A Grand Wedding Song

And just like that, I've seen "The Wedding of River Song".

Twice.

Spoilers.

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The Doctor is going to his melodramatic appointment with death that's been the theme of this season.

There's something a bit amiss, though. Time is mashed together with Winston Churchill as the Holy Roman Emperor in a world of skyscrapers, steam engines, and balloon-suspended cars while pterodactyls torment parks and the Pyramids have been inducted into the military's service.

The Doctor (known as Churchill's "soothsayer") is dragged by Roman Centurions to explain to Churchill why it's always 5:02 pm on a specific date.

And the Doctor begins his recap...

The Doctor, after the last episode, tracks down information on the Silence by picking the ruins of a Dalek (it's implied the Doctor took out said Dalek, but never stated). The Doctor crosses path with the Tesselecta, the humanoid, shapeshifting, time-travel vehicle crewed by miniaturized people. They, too, are investigating the Silence.

The Doctor's path takes him to a space viking who leads him to a gruesome storage area where the head of Dorium Maldovar (decapitated by the Headless Monks in "A Good Man Goes to War") is stored.

Dorium explains that the Silence want to kill the Doctor so he can't go to some place and be forced to answer the "first question". Answering that question means the Silence must fall.

Flip back to the present. It turns out the Silence are back and trying to kill the Doctor and Churchill. The Doctor realizes this as marks start to appear on his arm... a running tally of the Silence he's seeing and then forgetting.

The Doctor then reveals that he went to his appointment with death after talking to Maldovar. He sends out his invitations and walks right up to the space-suited River Song. He tells River he forgives her and waits for her to shoot him. She doesn't. Time starts to disintegrate...

Flip back to the present again. The Doctor and Churchill are surrounded by Silence. The pair are rescued by mysterious soldiers led by a familiar redhead with an eyepatch: Amelia Pond.

Amy is now some kind of spook who remembers the two timelines. With Rory as her faithful captain, she is working with River Song to use technology stolen from the captive Madam Kovarian so they can see, and capture, Silence.

A number of things unfold:

* If the Doctor and River touch, time restarts and goes back to the moment when River is being forced by the weird spacesuit to kill the Doctor. The Doctor wants this. River can't live with it.

* The eyepatches worn by Amy's people, are copies of those worn by the agents of the Silence. They let someone see a Silent and remember doing so. They are, unfortunately, also booby-trapped...

* The Silence are not prisoners... they were waiting to kill the Doctor.

Long-story short:

* Amy leaves Madam Kevorian to die from the treachery of the Silence, essentially killing Kevorian.

* River and Amy have cobbled together some kind of nonsensical time-transmitter-thing to ask the Universe to help the Doctor. Don't ask. It doesn't even try to make sense.

* The Doctor marries River. Why? Not really clear, but roll with it. The Doctor appears to tell River his "real name".

* The Doctor and River kiss. Time restarts with the Doctor slain.

The scene shifts to Amy getting slowly drunk. The Doctor is gone and she is devastated. River appears, having just finished the adventure with the Weeping Angels at the Byzantium. Amy bemoans wanting to talk to the Doctor...

And River reveals to Amy (and, a few moments later, Rory) that the Doctor, while present for his "death", was not slain. The Doctor who was shot and "killed" was the Tesselecta with the Doctor on-board.

The Doctor has faked his death and decided to start operating from the shadows. He returns Maldovar's head to its place in the tombs and the two talk. Maldovar then shouts to the departing Doctor the question that must never be answered:



Again. Spoilers.

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Doctor who?