The Doctor's Case:
- A Good Quotation:
- "You graffitied the oldest cliff-face in the universe." / "You wouldn't answer your phone."
- "What's it short for? Roranicus?"
- "Hi, honey. I'm home." / "And what sort of time do you call this?"
- "I'm River Song. Check your records again."
- "Where's the Dalek?" / "It died."
- "Not to you?" / "He doesn't really know me yet. Now he never will."
- We've seen the Eleventh Doctor foster a friendship with a little Scottish girl. We've seen him come to the rescue of Dr River Song and begin peace talks with Silurians and move in with Craig Owens. Now we get to see him take on something grander and potentially universe-ending and Matt Smith does a very good job as usual. He seemed to struggle a little early in the series, but by this point he's definitely the Doctor. The speech at Stonehenge is wonderfully delivered (even if I can't help but wonder why he's not shot to smithereens - they won't shoot him but will lock him up and leave him unguarded?).
- Dr Song isn't as interesting as she was in her previous appearances, but this episode doesn't focus very much on her so this is understandable. After showing the painting to the Doctor, she's just one of his companions who happens to be able to fly the TARDIS (somewhat like Nyssa in that regard), which isn't necessarily a bad thing - we don't need to spend every one of her appearances wondering who she is. There's no hint of the smugness that would come to overtake her character and which was visible to a much smaller degree in her first two stories. Her escape from the Stormcage is a good scene and the stick-figure being held at gunpoint is funny.
- Seeking to contend with the extraordinary opening of The Time of Angels, we get a teaser that sprawls space and time. It's nice to see people from across this series (Liz Ten, Churchill and that robot scientist guy, Vincent, River) and have all these disparate worlds and stories connect in a way. It doesn't feel like it but it's seven minutes long, teasing you with what the painting is.
- It's not quite as effective as Sarah crying over the imminent death of her adoptive son in The Stolen Earth, but the reactions of the Doctor, River and Amy to the threat of the Daleks gives the thought of them makes them seem so scary that you almost forget their neutering only earlier this series in Victory of the Daleks. The presence of the Daleks should never garner a reaction any less terrified than River's.
- Amy shows fear and sorrow and amiability and you might almost forget the smug and unknowable cheat that we travelled with for most of this series. Rory is back, as a Roman, and the scenes between the couple, as Rory struggles to make Amy remember him and then Amy tries to stop him from going Auton, are probably the best scenes of the two of them together. Unless seconded by Amy's Choice. Rory shooting her is tragic. The Big Bang is her best episode since Amy's Choice. She really was very good in this one, as a companion and in the scene where she remembers the Doctor at her reception.
- River in an exploding TARDIS; Amy's been shot; Rory's an Auton; the Doctor's been sealed in the Pandorica by the unholiest of alliances. What a way to end an episode. This is surely one of the best Doctor Who cliff-hangers.
The Valeyard's Case:
- A Bad Quotation:
- "I hate good wizards in fairy-tales. They always turn out to be him."
- "She is to me!"
- "You absolutely definitely may kiss the bride."
- "We haven't even had a snog in the shrubbery yet."
- As can be seen in the first of the bad quotations, Moffat indulges in a little mythologising of the Doctor. It's something Russell T. Davies was very guilty of himself and it's always a bad thing. Can't he just be a madman with a box?
- The Doctor calls in the Romans to fight the Alliance. Putting those lives in danger, risking damage to the timeline with their deaths, is a strange choice for the Doctor to make, not to mention their lack of effectiveness against a million starships.
- The Cyberman beneath Stonehenge serves a purpose but doesn't make for a particularly gripping scene. Perhaps I've just been disillusioned with the Cybermen.
- Did anyone else guess that the Pandorica was the Doctor's prison? When he said about the prisoner dropping from the sky and messing up your world it seemed obvious.
- Up until the final five minutes, this was a great showing for Amy, then she goes and delivers the last two quotations above. Thanks for reminding us of the terrible life choices of Amy Pond on the night before her wedding. I was in danger of liking her.
- The Big Bang, whilst not hugely difficult to understand, is needlessly over-complicated with Moffat's trademark timey-wimeyness.
- The "1,894 years later" wasn't at all necessary. The viewers are surely clever enough to work this out the moment we hear little Amelia's voice.
- We met Jackie Tyler in Rose's first episode; Francine and the other Joneses in Martha's first episode; and Sylvia and Geoffrey Noble in Donna's. It's taken this long to finally meet Amy's aunt Sharon. Amy's lack of a family has retroactively become a plot point - there was no hint of anything being wrong with Amy's family life until the Doctor mentioned the size of the house in the previous episode - but the lack of a family to teach us more about her as a person has made her more difficult to warm to than her predecessors.
- What luck that Amelia touched the Pandorica! Exactly what was the Doctor going to do if she hadn't? Lured her there a second time?
- There couldn't have been a less satisfying way to deal with the Doctor's predicament at the end of The Pandorica Opens. After all the drama, the Doctor is released with the flick of a screwdriver given to Rory by... his freed future-self. No. It makes no sense.
The Pandorica is Opening: The Pandorica was created by the Alliance from a snapshot of Amy's memories. It's a prison based on Pandora's box, built to contain the Doctor so that he can't fly the TARDIS, meaning that it will never blow up and cause the cracks in time. However, the Alliance was apparently unaware that Dr Song can fly the TARDIS as well and it's actually her who's flying it when it explodes.
The Universe is Cracked, Silence will Fall: The TARDIS was remotely controlled and blown up with River inside it in an attempted assassination of the Doctor, as it was assumed that he would be flying it. The Silence is still out there. The Doctor wonders why they drew the TARDIS to the date of the Williams-Pond wedding and why they blew it up.
I'll Explain Later:
- The Doctor knew about this cliff-face but is only now going to look at it? Coincidentally whilst he's travelling with the mother of the woman who wrote the message? Whilst in this incarnation? After he's met Vincent? Seems awfully lucky.
- How did the Alliance form? Daleks were willing to team up with Terileptils and Sontarans and Slitheen? The Cybermen were willing to team up with Draconians and Drahviins and Zygons? It shows how dangerous the threat of the TARDIS exploding is to all of existence, but it seems something that even Mance Rayder might struggle with organising.
- River's met the Daleks before? Why haven't Big Finish shown us her first encounter with them yet? Get on it.
- When River begs the Doctor to run, he asks where he could run to. Doesn't she have a vortex manipulator that could take them anywhere and anywhen?
- River identifies some ships as Slitheen. Shouldn't she have said Raxacoricofallapatorian?
- Rory is a Roman because he was taken from a snapshot of Amy's memories on the day of her wedding, but Rory ceased to exist and Amy doesn't remember him so how is this possible and how is there a photograph of him at Amy's?
- Don't the Cybermen chop people up before dumping their brains in a metal suit? How come there's a whole skull inside the Cyberman's head? Was Yvonne Hartman still blonde and beautiful when she took down her cyber-comrades for Queen and country?
- How did the Alliance know that the TARDIS was what caused the cracks in time?
- How did River know to give Amy her diary? She must have forgotten the Doctor as everyone else had. How can she even exist given that the Doctor's existence was the reason that she was born? How does her diary exist? The timey-wimeyness doesn't make much sense.
- If the universe has been restored, does that mean Amy and Rory remember the Daleks now? If so, why doesn't Bill Potts?
The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Pandorica Opens has a fantastic opening sequence and a very good ending and is undoubtedly the better episode of the two. Between these two points is a decent-enough episode, even if it isn't thrill-a-minute. There's certainly some empty space that could have used filling in order to make this a great episode. In The Big Bang, some questions are answered, some questions aren't. All in all, this second half wasn't great, being unnecessarily complicated by vortex manipulators and cracks in time and rules that don't make the least bit of sense. Amy, River and Rory were all decent, as was the Doctor, but this episode was just a bit too messy when its actual story could have been so much more streamlined. In conclusion, this two-parter altogether deserves a D.
Doctor Who (Series 5)
The Lodger | The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang | A Christmas Carol
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