At some point during his or her history, past or future, the Doctor must have had a desk. There had to have been/has to be a period where there is a desk in the T.A.R.D.I.S. So, what’s on and inside the desk? Do you think there are normal things on there, like pens and note pads? Or just little toys to fiddle about with? Is it cluttered or is it tidy? I have no idea why this thought came into my head, but it does make you wonder as you try to get into the mind of fictional characters for one reason or another.

Anyway, death. It is a horrible little monster that infects us all. It marks us and is the point we try to forget about. Yet when it creeps up on us, we are surprised by it and go into a state of shock. Maybe we aren’t always in a state of shock, but we always try to run away from it. We want to make it go away because there is always pain with it. Maybe not physical pain, but pain nonetheless. So what happens when your wife disobeys the order of time and ignores a fixed point in history to save you from the murder she commits. The murder that puts her in the strongest prison that she keeps breaking out of? Your murder.

Well, you have Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill being attended to by the Silurian doctor from “The Hungry Earth.” You have him in Buckingham palace (or Senate) with his hairy soothsayer that looks a lot like a dead man, retelling the story that led us to this point. You have Churchill asking the soothsayer, “A record? Good lord, man, have you never heard of downloads?” Oh, and Amy shoots the Doctor in the face… with a stun gun. Of course, America now has Area 52 too, in Giza.

This whole alt-reality thing, I’m sure it is confusing someone. I’m not even going to go into the details of how a mad-man in a box escapes death. I’ll lose an editor if I’m not careful. Though I will say, I’ve always had an affinity for the heist-style reveal: I’ve said it before when Marc Warren appeared in “Love and Monsters,” I do enjoy a bit of Hustle. What I would give to have Adrian Lester in Doctor Who. In fact, what I’d give to have him play the Doctor. Not to get sidetracked, but that’s always a fun, “how did they do it?” style of writing that I enjoy. First, you see the unbelievable, the weird, or the complex plan and then you see how it was done.

Does it mean “The Wedding of River Song” is a brilliant episode that does everything right? No. It is wrapping up everything or at least tries to. However, as much as it is adding new bits and tying up bits and pieces, it almost feels like you’re just rewatching the series so far for quite a bit of it. Even the previously unseen bits, they just feel like they were always there. I know, some will have skipped an episode about ten years ago, and thus you need to catch them up on what happened to have it make sense. That’s the trouble with television, it has the casual channel flippers, dropping in and out from time to time.

It is not a poor episode either. I think there is a wonderful job done to tie little references in throughout, new and classic series. It is the episode that references the Brigadier leaving out a brandy for the Doctor, which still feels like a kick in the teeth. Simon Callow returns as Dickens, Mark Gatiss makes one of his few appearances, and the aforementioned Ian McNeice plays Winston. Between that and the visuals of London in this alt-reality, it makes for a memorable episode, but there is just something about it that doesn’t feel right. Everything says it is grand, there is something to make this the episode that needs to be cared about, but ultimately, what does it do?

It gets us out of the issue that was only brought up at the start of the series/end of the last one. All of which is setting up for the next big thing: The battle of Trenzalore. Effectively, nothing has changed. The Doctor still has his life as the eleventh, Amy and Rory are still about, and River is going in and out of prison almost like she owns the place. The only difference is that Amy, Rory, River, and the Doctor know there was another timeline where it all went wrong. We’ve reset similar to a sitcom. It answers enough questions to get away without disappointing too much, but lacks something bulletproof.

I think what gets me is when I bothered to pause the episode to go pick up something and I noticed the length. It is a normal episode more or less. Not every episode needs to be 90-minutes, but I did think the pacing went by like a freight train across the nose. It is something that I am sure distracts from the lack of solid answers for some questions posed by the series. That idea is definitely aided by the visually different London, the space-ports and space dive bars, or the crypts filled with skulls and traps. All of it can make for an eye-catching and fun episode from time to time.

Anyway, next time we’ll be talking about that horror FMV game Erica, Bill Bailey, and maybe a bit about Alexander Armstrong being quite good. The episode is a bit naff, and C.S Lewis’ story of a wardrobe isn’t adapted all that well, but what else am I going to do? Twiddle my thumbs? Good point, I’ll get oversized foam hands with comedically large thumbs.

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Doctor Who "The Wedding of River Song"

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Visually interesting.
• Satisfying enough, if you don't think about it too much.

Cons

• Does it feel like a fresh episode?
• Needlessly rappid pacing.