First broadcast 1 October 2011.

It is the final episode of Doctor Who Season 6, and that means it is time to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, including past episode references, answers to long-running questions, and an attempt to reset the series and its protagonist for the future. What is perhaps surprising is that for all of the climactic chaos, returning characters, and time paradox shenanigans, “The Wedding of River Song” tells a remarkably simple story: River Song’s (Alex Kingston) love for the Doctor (Matt Smith) is going to destroy the entire universe unless he can convince her to kill him. Everything else, for good or bad, is elaborate window dressing.

So, to recap: a mysterious cult called the Silence kidnapped the time-sensitive baby daughter of Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) and conditioned her to one day assassinate the Doctor. This she apparently does, on the shore of Lake Silencio in Utah, April 2011. When the moment arrives, however, River overcomes her conditioning and discharges her weapon harmlessly into the air. A so-called ‘fixed point’ in time has been broken, and has caused all of history on Earth to occur at the same moment, unravelling reality as it does.

All of this is an excuse for a mash-up of previous Doctor Who episodes, where Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) rules modern-day Britain as a Roman Emperor with the Silurian Malohkeh (Richard Hope) as his personal physician, Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) writes television specials for Christmas, and pterodactyls scavenge for food in London’s parks. From there the Doctor is thrown to Egypt, where a resistance against the Silence is housed inside of a pyramid. It is all a bit of a nonsense really, although it does finally provide some concrete answers for what the hell has been going on. Visually it is stretching the budget at the seams, but director Jeremy Webb does a remarkable job of doing it.

At some point in the Doctor’s future, on the planet of Trenzalore, he will be asked a question – nobody knows what it is – and in answering it, will bring about the end of the universe. To prevent that future from occurring, the time-travelling cult known as the Silence has been working like crazy for the past two seasons to kill him off before he gets there. They seem to have succeeded as well, since the Doctor’s death at Lake Silencio is an established historical fact.

Except when it isn’t. Part of the entertainment value of this episode is seeing how the Doctor avoids the inevitable, and sneaks away with everybody – including his companions – thinking he is dead. It is a cheat, of course, and makes no sense when you think for more than a moment about it – and that is before you consider the Doctor is a time traveller, and therefore will continue to exist in the future anyway.

And, in theory, it resets the Doctor for the future. He started the season inserting himself into the history books, and now he is going silent. ‘I got too big,’ he admits to Dorium Maldovar (a charming Simon Fisher-Becker), ‘too noisy.’ There is something promising in that; the idea of a Doctor who’d go back to the small-scale wanderings of the original 1963-89 series, instead of where he’s been headed during the revival. The problem of a Doctor who can defeat enemies purely by referencing his reputation (as seen in “Forest of the Dead” and “The Eleventh Hour” is that he very rapidly runs out of dramatic potential. A smaller, quieter Doctor is honestly what the series needs at this stage. Whether or not it gets it is remains a matter for future reviews.

Coming back to Season 6 after a gap of many years reveals something of a ‘difficult second album’. It follows a legitimately great season, and simply fails to match its potential. The ongoing story arc has grown slightly overcomplicated and messy. The sillier bits feel a bit too silly. Moffat had two years to bring his first season to fruition, but only one to repeat the exercise. I think, ultimately, that it shows.