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doctor who - What happened in 'The Wedding of River Song'?


Forgive the bland title, but I didn't want to give away spoilers.
"The Wedding of River Song" is the thirteenth and final episode of the sixth series of Doctor Who, and was broadcast on 1 October 2011. During this series finale episode we learn...



...time stopped because the doctor didn't die when he was supposed to (the first time that episode, but the second time in the series). But then later on when the doctor and River went back to the beach, the doctor actually being the Teselecta machine, River shoots him (actually the Teselecta), and the doctor manages to survive. This was supposedly the doctor's death we see in the first episode of the series. So why doesn't time stop/act all at once again?




Secondly:



Did they ever explain who the silence and Madame Kovarian are?



Thirdly:



When River was on the beach (the River out of the astronaut suit), did she know already that the doctor would survive and how he would survive?




Answer




I'll answer each spoiler in order:



  1. The issue wasn't just that The Doctor died there, it was the precise events that played out then. The astronaut appears, shoots and kills The Doctor, and then they burn his corpse. By having the Teselecta take his place, The Doctor got to have his cake and eat it too. Events played out as they were supposed to at that fixed point, but he got to survive.

  2. No, not really. There were some minor developments along these lines as Kovarian's eye-patch was finally explained as a mechanism that allows the wearer to remember The Silence when not looking at them. Series 6 did add some more clarification on The Silence though. Now we know that at some future (to the Doctor) juncture, The Doctor will fight a war against them. This war will potentially end on the fields of Trenzalore, when The Doctor answers the first question, as that is when "Silence falls".

  3. Yes. When Amy and post-Byzantium River were hanging out near the end of the episode, she said one of the many lies she had to do was pretend she didn't remember recognizing the suit. She also brought Amy and Rory the good news that the Doctor survived. So she either remembers seeing the mini-Doctor inside the Teselecta's eye right before she shot "him", or she simply knew the Doctor was safe due to what he whispered in her ear.


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