The second half of the sixth season (episodes 8-13) will begin airing on August 27, which if you're keeping track of time like some sort of slave to the system is tomorrow. Who all has been watching this season?

It has been undeniably more story-arc-y and complex than your average Doctor Who season, even more so than the plot of season five, which itself was more complicated and interwoven than normal. These are the trademarks of head writer Stephen Moffat, who loves complicated plots and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey ... stuff.

I've heard that some people have been somewhat put off by this. What do you think?

Personally I love the more complicated, challenging plots. Whatever holes there might be in them, they are much more interesting and fun for me to watch and try to figure out. I highly enjoy Matt Smith as the Doctor, with his mad ways and his fast talk and his ability to do both quiet rage and madcap shenanigans with equal facility. I love both of the current companions as well.

Moffat has said that the second half of the season will contain answers. We'll learn what happened on that beach in the first episode, and we'll learn much more about the truth of River Song. He says that he's not interested in being Lost, and so he will provide answers at the same time as he is building new things for the future. No word, however, on whether or not the Silence and the exploding TARDIS mysteries will be wrapped up.

Moffat also says that because season six is so arc-heavy, season seven will be more focused on random adventure. Presumably he is building something up for season eight, which will take place during Doctor Who's 50th anniversary in 2013. I hope that Matt Smith will still be playing the Doctor then. Even if he chooses to leave after that, I'd like to see him get through all of Moffat's extended storyline.

Any theories about what's going to happen?

My personal theory, which appears to be widely shared on the internet, is that River will end up killing Rory somehow, and this is why she ends up staying willingly in a prison that she can escape at any time. Of course, if this happens, we know that the Doctor goes on to train and encourage a potentially younger River even knowing what she's done.

Another interesting thought is the idea that the word "doctor" means "warrior" in the language of that planet that gave River her name. Does that have something to do with why River is known as "Doctor Song"? Maybe it has nothing to do with knowledge or learning.

Was it River Song in the astronaut suit that shot the Doctor? I don't think that it was. At our current juncture that answer seems too obvious. But it's hard to say, and we don't have any other good candidates. If it's not River, then it could be someone unexpected, such as Amy or Rory, but I don't know why they would do it.

How will the Doctor avoid his fate? The Doctor who died specifically gathered Amy, Rory, and River to watch what happened, and invited his younger self so that they could do something, perhaps something to change his younger self's future. The Doctor now knows that he's going to die. Will he try to avoid that fate? We've seen already that the Doctor can indirectly alter his own past, but we have yet to see that type of action change the future. At the end of season five, a future Doctor helped Rory release the present Doctor, in a sort of time loop that had happened all along, but nothing in that loop was changed. In that same final episode, a future Doctor appeared before the present Doctor with fatal wounds and whispered something in his ear, but that didn't change the future.

Is the Doctor who died trying to change his future and alter his fate, hoping that his younger self can figure it out in time? Or was it somehow the ganger Doctor and not the real one? Could it even be the ganger Doctor since he appeared to begin regenerating? Can the ganger Doctor regenerate? It strikes me as unlikely, but not impossible.

Is River the eyepatch lady? Did she once belong to the same group, with the eyepatch as a status symbol? Was she raised to kill the Doctor? How did she end up in the astronaut suit with the Silence, if that's who the regenerating little girl was? What role will the Silence play? Why will Silence fall? What tried to blow up the TARDIS in season five? How are the Silence connected to the cracks in the universe that are now healed? How did other races, such as the vampire-fish-bugs, see "Silence and the end of all things" through the cracks? Why were the Silence trying to create a TARDIS? Who ate the last slice of pizza? Seriously, I was saving that.