6x12 Closing Time

that was a really good read.... now to watch the episode, very excited

No, I don't think so.  The explanation for that has yet to come.  There have been several episodes where the Doctor has been alone in the TARDIS; once that thing de-materialises, it doesn't matter that we see it re-materialise in the very next scene, there's space there for the writers to put in whatever they want in that gap.  One place that stands out for me as a place where that might happen is during the Doctor's "death" by poison in 6x10 - I don't believe it was just the Doctor being eccentric as the explanation for him turning up in the same top-hat-and-tails outfit as he wore back when he rebooted the universe that time....

On top of that, we've got the whole of the next episode. I saw pterodactyls amongst other things; who knows what the hell is going to go on there.  However much that clock might be tick-tocking down, he's not going to go straight there with his envelopes and stetson, we've got a bit more to come yet.  Lastly, I'm not even entirely convinced that the guy who claimed to be 1103 was the actual Doctor.  Just saying....

So, the metal eyepatches then.  We know that that's all about now - they are to let the wearer see the Silence (or whatever they are called) without immediately forgetting.  We see one on Kevorkian who is clearly able to recall them in the scene with River at the end of 6x11, we've seen one without explanation on River in several previews, and finally, in the prequel to next week's episode we see two soldiers, both wearing metal eyepatches, and both interacting with "Silents".  I think it's a safe bet that's the deal with the eyepatches.

The Doctor's death "tomorrow"?  I think that Kevorkian was very smug when she told the Doctor how she had fooled him not just once, but twice. The Doctor is going to have an even better trick up his sleeve when he fools not just Kevorkian, but the whole of recorded history into believing he died - using the same trick.

Who knows what the natural lifespan of a flesh avatar stabilised by the TARDIS might be.  I'm puzzled by the regeneration (and mid-regeneration death) though, if that really is the big "twist".

I did not think of that. Of course he could be lying and that makes perfect sense. That explains everything and now I am convinced we didn't jump 195 years into the Doctor's future.

True, that makes sense as well, but it feels very much like a made-for-TV diversion. In any war, having your most valuable asset (half-Timelord child) lose all but one of her regenerations in a distraction seems like a very flawed plan. It's not like they had her do it to win the Doctor's confidence to let her be around and kill him when his back is turned. After that the Doctor might trust River, but River didn't hang around, she went off and studied, became an archaeologist. And she got into that suit also without the Doctor's knowledge, so gaining the Doctor's confidence seems pointless, because they could have just as easily put evil (young) River into the suit and it wouldn't have made a difference.

(Now I will admit that the way I see the finale unfolding, the Doctor will find out that it's River in the suit and that will be the reason why he'll allow her to kill him, as a way of saving her. So it being the new, good River does make sense.)

Again, agree with you there, it makes sense, but the mystery of who was in the suit seemed so central at the beginning of the season and the show usually isn't that straightforward with its hints. We were explicitly told in The Impossible Astronaut that it was a little girl in the suit and then in Day of the Moon and A Good Man Goes to War we learned the girl was young River, so the only mystery remaining was whether or not it was River in suit as well when the suit kills the Doctor. And "yes, it is grown-up River" isn't an answer to a mystery, more like a confirmation of known facts and feels ... hollow.

I liked that too and it might possibly the end of their story - if you remember we saw them together and possibly happy in The Hungry Earth in 2020 waving to the Doctor and themselves from a far-off ledge - but I don't think so. If it wasn't clear enough before Closing Time said it explicitly that one of the themes of the season is how the Doctor needs companions and can't do what he does alone. So I expect Amy and Rory will be back next season and I would be very surprised if that wasn't the case. (Does anyone know if Karen Gillian and Arthur Darvill signed contracts for next year?) Also Rory in my eyes is one of the best developed companions since forever and would hate to not have him around next season. The same goes for Amy's off-the-scale hotness, but that goes without saying

Oooh, good catch. I didn't not make that connection. That might be something worth remembering.

Yeah, maybe. It would fit with the "flesh" episodes and Amy's reveal, but there still is the beginning regeneration during which the Doctor gets killed. Flesh when killed becomes liquid and falls apart. But the TARDIS could have faked that. After all the Doctor in America greets Amy and Rory on a car, with no TARDIS in sight. We don't know where he stashed it. We always assumes since he knew he went to his death he made sure no one would find the TARDIS and misuse it after he's gone, but now he might be using TARDIS to play tricks on the Silents (which were at the lake, because Amy saw them on the ridge) and eye-patch lady.

Nice, again I did not make that connection, but the explanation is great. I also liked eye-patch lady's line about "they are your owners." Creepy.

"We're on the side of the demons, Chief. We're evil men in the gardens of paradise, sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go."
-- Colonel Tigh

As for my comment about Lets Kill Hitler I was kind of wavering as I typed it, I know there as to be something up with that episode that were missing since it made no sense at the time, the guess at it being a diversion isn't something I believe fully, just trying to figure out what were missing from that episode...since there's got to be something right?

As for the age thing I did forget he had a diary and made reverence to being all caught up with River...but my guess to that is he took the book from the Library were River 'died'. Him really being caught up or at least that caught up would be kind of strange and make that storyline feel extremely rushed making LKH feel slow in comparison.

As for Jimmy the Fish, true, they were comparing diaries, but the Doctor's answer to River's questions have been kind of non-committal and vague.  "Jim the Fish? He's fine ... still building his dam," is not the clearest of answers and definitely something the Doctor could have guessed from the context.

The other thing is, if River was in the astronaut suit and killed the Doctor, why wasn't she more distressed before the Doctor was killed at the lake in The Impossible Astronaut? She was as surprised as anyone when the astronaut appeared and killed the Doctor. You could argue that the Silents wiped her memory again, the way the eye-patch woman seemed to imply at the end of Closing Time, but then River has always been saying that she "killed the best man she ever knew" and we all assume she meant the Doctor (and was in prison for it).

River also broke out of prison at the beginning of The Impossible Astronaut to attend the meet-up in Utah so you can't argue that in her timeline she first saw the Doctor die in Utah, was then abducted by the Silents and put in the suit (as seen at the end of Closing Time), killed the Doctor, and then went to prison where all her future meetings with the Doctor (in his past, the ones we've seen already) started. In addition, the ending of Closing Time made it look like she was abducted after she finished getting a PhD in archaeology, which happened right after she turned good in Let's Kill Hitler, i.e. after she regenerated from Mels to River.

As for the diary I thought we've seen the genesis of River's diary at least in Let's Kill Hitler, I think. Didn't the Doctor give River or leave her with an empty blue book? But it is true we have not seen the Doctor write in his diary yet, unless it happens off camera which is unlikely ...

The trouble with a time war is that the causalities are very hard to follow. And while I think the Moff doing a great job so far I would really like to read a good sci-fi novel that would intelligently describe the intricacies of a time war in detail ...

"We're on the side of the demons, Chief. We're evil men in the gardens of paradise, sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go."
-- Colonel Tigh

My take on this is a combination of Silent-memory wipe and my overall theory for the Doctor's death.  If the entire universe - all of recorded history - is convinced that the Doctor died on a particular date and that is an unchangeable, fixed point in time, is it really that much of a stretch for River to rank among the convinced, even if she can't actually remember it herself?