annabunches.net/content/posts/2011-10-05-doctor-who-wedding-of-river-song.md

---
excerpt_separator: <br/>
category: media
layout: post
title: 'Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song'
date: '2011-10-05T12:08:00.000-04:00'
author: Anna Wiggins
tags:
- Loki
- Amy Pond
- Media
- The Silence
- Oðinn
- he pulled bones from the desert sands
- Doctor Who
- Rory Williams
- Winston Churchill's Personal Mammoth
- River Song
modified_time: '2013-10-22T11:19:51.713-04:00'
blogger_id: tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4209116010564764361.post-185350424961410728
blogger_orig_url: http://www.stringofbits.net/2011/10/doctor-who-wedding-of-river-song.html
---

<strong>Spoiler Warning, Speculation Warning, Postmodernism Warning</strong><br/><br/><blockquote><br/>Tick tock goes the clock<br/>He gave all he could give her<br/>Tick tock goes the clock<br/>Now prison waits for River<br/></blockquote><br/><br/>As far as series finales go, this one was thoroughly satisfying. And I have a lot to say about it, which is good, because this is probably going to be my last Doctor Who entry until late December.<br/><br/>Let's start with the name: at least one person commented to me that 'wedding' can have many meanings, and such word play is right up Moffat's alley. Well, they were right, and we managed to get both a metaphorical wedding (of all points in time) and a literal wedding (what we can presume is a Gallifreyan wedding ritual). So, that was a nice bit of wordplay.<br/><br/>But on to the episode. We get some wonderfully fun spectacle scenes in this episode, especially in the opening act, with some wonderfully whimsical quotes, my personal favorites being "Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill returned to the Buckingham Senate on his personal Mammoth" and "Pterodactyls are pests. Please do not feed".<br/><br/>And that sets the stage for a quick drop into the plot: time is frozen on April 22nd, 2011, at 5:02 in the afternoon. Which is, obviously, the day the Doctor dies. So it's apparent from very early on (basically the moment the camera shows Churchill's clock) that River Song broke time. Which, frankly, seems like exactly the sort of thing she would do.<br/><br/>There were a lot of stand-out moments in this episode, so I'll just summarize what I thought of it all at once: the pacing was brilliant, the dialogue and acting was all exactly where it needed to be, the visuals were stunning, vibrant, varied, and very interesting throughout. From a production standpoint, I can't complain about a single moment of this episode.<br/><br/>We also have more overtones of the Second and Seventh Doctors in the portrayal of Eleven. First, the Live Chess game, aside from being a clever pun, brings to mind the Doctor in The Curse of Fenric. Fenric says of the Doctor:<br/><br/><blockquote>He pulled bones from the desert sands and carved them into chess pieces. He challenged me to solve his puzzle, I failed.</blockquote><br/><br/>The image of the Doctor playing chess (which is also an apt metaphor for the manipulation the Seventh Doctor was famous for) is something that is not only reminiscent of the Seventh Doctor because of Fenric, but more broadly because it is very easy to imagine the Seventh Doctor 'pulling bones from the desert sands and carving them into chess pieces'. Because the Seventh Doctor is an Odinic figure. He is not afraid to use his allies without explaining their purpose in his plans (and this frequently leads him to be quite cruel to his companions), and he never does anything without purpose. Paul Cornell made the Odin connection even more explicit in Timewyrm: Revelation, with what amounts to a spiritual journey culminating in the image of the Doctor hanging from Yggdrasil.<br/><br/>And in a very similar way, the Second Doctor bears more than a passing resemblance to Loki, with his fickle smiles and air of mischievousness. He is the playful, whimsical side of the Eleventh Doctor, the impulsive one who isn't afraid of getting into trouble without a plan already prepared.<br/><br/>Of course, others have discussed the Doctor as a magical figure before, and the show has even commented on it directly ("I hate stories about good wizards. They always turn out to be him."). But the Second and Seventh Doctors are easily the "most" magical Doctors, with very overt occult references attributed to them in various media. And the Eleventh Doctor's character is clearly inspired heavily by both of these previous incarnations. He's even inherited the Second Doctor's propensity for staring out of cameras and video screens.<br/><br/>Which, of course, brings us to the real topic of this week's post. The revelation that not only makes the end of The Wedding of River Song make sense, but will change t
Import blogger data. 2016-04-11 22:01:00 +00:00			`---`
Add post excerpts to the main page. 2016-05-04 18:41:25 +00:00			`excerpt_separator: <br/>`
Explicitly add category information to all posts. 2016-04-12 04:13:30 +00:00			`category: media`
Import blogger data. 2016-04-11 22:01:00 +00:00			`layout: post`
			`title: 'Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song'`
			`date: '2011-10-05T12:08:00.000-04:00'`
			`author: Anna Wiggins`
			`tags:`
			`- Loki`
			`- Amy Pond`
			`- Media`
			`- The Silence`
			`- Oðinn`
			`- he pulled bones from the desert sands`
			`- Doctor Who`
			`- Rory Williams`
			`- Winston Churchill's Personal Mammoth`
			`- River Song`
			`modified_time: '2013-10-22T11:19:51.713-04:00'`
			`blogger_id: tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4209116010564764361.post-185350424961410728`
			`blogger_orig_url: http://www.stringofbits.net/2011/10/doctor-who-wedding-of-river-song.html`
			`---`

			<strong>Spoiler Warning, Speculation Warning, Postmodernism Warning</strong><br/><br/><blockquote><br/>Tick tock goes the clock<br/>He gave all he could give her<br/>Tick tock goes the clock<br/>Now prison waits for River<br/></blockquote><br/><br/>As far as series finales go, this one was thoroughly satisfying. And I have a lot to say about it, which is good, because this is probably going to be my last Doctor Who entry until late December.<br/><br/>Let's start with the name: at least one person commented to me that 'wedding' can have many meanings, and such word play is right up Moffat's alley. Well, they were right, and we managed to get both a metaphorical wedding (of all points in time) and a literal wedding (what we can presume is a Gallifreyan wedding ritual). So, that was a nice bit of wordplay.<br/><br/>But on to the episode. We get some wonderfully fun spectacle scenes in this episode, especially in the opening act, with some wonderfully whimsical quotes, my personal favorites being "Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill returned to the Buckingham Senate on his personal Mammoth" and "Pterodactyls are pests. Please do not feed".<br/><br/>And that sets the stage for a quick drop into the plot: time is frozen on April 22nd, 2011, at 5:02 in the afternoon. Which is, obviously, the day the Doctor dies. So it's apparent from very early on (basically the moment the camera shows Churchill's clock) that River Song broke time. Which, frankly, seems like exactly the sort of thing she would do.<br/><br/>There were a lot of stand-out moments in this episode, so I'll just summarize what I thought of it all at once: the pacing was brilliant, the dialogue and acting was all exactly where it needed to be, the visuals were stunning, vibrant, varied, and very interesting throughout. From a production standpoint, I can't complain about a single moment of this episode.<br/><br/>We also have more overtones of the Second and Seventh Doctors in the portrayal of Eleven. First, the Live Chess game, aside from being a clever pun, brings to mind the Doctor in The Curse of Fenric. Fenric says of the Doctor:<br/><br/><blockquote>He pulled bones from the desert sands and carved them into chess pieces. He challenged me to solve his puzzle, I failed.</blockquote><br/><br/>The image of the Doctor playing chess (which is also an apt metaphor for the manipulation the Seventh Doctor was famous for) is something that is not only reminiscent of the Seventh Doctor because of Fenric, but more broadly because it is very easy to imagine the Seventh Doctor 'pulling bones from the desert sands and carving them into chess pieces'. Because the Seventh Doctor is an Odinic figure. He is not afraid to use his allies without explaining their purpose in his plans (and this frequently leads him to be quite cruel to his companions), and he never does anything without purpose. Paul Cornell made the Odin connection even more explicit in Timewyrm: Revelation, with what amounts to a spiritual journey culminating in the image of the Doctor hanging from Yggdrasil.<br/><br/>And in a very similar way, the Second Doctor bears more than a passing resemblance to Loki, with his fickle smiles and air of mischievousness. He is the playful, whimsical side of the Eleventh Doctor, the impulsive one who isn't afraid of getting into trouble without a plan already prepared.<br/><br/>Of course, others have discussed the Doctor as a magical figure before, and the show has even commented on it directly ("I hate stories about good wizards. They always turn out to be him."). But the Second and Seventh Doctors are easily the "most" magical Doctors, with very overt occult references attributed to them in various media. And the Eleventh Doctor's character is clearly inspired heavily by both of these previous incarnations. He's even inherited the Second Doctor's propensity for staring out of cameras and video screens.<br/><br/>Which, of course, brings us to the real topic of this week's post. The revelation that not only makes the end of The Wedding of River Song make sense, but will change t