 This story is the final story of Season Thirty Two (New Series 6) and explains the circumstances of The Doctor’s apparent death in "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon".
This story includes several scenes from the "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon" leading up to and immediately following The Doctor's death.
This story is directed by Jeremy Webb, who previously directed "The Curse of the Black Spot".
Mark Gatiss returns to the world of Doctor Who, this time playing Gantok. He is credited in this story under the pseudonym ‘Rondo Haxton’. Mark Gatiss previously played Professor Richard Lazarus in the 2007 Tenth Doctor story "The Lazarus Experiment", and he provided the uncredited voice of Danny Boy in the 2010 story "Victory of the Daleks" and again in "A Good Man Goes to War", along with a number of roles in audio dramas based on the show. He has also written four stories since the show was revived in 2005. These are "The Unquiet Dead", "The Idiot's Lantern", "Victory of the Daleks" and "Night Terrors".
Simon Callow returns to the role of Charles Dickens from the 2005 Ninth Doctor story "The Unquiet Dead".
Richard Hope reprises his role as a Silurian doctor, after first appearing in 2010 story "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood", and Ian McNeice again plays Winston Churchill. While off camera Nicholas Briggs again voices the Dalek.
American television hostess Meredith Vieira recorded her report of Winston Churchill's return to the Buckingham Senate in front of a green screen while filming a segment for The Today Show’s ‘Anchors Abroad’ segment.
Dorium Maldovar returns as a head in a box. He was beheaded by the Headless Monks in "A Good Man Goes to War".
William Morgan Sheppard is credited for his brief appearance in the background of The Doctor's death scene, reprised from "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon".
The Teselecta returns, as does its captain (see "Let's Kill Hitler").
The Doctor again sports a beard (see "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon").
This story’s main plot centres around the damage caused by River Song when she tries to re-write a fixed point in time. The Doctor tries to do this himself in the 2009 Tenth Doctor story "The Waters of Mars" but fails when Adelade kills herself in order to keep history the same. Fixed points in time have been a recurring plot device in the show, being mentioned in "The Fires of Pompeii", "The Waters of Mars" and "Cold Blood".
Following his death, in February 2011, this story pays tribute to Nicholas Courtney. This occurs when The Doctor hears that his old friend, Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart has died peacefully in a nursing home some months before. This is consistent with The Doctor's assertion in the 1989 Seventh Doctor story "Battlefield" that The Brigadier would die in bed. And as presented in this story it does not contradict the post-2010 continuity established for the character in Virgin Books’ The New Adventures novels as no indication is given as to when The Brigadier died.
The Brigadier last appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures story "Enemy of the Bane" and was most recently mentioned (being stuck in Peru, again) in "Death of The Doctor".
The Doctor mentions his former companions Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness. This occurs when he lists all the things he could do with the TARDIS' ability to travel in time. He suggests visiting Rose Tyler in her youth (which Captain Jack Harkness admitted in the 2007 Tenth Doctor story "Utopia" to having done) to help her with her homework, attending all of Jack Harkness' stag parties in one night, and returning to Queen Elizabeth I.
When The Doctor awakens in Amy's office aboard the train, he tries to remind her of the crack in her wall ("The Eleventh Hour") and fiddles with one of her TARDIS models ("The Eleventh Hour" and "Let's Kill Hitler"). Amy's sketches include a Cyberman's face ("The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang") a Dalek ("Victory of the Daleks", "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang"), herself seated in the Pandorica ("The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang"), a Silurian ("The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood" and "A Good Man Goes to War"), herself wielding a cutlass and sporting a tricorn hat ("The Curse of the Black Spot"), a Smiler's face ("The Beast Below"), a vampire girl ("The Vampires of Venice"), the first time she met The Doctor ("The Eleventh Hour"), Rory and another centurion ("The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang"), a side of the Pandorica ("The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang"), a Weeping Angel's face ("The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone" and "The God Complex"), and the TARDIS.
The Doctor tells Dorium Maldovar, ‘I've been running all my life, why should I stop?’, a precursive echo of his early, pre-death dialogue in "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon": ‘I've been running all my life...and now it's time to stop’. This theme of The Doctor 'running' from something (implied by Dorium to be his own identity) was first hinted at in the 2007 Tenth Doctor story "The Sound of Drums", where The Doctor stated that he was running from time itself.
Madame Kovarian is heard referring to ‘the death of time’. "The Death of Time" was the title of the second episode of the 1965 First Doctor story "The Chase". Incidentally the fifth episode of "The Chase" features a robot that looks exactly like The Doctor.
Winston Churchill and River Song describe Cleopatra as, respectively, ‘a dreadful woman but excellent dancer’ and ‘a pushover’. River Song impersonated her in "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang". The Fourth Doctor claimed in the 1976 story "The Masque of Mandragora" to have learned swordsmanship from a captain in Cleopatra's bodyguard. Mickey Smith implied in the 2006 Tenth Doctor story "The Girl in the Fireplace" that The Doctor had had some romantic history with Cleopatra and that he affectionately called her ‘Cleo’.
Napoléon Bonaparte is also referred to. In the 1972 Third Doctor story "Day of the Daleks" The Doctor recalls how he called him ‘Boney’ and advised him that an army marches ‘on its stomach’. Unlike Cleopatra, Napoleon has made an appearance in Doctor Who, meeting the Time Lord's companions in the 196? First Doctor story "The Reign of Terror".
Queen Elizabeth I is also mentioned. The Doctor mentions her waiting for him in a glade to elope with her. (see the 2009/2010 Tenth Doctor story "The End of Time"). She first appeared in "The Chase" and again in the 2007 Tenth Doctor story "The Shakespeare Code" in which The Doctor implied he knew her very well.
Charles Dickens describes his upcoming Christmas special featuring ghosts from the past, present and future, clearly and obviously alluding to his novel ‘A Christmas Carol’. Coincidently "A Christmas Carol" is also the title of the 2010 Christmas special.
The Doctor offers Winston Churchill a hypothetical scenario concerning a man with a secret that must be protected at all costs, inviting Winston Churchill to admit that he would consider killing the man; referring to Winston Churchill's apocryphal wartime fondness for quoting Benjamin Franklin's ‘Three men can keep a secret only if two of them are dead’.
When River Song says to The Doctor that time can be rewritten, he responds with ‘Don't you dare’. This echoes what River Song said to The Doctor in a similar situation in the 2008 Tenth Doctor story "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead".
River Song is heard to mention ‘Rule Number 1, The Doctor lies’ (see "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang" and "Let's Kill Hitler").
When The Doctor meets River Song in Area 52, he greets her by saying ‘Honey, I'm home’. River Song then replies with ‘And what sort of time do you call this?’. The two shared the same exchange in "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang".
The Doctor is heard to say ‘Geronimo’ once more (see "The End of Time", "The Eleventh Hour", "The Beast Below" and "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang").
It is revealed that Amy is partially protected from some kinds of temporal changes due to her long term exposure to the Cracks (see the 2010 stories "The Eleventh Hour" and "The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang").
A member of The Silence calls Rory ‘the man who dies and dies again’, referring to his deaths in "Amy's Choice", "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood", "The Curse of the Black Spot", and "The Doctor's Wife". Rory also remarked ‘I'm dead, again’ in "Night Terrors".
At the end of this story River Song states to Amy that she has ‘just climbed out of the Byzantium’. River Song is referring to events we witnessed in the 2010 story "The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone" - although we first heard her allude to the starliner during "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead". During this scene River Song is still wearing her combat clothes from that story and she also mentions that she had just met Amy when Amy had no idea who she was.
Pterodactyls have previously appeared in Doctor Who. The Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith survived a pterodactyl attack in the 1974 Third Doctor story "Invasion of the Dinosaurs".
This story contains a number of different timelines depending on the particular characters. For The Doctor this story occurs after "Closing Time" and during "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon". For River Song this story occurs after "Closing Time", during "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon" and before "A Good Man Goes to War". For River Song, in the final scene, this story occurs after "The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone" and before "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead". While for Amy and Rory this story takes place after "The God Complex" and during "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon".
A prequel to this story was made available online after the previous story, "Closing Time". It was the fifth prequel released during this season. The first four being for the stories "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon", "The Curse of the Black Spot", "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler". The prequel shows Area 52, with a clock stuck at the time of The Doctor's death, The Silence kept in stasis and River Song wearing an eye patch in the same fashion as Madame Kovarian. As all of this is happening, there is a voice-over of the children, the same as that from "Night Terrors" and the conclusion of "Closing Time" singing the rhyme ‘Tick tock goes the clock’ three times, and then ‘Doctor, brave and good, he turned away from violence. When he understood the falling of the silence’.
Before broadcast a couple of myths existed about this story – all proved to be true. These were: The Doctor will get married and part of this story will be set in Egypt.
This story contains a number of errors. Namely: When Dorium's head is upside down, the brass plate his head is mounted on is visible below his chin, and can be mistaken for the actor's true skin; The Doctor's reflection in River Songs's spacesuit 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 that he could have used; When The Doctor and River Song kiss, a clock is shown on screen, with time resuming from ‘05:02:00’, but earlier in this story, it was shown that time was frozen at ‘05:02:57’.
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 the fourth season of Merlin, "The Darkest Hour", was broadcast right after "The Wedding of River Song".
Following on after this story, on BBC3, was the thirteenth chapter of the sixth series of Doctor Who Confidential. Titled "When Time Froze" it was presented by Russell Tovey and looked into the making of this story.
This episode of Doctor Who Confidential includes the special mini-episode "Death is the Only Answer". It was written via a competition (Script to Screen), in which junior schools were invited to write a script including the Eleventh Doctor and an enemy of his. This competition was won by the Pupils of Oakley CE Junior School. As well as starring Matt Smith, as the Eleventh Doctor, Nickolas Grace played the part of Albert Einstein. It was directed by Jeremy Webb.
This episode of Doctor Who Confidential was also the final episode, of this popular behind-the-scenes programme, as the BBC announced a couple of days before it was broadcast that it would be the last made.
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The Firsts:
The first Doctor Who story to be aired on the same night as an episode of fellow BBC Saturday night drama, Merlin.
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(Position = 3 out of 13)
(Position = 129 out of 241)
