Doctor Who Review: I'm going to have nightmares where all bad episodes of Who happen simultaneously.
I really don't want to do this.
You have to. It was the big finale.
But I really, really don't want to have to even think about that episode ever again!
Come on. It's the last one you'll have to do...
Oh, yeah! Alright, then.
...Until Christmas.
AAAAARGH.
...Okay. Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song. With a title like that, you know it doesn't stand a whelk's chance in a supernova of being even slightly decent. I mean, we've now reached RTD levels of badness, with the dei ex machina being so far out of left field that all possible logic in the script just implodes on itself, forming a crack in time and space which erases anything of value Moffat has ever written from time itself.
But at least RTD was actually aware of the show enough to grasp that it's a damn anthology show, even if he couldn't seem to work out that anthologies generally have at least a little variation in stories. RTD's stories were, when it came down to it, despite the deeply unwelcome story arcs shoved in, independent stories in their own right. The Doctor turns up somewhere, saves the universe, and leaves.
Moffat, by comparison, writes random episodes of what he seems to think is one great big thirteen-part serial. As if this wasn't bad enough, he then proves himself almost completely oblivious to what the very people he employs are doing, as all the show's various guest writers try desperately to get Doctor Who back to at least being vaguely recognisable as itself, a task not unlike trying to turn an aircraft carrier around.
Quite simply, Moffat has no idea how to craft an episodic show any more. This is most in evidence in his obsession with starting episodes in media res, something I've complained about before. For those that think I'm making a big deal out of this, I invite you to bear in mind that every single episode Moffat has written this year has begun with a random action-sequence beginning, the events of which will never be explained owing to the ridiculous time constraints imposed by that bloody forty-five minute format. Every. Single. Episode.
Except that this time it's even more absurd and gratuitous, given that, for the past three episodes, we've had it rammed down our throats how resigned the Doctor is to his fate, and what a terrible tragic horror the Doctor's life is, despite the 100% evidence to the contrary, and now the Doctor suddenly up and declares "I'm going to change my defeatist ways!" as if this was a great character turnaround and not him actually acting sensibly for the first time in weeks, making that entire sodding angsty subplot completely unnecessary. Aaargh!
Anyway, what is The Wedding of River Song about? Given that it's the final episode of the season, and we were promised that at least some of the show's ongoing subplots would be resolved by now, you may think it's about who the Silence are, why they want the Doctor dead, how the Doctor will defeat them, and where River Song comes into all this.
Well, you're an idiotic sap if you still have any faith in what Moffat says by this point. No, once again, this episode is about barely anything other than good-looking set pieces and explosions. It begins, with no warning, in an Earth where every time period ever is apparently smooshed together, even though we don't really see much from the future, and, while it may be over a year since I last studied History, I don't recall a period when everyone travelled by hot air balloon. In any other story, this would be an innovative and engrossing sci-fi concept. Here, it just seems to be partially a rehash of last year's finale when everything went kaplooey with time, and partially an excuse to drag Ian McNeice and Simon Callow back to make sure that their respective historical domain characters are completely degraded.
So, it eventually transpires, after a long, long sequence of events involving the severed head of a character the audience has barely met and has no cause to care about being shoved onto our screens as if we're expected to give a damn about him, that the Doctor went willingly to his death at Lake Sillyname, only to have River Bloody Song prove herself once and for all to be an utter airheaded moron and somehow ruin everything.
As far as I can gather, we're supposed to glean that River went back in time and replaced her previous self, draining the astronaut suit's magic powers, although it's really not clear what happened, or where in hell River had the means or opportunity to do such a thing. Oh, and it's revealed that it was the suit that was controlling River.
In other words, River was entirely superfluous to the Silence's plans.
In other words, there is no reason for River Song to exist.
...
I... I...
Huh...
GNAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM
THIS IS JUST... GOD!
Anyway... So, the Doctor not dying at that exact moment and place means that all of time implodes on itself. Remember that.
So, a new timeline has apparently formed itself, in which the Doctor takes the form of a soothsayer, for some reason, hopefully one more substantial than "Matt Smith looks good with a beard." In this mucked- up timeline, we see that Churchill has a sense of vague companionship when around the Doctor, while Amy just about recalls her time on the TARDIS on the very fringes of her memory. Okay, with you so far. However, we then see that Rory, with his two thousand years' worth of memories (which itself has never made any sense), doesn't remember Amy or the Doctor at all, while River, the Silence and Madame Kovarian, people who have barely interacted with him, remember absolutely everything about the original timeline. And what the hell is Kovarian doing on Earth?
Anyway, at this point the audience looks at their watches, and those still capable of rational thought realise that the episode is now halfway through, and that, like all Moffat episodes, The Wedding of River Song has no plot, because it's not actually an episode so much as a summation. Only this time, it's a summation that doesn't even summarise anything. Essentially, the Silence are able to escape and kill a load of extras because, when duplicating the technology of Madame Kovarian's eyepatch, scientists found a little gubbins specifically there to electrocute the wearer, and thought "duh, okay! Let's stick that in!"Madame Kovarian is also killed by her own associates, because it may make no logical sense, but hey, I don't think they stressed that the aliens who want to enslave mankind and murder the main character are eeeeeeeeeeeeevil enough. Amy is the one that finally kills her, although we now know so little about Amy, and we never knew anything about Kovarian, that this is, well... pointless. Ooh, Amy murdered someone... well, so what? If you're not going to bother to give your characters personalities, Moffat, you by definition remove the ability to write out-of-character moments. You're also trying so hard and so obvious to make Amy behave OOC that it also becomes impossible to care.
Another thing we learn amidst all this nonsense is that when the Doctor and River touch, time starts moving again. Remember that.
Anyway, it transpires that River and Amy's plan is to transmit a signal to the entire universe, asking for help saving the Doctor's life. How the heck did we leap from one season finale where every superpower in the universe wants to kill the Doctor to a finale where everyone wants to save him? Of course, there is something of a difference, what was it now? Oh, yes, that was it: we've already established that in this reality, no one knows who the Doctor bloody well is. I mean, for God's sake. This is ridiculous. The entire premise of the episode is that no one remembers who the Doctor is, and now Moffat's trying to persuade us that everyone in the universe has decided to up and fly to Earth to save him!
So, after all that, why is River doing this? Why is she now breaking free of her brainwashing to try to do the exact opposite of everything she was created for? Well, it turns out it's because she's in love with the Doctor. Yup, it's all because she thinks she's in love with some bloke she's only met once. Well, it's official. It's canon. There's no denying it. River Song is a dangerous sociopath with no true concept of emotions. The Doctor, seeing this, immediately takes advantage of this, and marries her, because, as we've established, in the Moffatverse, marriage makes the woman the property of the man, and so now River can't disobey the Doctor's orders. If there's any doubt about this, watch the crappy hand-fasting scene again. All the while that the Doctor is pleading for River to save billions of lives, she's just standing there with a stupefied grin on her face, just thinking to herself: "he's mine now OMFG squeeeeee!" Because there's nothing a woman desires more than marriage.
So, time resumes, and whatever the hell it was River did is apparently reversed, because suddenly the suit has enough power to shoot the Doctor and stop him from regenerating.
So, the Doctor's dead, and Amy and River (again, for no reason, not Rory) remember the events of the imploded timeline. Oh, not Impossible Astronaut!Amy, remembering the events as soon as the real timeline resumes. Don't be silly, that would actually make sense! No, for some reason, Amy doesn't remember those events until presumably years later, post- God Complex! Wh... wh... huh?! Oh, and at that exact moment, she's conveniently visited by River! River has apparently come straight from the crash of the Byzantium. Y'know, when she was under heavy guard and all. Moffat, have you even heard of continuity?
Well, apparently not, because here comes the big reveal: throughout this episode and the beginning of Impossible Astronaut, the Doctor wasn't the Doctor at all, but Edd the Robot from Let's Kill Hitler.
Now, there are two ways to approach this. One is to scream my thoughts incoherently into a sprawling paragraph across the page, while causing my heart to explode altogether.
The other is to calmly and confidently list all the reasons this cop out makes no sense on any level.
Reason One: All the way through the episode, it's been presented as if there was something deeply ingrained in the Doctor as a person that was damaging time, hence why time resumed when River's flesh and the Doctor's flesh touched. However, now it's been revealed that the Doctor's flesh wasn't flesh at all, but random metals and alloys.
Reason Two: If this stupid thing can grow a motor vehicle out of its crotch, I have no trouble believing that it can augment a beard. However, painful though it is, think back to The Impossible Astronaut. We saw him start to regenerate. In fact, in the sequence of asinine flashbacks when time was restarting, we saw it again. They're rubbing it in our faces how the robot did something it could never possibly have the power to do!
Reason Three: Why didn't the Doctor tell River this before? Lives could have been saved! Okay, no one actually died (again), but people still died in the imploded timeline before it was reset, which could have been avoided if the Doctor had found some way to let River know the truth as soon as they met!
Reason Four: In the same vein, why did the Doctor even bother to hear River's stupid plan out? No one was in danger; no plan was even needed!
Reason Five: The Doctor dies at Lake Silenciogeddititsoundslikesilence. Everyone knows this. The extinguishing of the Doctor's existence is a fixed point in time, as everyone stresses. Well, the Doctor's just rewritten that, with absolutely no consequences! Hooray! So, why isn't time imploding because Edd the Robot died and not the Doctor? What, was that how it was all along? Not much of a fixed point in time, some robot getting lightly toasted.
Reason Six: While the crew of Edd have shown themselves to be completely irresponsible when it comes to maintaining the timeline, I find it hard to believe that they would agree to risk their lives and destroy their ship for some guy they barely know, who has repeatedly damaged and threatened them in the past.
Reason Seven: As we've established, everyone knows that the Doctor dies then and there. Everyone knows. So now what's going to happen when the Doctor carries on swanning around saving the universe? How exactly is its reputation as the point of the Doctor's death going to be maintained when it's clearly false?
Reason Eight: Is this really what River Song is in prison for? Even though it will shortly become clear that the Doctor is not dead, the crew of Edd can go and tell everyone that she didn't do it, and, anyway, it was the suit that did all the work while she looked on helplessly?
Reason Nine: Why on Earth was the Doctor so morose and resigned to his fate throughout the episode, other than to bait the audience? He knew he was in no real danger for the vast majority of the episode, and yet he just puts on this pretence, going through the motions of deciding to go off and die, knowing full well he's completely safe. This is at its utmost worst when Moffat commits the ultimate faux pas of trying to work the death of Nicholas Courtney into the script. The first time I saw that scene, I did actually think. "Oh, hey, they actually did that quite tastefully and respectfully. That's actually well done. Sniff." Now, with hindsight, it just comes off as part of the Doctor's act, a sad thing that apparently affects him, but which he laughs off at the end of the episode. It's the ultimate disservice. And that's what Moffat does best: projects his own cowardice onto the Doctor, making our supposed hero come off as a fraud who benefits from others' misfortune.
Reason Ten: The Doctor's Stetson was shot off Edd!Doctor's head, yet Mini!Doctor is still wearing it. Oh, leave me alone, it's still a valid piece of stupidity.
So, at the end of this season, what resolution do we have? Well, unsurprisingly, NONE WHATSOEVER. Madame Kovarian is presumably alive again, and she and the Silence are still out there; we still don't know any of their goals or why the Doctor is so important to them; we still don't know why or indeed how they caused cracks in time and blew up the TARDIS last season; we don't know why the Doctor comes to trust River, although on the evidence of this episode, it's entirely possible that River only believes they have this great relationship because of her various psychoses. Worst of all, Amy and Rory (remember them?) have absolutely no resolution at the end of this series, owing to being treated by Moffat as random devices to be dragged to whatever corner of the continuum it makes the least sense for them to be, and treated by the rest of the writers as pretty much extras in their own show. After being utterly superfluous in the Christmas special, we abruptly find them randomly teleported to living on Earth, where they rejoin the Doctor with no explanation of why they left him, and then potter around superfluously for the first half of the season, then randomly teleport back to living on Earth at the start of the second half, where they rejoin the Doctor with no explanation of how they got there, and then potter around superfluously for the next four episodes, before being dumped in a strange house in a strange town with no explanation and being reduced to cameos in the remaining two episodes of the series. Disgraceful.
Bringing us wearily to the very end of the episode, and the revelation that "The Question" is, and always has been... "Doctor Who?"
Now, I very frequently make predictions regarding TV plots, and am also frequently proved right. I should probably start writing them down: after all, I predicted correctly that the Question would be "Doctor Who," that Tariq from Spooks would be killed off, and that Waterloo Road would be more hilariously awful than ever before.
So, here and now, I make this prediction: "Doctor Who?" "The Fall of the Eleventh"? The fact that the Silence storyline is still dragging horribly onwards? I know Moffat's masterplan: I've worked it out. This is all building up to the 50th Anniversary, isn't it? In 2013, this storyline's finally going to reach its nothing of a climax, and Moffat is even now working on more ways to make it seem as if every single moment in this once-proud show's half-century history has been building up to it.
Well, I'll say this for Moffat: when he picks a motif, he really goes with it. Not only is he aiming to ruin Doctor Who in 2013, he's trying to ruin it at every point in its history simultaneously. Wonderful.
You have to. It was the big finale.
But I really, really don't want to have to even think about that episode ever again!
Come on. It's the last one you'll have to do...
Oh, yeah! Alright, then.
...Until Christmas.
AAAAARGH.
...Okay. Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song. With a title like that, you know it doesn't stand a whelk's chance in a supernova of being even slightly decent. I mean, we've now reached RTD levels of badness, with the dei ex machina being so far out of left field that all possible logic in the script just implodes on itself, forming a crack in time and space which erases anything of value Moffat has ever written from time itself.
But at least RTD was actually aware of the show enough to grasp that it's a damn anthology show, even if he couldn't seem to work out that anthologies generally have at least a little variation in stories. RTD's stories were, when it came down to it, despite the deeply unwelcome story arcs shoved in, independent stories in their own right. The Doctor turns up somewhere, saves the universe, and leaves.
Moffat, by comparison, writes random episodes of what he seems to think is one great big thirteen-part serial. As if this wasn't bad enough, he then proves himself almost completely oblivious to what the very people he employs are doing, as all the show's various guest writers try desperately to get Doctor Who back to at least being vaguely recognisable as itself, a task not unlike trying to turn an aircraft carrier around.
Quite simply, Moffat has no idea how to craft an episodic show any more. This is most in evidence in his obsession with starting episodes in media res, something I've complained about before. For those that think I'm making a big deal out of this, I invite you to bear in mind that every single episode Moffat has written this year has begun with a random action-sequence beginning, the events of which will never be explained owing to the ridiculous time constraints imposed by that bloody forty-five minute format. Every. Single. Episode.
Except that this time it's even more absurd and gratuitous, given that, for the past three episodes, we've had it rammed down our throats how resigned the Doctor is to his fate, and what a terrible tragic horror the Doctor's life is, despite the 100% evidence to the contrary, and now the Doctor suddenly up and declares "I'm going to change my defeatist ways!" as if this was a great character turnaround and not him actually acting sensibly for the first time in weeks, making that entire sodding angsty subplot completely unnecessary. Aaargh!
Anyway, what is The Wedding of River Song about? Given that it's the final episode of the season, and we were promised that at least some of the show's ongoing subplots would be resolved by now, you may think it's about who the Silence are, why they want the Doctor dead, how the Doctor will defeat them, and where River Song comes into all this.
Well, you're an idiotic sap if you still have any faith in what Moffat says by this point. No, once again, this episode is about barely anything other than good-looking set pieces and explosions. It begins, with no warning, in an Earth where every time period ever is apparently smooshed together, even though we don't really see much from the future, and, while it may be over a year since I last studied History, I don't recall a period when everyone travelled by hot air balloon. In any other story, this would be an innovative and engrossing sci-fi concept. Here, it just seems to be partially a rehash of last year's finale when everything went kaplooey with time, and partially an excuse to drag Ian McNeice and Simon Callow back to make sure that their respective historical domain characters are completely degraded.
So, it eventually transpires, after a long, long sequence of events involving the severed head of a character the audience has barely met and has no cause to care about being shoved onto our screens as if we're expected to give a damn about him, that the Doctor went willingly to his death at Lake Sillyname, only to have River Bloody Song prove herself once and for all to be an utter airheaded moron and somehow ruin everything.
As far as I can gather, we're supposed to glean that River went back in time and replaced her previous self, draining the astronaut suit's magic powers, although it's really not clear what happened, or where in hell River had the means or opportunity to do such a thing. Oh, and it's revealed that it was the suit that was controlling River.
In other words, River was entirely superfluous to the Silence's plans.
In other words, there is no reason for River Song to exist.
...
I... I...
Huh...
GNAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM
THIS IS JUST... GOD!
Anyway... So, the Doctor not dying at that exact moment and place means that all of time implodes on itself. Remember that.
So, a new timeline has apparently formed itself, in which the Doctor takes the form of a soothsayer, for some reason, hopefully one more substantial than "Matt Smith looks good with a beard." In this mucked- up timeline, we see that Churchill has a sense of vague companionship when around the Doctor, while Amy just about recalls her time on the TARDIS on the very fringes of her memory. Okay, with you so far. However, we then see that Rory, with his two thousand years' worth of memories (which itself has never made any sense), doesn't remember Amy or the Doctor at all, while River, the Silence and Madame Kovarian, people who have barely interacted with him, remember absolutely everything about the original timeline. And what the hell is Kovarian doing on Earth?
Anyway, at this point the audience looks at their watches, and those still capable of rational thought realise that the episode is now halfway through, and that, like all Moffat episodes, The Wedding of River Song has no plot, because it's not actually an episode so much as a summation. Only this time, it's a summation that doesn't even summarise anything. Essentially, the Silence are able to escape and kill a load of extras because, when duplicating the technology of Madame Kovarian's eyepatch, scientists found a little gubbins specifically there to electrocute the wearer, and thought "duh, okay! Let's stick that in!"Madame Kovarian is also killed by her own associates, because it may make no logical sense, but hey, I don't think they stressed that the aliens who want to enslave mankind and murder the main character are eeeeeeeeeeeeevil enough. Amy is the one that finally kills her, although we now know so little about Amy, and we never knew anything about Kovarian, that this is, well... pointless. Ooh, Amy murdered someone... well, so what? If you're not going to bother to give your characters personalities, Moffat, you by definition remove the ability to write out-of-character moments. You're also trying so hard and so obvious to make Amy behave OOC that it also becomes impossible to care.
Another thing we learn amidst all this nonsense is that when the Doctor and River touch, time starts moving again. Remember that.
Anyway, it transpires that River and Amy's plan is to transmit a signal to the entire universe, asking for help saving the Doctor's life. How the heck did we leap from one season finale where every superpower in the universe wants to kill the Doctor to a finale where everyone wants to save him? Of course, there is something of a difference, what was it now? Oh, yes, that was it: we've already established that in this reality, no one knows who the Doctor bloody well is. I mean, for God's sake. This is ridiculous. The entire premise of the episode is that no one remembers who the Doctor is, and now Moffat's trying to persuade us that everyone in the universe has decided to up and fly to Earth to save him!
So, after all that, why is River doing this? Why is she now breaking free of her brainwashing to try to do the exact opposite of everything she was created for? Well, it turns out it's because she's in love with the Doctor. Yup, it's all because she thinks she's in love with some bloke she's only met once. Well, it's official. It's canon. There's no denying it. River Song is a dangerous sociopath with no true concept of emotions. The Doctor, seeing this, immediately takes advantage of this, and marries her, because, as we've established, in the Moffatverse, marriage makes the woman the property of the man, and so now River can't disobey the Doctor's orders. If there's any doubt about this, watch the crappy hand-fasting scene again. All the while that the Doctor is pleading for River to save billions of lives, she's just standing there with a stupefied grin on her face, just thinking to herself: "he's mine now OMFG squeeeeee!" Because there's nothing a woman desires more than marriage.
So, time resumes, and whatever the hell it was River did is apparently reversed, because suddenly the suit has enough power to shoot the Doctor and stop him from regenerating.
So, the Doctor's dead, and Amy and River (again, for no reason, not Rory) remember the events of the imploded timeline. Oh, not Impossible Astronaut!Amy, remembering the events as soon as the real timeline resumes. Don't be silly, that would actually make sense! No, for some reason, Amy doesn't remember those events until presumably years later, post- God Complex! Wh... wh... huh?! Oh, and at that exact moment, she's conveniently visited by River! River has apparently come straight from the crash of the Byzantium. Y'know, when she was under heavy guard and all. Moffat, have you even heard of continuity?
Well, apparently not, because here comes the big reveal: throughout this episode and the beginning of Impossible Astronaut, the Doctor wasn't the Doctor at all, but Edd the Robot from Let's Kill Hitler.
Now, there are two ways to approach this. One is to scream my thoughts incoherently into a sprawling paragraph across the page, while causing my heart to explode altogether.
The other is to calmly and confidently list all the reasons this cop out makes no sense on any level.
Reason One: All the way through the episode, it's been presented as if there was something deeply ingrained in the Doctor as a person that was damaging time, hence why time resumed when River's flesh and the Doctor's flesh touched. However, now it's been revealed that the Doctor's flesh wasn't flesh at all, but random metals and alloys.
Reason Two: If this stupid thing can grow a motor vehicle out of its crotch, I have no trouble believing that it can augment a beard. However, painful though it is, think back to The Impossible Astronaut. We saw him start to regenerate. In fact, in the sequence of asinine flashbacks when time was restarting, we saw it again. They're rubbing it in our faces how the robot did something it could never possibly have the power to do!
Reason Three: Why didn't the Doctor tell River this before? Lives could have been saved! Okay, no one actually died (again), but people still died in the imploded timeline before it was reset, which could have been avoided if the Doctor had found some way to let River know the truth as soon as they met!
Reason Four: In the same vein, why did the Doctor even bother to hear River's stupid plan out? No one was in danger; no plan was even needed!
Reason Five: The Doctor dies at Lake Silenciogeddititsoundslikesilence. Everyone knows this. The extinguishing of the Doctor's existence is a fixed point in time, as everyone stresses. Well, the Doctor's just rewritten that, with absolutely no consequences! Hooray! So, why isn't time imploding because Edd the Robot died and not the Doctor? What, was that how it was all along? Not much of a fixed point in time, some robot getting lightly toasted.
Reason Six: While the crew of Edd have shown themselves to be completely irresponsible when it comes to maintaining the timeline, I find it hard to believe that they would agree to risk their lives and destroy their ship for some guy they barely know, who has repeatedly damaged and threatened them in the past.
Reason Seven: As we've established, everyone knows that the Doctor dies then and there. Everyone knows. So now what's going to happen when the Doctor carries on swanning around saving the universe? How exactly is its reputation as the point of the Doctor's death going to be maintained when it's clearly false?
Reason Eight: Is this really what River Song is in prison for? Even though it will shortly become clear that the Doctor is not dead, the crew of Edd can go and tell everyone that she didn't do it, and, anyway, it was the suit that did all the work while she looked on helplessly?
Reason Nine: Why on Earth was the Doctor so morose and resigned to his fate throughout the episode, other than to bait the audience? He knew he was in no real danger for the vast majority of the episode, and yet he just puts on this pretence, going through the motions of deciding to go off and die, knowing full well he's completely safe. This is at its utmost worst when Moffat commits the ultimate faux pas of trying to work the death of Nicholas Courtney into the script. The first time I saw that scene, I did actually think. "Oh, hey, they actually did that quite tastefully and respectfully. That's actually well done. Sniff." Now, with hindsight, it just comes off as part of the Doctor's act, a sad thing that apparently affects him, but which he laughs off at the end of the episode. It's the ultimate disservice. And that's what Moffat does best: projects his own cowardice onto the Doctor, making our supposed hero come off as a fraud who benefits from others' misfortune.
Reason Ten: The Doctor's Stetson was shot off Edd!Doctor's head, yet Mini!Doctor is still wearing it. Oh, leave me alone, it's still a valid piece of stupidity.
So, at the end of this season, what resolution do we have? Well, unsurprisingly, NONE WHATSOEVER. Madame Kovarian is presumably alive again, and she and the Silence are still out there; we still don't know any of their goals or why the Doctor is so important to them; we still don't know why or indeed how they caused cracks in time and blew up the TARDIS last season; we don't know why the Doctor comes to trust River, although on the evidence of this episode, it's entirely possible that River only believes they have this great relationship because of her various psychoses. Worst of all, Amy and Rory (remember them?) have absolutely no resolution at the end of this series, owing to being treated by Moffat as random devices to be dragged to whatever corner of the continuum it makes the least sense for them to be, and treated by the rest of the writers as pretty much extras in their own show. After being utterly superfluous in the Christmas special, we abruptly find them randomly teleported to living on Earth, where they rejoin the Doctor with no explanation of why they left him, and then potter around superfluously for the first half of the season, then randomly teleport back to living on Earth at the start of the second half, where they rejoin the Doctor with no explanation of how they got there, and then potter around superfluously for the next four episodes, before being dumped in a strange house in a strange town with no explanation and being reduced to cameos in the remaining two episodes of the series. Disgraceful.
Bringing us wearily to the very end of the episode, and the revelation that "The Question" is, and always has been... "Doctor Who?"
Now, I very frequently make predictions regarding TV plots, and am also frequently proved right. I should probably start writing them down: after all, I predicted correctly that the Question would be "Doctor Who," that Tariq from Spooks would be killed off, and that Waterloo Road would be more hilariously awful than ever before.
So, here and now, I make this prediction: "Doctor Who?" "The Fall of the Eleventh"? The fact that the Silence storyline is still dragging horribly onwards? I know Moffat's masterplan: I've worked it out. This is all building up to the 50th Anniversary, isn't it? In 2013, this storyline's finally going to reach its nothing of a climax, and Moffat is even now working on more ways to make it seem as if every single moment in this once-proud show's half-century history has been building up to it.
Well, I'll say this for Moffat: when he picks a motif, he really goes with it. Not only is he aiming to ruin Doctor Who in 2013, he's trying to ruin it at every point in its history simultaneously. Wonderful.