Fans who have kept up with spoilers know that things are going to be very strange in Doctor Who's series 6 finale, "The Wedding of River Song." We know that Ian McNeice's Winston Churchill will be back, and that he's apparently the Holy Roman Emperor who rides a mammoth. There's also a steam engine that drives into a pyramid labeled Area 52, and a chess-playing Viking who wears an eyepatch similar to Madame Kovarian's.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more confusing, it does.
Doctor Who Magazine has revealed more details for the October 1 finale, and they're pretty wild. The episode is apparently set on April 22, 2011 at 5:02pm: "In Buckingham Senate, at 5.02pm, Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill calls for his Soothsayer to be fetched from the Tower. Greying, unkempt, older, tireder, but unmistakably – it’s the Doctor. 'Tick tock goes the clock,' Winston tells him, 'but they don’t, do they? The clocks never tick.' It’s always 5.02pm these days. All of history is happening at once. 'What happened to time?' asks Winston. The answer, it seems, is a woman…"
I think it's pretty obvious that the woman in question is River Song. But how exactly could even River Song cause the time-frozen earth to be afflicted with pterodactyls, or Charles Dickens? It appears to me like all of time has been compressed into one moment, and things aren't looking too pretty.
Dorium, the big blue man who sold River a vortex manipulator back in series 5, will also be back in the finale, it seems, despite his death at the hands of the Headless Monks in the midseries finale, "A Good Man Goes to War."
“On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature may speak falsely or fail to give answer, a question will be asked," Dorium tells the Doctor. "A question that must never, ever be answered. . . 'Silence must fall’ would be a better translation. The Silence are determined that the question must never be answered. The Doctor must never reach Trenzalore.”
You can bet that the question he's talking about is the oldest question in the universe.
I don't know about you, but I'm bracing myself for a pretty wild episode. Check out more details from "The Wedding of River Song" over at Doctor Who TV.
"The Wedding of River Song" will air on Saturday, October 1, on BBC1 in the UK and BBC America in the US. Next week's episode, "Closing Time," will air on Saturday, September 24 on the same channels.
It's obvious isn't it.
The Oldest question is obviously also the Ultimate question. The Answer to life the Universe and Everything. And therefore we already know that the answer is 42.
If there isn't a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide in the final ep, I'm going to be a bit sad.
I wonder if the time lock is breaking. Maybe the Doctor gets saved, but his death is a fixed point. Changing it would cause who knows what to happen. Perhaps the tardis exploded because of the time lock breaking. Maybe by this time next year, we will meet the doctors daughter again, and all the other people on the other side of the time lock.
You know what gets me, the fall of the eleventh. Which Doctor are we on, the eleventh. I think we are going to see Matt Smiths final season.