UNEDITED EXCLUSIVE: Doctor Who Season 6 Episode 13 REACTION!

Guys this is really not that hard. The Dr gives the Tesselecta the envelopes, climbs in. Still in the regular timeline, he goes to Lake Silencio as seen in the opener two-parter. We see in Wedding that River doesn’t shoot him. The alternate timeline is set in motion, and in the regular timeline the doctor and everyone is still on the lake since time has stopped for them. Okay, how he became a soothsayer, I have idea. (I have a feeling some things were cut, and I agree it did need to be a two-parter, and they should have condensed the ganger episodes into one) But moving on, after the alternate timeline is resolved, the action on the beach from the impossible astronaut begins again, the Doctor gets killed in the Tessalecta, etc. he invites his younger self because he knows he was there already for some reason. Yes, it’s really convoluted, and definitely could have been explained better given more time, totally agree with that. Everyone gets on Moffat for these complex scripts, but I don’t believe it’s just the writing. The BBC is notorious for strict timetables, shooting for hours to get an Episode filmed and often reducing the number of takes because of time restraints. Still, as showrunner, Moffat should, you would think, take this into account. Some episodes were moved around this season. Don’t know exactly why, although I do know The Doctor’s Wife was supposed to be in Season 5, Maybe due to the script being edited for money or time, or not finished, who knows. Anyway, I think that if the season had been structured better, the River Song Arc would have made more sense. Still I love this season. There some really good episodes, and I’m owning my bias right now; I love River Song, so enjoy every episode she’s in.

Vanessa J McNamara

By Moffat's standards thought the final was a bit of a cop out but he is still the best series writer of the show.

David Broome

The links aren’t working anymore :( it says the files are deleted?

Johnny Guitar

You should have a read of this: <a href="http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/steven-moffat-is-a-feminist-and-you-are-wrong-if-you-disagree/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/steven-moffat-is-a-feminist-and-you-are-wrong-if-you-disagree/</a> as an interesting counterpoint to your views.

Moffat is incredible, his conceptual way of doing things is extremely intriguing and his ideas about time travel, exciting. But he has some glaring flaws that sometimes make watching his work uncomfortable. For instance, he can't hide his sexism no matter what. He clearly seems women as less than human, support pieces who exist to love men. Be they 'strong' in his universe or not, their work is always nothing important, they do whatever so long as it's to get what they want (a man) and they're walking wombs in his world as well, he has serious mother issues. (Look it up, you'll find information on his father, but it was only in the last couple of years that you could even find his mother's name. No idea about what influence she had on his life, if she's even alive, if she was in his life, or what.). It seems like he envies that women can have babies, but other than that, he just thinks they are there for support only. They are often working with kids, and start out as fire crackers that 'need' to be 'settled' into marriage/babies. He writes them as flighty, wild, then settled and all once they're married off having babies, because we all know that's all a woman is good for or wants in her life. Geez. They never are all that well developed and they (though he does this bit with all his characters, gender aside) change to suit the plot, rather than react to the plot around them the way writing really should go. That's his other weakness. He just uses characters as a means for his plot, rather than the other way around, which is why a lot of the emotional moments don't really hold the weight they should and they often come off pretty empty...I mean you have River, this incredible character who is dangerous and strong and can do all of these things, but all she cares about is a man (the Doctor). Even in the library, at the end it was about putting her in there as a wife and mother. Moffat thinks that's all women want and are for in the end, ultimately. That we have no other goals in life, no other drives or desires but to please or get a man. It's really frustrating. And men who do 'settle down' with a woman are often portrayed as weak, incapable, butt of the jokes (when he's not throwing shade at women for being incomprehensible in his world). That said, his episodes are often enjoyable to watch and interesting. (And I noticed that with some male writers, that they fail at capturing female characters as real human beings with real motivations, real feelings, real thoughts of their own, those types of writers have a very similar and off putting tone as well.)

Jayna

Mine too. Plus Doctor’s Wife and Girl Who Waited.

I like this episode, it, and the season openers are amongst some of my favourite stories.

Cooper Vision

Man, as others have said, the whole Moffat era is loads better on rewatch for some reason. It borders on the sappy and nonsensical, but at least it really attempts to be clever and imaginative. And often succeeds. Which is why I watch this show really.

This episode is so much better on the rewatch. Watching it when it first aired I was a bit disappointed.

Emma

Agreed, Pond Life Omnibus is good fun and provides context :)

Don't forget to watch the mini-sodes before s07e01. Very important.

“Have you never heard of downloads?”

Yeah... if there was a season finale that would have benefited from being a two parter, it’s this one. Too much is crammed together with previously established things being undercut. Although I do love your theory of when Doctor tells River his name, it’s too hysterically funny for it not to happen that way (but I never cared about the Doctor’s name, unless it’s Slartibartfast or something like that)

“The first question... hidden in plain sight.” Obviously should have tied in with the first words ever written and been “sweetie who?”

Time displaced Winston Churchill is a ton of fun though.

Sachal Ali

So... I enjoy this episode, but it has several issues. A lot of smaller ones, but I'll focus on the big: It was a bad call to have the Doctor already have made his escape plan before he even went to Lake Silencio. It makes you feel like the entire episode was a waste when you know he was never going to die and that all he was really doing was trying to get River to understand that without outing his plan to the Silence. It's a bad kind of lying to the viewers. If he really had accepted his death and everything we see in the alternate timeline is exactly what it seems, then the tragedy of the episode isn't undercut. And I would have accepted whatever time travel bullshit Moffat came up with if the Doctor somehow rewound time and switched with the Tesselecta *after* the alternate timeline scenes, with River successfully talking him into not giving up on life. Or literally any other explanation where his tragic choice is real and he only figures out / decides another way near the end of the episode. I also think that having him use a Ganger would have been much more satisfying than using the Tesselecta. A bit obvious, sure, but I find it hard to believe that the Silence would fall for the latter, while even the Doctor himself had trouble seeing through the former when it was Amy who was swapped. Really, this episode needed to be a little longer and have a whole section dedicated to the Doctor deciding to live and coming up with a way to do it, and all of that needed to be after the main events of the episode, not before. As for the Doctor telling River his name, it might happen offscreen at some point, but my favorite theory is he told her back in Let's Kill Hitler when he whispered a message to "River Song" to Melody. "I'm sure she already knows", she says, and we assume he said to tell her she loves him, but much funnier if he told her to tell River his name, and her reaction is just confusion (like "how can this woman not already know your name")

Sachal Ali

"On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked, a question that must never, ever be answered."

Andrew W

I hate the next Christmas episode though. It’s one I always skip and just move on to season 7.

I like this episode but I realize it’s messy and not everyone agrees. I did foresee “Doctor in a Doctor suit” the moment they appeared way back in “Let’s Kill Hitler”. I was actually super disappointed at the time, as I felt that gave the game away too early. I had pieced most of it together before the finale, but I was wrong in thinking we’d see the Time Wraiths from Season 1 again.

So much of the series doesn’t make sense, this wasn’t that bad to me. I enjoyed it.

I actually liked it. So much of

When I watched this as it aired, I didn’t foresee the “Doctor in a Doctor suit” or put any of the pieces of the puzzle together on my own. I trusted in its manic, fairy-tale logic that it all made sense until I was able to watch it again for the first time on DVD. I loved that you predicted smaller scale stories for next season. The crack in Amy’s wall has been explained and fixed, the universe was rebooted, River’s relationship to Amy, Rory, and the Doctor has been revealed, the Silence are defeated, and the Doctor plans on keeping a low profile after faking his death. It sure can’t get any more complicated than that. Next stop: everywhere!

Tumbili

This is an unusual one for me - as much as I love it, I think it falls flat compared to the battle at demons run

Chris

I like the ending, but the rest of the episode is sort of mixed for me. I did appreciate that they fleshed out the River Song story. In fairness, it's hard to top the last 2 season finales.

Stephen Ray

This finale has grown on me, but probably due to the River/Doctor relationship explored. It ends the series as best as it could without a regeneration at the end of it, and sets up series 7 well. Great stuff coming next series!

dwp

It's one of those stories where Moffat had the plot jump through hoops in order to tie up all the loose ends - and I'm not absolutely sure that it did. I've watched this season twice,and both times I ended up feeling somewhat cheated. Anyway...looking forward to your ongoing Who journey :)

Ian Smith

Gotta be honest, really not a fan of this episode. Specifically, the second half and resolution. Kinda felt like it negated all the character work in the previous episodes. Moffat is a crazy creative writer but I think this is the first time where the plot gets so convoluted he couldn't really resolve the plot. Like, for example, why is the Doctor still in the tesselector after time is messed up? If its almost like that bubble of time is reborn and is dying independently it doesn't really make sense.

Callum Baird

Interesting ending to the season... leave your thoughts down below!

Failwhale34