A Proper Introduction To The Silence Comes On The "Day Of The Moon!"

The Good: Good performances, Engaging plot progression, Special effects, Concept of the episode's resolution
The Bad: Insular plot with limited character development, Final scene
The Basics: "Day Of The Moon" resolves the Earth's occupation by The Silence in 1969 while leaving a lot for Amy Pond to do!


Doctor Who mysteries are some of the most erratic on television. The executive producers of Doctor Who have tried season-long arcs, but inevitably they have bottle episodes that are only semi-serialized. As a result, most Doctor Who mysteries are contained within an episode or two, with threads that connect to other episodes in a season. "Day Of The Moon" is a second part of a Doctor Who mystery and the irony of it is that it completely resolves one plotline - that of an alien invasion in 1969 - while completely leaving the mystery of the little girl from the prior episode unresolved.

It is impossible to discuss "Day Of The Moon" without some references as to where "The Impossible Astronaut" (reviewed here!) left off. After all, the entire mission in "Day Of The Moon" occurs after The Doctor has been killed and his Companions are reunited wth an earlier version of him. Just after revealing to The Doctor that she is pregnant, Amy Pond shot at the astronaut who appeared to be a little girl. "Day Of The Moon" involves tracking down the origins of the little girl and has The Doctor's team trying to learn about The Silence.

Three months after Amy shot at the Impossible Astronaut, Amy is running through Utah, away from Canton Delaware and his g-men. After Canton shoots her, he returns to Area 51 where The Doctor is being held prisoner. Delaware then hunts down River Song in New York City and then Rory at the Hoover Dam. The Doctor is being blocked into a prison that will keep out The Silence and once it is completed, Delaware reveals that he has saved The Doctor's companions, The TARDIS and they have all learned what they can about the occupying force of The Silence on the Earth.

After implanting a device in each of their hands, The Doctor tasks his Companions and Delaware with finding the little girl who was abducted to become the astronaut. Amy and Delaware visit a children's home where the manager believes it is not yet 1967 and he has no children in his charge. Amy finds a whole hive of the creatures that erase memory. After Amy is abducted, The Doctor, River and Rory begin to learn about The Silence and figure out what the purpose is of the space suit the little girl was in. Delaware gets a video of one of The Silence declaring that all humans should shoot them on sight, which inspires The Doctor to alter history and deputize humanity to turn humanity against the occupying force on Earth. After locating Amy Pond, The Doctor brings the TARDIS to rescue Amy from The Silence.

"Day Of The Moon" marks the first experience Amy Pond has with the apparent hallucination that comes up through the entire season. There is a woman with an eye patch who Amy briefly sees and hears and her appearance is instantly evocative of Rose's flashes throughout the fourth season of Doctor Who (reviewed here!). Moffat starts playing a season-long arc that Davies had done only two years prior on Doctor Who in "Day Of The Moon." The season-long arc for the sixth season of Doctor Who involves a disparity between Amy Pond being pregnant or not and the clues given in "Day Of The Moon" play off information that comes up later in the season.

River Song's arc in "Day Of The Moon" is intriguing. River continues to exhibit absolute trust in The Doctor and she works with Rory quite well. While some of that might simply be that Alex Kingston was not yet aware of the backstory connections between Rory and River, "Day Of The Moon" allows Rory to reach out to River and for her to actually lean upon him. The assignment The Doctor has River and the Companions on comes as Song is reeling in shock from The Doctor's death. River becomes a leader in "Day Of The Moon" and Kingston makes her into both a credible scientist and leader.

Amy Pond is a pretty classic "damsel in distress" in "Day Of The Moon" and Karen Gillan does the whole "see something terrifying and scream" thing fine. "Day Of The Moon" finally begins to add depth to the relationship between Rory and The Doctor in scenes after Amy is captured. Rory has been a supporting character who was so distant from The Doctor's attention that he initially seemed like a cheap re-casting of Micky and The Doctor knows virtually nothing about him. While Rory has been a champion for Amy, he and The Doctor have not actually bonded . . . until now.

The technological device that The Doctor suddenly produces in "Day Of The Moon" is cool and easy for viewers to invest in. What is far less believable is the technology being used in Area 51 to seal in The Doctor. "Day Of The Moon" did a poor job of illustrating how technologically advanced The Silence members were to make it credible that they would have the materials that Delaware could find to seal in The Doctor and his Companions. That said, the special effects and the make-up effects used the characterize The Silence are pretty incredible.

"Day Of The Moon" spends a lot of time examining the nature of The Silence and the mechanisms by which they controlled the mysterious little girl. Unfortunately, the episode comes to an abrupt end before the nature, identity and character of the little girl can be truly explored. The reason that is worth mentioning is that there is an incredibly unsatisfying resolution to "Day Of The Moon" from the fact that The Doctor explicitly mentions they can actually look into the little girl and why the Silence wanted her or they can just go off on some random adventures . . . and the little girl is shown six months later completely alone, so viewers know that The Doctor, Rory and Amy are headed off to do random things as opposed to follow up on the major loose end connecting the alien occupation of Earth to The Doctor's death.

But, a tremendously bad end does not stop "Day Of The Moon" from being unworth watching. "Day Of The Moon" effectively delivers on the promise of setting up a season-long mystery; it is not the episode's fault that it is abandoned in a ridiculous way at the end.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Sixth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with President Richard Nixon in alternate realities, be sure to visit my reviews of:
X-Men: Days Of Future Past
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
Watchmen
Forrest Gump

8/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Enter The Silence And "The Impossible Astronaut!"

The Good: Incredible new villain, Intriguing mystery, Decent character moments, Good performances all around
The Bad: Establishing so many characters that it does not use The Doctor overly well.
The Basics: "The Impossible Astronaut" begins the next big Doctor Who mystery by introducing The Silence and putting into play an astronaut who kills The Doctor while his friends watch!


When it comes to serialized television, the benefit of long arcs is that one can seed ideas in early seasons and then play them out later for maximum dramatic effect. Long arcs allow for complicated characters and concepts which can be incredibly well-developed. What becomes increasingly obvious to fans of serialized television is when those ideas are mapped out before an idea is even pitched to a production company and when the story is crapped together piecemeal after something is already established. The "mythology" of The X-Files (reviewed here!) is an excellent example of something cobbled together poorly; while Doctor Who has season-long arcs that are well-constructed, the overall arc of the series is not terribly well-constructed. To his credit, Steven Moffat seemed to have a lot of well-developed ideas on how he was going to pull off River Song when he created her in "Silence In The Library" (reviewed here!). "The Impossible Astronaut" begins the process of explicitly spelling out River Song's backstory.

And "The Impossible Astronaut" is a pretty good beginning to that backstory. More than that, "The Impossible Astronaut" begins to lay the framework for a mystery surrounding who exactly the assassin and astronaut were and how they fit into the larger Doctor Who mythos. Interestingly, "The Impossible Astronaut" is a start to the story that is one of the rare starts that is so entertaining on its own that it is not disappointing for its lack of resolution.

Opening with Rory and Amy finding clues that The Doctor is "waving" at them from the past through inserting himself into events and ridiculous situations to which they might pay attention, The Doctor gets Amy, Rory, and River Song in Utah. The Doctor wants to stop running and when the quartet has a meal out on the edge of a lake, Amy sees an alien (but then forgets she sees it) and they are joined by Canton Delaware . . . moments before The Doctor is killed by an astronaut who comes out of the lake.

Going back to a diner after burning the Doctor's body, the trio finds an earlier version of The Doctor who was similarly summoned to that time and place. The Doctor refuses to simply go along on the mission to 1969, until Amy Pond swears she can trust him on fish sticks and custard. The Doctor arrives, after River effectively cloaks the TARDIS, inside the Oval Office, where Nixon is briefing a younger version of Canton Delaware III on calls he is getting claiming aliens are around her. While they are in the Oval Office, Amy sees the creature again, but as soon as her line of sight with it is broken, she forgets. The Doctor and his companions begin a search for the little girl calling Nixon and in Cape Canaveral, they discover an alien laboratory and stolen NASA technology. Rory and River Song discover a network of tunnels underneath the entire planet, filled with the aliens who cause people to forget their existence.

"The Impossible Astronaut" introduces the previously-alluded to Silence on-screen for the first time. In "The Impossible Astronaut," The Silence appears as an alien that exists in one's memory only when they are in eye contact with it. The entity erases itself from the memory of its victims the moment they are no longer looking at it and director Toby Haynes plays the technique out wonderfully in "The Impossible Astronaut" to make it clear. Before any characters evaluate the alien invaders on Earth in 1969, Amy Pond encounters them multiple times and Haynes shows their effects.

The plot of "The Impossible Astronaut" finds the right blend of funny and creepy to instantly engage the viewer. The Silence creatures are terrifying and the addition of River Song makes for a compelling character dynamic. While it helps to advance the plot, the use of a version of The Doctor who is 1103 and one who is only a year older than Amy and Rory recall (908), creates - albeit briefly - a lost history of The Doctor and River Song. When The Doctor and River sync up their journals, they appear to have had a great many of their adventures together. It confirms what viewers would suspect by watching "The Husbands Of River Song" (reviewed here!), which put a cap on The Doctor's adventures with River and eliminated any interaction between River and any future Doctors.

"The Impossible Astronaut" has a lot of set-up work to do and the return of The Doctor is one that features an erratic use of the character. The Doctor who is present in almost the entire episode is not the one who moves along the plot; the dead 1103 year-old Doctor is the character who guides the plot. The Doctor is fun in his later years, but when the 908 year-old version of The Doctor starts to follow the trail of clues left by his older self, he oscillates radically between being incredibly serious and as goofy as one might expect from Matt Smith's first season as The Doctor.

The character issue that resonates with those who consider the character of The Doctor in "The Impossible Astronaut" is one that stretches credibility some. The viewer is expected to believe that in the few months that Amy Pond was The Doctor's companion for the fifth season of Doctor Who (reviewed here!) he bonded with her in such a way that he would enlist her help in fighting the Silence. Given that the mission in "The Impossible Astronaut" involves going back to 1969, there is no clear reason in the episode why The Doctor - who had been out of Amy and Rory's life for two months and several decades from the plot - would have used them for the mission instead of either getting a new Companion in 1969 or using someone from his past he trusted.

Of course, for the entire plot surrounding the truth of the Astronaut and the mysterious little girl to work, Amy Pond has to be involved in the mission. Alex Kingston steals her scenes in "The Impossible Astronaut" and her facial expressions heighten the fear in the middle of the episode. When River Song goes into the creepy basement, Kingston emotes being afraid perfectly through her eyes and she makes the viewer completely forget that River Song cannot possibly die in the episode.

"The Impossible Astronaut" is a promising beginning to the sixth season of Doctor Who and it establishes enough tenants for a mystery involving an alien invasion in 1969 to make "Day Of The Moon" irresistible - when watching "The Impossible Astronaut" leave enough time to watch its sequel immediately afterward!

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Sixth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other Doctor Who season premieres, please visit my reviews of:
"Rose"
"The Christmas Invasion"
"The Eleventh Hour"

9/10

See how this episode stacks up against other episodes and seasons of Doctor Who by visiting my Doctor Who Review Index Page where the reviews are organized from best to worst!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Steven Moffat Fumbles His First Doctor Who Christmas Special With "A Christmas Carol!"

The Good: Guest performances are all right, Most of the special effects
The Bad: Wonky science, Poor character development, Continued goofy performance of The Doctor
The Basics: "A Christmas Carol" is a lackluster Doctor Who adventure that presents The Doctor as a supporting character in his own narrative.


One of the inherent problems with reinventing a character continually is that viewers tend to have a longer memory than executive producers. As a result, fans hold their beloved characters to high standards that producers and writers who are not as tuned into the characters fail to. As Steven Moffat took over as showrunner of Doctor Who, he had a number of moments that seemed to illustrate that he did not care all that much for what came before in the series. When he had his first Doctor Who Christmas Special, I found myself underwhelmed and it took me multiple viewings to realize why exactly the episode - "A Christmas Carol" - did not grab me.

There were two essential aspects of "A Christmas Carol" that left me unimpressed. First, Steven Moffat played The Doctor as Sherlock Holmes in The Doctor's first big expository scene and that level of creative laziness (Moffat was executive producing and writing Sherlock as well at the time) pulls the viewer out of the narrative. But, as the title suggests, "A Christmas Carol" is a Doctor Who reworking of the Charles Dickens classic by the same name. After multiple viewings, I came to realize why the Doctor Who reworking seemed so unimpressive to me. "A Christmas Carol" is a Doctor Who reimagining of a Charles Dickens work . . . without ever referencing that The Doctor met Dickens and had an adventure with Dickens and "ghosts" back in "The Unquiet Dead" (reviewed here!). Given that Doctor Who already did a big Dickens story, the viewer has to expect that if the series is going to do anything Dickens-related, it will be good, clever, and make some acknowledgment of where The Doctor has been before. "A Christmas Carol" does not do that.

Opening with a space ship in the process of crashing, Amy Pond arrives on the bridge from the honeymoon suite, followed by Rory. The TARDIS arrives to rescue them. The ship is about to crash on a planet that is effectively run by Kazran Sardick. Sardick is refusing to release a woman frozen in suspended animation to her family for Christmas dinner. The Doctor arrives in Sardick's drawing room, where he discovers he cannot manipulate the controls that would allow Sardick's controls to save the falling ship because the controls are isomorphic and respond only to Sardick. The Doctor wants to save the four thousand three people on the falling ship, while Sardick is resistant to getting involved.

After The Doctor psychoanalyzes Sardick when the old man does not smack a kid he's kicking out of his home, he journeys in time to Sardick's past to learn about the system that could be used to save the ship in the future. The planet, The Doctor learns, uses a weather system that keeps fish in the atmosphere at bay and he accompanies the younger version of Sardick on a bit of an adventure. The pair are attacked by a flying shark, which eats The Doctor's sonic screwdriver, and young Kazran is so invested in saving the life of the shark that he reveals the family's "ice box," which is storing the planet's surplus population. As The Doctor figures out how Sardick became such a bitter old man, he works to save the falling ship in the future.

"A Christmas Carol" begins Steven Moffat's obsession with placing "magic" above science in Christmas episodes and that is incredibly unsatisfying in this context. The fish in the atmosphere on the alien world, including the shark that comes down below, are kept in check by the singing of Abigail's singing. When The Doctor tries to explain the science behind it, he is told to shut up by the young Sardick and he is bitten into submission by flying fish.

The Doctor and the growing Sardick return each Christmas to unfreeze the imprisoned Abigail to go on adventures with her, which basically uses up her life and creates a time that is basically a self-contained "lost Companion" type scenario. While that plays in an interesting way for this specific adventure, it completely undermines the impact of Amy and Rory as The Doctor's Companions in this adventure. The Doctor ditches his loyal, best friends for a self-contained adventure that exists, theoretically, to save his Companions but instead has an adventure largely without them.

The science of "A Christmas Carol" is a bit wonky. While I can live with the idea of The Doctor going back and altering the past of (essentially) the episode's protagonist, "A Christmas Carol" falls down in its execution. The Doctor goes into Sardick's past to have adventures with Sardick and Abigail, but the net effect of it is unchanged. What makes no sense with the changes to Sardick's timeline is that Sardick in the future only has his memories changed, as opposed to the character developing differently as a result of his experiences. In other words, young Sardick's life does not change and he does not grow in a different direction as a result of his having experiences with The Doctor and Abigail, which is an utterly ridiculous construct.

On the character front, "A Christmas Carol" is a preposterous exercise for The Doctor. The Doctor tells the crew of the falling ship to sing for their lives, illustrating he has influence over the crew and enough time to interact with the falling Galaxy-class ship. In the time it takes to go through the convoluted adventure in rewriting Kazran Sardick's timeline, The Doctor could have landed the TARDIS on the falling ship and gotten all of the people there inside the TARDIS to safely evacuate them. That solution would not have negated the disaster that called him to the event, but would have saved all of the people in peril without the very convoluted solutions he comes up with.

While "A Christmas Carol" is a wonderful excuse to present Katharine Jenkins's amazing voice, the episode is a contrived adventure that makes a poor use out of the principle characters. While I can, generally, live with episodes that explore supplemental characters, Steven Moffat seems to want to play in the Doctor Who universe without using the characters there well. His episodes flesh out one-shot characters or recurring characters to the detriment of the main cast members. As a result, The Doctor stumbles through "A Christmas Carol" being overshadowed on every front by the supporting characters.

Between that and the contrived nature of the conflict (it doesn't seem to occur to The Doctor to get a cure for Abigail!), "A Christmas Carol" is one of the initially-fun episodes of Doctor Who that ages incredibly poorly with any analysis.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Sixth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the sophomore season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other Doctor Who Christmas episodes, please check out my reviews of:
"The Christmas Invasion"
"The Husbands Of River Song"
"Last Christmas"

3/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Burdened By The Preposterous, "The Big Bang" Explodes With Mixed Credibility!

The Good: Decent performances, Concept of theme
The Bad: Light on character development, Vast amounts of plot exposition to simply explain what the hell happened in the prior episode and what is happening within the episode
The Basics: Steven Moffat tries desperately to dig Doctor Who out of the hole he dug for it with "The Big Bang," an episode that truly only works if one shuts off all rationality.


Doctor Who had a pretty formidable body of season finales under its belt before Steven Moffat took over as executive producer and had to form his own story end. "The Big Bang" was the first episode where Moffat had to create a story end and something that would encourage viewers tune in to the next season of Doctor Who. "The Big Bang" picks up immediately after "The Pandorica Opens" (reviewed here!) and it is a season finale that begins with a formidable weight against it. In order to truly discuss and evaluate "The Big Bang," it is impossible to not mention several key plot points from "The Pandorica Opens" that would be considered spoilers (were the material still fresh and new!).

When I write that "The Big Bang" opens from a disadvantageous position, it is because much of "The Pandorica Opens" is utter nonsense, both within the context of Doctor Who and in terms of basic physics and science. "The Pandorica Opens" found the many enemies of The Doctor, having realized that The Doctor and the TARDIS are responsible for cracks in the fabric of the universe that will lead to the destruction of the universe allying with one another to create a trap for The Doctor that he would be unable to resist. The Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen, Judoon and other races work together to create the Pandorica in order to trap The Doctor and attempt to forestall the end of the universe. One of the few truly brilliant moments Steven Moffat created in "The Pandorica Opens" is the revelation that all of The Doctor's traditional enemies have come together to save the universe from The Doctor; The Doctor is, it appears, the villain and universe destroyer.

But while that moment is cleverly written and revealed well through the direction of Toby Haynes, it falls apart completely under any real scrutiny. First, the idea that all of the disparate enemies of The Doctor could and would work together for a common purpose is troublesome - "Doomsday" (reviewed here!) illustrated that the Cybermen and Daleks could not overcome their initial programming to stop shooting at one another and there is no reason to credibly believe that either race would not continue being so arrogant as to believe that they could stop The Doctor without any other race's help. So, first, "The Pandorica Opens" is predicated on the idea that one of The Doctor's enemies correctly identified the cracks in the universe as the work of The Doctor and then managed to talk the others into working with them to stop The Doctor. Which leads to the second problem; the trap constructed by using the memories of Amy Pond is vastly more creative than anything any race The Doctor has ever fought has illustrated in the past. Moreover, the only reason to devise a trap based on the Companion's memories is to make it relatable to the human audience of Doctor Who; the various enemies of The Doctor hinge everything on creating a plan that could intrigue Amy Pond, but she is a passenger through "The Pandorica Opens," merely following along as clues from other people put her in the right time and place. The reason this is a ridiculous idea is two-fold; The Doctor did not follow clues from Amy Pond's memories to locate the right time and place to be (he followed co-ordinates given to him by River Song!) and the enemies of The Doctor are hinging everything on a scenario that would interest Amy Pond on the belief that Amy Pond would be The Doctor's Companion at the time. The problem with creating an end of the universe type event and setting it in a non-linear narrative is an exponentially complex storytelling problem. The bulk of the episode occurs in approximately 200 A.D., so the presence of the various alien races around Earth means that at least one of them has time-travel abilities. While the Daleks have their "emergency temporal shifts," none of the other races depicted in "The Pandorica Opens" were present near Earth in this time period and - because I am not a classic Doctor Who scholar, I don't know if - the Cybermen might not even have been created yet. That said, with the Daleks identifying The Doctor as the cause of the time cracks and having time travel abilities, it seems like if they wanted to prevent the end of the universe, they would use this as the opportunity to visit Gallifrey and erase The Doctor from existence before any of this nonsense.

So, "The Pandorica Opens" is fraught with conceptual problems and on a plot front, its climax finds The Doctor being stuck in the Pandorica, Amy shot by the Rory robot, and River Song attempting to exit the TARDIS as it explodes. The Doctor claims that when the TARDIS explodes, it will put out the stars (not exactly sure how that works) but the last shot of "The Pandorica Opens" certainly implies that The Doctor was right and the end of the universe has come. So, "The Big Bang" opens immediately burdened by the question, "What do you do when the universe has ended?"

The answer, of course, is one has to find a way to save the universe. But, from a storytelling perspective, it's hard to sell the idea of saving the universe after it is already destroyed. "The Big Bang" is burdened by trying to make it credible that Earth somehow survives in a universe that never existed. And it's an impossible sell.

Opening in 1996, Amelia Pond is praying for help with the crack in her wall and The Doctor does not materialize. Amy dreams of the stars, which there are none of in the night sky. That night, her house is visited by a stranger who drops off a brochure for the National Museum, with the Pandorica circled and Amelia drags her Aunt Sharon to the museum, where she follows notes directing her and is in the museum after it closes. Amelia approaches the Pandorica and it opens, revealing Amy Pond inside.

Flashing back to Roman-occupied Britain, Rory is speaking to Amy's body when The Doctor appears, gives Rory his sonic screwdriver and tells Rory to rescue him from the Pandorica. Doing so, The Doctor places Amy into the Pandorica, which will restore her to life with a DNA sample from her living self and The Doctor uses River's vortex manipulator to leap forward to 1996. The plastic Rory soldier stays with the Pandorica to keep Amy safe. Arriving in 1996, The Doctor ties up the loop by going back to visit Rory and leave the clues for Amelia Pond before a version of himself from 12 minutes in the future arrives and promptly appears to die. When The Doctor realizes that Earth's sun is the exploding TARDIS, he rescues River and comes up with a plan to restore the universe by destroying the Pandorica.

"The Big Bang" is packed with conceptual inconsistencies. The Pandorica being employed petrified the Daleks and others near it, according to The Doctor because they were erased from existence. Amy Pond needed her own DNA in order for the Pandorica to heal her. And yet, somehow it is the light from the Pandorica that is explained to heal the Dalek . . . how did that happen without Dalek DNA?

The set-up for "The Big Bang" is that the universe ends in 2010 when the TARDIS exploded because The Doctor was not in the TARDIS when River opened the doors to it. The ripple effect back in time was that the stars went out in Roman times. The explanation from The Doctor is that the Pandorica's restoration energy is responsible for resurrecting the petrified Dalek. The Pandorica was designed as a prison to keep The Doctor from destroying the universe; why would it possess something designed to resurrect its captive? In simpler terms, "The Big Bang" asks the viewer to believe that all of the Doctor's enemies came together to prevent the Universe's destruction and to do that, they would want to keep him alive. There is no logical sense to that; if The Doctor is going to destroy the universe, the easiest way to prevent that from happening would be to eliminate The Doctor, not keep him alive.

"The Big Bang" is a plot-heavy episode. For sure, the concept of the episode hinges on the idea that Amy Pond's memories could be used by the Pandorica to reboot the universe. The theme of "The Big Bang" is an intriguing one; that memory can create and the universe has a decidedly human component to it.

The Doctor has a very "hand's on" role in saving the universe in "The Big Bang." When The Doctor takes the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS, he has a very obvious heroic quality to him and it triggers a backward trip through the season to explain a throwaway moment from "Flesh And Stone" (reviewed here!). Matt Smith sells the monologues from The Doctor surprisingly effectively and Smith's plays sadness with exquisite precision near the end of the episode.

What "The Big Bang" does very effectively is finally answer and resolve the issue of the crack in Amy Pond's wall. "The Big Bang" manages to define the crack and seal it . . . with results that are almost as tough to buy as the episode's initial set-up.

"The Big Bang" is problematic on its own and in the larger context of Doctor Who becomes an impossible series of paradoxes, not the least of which is that it is River Song who sparks Amy Pond's memories of The Doctor. Of course, at the time "The Big Bang" was created, viewers had no idea just how ridiculous that notion would be (i.e. that in a universe devoid of the Doctor, River Song would be able to attend Amy and Rory's wedding . . . when she doesn't have her vortex manipulator!), but in retrospect, "The Big Bang" becomes one of the most conceptually convoluted, absolutely ridiculous episodes of the modern Doctor Who.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fifth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other big season finales, please check out my reviews of:
"The Parting Of The Ways" - Doctor Who
"Legendary" - DC's Legends Of Tomorrow
"The Expanse" - Star Trek: Enterprise

2.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Steven Moffat's First Big Doctor Who Payoff Begins When "The Pandorica Opens!"

The Good: Adequate performances, Moments of plot progression
The Bad: Very light on character
The Basics: "The Pandorica Opens" is a set-up episode that loosely ties together some of the past concepts from earlier in the season of Doctor Who without making a truly coherent narrative of its own.


Whenever serialized television is developed, there comes a key point when the seeding must yield to the payoff. Usually, this occurs when a season of television is written with each episode adding new threads to the overall serialized story and then in the season finale, those scattered plot points and character moments come to a head. Steven Moffat's first season of Doctor Who where he was the executive producer included very limited seeding; there was a crack in Amy Pond's wall from the very first episode that has been following Pond and The Doctor around for the whole season and River Song mentioned that she would see The Doctor next when the Pandorica opens. Beyond that, most of Moffat's debut season was generally episodic, but Moffat attempted to call back elements from all of his prior episodes as the season finale began with "The Pandorica Opens."

"The Pandorica Opens" offered a chance for various guest stars from earlier in the season to pop back up . . . with a limited sense of effectiveness. Instead of organically coming together, Moffat frontloads "The Pandorica Opens" with characters from episodes early in his first season as executive producer, plus Vincent van Gogh from "Vincent And The Doctor" (reviewed here!). The technique is presented entirely gratuitously, with no finesse, as a plot construction to bring River Song back into the Doctor Who narrative once again.

Opening in 1890 France, Vincent van Gogh is distraught, having just painted an image of the TARDIS exploding, Bracewell finds the painting in 1941 and has Winston Churchill deliver the message. Churchill's call is rerouted to 5145, where the imprisoned River Song gets it and hunts down the painting and a vortex manipulator. The Doctor and Amy Pond visit the oldest world in the universe which has a message that has been untranslated . . . until they visit, open the door to the TARDIS and get Song's "Hello Sweetie" message and co-ordinates to go to. Arriving in Roman-occupied Britain, The Doctor and Amy are reunited with River Song, who shows them van Gogh's painting, The Pandorica Opens. The Pandorica is a box, which is holding the most dangerous thing in the universe (according to a legend that The Doctor denies), which The Doctor is convinced is below Stonehenge.

Entering the Underhenge, having failed to notice the Cyberman head nearby, the trio finds the Pandorica. The Underhenge, as it turns out, is a massive transmitter, letting the universe know that the Pandorica is present and it is opening from the inside out. Earth, as it turns out, is surrounded by over 10,000 warships and The Doctor's solution is to use the Romans to fight the alien soldiers. While River Song enlists the aid of the Romans, Amy confronts The Doctor on the engagement ring she found, but gets only cryptic responses from him. When Amy is attacked by a Cyberman, she is rescued by Rory, who reappears as a Roman soldier. As River Song tries to use the TARDIS to get clues into the impending destruction of the universe, she arrives on Earth in 2010, on the date the Doctor previously saw would be the date of the end of the world. But when River Song investigates Amelia Pond's home and becomes convinced that The Doctor is in a trap, her attempt to flee with the TARDIS has disastrous results!

"The Pandorica Opens" includes the whole story of the Pandorica, so there is something odd about the episode and the magnitude of it. While the Pandorica was alluded to a prior episode, the legend of the Pandorica coming up after it has already been found feels cheap. Steven Moffat frequently plays with prophecies in his subsequent seasons of Doctor Who; that the menace of the Pandorica has not been adequately foreshadowed makes it feel like an abrupt universe destroyer. It is hard to take seriously the supposed magnitude of what is supposed to be inside the Pandorica when this is the first time it is referenced.

While the Romans may be the greatest military machine Earth has ever seen, they are technologically outmatched on every front, so the idea that the humans could be enlisted to fight any of the alien armies is utterly ridiculous and further undermines the menace of classic Doctor Who villains like the Daleks, Cybermen, Judoon and others. Having only fifty Romans is just silly.

Rory's return is glossed over in a similarly awkward way. While "The Pandorica Opens" has Rory asking key questions about his relationship with Amy, the mechanism for his return is not satisfactorily explained in "The Pandorica Opens." When Rory was last seen, he was dying and The Doctor let his body be consumed by the traveling tear in the universe. In "The Pandorica Opens," Rory's explanation is "I died and came back as a Roman." That is hardly a coherent concept for a character resurrection. The Doctor's insistence that Rory never existed plays as ridiculous given that Rory did exist, was erased, and has now managed to return. Arthur Darvill returns to Doctor Who with a beautifully sad performance as Rory deals with the fact that Amy does not remember him at all.

Karen Gillan has an understated role in "The Pandorica Opens," which makes some sense given that the episode is very plot-focused. Gillan gives one of her less-impressive performances as Amy Pond after Amy is drugged by a Cyberman (with the slowest-acting poison on television!). Gillan's final moments in "The Pandorica Opens" lack the sense of epiphany one would hope for for the magnitude of the character moment. Matt Smith does fine as The Doctor in "The Pandorica Opens," though he is saddled with a lot of exposition. Smith rises to the occasion as The Doctor when he has to solve the major problem of the massive fleet by talking his way out of the potential fight.

Ultimately, "The Pandorica Opens" feels like exactly what it is; a set-up for a second part. But in order to weave the episode together, Steven Moffat makes something that is more nonsensical than it is great or coherent.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fifth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Tony Curran, please check out my reviews of:
"Penny And Dime" - Daredevil
Thor: The Dark World
X-Men: First Class
The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Mists Of Avalon
Gladiator

4.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |