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The Pandorica Opens & The Big Bang

Writer: Steven Moffat | Director: Toby Haynes

UK Broadcast Date: 19th June 2010 & 26th June 2010

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Synopsis

In Provence, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh is crying his heart out. He's just painted a terrible vision of the future – the explosion of the TARDIS. In 1941 Bracewell shows the painting, named "The Pandorica Opens", to Winston Churchill and asks him to deliver the warning to the Doctor.

Locked away in the Stormcage Containment Facility in the year 5145, River Song receives a phone call from Winston Churchill. She asks him to deliver his message quickly and makes her escape. With the aid of a vortex manipulator she retrieves the painting from the Royal Collection of Queen Elizabeth the tenth and heads to the co-ordinates shown on it.

The Doctor takes Amy to Planet One to read the diamond cliff bearing the first ever written words – "Hello Sweetie". Taking this as a message from River Song, the Doctor and Amy travel to the co-ordinates specified by River, who shows them the painting. Eager to uncover the mystery the three time travellers travel to Stonehenge where they find the mystical Pandorica – the box containing the most feared being in the universe. The trouble is that many of the Doctor's enemies have heard that that the Pandorica is opening and have travelled to ancient Britain too.

What is the being in the Pandorica, why do all the menaces in the universe want it and what will cause the TARDIS to explode?

"Silence will fall."

Memorable Quotes

Bracewell: You're not supposed to understand it, Prime Minister, you’re supposed to deliver it.

River: I hate good wizards in fairy tales, they always turn out to be him.

Rory: Well, I died and turned into a Roman. It's very distracting.

Doctor: Vortex manipulator, cheap and nasty time travel, very bad for you. I’m trying to give it up.

River: Right then, I have questions, but number one is this: what in the name of sanity have you got on your head?!

Review

Like all series endings thus far The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang was extravagant, busy with something big at stake - in this case creation itself. Since the threat to everything that has ever existed is the greatest threat one can ever pose, these grand series endings would appear to have run their course.

In terms of plot this is a story of two halves. The first episode creates builds up to the cliffhanger nicely and the events just before the story's cliff hanger are well presented. The unexpected re-appearance of Rory and the real reason why he was alive were both nice surprises. River Song was, as always, excellent – especially when she was given the task of bringing the Doctor to ancient Britain.

The problems arose in the concluding episode, The Big Bang. The cliff hanger was overcome within five minutes and all of the inescapable situations that the characters were in were easily overcome. Amy wasn't actually dead, but dying – and was revived by her younger self with just one touch; the future Doctor gave Rory the ability to open the Pandorica (easily, using the sonic screwdriver) and River Song was actually caught in a time loop.

The very fast turnaround of the Doctor's situation made no sense logically. The Doctor could never have escaped from the Pandorica in order to go back in time to hand Rory the sonic screwdriver without first having escaped from it. Linearly speaking, the Doctor would have had to avoid being imprisoned in the Pandorica in order to go back in time to provide Rory with the tool to free him – meaning that the Doctor was never imprisoned in the first place.

Secondly, the monsters were wasted. Apart from the re-emergence of a single Dalek after the cliffhanger, the many monsters that imprisoned the Doctor in the Pandorica do not make a re-appearance, so weren't really needed. With the exception of the Daleks, Cybermen and Auton duplicates, the only reason to include the other races was to create the "big" event.
My final gripe about The Big Bang was the eleventh Doctor's unnecessary farewell tour. The idea was to plant memories of him into Amy Pond's mind so that he'd reappear in time to avoid what would have been a terrible best man's speech, but I thought it was wasted screen time and added no emotion to the piece at all.

After all that negativity, I'm happy to say that Amy Pond's wardrobe extended to a pair of jeans for this story – hooray! Rory's return to, I hope, full-time companion duties is also much welcomed. Arthur Darvill was spectacular in this story and deserves to be included full-time.

Overall, I liked The Pandorica Opens and loathed The Big Bang. The Christmas episode sounds fun – I'm looking forward to it.

Doctor Who returns to our screens at Christmas.

Reviewer: Dan Ludlow