was coming, in the encounter just prior to River going to the Library, so it seems unlikely.
I’m sure it’s related to the way the question was asked, where past tense made sense. I don’t think it’s significant.
He didn’t invite a previous version of himself to watch himself die. He invited a previous version of himself to a diner nearby where he was going to die so that the past version of himself would hook up with his friends from his death and proceed with the adventure that needed to unfold next.
Inside - the box is bigger on the inside.
Now there’s a spin-off I could go for!
Yes, that is odd. The Silence put young Melody in a space suit for a while, till she breaks out. Then later they put adult Doctor River in a suit to complete the assassination. No explanation given.
Sometime after the Doctor dropping Amy and Rory at their new house, after the bizarre everything happening at once timeline.
From that story:
Reading those show titles, are you sure that isn’t from The Onion?
During the events with the Angels on the spaceliner where the Aglican soldiers disappear, The Doctor tells Amy she is a special spacetime event because of traveling in the TARDIS, and thus she can remember things others can’t. That is also why she is able to remember him back into existence. It’s not some previous special power of Amy’s, it’s a feature of time travelers (who’ve been through the void). So it applies to Rory (sometimes remembers being plastic) and to River as well.
Somebody had to bring the gasoline. 
It was his way of introducing the next adventure, but also to try to give another hint of “yes it really was me” to fulfill the needs of time/fate/etc.
Yes, according to her, she knew, which explains why she couldn’t hit an astronaut at fifty paces when she usually is a crack shot. Of course, then she also knew that wasn’t the same Doctor, so that line is out of place. Was she playing up to Amy and Rory?
Uh, posts 313 and 317. {checks mirror}
Doesn’t sound like the novel I’m thinking of.
I received the impression that the Silence was planning to raise her inside the suit - kind of the ultimate nanny. River mentions the advanced life-support system; the occupant wouldn’t even need to eat, and presumably there’s a waste disposal system in place as well.
However, little Melody is human, and a human is not going to thrive inside a space suit. Maybe once she escaped the Silence decided it would be better to go ahead and place her with a family in Amy and Rory’s hometown and let her grow up more or less normally, although I’m sure there were a couple of Silence living in her bedroom closet that kept her on focus as she grew up.
I think this video should clear up any lingering confusion about the finale.
OK, not really.
Anyone else notice that the flashbacks in “The Wedding of River Song” still work if they precede “Closing Time”? It changes the thematic meaning of “Closing Time” but I think it’s more Doctory somehow.
Only one of them remembered.
Nice.
For my money, Farscape did this the best. Split John Crichton into two, identical John Crichtons, with absolutely no differences, then left them in that situation for at least half a season.
It was a clever plot device, as it allowed them to resolve the ‘will they, won’t they’ relationship of John and Aeryn, while simultaneously letting it carry on.
The problem with the whole ‘ganger doctor is as real as the real doctor’ idea is he clearly wasn’t. He was made of goo.
Well, it’s not a story I actually read, only heard described. Your description seems similar to me, from the tiny bit given. I could be wrong.
To me, why it felt like a reasonable conclusion is that it explained:
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Why the Silence wanted the Doctor dead (because of some act he will do in the future, going to a particular place where no one can lie and then be asked the question they believe should not be answered, because it will cause the end of the universe).
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What the question is (Doctor Who? Something essentially about his identity - whether his name or something more philosophical is unclear. Thus why he is the one person who cannot be allowed to go where he can’t lie, because he’s the only one who could answer the question.)
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How Madame Kovarian could remember and interact with the Silence beings (her eyedrive).
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How and when River ended up in the suit in the lake (just after earning her doctorate in Archeology, the Silence show up and reveal they’ve been following her all along and the stuff her in the automated suit.)
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Why River went ahead with killing the Doctor after her revelations from Let’s Kill Hitler (first the suit was forcing her, then she found out the Doctor had a ploy going and she consented to aid his ploy at the cost of her reputation and such).
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How the Doctor escaped actually dying (he had a Doctor-shaped object die for him).
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Why the Doctor was willing to go along with his own death (found a way to not die, use it as a ploy to fade back into the woodwork a bit, the whole thing about being a fixed event and shattering time if he didn’t).
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What River knew at the time (she knew he was going to be shot and knew it wasn’t really him).
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Were River and the Doctor married (yes, in parallelworld, but that counts).
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Why the Doctor was running around saying goodbye and all and dreading the day (he thought he really was going to his death, and didn’t come up with the escape plan until the last minute encounter with the Teselecta).
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Why the Doctor dropped of Amy and Rory when he did (he was expecting to be going to his death, after a few hundred years of running. He was basically starting his goodbye run.)
It also allowed Amy and Rory to be badass. (Actually, Rory was seeming pretty badass, but didn’t actually accomplish anything by it. I mean, if he had managed to shoot even one Silence who came through the door, that would be one thing, but they just amped up the effect when they came through the door, so really his resolve was futile. Only thing was it sparked Amy to return.)
In that sense, it fulfilled the main thrust of the last 2 seasons.
Why it feels a bit of a let down:
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It was a giant cop out. We were told it was really the Doctor and he was really dead. But then he wasn’t really dead, and it wasn’t really the Doctor (although he was there).
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River being in a suit that forced her to kill him rather than doing it and coming to regret it. Yeah, she already had that moment of truth, but it still felt rigged. For River to have been the one who killed the Doctor and go to jail for it, it really felt like she needed to have been the one who actually did it. Well, maybe ultimately she did when in parallelworld she agreed to fix the broken time, but still, it just didn’t come off the way it was set up.
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Some of River’s prior actions just don’t ring true for what she had to have known. Like her comment to the Doctor in the Impossible Astronaut when they get to the diner and find him alive.
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We’re still left with unanswered details - how River got from New York in 1970 to England in the 1990s while still a kid to grow up with her parents, what she was doing in the spacesuit in 1969 before escaping, what happens in the Gamma Forest besides running, who is Jim the Fish.
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How is this actually supposed to fool anyone if he’s still running around afterwards? Supposedly he’ll have a lower profile. How? I know there have been several scenes with him basically flauting his “I’m the Doctor, check your records, now run along”, so maybe there will be less of that. (See the episode with Prisoner Zero, the confrontation on top of the Pandorica). Still, if he’s still showing up in time for disasters and poking his nose in them, that is going to stand out.
Ultimately, while it did answer the big set up from this season about his death and it did answer the River question about how close they are and who she is, they still left some question to carry over: The pending trip to the plane of whatever and the Doctor’s answer to the ultimate question.
They also have to explain why the Doctor goes back to Amy and Rory. He dropped them off for a reason. What changes?
I thought it was because “Silence would fall” meaning that they, The Silence, would fall - not the universe.
But that doesn’t work for me - because they are an order founded solely on the belief that said order would fall if X happens? Why create an order based only on the premise that said order will fall?
And that’s kinda contradicted again, when The Doctor said “I didn’t realise it meant MY silence, my death.” Which, clearly, is not what it means.
Yeah, I was fully expecting that he’d use The Silence’s forgetting power somehow to make the universe forget about him. Instead all he did was fake his death, which is a deception which will last up until the point where someone sees him alive.
Obviously, your wife has never seen some of the vintage Who from the 1960’s and 70’s - the effects were even worse at times.
They weren’t so hot in the 80’s either.
She might well have been convicted of a crime she doesn’t remember committing.
In some episodes she says, or hints at, being in prison because of a promise. I guess the promise is to pretend that she’s guilty of killing the Doctor so that he can successfully fake his death.
I missed Doctor Who Confidential this week, so I’ve just caught this now: River Song’s timeline.
Not sure if it’s aired everywhere else, so I’m just linking for anyone else who missed it.
Shes only seen one so far. However, since most of their fx consisted of a flashlight and some colored cellophane, it was a lot more forgivable.
Now, though…not as good an excuse.
-Joe
I liked the chompy skulls. To me they hearkened back to the good ol’ days of low budgets and cheesy effects.
Yeah, the fact that he’s a time-traveller helps here. Unless he regenerates or does something too “timey wimey” there’s no reason anybody would assume they’re not just encountering The Doctor before his death.
I thought they were food for thought myself 
Thinking a bit more on this whole plot by the Silence to kill the Doctor, I’m left wondering a few things…
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The Silence needed humanity to build a spacesuit. Why? Did no other species in the entire universe, from the beginning of time to the late 1960s ever build one? The Silence had to have enhanced it from its original design when Melody Pond was put into it. They then put River Song into the suit in the 51st century. Unless it was very well preserved, I’m assuming it had to have been a recreation. Otherwise, the suit would’ve been at least 3,031 years old. Again, no other humanoid spacesuit design in 3,000 years?
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What was the point of River Song? Why were MK and the Silence so keen on using her? The suit was automated. She didn’t have control over it. The Silence could have used anyone, and it still would’ve killed the Doctor. If it had to be someone the Doctor knew, why not Martha, Donna, Craig, etc?
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What was the big fuss over Melody Pond being a human/Gallifreyan hybrid? At no point was it significant to the plot of killing the Doctor. She is not a Time Lord, meaning able to see past, present, & future. She doesn’t have two hearts or significantly different biology. She can regenerate, but so what? I’m fairly sure the Silence didn’t plan for her to escape the spacesuit, wander in New York, die, regenerate, then go to England and wait for the Doctor as Mels.* Again, completely unnecessary if they’d just used someone else.
While we’re on that, after Mels regenerates into River, she says she was conditioned and trained for one purpose. When exactly was that? When she was in the suit from which she was trying to escape? Between her dying in New York and growing up with her parents?
*On second thought, maybe they did. They were in the room at the orphanage with Melody & the Amy ganger. Then we’re shown Melody free and hiding from the Doctor, Rory, and Canton.
- And now the Question, the oldest question, since the beginning of time, which must never be…asked or answered? If it’s just a matter of a name, then someone should tell the Silence that it’s already been asked and answered. The Doctor’s 10th incarnation told River Song there was only one time he ever could say it, which I took to mean he’d revealed it before to someone…and Silence did not fall, nor did the universe cease. So I sincerely hope it involves more than just his name. (And I still can’t get over how lame-ass the Silence appear as the new arch-villains. Arch-villains?!?)
I realize that all of this could be explained by saying that it was always going to happen exactly the way it did from the moment the Doctor first met River Song in the Library…or if you’d prefer it’s “wibbly-wobbly, timey-whimey, spacey-wacey”. Except it isn’t. The 10th Doctor told River that time could be rewritten. She said no. So, really the entire mess of Series 5 and Series 6 can be laid at the feet of River Song’s refusal to let the Doctor save her. Granted, he may have regenerated sooner rather than later, and he might not have ever met Amy or Rory. We simply would’ve wound up with different adventures for Series 5 and 6.
So that’s it. Those are my musings.
I know it sounds like more of a rant, and I apologize. I’m still a little miffed at the thought that River Song ends up married to the Doctor, despite the fact that I like Alex Kingston’s portrayal. Why it’s apparently more acceptable for the brain-washed, killer psychopathic daughter of the Doctor’s friends, which he’s known since she was an infant, to be his bride, but a relationship with a blonde teenage girl, with the stubborn will to cross parallel universes and briefly become omnipotent to save him, would ruin the series is beyond me. (sigh I need professional help.)