"Doctor Who" recap: The Devil Wears Stetson

I hope you guys will forgive me for the extreme tardiness of this Doctor Who recap; I had to rush out of town for a family emergency on Saturday afternoon, so I've only just caught "The Wedding of River Song" — but I'm sure my live-viewing reaction would have been the same as my days-late reaction: HO-LY CRAP! The answer was delightfully ... simple!

Or, well, as simple as a parallel universes and criss-crossed time streams and millions of years of Londons stacked up on top of each other can be. I think this might be my favorite Doctor Who episode ever, in terms of visuals: Winston Churchill as the Roman Emperor, pterodactyls dive-bombing kids in the park, cars traveling around Up-style, and Charles Dickens banging on about his latest Christmas special. That's one of the beauties of London, isn't it? The scenery is so iconic, you can just throw some floating automobiles in front of The Gherkin, and voila! It's the future of Great Britain!

So, in that time-stream, The Doctor has grown that ridiculous beard again, so he can play the role of soothsayer (master of exposition) to "Caeser" while battling, once more, against The Gentlemen of The Silence. (The tally marks in permanent marker were put to perfectly creepy use again.) And he's also battlling the stoppage of time.

In another time-stream, The Doctor is be-bopping around in that stetson, looking for an answer about why he has to die. Kicking the nostalgia to eleven (heh!), he tracks down a Dalek, a very headless Dorium Maldovar, and that pesky human-sized Tesselector from "Let's Kill Hitler."

So, why have all the clocks stopped? Because River Song loves The Doctor more than literally anything in the universe, and so she has seriously just stopped time. If the clock never ticks forward, the fixed point in time never occurs, and the Doctor never dies. Of course, the universe is creaking and groaning under the strain of this timey-wimey shenanigan, and The Doctor knows it has to stop. All he has to do is touch River long enough to make things normal again. River has always been powerless against the depth of her affection for him, but this time it seems like she's really going to stick by her guns.

Only when The Doctor marries(!) her and tells her to look into his eyes, does she relent and let time move forward. And here are all of our questions answered: Yes, it's River in that astronaut suit. Yes, she zaps the Doctor. Yes, she spends her life in prison for the murder of a good man. And yes, she is, indeed, his wife. Except for, well, it's just like she said: He's always one step ahead. The Doctor snagged himself a Tesselector, so a robot time machine is the thing that really gets blasted and burned. The Silence think The Doctor is dead. And that's the end of that.

On the other hand, it's not the end at all. It's a brand new beginning. The Doctor is going black ops again, undercover to save the world. And his whole story with Rory and Amy and River has been reset. They can stick around and fill entirely new roles in his life. But maybe best of all, The Doctor finally realizes that he's not alone in the universe, and that his self-hatred is maybe a little too intense. Solar flares? Nah, those were just billions of civilizations crying out, offering to help save him.

There's this funny thing that has happened in the Whoniverse over the last several year: Fans have gotten louder and louder with their opinion that Russell T. Davies was better at bringing the pathos than Steven Moffat, and I've just got to disagree. Sure, Davies was better at ripping our hearts from our chest and beating them with a hammer — but Moffat knows how to play our hearts like a harp without leaving us in a heap of despair.

He also knows how to send The Doctor into an existential crisis. Silence will fall when the question is asked. And the question is: Doctor Who?

Before we go, I just want to say: Matt Smith, congratulations on your face.

This was my very favorite season of Doctor Who. How about you?