Review Doctor Who: Closing Time

Silence will fall when the question is asked.

A simple yet creepy statement first uttered while David Tennant was the doctor. Running through the fabric of the doctors story that statement finally comes full circle. At the start of season 6 we learn of the doctors death right from the start by the Impossible astronaut. What we didnt know was who was in the suit, why or how they came after the doctor.

This week, the doctor came and visited an old friend Craig Owens. Craig sees right through the doctors simple “social visit” claim when he arrives.  The doctor is in fact saying his good byes. Much like his previous incarnation, the doctor goes to his former friends to say goodbye knowing that what comes next cannot be changed, cannot be altered, cannot be stopped. But the doctor notices something isnt right.

Cybermen, at the local mall. Going undercover the doctor works at a toy store in an attempt to learn whats going on. Eventually he finds the underground ship that crash landed on earth thousands of years ago, now trying to create an army. Craig is taken and almost converted if not for the crying of his baby. Fighting back he in turn gives emotion to the cybermen, killing them and causing an explosion.

This final adventure is a simple small plot to the main event that has finally come to a front. Back in season 4, the doctor and Donna Noble visit a planet which is one giant library. The episode was titled “Silence in the library”. Creeply familiar to the above statement told to the doctor much later. The key to this was the meeting of River Song and the Doctor for the first time. Here River is killed saving Donna and the others and preventing the doctor from killing himself in the process. River insists that his death now will prevent her meeting him in her own past, creating a paradox. She whispers an intimate detail to the Doctor, revealing her relationship to him before activitating the device and dieing. The end of this episode has some really neat prop points. We see how the doctor obtained the “tardis blue” envelopes and the hat he wore to America.

We know now who River is and her importance. We also learn that Madame Kovarian is working with the silence and far in the future, they meet up with River who is researching eye-witness accounts of the day the doctor died. Kovarian brings an astronaut suit and sets it next to River telling her, you are still ours and now you will kill the doctor. We end seeing river under the water in the lake, wearing the suit, listening to a creepy lullaby leading up to the death of the doctor.