The On-Screen Advent Calendar 2012: Day Twenty-Two

DOCTOR WHO: THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR SO FAR
On a number of the remaining days of our Advent Calendar, we'll be retelling the adventures of the Eleventh Doctor so far in Doctor Who. Through his dealings with the cracks of time in Series Five to the death of the Doctor arc in Series Six and indeed the fall of the Ponds, we'll recap all of the major events in the new Time Lord's life up until The Snowmen. Without further ado, then, let's get going...
SERIES SIX

While Amy and Rory went on their honeymoon, the Doctor dealt with a Scrooge-like mister who threatened to send the Ponds to their deaths on a cruise ship. Travelling on, the Time Lord recruited Amy, Rory and River to meet him in 21^st Century America for a secret mission, only for his companions to see him gunned down by an Impossible Astronaut at Lake Silencio in Utah. It became apparent when another Doctor appeared to them that the man they had seen die was two-hundred years older than the current incarnation, yet how could the Ponds and River prevent this seemingly inevitable fate?

In 1960s USA, the time team encountered the agents of the Silence, a race who had manipulated the Doctor’s death. Thankfully, they managed to stop the aliens taking over humankind, but not before the Silence created the fabled suit of the Impossible Astronaut and a strange girl showed the ability to regenerate on the streets of New York. From here, Amy and Rory travelled on the high seas and beyond the universe with the younger Doctor, all the while knowing the fate that awaited him. Things came to a head when it was revealed that Amy was in fact a Flesh clone of her true self, with the real Amy pregnant in the Silence’s fortress of Demon’s Run. The Doctor and Rory raced to save her, recruiting Vastra, Jenny, Strax and Dorium Maldovar to help, but ultimately they failed to prevent the Silence escaping with her baby. Just who was that baby? At this point, River Song appeared and revealed that she was Melody Pond, giving a positive sign that things would turn out alright.

The Time Lord searched for Melody for three months, yet it took a journey back to Nazi Germany with the Ponds and their friend ‘Mels’ to discover that the child had grown up in Leadworth with her parents unwittingly bringing her up. The Doctor left River (who had sacrificed all of her regenerations to save her love from the Silence) at a space academy to train as an archaeologist, hoping this would keep her safe from the Silence. After adventures involving living dolls, an older Amy Pond and a hotel-trapped Minotaur, the Ponds decided life in the TARDIS was now too dangerous for them, leaving the Doctor to his fate. On a last stop before his death, the Doctor met Craig and the Cybermen once again, only for the Silence to work in parallel to capture River and place her in the Impossible Astronaut suit to kill her lover at Lake Silencio. Ultimately, it turned out that the Doctor had used a robotic suit to fake his death, though, and he decided to retreat back into the shadows.

The adventure was by no means over, though: deep below the surface, Dorium warned the Time Lord that the Silence wanted to stop him reaching the Fields Of Trenzalore, as there he would have to answer a question that could end everything…Doctor Who?