The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang
review

Holistic Review: Undeniably exciting, but the script is an odd mixture of "underexplained" and "overly complicated", with a huge reset button at the end.

This really wasn't quite what I expected from Steven Moffat. Yet again, he seems to want to mimic RTD by assuming that "bigger is better" when it comes to the season finale. For two seasons in a row now, we have a threat to the entire multiverse, although in this case, the threat is less comprehensible than last year's, but also more logical, which is weird. (Although this year, amazingly, a threat to the multiverse is not used as an excuse to bring Rose back, or even to mention her.) The script, too, feels in some ways a little closer to RTD's freewheeling style. Lots of stuff happens just because it looks cool and the plot needs it to happen; but, in contrast, some parts are so thought-out that they become confusingly detailed, such that you assume it all makes sense even if you can't quite puzzle it out. And there's not really a ton of outstanding dialogue. So, overall, while it's exciting on first viewing, I don't really think that the story holds up.

I feel the need to start off with the "big questions", the things that really didn't make sense to me.

  1. The way that River attracts the Doctor's attention flies by in such a whoosh that I just want to lay it out. Apparently Stonehenge is transmitting a message to all points in space and time that the Pandorica is opening, and Vincent, being sensitive to such things, incorporates the date and location into his final painting. After seeing Vincent's message and getting her vortex manipulator in the Maldovarium, River immediately travels back to the dawn of time and defaces the diamond cliff on Planet One with temporal-spatial coordinates that correspond to the ones in Vincent's painting. Then, she heads off to those coordinates herself, to await the Doctor's eventual arrival. (Presumably she doesn't particularly care which incarnation turns up, but she knows that the Doctor will eventually get curious to solve her little mystery.) This is all just about believable except for two points. One: we're told that no-one has ever been able to translate the writing, so are we meant to believe that River is writing in some language that only she and the TARDIS know? Two: If information about the Pandorica is being transmitted to all points in space and time, then why has the TARDIS never intercepted it, why indeed is the Doctor the last to know, why are baddies just now bringing it up to him (as if they know that it's in his personal near-future), and why is it regarded as a legend? It would have been reasonable for River and the baddies to assume that he would pick up the Pandorica's message from the TARDIS and come on his own, without having to bother with messages on cliffs and traps involving Romans.

  2. Upon arriving in Roman England, how does the Doctor realize that Stonehenge is the location of the Pandorica? He has no concrete reason other than "they probably marked its location with something big" and Stonehenge was the obvious answer. Nor do we have any particular rationale behind why he decides that the entrance is being covered by the altar stone. It's utter guesswork, yet of course he turns out to be exactly right on both counts.

  3. Who built the Pandorica, and when? The strong implication is that this Dalek alliance invaded Celtic England, built the Pandorica underground, left a Cyberman on guard (where it was, for some reason, hacked to bits by the natives), and then convinced the locals to build Stonehenge on the site. I could believe the first two parts, but I'm confused by the presence of the Cyber-guard (particularly since it seems determined to kill the Doctor, rather than simply capturing him until the alliance arrives) and why the natives would have attacked it if it were sealed underground (or if the other Dalek and Cyber-ships were still in the vicinity), and I'd really like to see the scene in which the Daleks convinced the Celts that this would be a great location for a stone circle. And why does the Dalek alliance build and bury the Pandorica thousands of years before they actually plan to lure the Doctor to it?

  4. What causes the Pandorica to open? Is it on a timer, and the message being broadcast from Stonehenge is a countdown? Or is it a result of the Doctor's presence? And, either way, what then causes it to open when Amelia touches it in the future? And why does River think that the Pandorica will take "hours" to open, when it later opens for Amelia in a matter of seconds?

  5. What's causing the stones to transmit this warning that the Pandorica is opening? Is it the Pandorica itself? If so, then why can't the Pandorica also transmit its own restoration field across all of space and time, without needing to take advantage of the exploding TARDIS? Or does it require the stones to beam the signal for it? If so, what makes the stones special? Aren't they just ordinary Earth stones? And why does River instantly assume that other people are going to pick up this "warning" and want to come find the Pandorica? Wouldn't they want to stay away, if the warning is doing its job properly?

  6. Leaving aside the fact that we don't find out about Amy's predilection for the Roman invasion of Britain and Pandora's Box until the season finale, how did the Daleks plan to lure the Doctor there? Apparently they thought that creating a scenario from Amy's memories would be the perfect trap (a legend and some fake Romans by Stonehenge? Really?), but then why go to all the trouble of creating Auton duplicates of Romans? The Pandorica is intriguing, and would have lured the Doctor perfectly well all by itself. The Romans don't really add anything to this trap. Their only purpose, really, is to hold the Doctor there until the alliance arrives, but the duplicates aren't activated until just before the Pandorica opens, at which point the alliance is already hovering in the skies over Stonehenge, so it's not like they really take the Doctor by surprise, nor are they fulfilling a function that couldn't have been taken care of perfectly well by a couple of Sontarans beaming down from their ship. Besides, it's the presence of the faux-Romans that clues the Doctor into the trap; without them, he would have been taken completely unawares.

  7. Despite the fact that there are presumably still Cybermen native to our universe, and all of the alternate-universe Cybermen should have been destroyed in Doomsday (with some stragglers wiped out in The Next Doctor), now there are apparently enough alt-Cybermen in our universe that they have ships? And they've been building up an empire for thousands of years? Where did this come from?!

  8. When the Doctor foolhardily announces that he has "no plan, no backup, no weapons", what on earth would stop them all from beaming down and killing him right there? Or launching a missile at him from space? (There's no reason why they should care that Stonehenge is an important historical monument, not to be blown up!) For that matter, that would have solved their problem anyway: no need for the Pandorica! And since they don't want the Pandorica for themselves, as the Doctor mistakenly believes, then what's stopping them from attacking him right there and then? Partly as a result of this unlikely turn of events, the Doctor's line "Let somebody else try first!" comes across as hokey rather than thrilling.

  9. A biggie. According to tradition — by which I mean, 1972's The Stone Tape and its heavy influence on the theory of residual hauntings — buildings may absorb and replay powerful emotional events. So, if the Nestenes wanted to scan Amy's room, they might be able to copy the night she met the Doctor, or the time she stubbed her toe on the dresser. The idea that the building actually records the entire memories and personality of the people who inhabit it is completely new, and much more difficult to believe. How much time do you have to spend in a building for it to acquire your entire set of memories? Does Under the Bridge Spicy Crab Restaurant in Hong Kong now possess my lifetime memories, after one visit? And it gets even more problematic. I can just about suspend my disbelief enough to accept that Amy's room would possess Amy's memories and personality. However, Rory had not been in Amy's room for quite some time before his death in 2020, so how did the Nestenes get a copy of his memories up to and including his death? That points very strongly to there being some other force at work besides the Nestenes and a stone tape, and we never get any hint as to what it might be. I suppose maybe they could have acquired Rory's soul if their scan encompassed the crack in Amy's wall, but I find it unlikely that you could recover the memories, personality and soul of someone who had been erased from time simply by scanning one of these cracks.

  10. What makes them think that locking up the Doctor will save the multiverse? We're given no concrete evidence for this theory, merely a mention of some future predictions that the Daleks and Cybermen apparently made, but we have no idea where they got their data.

  11. Why does an exploding TARDIS cause a "total event collapse" which destroys the multiverse? I find it hard to swallow the idea that the TARDIS is that powerful. Besides, you can't tell me that during the entire Time War, not one other TARDIS exploded.

  12. I have major issues with the idea that anything that can be remembered can be brought back, but only if the person doing the remembering is Amy Pond. It makes this story veer a little too close to Last of the Time Lords territory, because this feels like Tinkerbell gobbledegook again. Besides, if the TARDIS repairs the cracks in the universe, which seems to put all of history right again, wouldn't that automatically bring back Amy's parents without her having to remember them and Rory? And if that's not the case, then what about everything else the cracks ate that won't be remembered by a girl with the time vortex in her veins? Is it just gone forever? Plus, Rory died before he was absorbed by the crack, so how is it that Amy's memories bring back an alive-and-well Rory rather than a corpse? Unless closing the cracks also undid all their adventures? That's certainly the implication, since it's the only way that Rory could be alive again. And once the Doctor's timeline is restored, did Amy and Rory actually have all those adventures with him? Or do they just remember those adventures, as if a second set of memories has been squished into their heads?

  13. Sealing the Doctor in the Void and removing him from time would have massive repercussions. Look how different the Earth was in Turn Left, and that one only undid two seasons of David Tennant! Without the Doctor around at all, the Earth should probably be long since destroyed or enslaved, or both. Not exactly happy circumstances for a wedding. And that's without even getting into the consequences for all the other planets the Doctor visited — or, for that matter, the Time War! (It's possible that without the Doctor, there wouldn't have been a Time War in the first place, but that's unlikely; without the Doctor, the Daleks would have accelerated their development and probably threatened Gallifrey even without being provoked by a renegade do-gooder Time Lord.) So, when Amy does manage to remember him and bring him back, which presumably restores his entire timeline (somehow), shouldn't that also cause a massive reality shift? The scene is played in a very jolly "oh look, the Doctor's back, calloo callay!" sort of way, as if the Doctor had only been gone since the conclusion of this episode rather than having been written out of Time altogether, which trivializes the whole thing.

That's kind of a lot of major stumbling blocks, don'tcha think? The overwhelming implication is that Moffat was taking some narrative shortcuts and hoping that the episodes would be so exciting that we wouldn't think about them very hard, which again sounds a lot like another executive producer I could name.

Turning to the positive side for a bit, Matt Smith continues to excel as the Doctor. Let's all make note of the fact that although he did not take a break for episode 11, he's still fully present in episodes 12 and 13; that's the first time this has happened since Eccleston. It tickles me that the eleventh Doctor is really demonstrating his sense of style; specifically, his trend-bucking adoration of fashion accessories that are generally considered uncool. To his bowtie, he now adds a fez ("Fezes are cool."), and I have to say that I kinda like it! (Not that I can blame Amy and River for wanting to disintegrate it.) I don't get, though, why the Doctor's reaction to Rory turning up alive again is underwhelmed. If it had been Amy who died and then turned up again, he'd have been whooping and hollering and twirling her around. Is he really that un-fond of Rory? Or is it just unacceptable for the Doctor to show similar affection for his male companions? But good on him for halting Amy's kiss in its tracks this time! Matt Smith's best delivery: the sweetly-amused "Just your basic knockout drops. Get some fresh air, you'll be fine." Other great lines include "Dead? Yes, yes, of course he's dead.", "It's not a light, it's a restoration field, but never mind.", "I hate repeats.", and his adorable and hilariously spastic dancing with the kids. I also love Matt Smith's smile, particularly during the scene in which he has a bedside chat with a sleeping Amelia.

Amy Pond. Thirteen episodes in and I should feel like I know you. One would hope that I would look forward to seeing her onscreen. But I still feel, perhaps irrationally, that I know next to nothing about her and I don't understand how she thinks. True, I get her a little more now than I did at the start; she's not quite as crazy-scary and unpredictable as she appeared to be in The Eleventh Hour. But at this point I have to resign myself to the fact that unless they give her character a major overhaul, I'm just not going to warm to her significantly. At times it looked like a major overhaul of Amy was exactly what we were going to get in this story. Every time the Doctor said that Amy was "not an ordinary girl" or mentioned that her life "doesn't make any sense", my spirits rose. I dared to hope that maybe there was a really good reason why I didn't get Amy; maybe her character deficiencies were planned and scripted, and we'd soon find out just how the crack in her wall had messed with her head. (Not that I had any idea what kind of excuse they could craft that would justify Amy's oddities.) But no, it turns out that the crack just swallowed up her parents and some of her memories, and gave her the ability to bring back things that the crack had erased. Aside from some peculiar memory gaps, she's still the same old Amy. She's even rude to Rory ("Well, shut up then!") when he attempts to be comforting, and even after she's married Rory (yet before their honeymoon night!), she still wants to drag the Doctor into the bushes for a snog at the very least. You will be unsurprised to hear that the cliffhanger had the opposite effect on me that Moffat was intending. Gillan gives a couple of weird line deliveries ("Pandora's Box, with all the worst things in the world in it." and "Raggedy Man, I remember you, and you are late for my wedding!", in which she sounds like a Pentecostal preacher) but also some really fun ones ("What, like you did?!"). I continue to enjoy her appealing shades of nail polish. But, looking back over the season, I have to admit to myself, as I suspected I would: who was I trying to kid? She was a train wreck, and I knew it all along.

I was interested to note that in Amy's first appearance in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip (Supernature, issues 421 — 423, May — July 2010), Jonathan Morris (who I revere) appeared to have the same difficulty getting a handle on her character that I have: she's confined to a hospital bed with the plague throughout part two, and the entirety of her dialogue in the first two parts is:

Much of this is extremely generic, and few of the lines scream "Amy Pond", although to be honest I think few lines would. But I'm certainly not mentioning this as a criticism of Morris; the thing that made me snort was a letter in DWM issue 423, published simultaneously with part 3 of Supernature, in which Nathan Mullins declared that "Jonathan Morris' script captures [the Doctor and Amy] both so well." Yes, in that Amy has few uniquely-identifiable character traits, I guess it does.

I am, however, pleased that I at least managed to predict one element of the season finale: Rory's return! I have no idea how he's back, but I will happily sweep that under the rug. Whatever technobabble they have to whip up, and whatever reset buttons they have to press, fine, as long as Rory is no longer dead. (Any chance the cracks in time sucked the Doctor's memories out of Donna too? Hmm? — what's that you say? Broken record much? Fine, fine...) My joy is boundless! It's thrilling to see him back and he's just as likeable as ever, particularly his selflessness in standing guard outside the Pandorica for 2,000 years to protect Amy (although, given how many layers of protection are in the Pandorica itself, I doubt she needed it). I actually became really fond of Auton-Rory, with his awesome hand-weapon and his ability to hear things that even the Doctor can't. If it hadn't been for his inability to heal, I think it would've been really fun to see Auton-Rory as a companion. (And maybe it wouldn't have mattered, given that he somehow managed to avoid getting even a scratch over 2,000 years — even while single-handedly dragging the Pandorica out of a burning building during an air raid! Clearly he has an excellent danger-avoiding sense, or an inordinate amount of luck.) Even though I may have trouble swallowing the "logic" behind the reason why, I'm really glad that he didn't turn out to be just an Auton. At the end of the story, even Amy re-boarding the TARDIS couldn't dampen my squeal of glee as Rory joined the Doctor for further adventures. Hopefully he's locked in for all of season six; this gives me something to look forward to. Plus, a married couple onboard the TARDIS is totally new! I love Williams' hurt "Great..." when Amy tells him that she's really sad at their wedding reception.

Practically a third companion in the story is River Song, who continues to intrigue and delight. I feel sure that I ought to be finding her annoying, but Alex Kingston manages to play her exactly the right side of smug. She's a really fun blend of the first Romana and Bernice Summerfield, and I love her confidence and her cunning and her unashamed (but not overdone) sensuality, not to mention the way she takes everything that happens to her in stride. Her best moments include her sneakily dosing the blue dude's wine with microexplosives, and her confrontation with the Dalek. The mystery of River is deepening, as are the hints that she's just a bit amoral, and I like it. And Kingston looks awesome in her dark Cleopatra wig. For me, Alex Kingston is one of the big highlights of this story, and I'm pleased to hear that we'll be running into her again soon.

I'm also delighted to see Caitlin Blackwood back, given that she was one of the highlights of the season opener. She's just as great here, lippy and temperamental and brave and adventurous. It actually makes me wonder what it would be like if the Doctor had a nine-year-old companion for a change. Again, she and Matt Smith have a great rapport; I particularly love the scene in which he jams the fez on her head, and she shoves it right back at him. We finally get to meet the rest of Amy's family: the mysterious aunt Sharon (Susan Vidler) as well as her mum and dad, Tabetha and Augustus (Karen Westwood and Halcro Johnston). Westwood makes the most immediately positive impression as the lighthearted and irreverent Tabetha ("Feel free to tip it out of the window if it's an atrocity."). I wonder what she thinks of Amy being a kissogram? (Come to that, how did — or does! — Rory feel about it after they started dating?) It's also cool that we get cameos from Vincent, Churchill, Bracewell and Liz 10, even if it is a bit strange that Vincent's painting only passes down through the hands of people we've met this season.

We're treated to four main monsters in this story: Daleks, Nestenes, Cybermen and Sontarans. (I was also delighted by the name-checking of the Drahvins, Zygons and Chelonians, although bummed that we never even got a glimpse of one. I mean, really, in all that mishmash of aliens, how hard would it have been to whip one Drahvin up? All you need is a beehive and some eyebrow bindi!) The Sontarans get the least to do, but they're useful as muscle. The Nestenes sadly don't make an appearance themselves, but it's fun to see the Autons return, particularly since Rory gets to be the most prominent Auton we've ever had in the series. And the Daleks, thankfully, make a minimal appearance, meaning that the finale isn't as Dalek-centered as I had worried it might be. (For a moment, thanks to the redesigned grille section, I actually thought that the Dalek next to the Sontaran was a Chumbley. Obviously still having Galaxy 4 pangs.) The stone Dalek, too, is a neat concept, well-executed.

Then, of course, there's the whole thing with the Cyber-sentry, which is a massive diversion in the middle of the story, just one whopping great piece of filler. Still, despite my reservations, it's a pretty tense scene — particularly as the Cyber-head pursues and attaches itself to Amy — with great sound effects. It also makes the Cybermen scarier than they have been recently — not only can their body parts move independently of one another, and are equipped with tranquillizing flechettes, but the Cybermen are back to their old "converting entire humans" tricks (or, at least, their heads) rather than brains-only.

I can't say that director Toby Haynes blew me away, but I did like the wipe as Sharon and Amelia go to the museum. Murray Gold gets some good musical moments, notably the "something is creepy" music as River investigates the mystery of Amy's life, the music as the Autons advance, and the music as Amy's tear falls onto River's diary.

As sets go, I find the Underhenge to be a bit of a let-down. I suppose you can't ask for too much when it's only buried just beneath Stonehenge, but for some reason the flimsy-looking wooden door leading to one somewhat-spacious underground chamber feels like a budgetary constriction. (Although I know I really shouldn't complain about those!) Above-ground, the filming at Stonehenge is great. I'm amazed they were allowed to film on-site and even touch the stones; that's pretty cool to see! I could wish for better use of the stone circle (cf. The Stones of Blood), but I'm sure their filming time was pretty limited, so I'm content with what we got.

Great effects include the establishing shot of the Maldovarium (whatever it is!), the landscape of Planet One (giant mushrooms, whee!), the dozens of ships in the sky over Stonehenge, the cables in the Cyber-head whipping around and attacking Amy, the Pandorica glowing green as it unlocks, the Pandorica flying toward the exploding TARDIS, and the Big Bang 2. Less-successful effects include the cliff of pure diamond on Planet One (there are some yellowish stones around the cliff, but the cliff face itself is plain old rock) and the "landing patterns" in the lawn (which look like spray-on stencils). I must also compliment the art department's creation of the artwork showing centurion-Rory dragging the Pandorica to safety, which is quite nice.

Sadly, Roman England feels like a very underused setting. This is probably because the majority of the action taking place there happens between the Doctor, Amy and River, who most of the time are in the Underhenge. The Romans themselves get very little to do, the exception being the great scene between River and the Commander in which she proves that she's not from their time. Otherwise, the Romans and their culture seem like little more than window dressing.

Minor points:

There are some flashes of greatness, but overall, The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang is a disappointment. The more I think about the story, and attempt to disentangle my confusion, the less I like it. It's not as insulting as the Last of the Time Lords three-parter, but there is no universe in which this is a great storyline, and it's not terribly satisfying as a culmination of the season arc. True, it's not meant to wrap up everything — and I actually like that — but there are great ways to wrap up a storyline while still leaving some questions dangling, and this is not one of them. Overall, series five has been a mixed bag, so my hope is that next year, Moffat feels comfortable enough to make his mark on the series as powerfully as Philip Hinchcliffe and John Nathan-Turner did. I really think that if he shakes off the lingering remnants of the Davies years and charts his own, completely original, course, we could have another golden age in the history of Doctor Who. It's just a shame that this first year feels like a slightly squandered opportunity.

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