Story 213 - The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang

In which Vincent Van Gogh paints a disturbing picture. Decades later it is found by British soldiers and sent to the Cabinet War Rooms where Professor Edwin Bracewll shows it to Winston Churchill. He decides to call the Doctor, but gets redirected by the TARDIS to the Stormcage penal facility in the 51st Century, and the cell of River Song. On hearing of the painting she breaks out of jail and goes to find Starship UK, breaking into the royal gallery. She is confronted by Liz 10, but on seeing the painting she permits River to take it away with her. Meanwhile, the Doctor decides to take Amy to visit the oldest planet in the universe, which is said to have strange writing carved into a mountain. The TARDIS translates this as "Hello Sweetie", accompanied by a set of space-time co-ordinates.
The Doctor and Amy follow these and find themselves in the Britain of 102 AD. There is a Roman camp nearby, and one of the soldiers hails the Doctor as Caesar and invites him to come and meet Cleopatra. This proves to be River. She shows Van Gogh's painting to the Doctor. It depicts an exploding TARDIS, and is entitled "The Pandorica Opens"...
The Doctor has dismissed the Pandorica as a myth from his childhood, but River explains that it supposed to be buried near here. The Doctor realises that the location of such an object would be marked in some way. A short time later, he, River and Amy arrive at Stonehenge. As they explore the megalithic circle they fail to notice the severed head of a Cyberman lying nearby. A central stone proves to be the concealed entrance to the Underhenge - a huge chamber beneath the stones. The Pandorica is here - a large, ornately carved cube.

The Doctor tells his companions that the myths claim that it is an unbreakable prison which was designed to trap the most dangerous thing in the universe - something which would drop out of the sky and cause carnage around it. River discovers that the stones of the circle are actually transmitters - sending a message out across the universe that the Pandorica is about to open up. Spaceships from many different species are converging on their location - Daleks, Cybermen, Zygons, Draconians and more. The Doctor will need an army to face them, and realises that he has one close by. River is sent back to the camp to enlist the help of the Roman soldiers. After she has gone, the Doctor discovers a Cyberman arm. He guesses that it was a sentry, which has fallen foul of the local Iron Age tribes people. It is still dangerous, as it begins firing at them. On picking it up, it issues an electric shock which stuns the Doctor. Amy is then attacked by the disembodied Cyberman head. It fires a tranquiliser dart into her, and attempts to take her body for itself. The rest of the Cyberman appears, and fits its head back onto its body. It is destroyed when a Roman officer arrives to save Amy. The recovered Doctor is shocked to discover that this is Rory Williams. He does not know how he came to become a Roman after being killed by the Silurian Restac. Amy wakes up, but does not recognise him. The Doctor goes outside and sees a huge fleet of alien spaceshps hovering in the skies above Stonehenge. he issues a challenge - demanding that if they want the Pandorica they will have to come and face him.

The Doctor returns to the Underhenge and calls for River to bring the TARDIS to him. However, she finds that the ship won't respond to her. It arrives in 2006, outside Amy's house in Leadworth instead of the underhenge. She sees signs of a recent landing by a spacecraft. Inside the house she explores Amy's bedroom and finds that one of her favourite books was story of Pandora's Box. Amy also loved ancient Rome, and River sees a picture of a Roman general which exacty matches the one from the camp in 102 AD. She then sees a photo of Rory and Amy at a fancy dress party, where he is dressed as a Roman soldier. As the Pandorica opens, River calls the Doctor and warns him that the whole situation is a trap, created form Amy's memories. The Roman soldiers are not real. The Doctor discovers that they are Auton replicas. Rory is also an Auton. Amy finally remembers who he is just as the Autons are activated. He warns her to get away from him as he cannot control himself. The Pandorica finally opens up and the Doctor sees that it is empty. He is captured by the Autons, and then finds himself confronted by a group of Daleks who have beamed down into the Underhenge. They are joined by Cybermen, Sontarans and a host of other aliens, including Sycorax and Silurians.

The Dalek Supreme explains that they created the Pandorica, in which to imprison the Doctor. The TARDIS is going to explode and destroy the entire universe, and the only way to prevent this is to lock the Doctor away. They have failed to realise that the Doctor is not the only person who can pilot it. When River tries to return to 102 AD, the TARDIS goes out of control and materialises within solid rock, trapping her inside. The ship then begins to break up, exploding around her. On the surface above, Rory loses control over his conditioning and shoots Amy, killing her. The Doctor is dragged into the Pandorica, which is then sealed up. The stars begin to go out...
Meanwhile, in Leadworth, 1996, young Amelia Pond is forced to see a child psychologist as she believes in stars -  and everyone knows they don't exist. One night she sees someone drop a flyer for a museum through her door, with the Pandorica exhibit marked and a note urging her to visit. She drags her aunt to the museum and makes for the Pandorica, and reads about how it passed through many countries over the centuries. There is a legend that it was constantly guarded by a solitary Roman soldier, who followed it wherever it went. He was last seen during the London BLitz, dragging the cube to safety from a burning building. Amelia spots a sticker on the Pandorica addressed to her, asking her to stick around. She hides away behind an exhibit of Nile penguins, close to two sinister looking stone objects, shaped rather like pepperpots. After everyone has left, she returns to the Pandorica. As soon as she touches it it opens up, to reveal Amy Pond sitting within.

Back in 102 AD, the Doctor has escaped the Pandorica by travelling back in time from a point after he has been released to give Rory the means to open it - his sonic screwdriver. The Pandorica is designed to keep its occupant alive indefinitely, even bringing them back from the dead, so he has Rory help him put Amy's body in the cube. He then uses River's vortex manipulator again to travel to 1996 to ensure that Amelia will go to see it and touch it. Having the same DNA will open it and release her future self. The Doctor travels forward to 1996, but Rory insists on staying with Amy - even it means centuries guarding her. The light from the Pandorica falls on one of the stone Daleks, bringing it back to life. It attacks the Doctor, Amy and Amelia, but they are resucued by one of the museum guards, who has a gun build into his plastic hand - Rory. Shortly afterwards, Amelia disappears. The Doctor explains that the whole of creation is unravelling. Earth will be the last to go as it was at the centre of the TARDIS explsion, but things are vanishing around them. The Doctor makes another temporal jump and reappears seconds later, apparently dying after being shot by the Dalek. Upstairs they find an earlier version of him, and they go to the roof where the Doctor explains that the sun they see in the sky is really his exploding ship. He uses his screwdriver to liste in, and they hear the TARDIS engines and River's cries for help.

The ship had protected her within a time loop  a few seconds before it blew apart. He uses the manipulator to fetch her to safety and bring her to the museum. The Dalek attacks agin, and this is when the Doctor is fatally shot. River destroys the Dalek. When she hears of the dying Doctor, she realises that he is tricking them. They go and find his body has vanished. He is found in the Pandorica. he plans to fly it into the heart of the explosion. The TARDIS will spread the cubes life-giving force throughout space and time - rebooting the entire universe. However, he is unlikely to survive. The Pandorica takes off and flies into the maelstrom. The Doctor discovers that he is still alive, but traveling back along his own recent timeline. He vists the artificial forest on the Byzantium and speaks with Amy when she is alone - urging her to remember what he told her as a child. He then finds himself back in her house when he first met her, again urging her to remember.

Amy wakes up on the day of her wedding, her mother and father in the hosue getting ready for the big day. At the reception after the ceremony, she is troubled by something being not quite right. Something is missing. She sees one of the gifts - a blue diary, left by a woman Rory didn't recongise.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Amy begins to remember the Doctor. Everyone present recalls her childhood imaginary friend - the "Raggedy Doctor" - but all are shocked when the TARDIS begins to materialise in the middle of the room. Rory also begins to remember him. The Doctor emerges, dressed in top hat and tails, and joins the celebrations. That night he slips away, but meets River ouside Amy's house. He returns her diary, but she refuses to tell him any more about who she is and what her role in the Doctor's life really is. That would be spoilers.
The Doctor is about to leave when Amy and Rory arrive, and they insist on going with him, now that they have only just got him back. The Doctor recieves a call from someone, telling him about an ancient Egyptian princess at loose on the Orient Express. In space.

The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on 19th and 26th June, 2006. It marks the end of Moffat's first season as showrunner, and Matt Smith's as the Eleventh Doctor. The date of the final episode - 26/06/2006 - was the one which had been seeded through the season as the date on which the space / time crack was created.
It is very much a story of two halfs - one good, the other not quite so good.
The pre-credits sequence is a lengthy one, reintroducing a number of characters seen earlier in the season - Vincent Van Gogh, Churchill and Bracewell, and Liz 10. The series was premitted to film at the genuine Stonehenge monument in Wiltshire - a rare thing - though a "Foamhenge" was also built by the design team for additional shots as the time allowed at the monument was short.
Eerything builds nicely, as we hear of the different aliens converging on the Pandorica location, then we have one of the Eleventh Doctor's defining moments, as he makes his stirring challenge as the spacecraft swirl in the night sky overhead. Fans were particularly pleased to see a Cybership design last seen for The Invasion in 1968. The dismembered Cyberman sentinal is also very well done, especially the head scuttling around on its own.

To top the first episode we have a triple cliffhanger. The Doctor has discovered that a number of his enemies have entered into an alliance against him and lock him in the Pandorica, whilst River is trapped inside the exploding TARDIS. Rory has inexplicably returned from the dead as a Roman Centurion, who turns out to be an Auton replica but with all of his personality and memories. He is forced to shoot Amy. And then the universe begins to unravel. The only real criticism of this first episode is the alliance once we get to see it. Yes we get Daleks (the New Paradigm versions) and Cybermen, and Christopher Ryan even returns for a cameo as another Sontaran general, but the rest of the gang include rubbish like the Uvodni, the Hoix and the robots from The Runaway Bride. It's clear they have simply pulled out whatever costumes were lying around in the storeroom, and they come across as a great disappointment after we were promised Zygons and Terileptils. Even a Drahvin would have been nice.
Things rapidly go downhill as we go into the second half of the story, and it becomes readily apparent that Moffat really didn't know where to go with his finale. The whole of The Big Bang is just Moffat saying "I'm the timey-wimey guy - look how clever I can be with a whole episode of it". Except he isn't clever. The Doctor's escape from the Pandorica is a cheat. It can be opened by the sonic screwdriver. And the Doctor crosses his own timestream to do it - something every writer before this has always managed to avoid, because it is plain lazy and, I'll say it again, a cheat. Apart from a brief appearance by a Dalek, there isn't even any real jeopardy in The Big Bang - it's all running around and jumping through time.
The other big disappointment is that we never get any proper resolution to the story arc. We know that the cracks were caused by the exploding TARDIS, but we were told that back in Cold Blood. Who is responsible, and why, we are never told.
One suspects that Moffat decided on the whole rebooting of the universe plan so that he could simply side-step continuity problems.

For a big two part finale, the guest cast is surprisingly small. In fact, the whole two episodes are pretty much carried by the regulars, and Alex Kingston. We mentioned Christopher Ryan's brief appearance as a Sontaran, and Caitlin Blackwood is back as Amelia, but the only other performance of note is Simon Fisher Becker as Dorium Maldovar, the rotund blue-skinned man from whom River obtains a vortex manipulator, and who will return for a couple more stories - even after he has had his head chopped off.
Overall, as stated above, a game of two halfs. Best to leave the ground at half-time and get to the pub before the crowds arrive.
Things you might like to know:

• That alliance in full. Guess which ones we only hear about and which ones we get to see: Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Atraxi, Blowfish, Weevils, Roboforms, Silurians, Slitheen, Hoix, Drahvins, Zygons, Terileptils, Chelonians, Draconians, Nestenes / Autons, Uvodni, Judoon, Haemogoths and Sycorax. For anyone who is infamilier with them, the Chelonians are turtle-like creatures from the New Adventures novels. Haemogoths come from the book range as well. Weevils and Blowfish hail from Torchwood, whilst the Uvodni appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures.
• Director Toby Haynes was inspired by the Indiana Jones movies. He played in some of John William's music over the Underhenge scenes prior to Murray Gold completing the finished score.
• River Song's costume on the other hand was inspired by the Star Wars movies, designed to have a touch of both Princess Leia and Han Solo about it.
• The damaged Cyberman sentinel was initially played by an actor who had lost an arm. The sequence was later reshot with a regular Cyberman performer with one arm covered in green material to be CGI's out. Look closely, however, and you'll see the missing arm casting a shadow on the Pandorica prop.
• There are Greek letters carved on the cliff of Planet One alongside the "Hello Sweetie" and the co-ordinates. These letters spell out Theta Sigma - the Doctor's nickname at school according to The Armageddon Factor.
• It had been hoped that Scots actor Gregor Fisher (most famous for his Rab C Nesbitt character) would play Amy's dad, but the role eventually went to Halcro Johnston.
• The museum scenes in The Big Bang are supposed to be set in 1996, yet the Gherkin building (started in 2001 and completed in 2004) can be clearly seen on the city skyline.
• Question: why isn't Rory's dad Brian at the wedding? When the character eventually appears in the series there is no mention of him missing the big day.
• We won't see the Doctor visit the Orient Express in space until the Twelfth Doctor story Mummy on the Orient Express.