Inspirations: A Christmas Carol

Thank you very much for making this an easy one, Mr Moffat.

This is basically Doctor Who's version of Charles Dickens' 1843 short novel of the same name. The famous festive ghost story had previously acted as one of the inspirations for the whole Trial of a Time Lord season.

Notorious miser Ebeneezer Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by four spirits beginning with that of his old business partner Jacob Marley, who died 7 years ago to the day. Marley warns Scrooge that a terrible fate awaits him on his demise if he doesn't change his ways - and to inspire him he's visited by the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future.

Kazran Sardick is the Scrooge figure - a rich, mean-spirited individual who is reluctant to help anyone, be they an individual, group or his society as a whole.

Christmas Past is the Doctor, who goes back in time to start manipulating Kazran as a boy - in the hope he will grow up to be less sociopathic.

Christmas Present is Amy - appearing to him as a hologram. She and Rory are on their honeymoon (having got wed in The Big Bang), but their spaceship is about to crash unless Kazran does something to help.

Christmas Future is Kazran himself - as the Doctor allows his young self to witness the cruel behaviour of the man he is going to become.

This is all handled in a terribly timey-wimey way.

The planet where the action takes place has a society seemingly based on Victorian England - again tying in with Dickens. However, this is very much a steampunk version of Victoriana. Note costume choices such as the top hats worn with goggles, or the machine-like buildings.

Presumably this was an Earth colony and the city grew up around the spaceship which brought the pioneers here.

The Doctor attends a Hollywood-style party in the 1950's at which Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Santa Claus are present.

Monroe (1926 - 1962) was the hugely famous blonde film star and pin-up who died tragically young, immortalised by Andy Warhol in screen-print and Elton John in song. Some aspects of her death are popular in conspiracy theory circles.

Francis Albert Sinatra (1915 - 1998) remains one of the most famous popular singers of all time. Leader of the Rat Pack, who mixed with Presidents and Mafioso, he's best known for his many farewell tours, and for doing things his way.

According to the Doctor, Santa's real name is Geoff. He previously encountered him at the North Pole when millions of children wanted TARDISes for Christmas - according to TV Comic at least.

I've no idea why this story features sharks - unless it is a reference to the movie Jaws (1975) which is a blockbuster - and big movies always used to premier on TV in Britain at Christmas back in the day. Terribly tenuous if that's the case.

Music plays a big part in the plot. But then we have classical singer Katherine Jenkins in a significant supporting role. You don't cast a singer then fail to give them a song or two - though saying that, Sinatra made quite a few movies in which he never warbled once.

Kazran's cloud-influencing machine looks like an organ and the controls are said to be isomorphic - just as those of the TARDIS were supposed to be (as first mentioned in Pyramids of Mars).

Next time: it's the Doctor's turn to be killed, but first he inspires the Watergate scandal. Astronauts crop up in the oddest locations, though we finally do get to see a famous one on the Moon. The rest is Silence...

Inspirations: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang

Steven Moffat's first series finale. I'm sure one of the things he first thought about on taking over was: how does you go one better than RTD...?

When the series returned in 2005, RTD was very much following the model of US drama series, which featured mainly stand-alone stories but with an arc running through it. This would be introduced in the opening instalment, then reappear once or twice mid-season before taking over for the finale, which was nearly always a two-parter. The most obvious examples are Buffy The Vampire Slayer (of which RTD was a self-confessed obsessive) and The X-Files. The various Star Trek series didn't always feature mid-season arc instalments.

After reintroducing the Daleks by way of a lone example, RTD opted to deliver a vast army of them for his first finale. The second brought about the long anticipated coming together of Daleks and Cybermen.

The third reintroduced the Master, and the fourth Davros.

The last 2009 Special brought back the Time Lords and gave us a glimpse of the Time War.

In each of these finales, contemporary Earth faced global annihilation.

Another big invasion of Earth (usually represented by London) simply wouldn't do for a fifth year running. Not only would it be a bit samey, but Moffat had his own idiosyncratic way of crafting stories.

For a start, this finale goes nowhere near the present day. The Earth isn't at risk from aliens. Indeed, they think it - and everywhere else in the Universe - is at risk from the Doctor.

It isn't a conventional two-parter. The second half goes off on a weird tangent, with many elements from the first part simply passed over. (Matt Smith will never get a conventional two-part finale. No invasions of Earth for him).

After the Daleks and Cybermen squaring up to each other in Doomsday, Moffat decided to have them join forces against the Doctor. He then threw a lot of other aliens into the Pandorica Alliance.

The Pandorica was first mentioned by Prisoner Zero in The Eleventh Hour, and then again by River Song in Flesh and Stone.

She is back, still a captive at the Stormcage facility. When we first see her she is posing as Cleopatra, despite that Egyptian queen having been dead for decades before the opening scenes are set.

(The Fourth Doctor mentioned getting fencing lessons from her guard captain, so may well have met the real thing).

We see again Vincent Van Gogh (Vincent and the Doctor), Liz 10 (The Beast Below), Winston Churchill and Prof. Bracewell (Victory of the Daleks) from earlier in the series, as River pursues Vincent's painting of the exploding TARDIS through history.

The Doctor discovered that the TARDIS will blow apart at some point in Cold Blood, not long after Rory was removed from time by the crooked smile crack.

By the end of this story, most of the Series 5 episodes will have been revisited (literally in some cases).

At Stonehenge we encounter an armless, decapitated Cyberman of the Cybus design - last seen in The Next Doctor. The Daleks are the recently introduced New Paradigm flavour from Victory of the Daleks. 

Never seen, but mentioned to be in the skies above what will one day be Wiltshire are Drahvins, Terileptils, Judoon, Draconians and Zygons.

The ones we actually see are clearly the ones they have costumes easily accessible - so we get z-list creatures such as the Hoix, Uvodni (Sarah Jane Adventures), Sycorax and Blowfish. Also from Torchwood there are Weevils, who are supposed to be little more than savage animals.

From the Virgin New Adventures we hear that the fleet contains Chelonians (warmongering turtle people).

A-listers we do see are the Autons, Sontarans and Silurians (though of the inferior new type).

A nice touch is bringing Chris Ryan back to play the Sontaran commander, having played Staal in The Sontaran Stratagem two-parter.

There are familiar spaceships in the sky, including Cyberships based on the design we saw way back in The Invasion.

Rory is brought back as a Nestene Auton, though he will be rendered human again after the Doctor reboots the universe in The Big Bang.

This reset is supposed to explain why Amy does not recall the events of The Stolen Earth, as well as incidents such as the Cyber-King stomping over Victorian London. 

Moffat explained this as an attempt to avoid continuity questions - just blame everything on Big Bang 2 - but it simply creates new problems as the same event can be both recalled and forgotten, depending on who's writing. Russell T Davies has certainly ignored this.

The first episode ends with the Doctor in an impossible to escape prison, the titular Pandorica. However, the second episode begins with the Alliance reduced to dust whilst the writer simply cheats his way out of the predicament using his trademark "Timey-wimey"-ness. All the impregnable Pandorica needs to open it is the Sonic, which the Doctor gives to Rory to use after he has used it to free the Doctor so that he can give it to him to use to free him...

Moffat has been writing this time-twisting stuff since the 1990's, whilst a 2005 short story of his provided the springboard for Blink, in which the "Timey-wimey" thing first reared its head.

The story nears its conclusion with the Doctor seemingly being erased from time, and we see him travel backwards through his most recent experiences.

Flesh and Stone had seen what many fans thought had been a continuity gaffe - the Doctor appearing wearing his jacket when he had only just lost it to the Weeping Angels. This turned out to be a deliberate scene, as its the future Doctor revisiting Amy.

Young Amelia Pond features in the second half prominently.

Very few loose ends are tied up by the end. We'll have to wait another two years for some of them.

Next time: The Doctor has the Dickens of a time during a steampunk Christmas, whilst Amy and Rory look like they don't stand the ghost of a chance on a crashing spaceship...

Inspirations: The Lodger

This was the third adaptation of the revived series of a story from other media, after Dalek and the Human Nature two-parter. 

It is also this year's companion-lite story, with Amy only featuring briefly in short scenes set within the TARDIS set.

Steven Moffat gave the writer Gareth Roberts the working title of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" - the title of a Bette Davis screwball comedy of 1942 in which a family are forced to put up with an uninvited guest following an accident.

The first of the 60th Anniversary Specials was an adaptation of a Doctor Who Weekly comic strip, and The Lodger is similarly an adaptation of a strip from the monthly iteration of the magazine.

In DWM 386 (in the shops from 30th March 2006, just as Series 2 was about to begin) Roberts gave us a single issue strip called The Lodger. 

In this the Tenth Doctor is stranded in the London of 2007 when the TARDIS dematerialises without him. Rose is still on board as the ship jumps a time track to arrive a few days into the future.

With nothing to do but to wait for him to catch up with it, the Doctor is taken in by Mickey Smith - becoming his lodger for a few days.

This period coincides with an alien threat to the Earth.

As with the TV version, the Doctor annoys his host by being better than he at many things - including football. 

These scenes allowed Matt Smith to show off his soccer skills. He had been aiming for a career as a professional footballer when injury diverted him into acting. The sequence wasn't written for Smith's benefit, however, as he hadn't been cast when Roberts wrote the first version. (He had actually hoped to get it made for Series 2).

James Corden - a friend of Smith's - is also an obsessive football fan, so was the obvious choice to play Craig Owens.

The Doctor wears a No.11 shirt - a reference to him being the Eleventh Doctor and this being the eleventh episode of the fifth series.

Mickey mistakes the sonic screwdriver for his electric toothbrush, and in the TV version we see it sitting in the toothbrush mug in Craig's bathroom.

Roberts builds on the strip by having his new landlord a stranger to the Doctor, and gives him a girlfriend. We also see the Doctor best Craig at his job, appearing to be more successful with clients and more popular with colleagues. Roberts will build on this "Doctor gets a job" scenario in his next two stories.

For the alien threat, Roberts originally intended to use Meglos - the cactus-like creature from the story of the same name. This is because of its use of the Chronic Hysteresis time-loop, and The Lodger was to include the Doctor experiencing time-loops in action.

As it is, we get a dimensionally transcendental time machine with a central control console - which prompted many at the time to suspect that a Time Lord was involved. It would later transpire that this craft belonged to the Silents, who would make their entrance in Series 6.

The time-ship was actually based on unused concept art for the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS.

The street name - Aickman Road - is an homage to the supernatural writer Robert Aickman (1914 - 1981).

The vacancy arises at the flat due to the previous flatmate gaining an inheritance from someone he never knew about. The Doctor had previously gained his teacher role in School Reunion by having someone winning the lottery, and he obtained a winning lottery ticket as a wedding present for Donna Noble.

He sings La donna e mobile in the shower - a song he had previously sung to himself in Inferno.

In Craig's flat we see a Jubilee Pizza box - a company which first featured in Dalek as a reference to the audio which had inspired it.

Tea is used as a restorative, having helped revive the Tenth Doctor after his regeneration in The Christmas Invasion.

The Doctor introduces himself to the Avatar as "Captain Troy Handsome of International Rescue" - referring two Gerry Anderson puppet series, Troy Tempest being the commander of Stingray and IR being the organisation from Thunderbirds.

He also has a postcard on his fridge for the Vincent Van Gogh exhibition in Paris which the Doctor and Amy took the painter to in the last episode.

Behind the fridge is the crack in time, and in the TARDIS Amy finds Rory's ring, but obviously doesn't know it belonged to him after he was removed from time by the crack in the Silurian story.

Next time: It's been mentioned twice this year but we finally get to see the Pandorica. Moffat has to trump RTD in season finales, so gives us a whole load of familiar aliens joining forces...

Inspirations: Vincent and the Doctor

 

Vincent and the Doctor is this series' "proper" celebrity historical. Victory of the Daleks had included Winston Churchill, but his wasn't essential to the plot. We could have seen the Ironsides already deployed at any WWII military establishment.

This story can only work with the inclusion of Vincent Van Gogh at this specific point in his life - just a few weeks before his suicide.

The Dutch painter (1853 - 1890) commands vast amounts of money for his works today, but famously only ever sold a single painting during his short, turbulent lifetime.

A number of his paintings are visually referenced in the episode:

It opens with Van Gogh painting Wheatfield With Crows (July 1890).

The Doctor and Amy examine The Church at Auvers (June 1890) when they spot the Krafayis lurking in the window.

Vincent is found at the café on the terrace of the Place du Forum, Arles - subject of Café Terrace At Night (1888).

We see him paint over one of his many self-portraits.

His bedroom looks like Bedroom in Arles (also known simply as The Bedroom) (1888).

(Suffering an initial touch of writers' block, Curtis rearranged the furniture in a spare room whilst on holiday in Italy to resemble this painting - which gave him the impetus to get started).

Amy knows he painted lots of Sunflowers - and the joke is that he doesn't like them. She inspires him to paint them. Van Gogh produced two sets of sunflower paintings - the first in Paris in 1887 and the second in Arles the following year.

After the death of the Krafayis, the Doctor and Amy get to imagine the night sky as Vincent sees it - and it transforms into Starry Night (June 1889).

Other works can be seen in the background in his house and at the museum.

The working title for Richard Curtis' story was "The Eyes That See The Darkness" - based on a line from Don McLean's 1971 song about Van Gogh - Vincent (1971): "the eyes that know the darkness in my soul".

Being Curtis, Bill Nighy features. He has appeared in a number of his films, including Love Actually, About Time, and The Boat That Rocked.

Curtis' movies and TV episodes are famous for tugging the heartstrings, and his Doctor Who story is no exception to his style.

Neglected in his own lifetime, and suffering from crippling emotional health problems, Van Gogh gets to see how both he and his work are appreciated when taken to the Musee D'Orsay in Paris in the present day.

(Though wouldn't it have made more sense to take him to his very own museum in Amsterdam?).

After seeing the First Doctor on his library card a few weeks ago, we now see his device depict his face as Hartnell and then Troughton when he tests it on himself.

The accordion player at the café is playing a version of Murray Gold's I Am The Doctor. 

Chances by Athlete - the music from the gallery scene - was selected by Matt Smith as it was one of his favourite songs at the time.

Vincent hearing Scots as Dutch is part of a running joke about the TARDIS translation system - e.g. Latin sounding Celtic. It's an in-joke as well since Karen Gillan and Tony Curran are both Scots.

Some have seen the shape of the tree next to the TARDIS landing site at the end of the episode as mirroring the crack in time.

Next time: Gareth Roberts adapts one of the comic strips. There's a lot of it about...

Inspirations: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

This two-parter very much looks to the Pertwee era for its inspiration.

The Third Doctor was the first to encounter the Silurians, and then their marine cousins the Sea Devils (both of whom only ever returned once, opposite the Fifth in the underwhelming Warriors of the Deep). An appearance in the revived series was always on the cards - though we would have to wait another 12 years before we saw the Sea Devils again. 

The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood features another UK colony of Silurians, whose shelter has been disturbed by the activities of a scientific research project - the Wenley Moor cyclotron then, and a Welsh deep mining operation here.

In recognition of the naming controversy, the creatures are referred to as Homo Reptilia here. Their creator, Malcolm Hulke, had selected the name "Silurian" purely because it sounded good, and he thought - in the pre-internet era - that the era was a suitable one. He corrected this after the production team received letters about it, and had the Doctor rename them Eocenes in The Sea Devils.

Unfortunately this is also wrong. The Triassic to the Cretaceous were the eras of the large reptiles.

The Doctor attempts to prevent conflict and begin peaceful negotiations between humans and Silurians - just as he tried in the two Pertwee stories. As in The Silurians, one of the reptile people is a war-monger who undermines his efforts, and as in The Sea Devils, an aggressive human does the undermining.

This story at least ends with the Doctor setting up a future round of negotiations, when the time is right.

(Though there is no sign of human-Silurian co-existence in any future-set story).

An early design for the new Silurians was very much based on the originals. However, Steven Moffat decided to veto the third eye (supposedly because Davros already had a third eye that lit up...).

Sadly, we end up with a rather sub-Star Trek make-up. The masked versions have a similarity to Sea Devils.

The Silurian guns are based on the Sea Devils'.

Another obvious Pertwee inspiration is the energy dome which is set up to isolate the village. This clearly mirrors the heat barrier from The Daemons.

There's no trace of green ooze turning people in werewolves, but we've seen an experimental drilling project in Inferno.

A medical procedure harmless to humans but potentially fatal to a Time Lord, we have also seen in the Pertwee era - in The Mind of Evil.

Chris Chibnall was given the Silurians as a given, along with the idea of "we drill down to them - and they drill up to us". It was Moffat who decided that these Silurians should belong to another branch, to explain the changes.

In an interview, Chibnall described his intention as Passport to Pimlico meets Tremors. 

Passport to Pimlico (1949) is a classic Ealing Comedy, in which a district of London finds itself cut off, diplomatically and physically from the rest of the UK.

Tremors (1990) is a Kevin Bacon-starring comedy-horror about carnivorous subterranean creatures attacking an isolated desert town.

As far as the series' story arc is concerned, this was a key piece. At the conclusion we see the crooked smile crack, and Rory is first killed by Restac, then removed from time by it.

Amy forgets who he is.

The Doctor retrieves an item from it which proves to be debris from the TARDIS - revealing to him that his ship is at the heart of the explosion which is rippling throughout all of time and space.

Some aspects of this won't be resolved until Christmas 2013.

Next time: It's Richard Curtis, so expect to have your emotions manipulated. And Bill Nighy.

Inspirations: Amy's Choice

Technically, this story takes place entirely within the TARDIS. It just doesn't look like it due to the Leadworth dream.

It's only the second episode to have the companion's name in the title - the first being Rose.

One of the things Steven Moffat did on becoming showrunner was to invite submissions from writers who were better known for comedy / comedy-drama work. The author of this story is Simon Nye, who is best known for the popular sitcom Men Behaving Badly, which ran from 1992 - 1998. It was produced by Moffat's mother-in-law, Beryl Vertue.

The idea for a story involving split dreams came from Moffat, but Nye wanted to write an episode which would concentrate on the relationship between Amy and the Doctor / Rory when under stress.

In discussions with Moffat, Nye had told him that on first waking after particularly vivid dreams, was he momentarily confused as to whether he was still sleeping or awake.

Having one dream set five years in the future allowed for some humour. Having Amy pregnant was introduced purely to play around with the cliché that the Doctor and companions are always running.

When asked to include a monster, he came up with the idea of a creature centred around an old peoples' home. 

Nye claimed that young people often found old people somewhat scary - but hoped he wouldn't put small children off visiting their grandparents.

The home is called "Sarn", which just happens to be the name of the world in Planet of Fire.

The Eknodines were designed to be cheap and easy to realise.

Mr Nainby (stunt performer Nick Hobbs, who played Aggedor) was named after a school friend of Nye's.

The Dream Lord calls the Doctor "the oncoming storm", which is supposed to be what the Daleks call him - first mentioned in the novel Love and War, but stated on screen in Parting of the Ways.

He also refers to him as a vegetarian. The Doctor had adopted a meat-free diet after the events of The Two Doctors.

The running joke about his relationship with Queen Elizabeth I is also mentioned - which originated in The Shakespeare Code.

The Dream Lord is a manifestation of the darker side of the Doctor's nature - originating from his subconscious.

We'd previously seen an embodiment of this in the Valeyard - an incarnation from between his twelfth and final one. (The extension of his regeneration cycle in The Time of the Doctor, and then the introduction of the Timeless Child have further muddied this already opaque concept).

Even earlier, in The Time Monster, the Doctor had told Jo to ignore his subconscious thoughts as relayed by the TARDIS telepathic circuits, claiming that there were some he was not very proud of.

Moffat has big plans for Rory, usually involving him dying (as happens for the first time here - though only within a dream).

After her attempted seduction of the Doctor,  this episode served to make Amy realise just how much she really loved her fiancé.

At one point the Doctor thinks the TARDIS has jumped a time-track - a reference to The Space Museum.

This is the first story of the 5th Series not to feature the crack in time.

Next time: The Pertwee era revisited...

Inspirations: The Vampires of Venice

The big clue is in the title...

Fans of Hammer Horror will have spotted one of the main inspirations for this story - especially the 1960 film The Brides of Dracula. This stars Peter Cushing as Van Helsing but - despite the title - Dracula doesn't actually feature. Instead, the vampire hunter is up against one of the Count's disciples - Baron Meinster - who targets a girls' school. 

One of the heroine's friends, played by Hancock's Half Hour's Andree Melly, is vampirised, and she emerges from her coffin in what looks like a white night dress. There are a number of female vampires across the Hammer range who dress similarly, though they are supposed to be in their shrouds. Skimpy night dresses are obviously sexier. (Hammer turned to sex  towards the end, to spice up their flagging horror films, which included the lesbian-focussed Karnstein trilogy, the second of which also revolved around a girls' school).

The girls in this story are being set up to be brides of vampiric creatures.

The Vampires of Venice just happens to also be centred around a girls' school - and the pupils who have been transformed tend to wander about in their white night dresses.

In the same way that most werewolf lore derives from The Wolfman (Universal 1941), so much vampire lore derives from Bram Stoker and the Universal & Hammer movies.

We have the extreme light-sensitivity, an apparent ability to fly, fangs, and failure to cast a reflection. An aversion to running water is naturally omitted.

Another horror film trapping is the sight of the failed "brides" lying in their coffins.

A draft script had Francesco climbing up the wall of a building, as Dracula does in the novel (but which Christopher Lee didn't get round to doing until Scars of Dracula, 1970).

We should also bear in mind that the writer, Toby Whithouse, was the creator and lead writer on Being Human - the darkly comedic drama about a vampire / werewolf / ghost flat-share.

Google this episode and you might have also come across a horror movie starring Klaus Kinski, reprising Graf Orlok in a sequel to Werner Herzog's Nosferatu remake. Released in 1988, it is titled Vampire In Venice.

The story is also designed to reintroduce Rory and bring him aboard the TARDIS as a full-time companion - setting him for major plot developments later on.

It has already been established that Amy has run away with the Doctor on the eve of her wedding, so here we see him attending his stag party.

Venice is regarded as one of the most romantic cities in the world (moonlit gondola rides, etc.) so this helped determine the location of the story - the Doctor is determined to keep the couple together.

The fact that Series 5 is partly being filmed in Croatia - just across the Adriatic from Italy - is another inspiration. Trogir has similar architecture to Venice.

Since the series returned in 2005 one of the taboos has been the depiction of blood on screen. Characters can meet the grisliest of fates, but you can't show the red stuff.

A bit of a problem in an episode about vampires...

The way round it is to substitute nice safe water, and the location agrees with this - Venice being built on a lagoon and famous for its canals.

The threat of the city sinking at the conclusion derives from the genuine issues Venice faces.

Next time: the Doctor encounters his very own Monster from the Id. Rory dies, but not for the last time...

Inspirations: Time of the Angels / Flesh and Stone

Blink had proven to be one of the most successful stories of the revived series thanks to the creation of the Weeping Angels. Written by Steven Moffat, everyone assumed that they would return now that he was the new showrunner. There was also the enigmatic character of River Song, which Moffat had also created, who many of us wanted to know more about.

Time of the Angels / Flesh and Stone was to be the first two-parter of Series 5, and was the first story to go into production. Our first sight of Matt Smith in costume was when he filmed location work at "Bad Wolf Bay", the distinctive beach which had played that role in Doomsday.

The first draft of this story was already written before Smith had even been cast.

One of the inspirations for this story was Aliens (1986). Moffat thought that most sequels failed to live up to the originals, though the Alien sequel was one of the exceptions. Whilst Ridley Scott's film had featured a single Xenomorph, James Cameron delivered a whole army of them, battling a military unit on a hostile alien planet. Dalek and Bad Wolf / Parting of the Ways had followed a similar path in 2005. Whilst Blink had featured more than one Angel, the numbers were very small - with only a single creature threatening at any one time for the most part.

As for River, she had mentioned the "crash of the Byzantium" as an incident she knew about, which the Doctor was unaware of - so something from her past, but his future.

Everyone at the time assumed this to be a spaceship - and so it turned out to be.

When added to the script for the Library story, Moffat had not planned that this comment would lead anywhere.

What he had worked out was that River would be involved in the Doctor's death at some future time, and was in prison for this, and that the pair would become married at some point. He envisaged their relationship as an argumentative one, with a lot of oneupmanship between them.

On first reading the script, Alex Kingston actually thought that she was playing the Doctor's mother rather than his wife.

Blink, as the title had suggested, had seen the Angels at their most threatening when un-viewed, which inspired Moffat to have Amy blinded during this story, having to find her way through a large group of Angels. Having the Doctor return to her wearing his jacket, which he had only just lost, was not a late addition. Moffat was already plotting out his series finale which would see him travel back through his recent timeline.

The forest setting was there to provide a spooky location, rather than have everything take place in a futuristic spaceship interior.

Having the soldiers a religious order was simply a way to make them more interesting, and something which could potentially be revisited in a future story.

The Doctor speed reads a book and claims it was a bit boring in the middle - just as he had done in City of Death.

The Byzantium's Home Box - inspired by an aircraft black box flight recorder - has Old High Gallifreyan writing on it, which the Doctor can read, as previously seen in The Five Doctors.

It is suggested that the iconic TARDIS (de)materialisation sound is due to the Doctor leaving the brakes on. This doesn't fit with many stories in which other Time Lords' TARDISes have made the exact same noise, so might just be River being flippant.

The series' story arc concerning the crack shifted up a gear as the Doctor became aware of it for the first time since little Amelia's bedroom wall. For the first time we saw that it could remove people from existence.

First mention of the Pandorica.

The story ended with a return to Amy's house and the Doctor realising that the date of her wedding (due the following day) was significant. Fans noted that this date would be that of the series finale (26th June 2010).

The writer came to regret the scene in Amy's bedroom where she tries to thrust herself upon him sexually, saying it was the one thing of his entire tenure he would change.

Moffat added to Angel lore by having them kill for the first time, speak (although only through the bodies of their victims) as well as be seen to move. He also introduced the "image of an Angel becoming an Angel" notion. 

Many fans were unhappy with these developments - especially the voice and movement. Preference was also made to the smaller number or single Angel posing a more effective threat than whole hosts of the creatures. A case of "less is more".

Ultimately, this story turned out to be one of those occasions when the sequel did not better the original.

Next time: a visit into Hammer Horror territory...

Inspirations: Victory of the Daleks

Mark Gatiss becomes the first writer (after the showrunner himself) to write for the new set-up. He and Moffat will form a successful writing partnership which will include Sherlock and an adaptation of Dracula.

Moffat wished to follow the now common practice of having seasons commence with a contemporary story, followed by a futuristic one, and then a historical.

Gatiss' previous stories had been set in relatively recent historical periods - the Victorian era and the 1950's. His work for the Virgin and BBC book ranges had also tended to have similar historical settings.

This time round, he opts for World War II. This is the season's Celebrity Historical, so he opts for the inclusion of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. 

The WW2 setting saw Gatiss revisit childhood memories of classic British war movies. Two in particular stand out - Where Eagles Dare (1968) and The Battle of Britain (1969).

From the first we have the Spitfire call signs "Broadsword calling Danny Boy" - you can almost hear Richard Burton saying it - whilst the Spitfire dogfight and images of the RAF Fighter Command centre, with models pushed about a map, come from the latter.

Gatiss himself, who previously acted in the series, gave voice to the Spitfire pilot.

The Daleks were redesigned for this story - supposedly a new permanent variation on the design. The larger size and colourful nature of the "New Paradigm" derived from the Aaru Dalek movies which had starred Peter Cushing as Dr. Who. Moffat had already used the cinematic TARDIS as inspiration for his new Police Box exterior.

The cinema Daleks had had different ranks, indicated by colour (black, gold, red). Gatiss and Moffat went for both rank (the white Supreme) and function.

The plan was that they would have an equipment hatch at the rear of the casing from which different appendages could emerge, rotating round the groove which runs round the middle section.

Unfortunately this simply resulted in them looking hunch-backed, their graceful symmetry destroyed.

Instead of metallic colouring, they looked like they were now manufactured from plastic. Fans likened them to Tele-Tubbies, or to colour-coded household recycling bins which were then proliferating.

Daleks had always been likened to armoured tanks, and this image was accentuated by having the RTD design props repainted in military khaki camouflage colours, with webbing accoutrements - and little Union Jacks on the domes where identity numbers had featured of late.

These "Ironside" Daleks - the name deriving from the helmet design of Cromwell's New Model Army of the English Civil Wars - were acting in an apparently subservient manner. This was inspired by Power of the Daleks, in which the Daleks found on Vulcan pretend to be servants of human colonists only until they have achieved the independent power supply they need to exterminate everyone.

In the 1966 story, one Dalek chants "I am your servant" over and over, and in his story Gatiss has one state "I am your... soldier", with a pause on the "s" by way of an homage.

Churchill's line about giving the Devil a favourable reference if Hitler invaded Hell came from a real speech the PM made in June 1941. Then, he was referring to support for Stalin against Hitler, despite being a staunch anti-communist.

Gatiss used other Churchill-isms, such as KBO (Keep Buggering On) and "Action this day" which he added to orders which he wanted carried out immediately. 

It was Moffat who decided that the Doctor and Churchill should have previous history, inspired by the name-dropping Pertwee's Doctor used to indulge in (Napoleon, Nelson etc).

Labour politician Clement Atlee features at one point attending a meeting in the Cabinet War Rooms. He would go on to win the post-war General Election, which ushered in the National Health Service etc.

You can visit the War Rooms today. Built beneath Whitehall, entry via King Charles Street, they are now named after Churchill.

Professor Bracewell's supposed origins in Paisley, the city SW of Glasgow, is a nod to Moffat. It's his home town.

The Daleks have been creating humanoid robots ever since they copied the Doctor in The Chase.

The story arc continues with another sighting of the crooked smile crack - this time in a wall behind where the TARDIS landed.

Next time: the Angels are back - and so is River Song.

Inspirations: The Beast Below

After writing his new Doctor's introduction story, and working out the story arc / resolution, Steven Moffat had to get on with writing the intervening "ordinary" episodes that would make up the bulk of the series. Whilst the series opener would introduce new companion Amy Pond, it obviously had to concentrate on the Doctor. The second episode is the one where the focus can be shifted onto the companion, and give the audience an indication of how the pair are going to interact with each other.

In particular Moffat wanted to show the companion resolving the problem, saving the Doctor from making a mistake - her reasoning behind this being her equating the Star Whale with the Doctor.

The post credits scene shows us Amy's first taste of space travel, as well as providing an eye-opening sequence for the audience. It is clearly only moments after Amy has entered the TARDIS at the close of The Eleventh Hour as she's not discovered the wardrobe or popped back home for a change of clothes.

Setting the scene in space also allows for a smooth transition to the main action of the episode as she and the Doctor see the Starship for the first time.

Earlier, the pre-credit sequence has introduced us to the new monster, the Smiler, which has already featured in the 3-D cinema trailer for the forthcoming series.

Moffat has raided childhood fears for some of his monsters, but he also has a thing about building upon a striking image - in this case the sudden change from happy smiling figure to frightful angry one.

With their painted faces, the Smilers look vaguely clownish - always a potential scare factor - as well as ventriloquist dummies, which also freak a lot of people out.

Another visual inspiration is fairground arcade fortune-teller machines, which feature a dummy in a glass booth.

The Winders are simply an extension of the Smilers. Clockwork people need someone to wind them up, and the rotating head image worked for both.

Liz 10 is the latest British monarch to feature in the series, with her original namesake featuring in The Shakespeare Code, Victoria in Tooth and Claw, Richard I in The Crusade, a fake John in The King's Demons, and the second Elizabeth appearing on several occasions, from Silver Nemesis to Voyage of the Damned. Others have been namedropped by the Doctor.

Starship UK is supposed to be the country in miniature, with all the counties represented by tower blocks and with certain landmarks also present - such as Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London. Technically, it ought to be Starship GB, as only English counties are seen. (There's no mention at all of Northern Ireland or Wales on screen). What we do hear is that Scotland has gone its own way - a dig at the Scottish independence movement. What we actually see of the interior of the starship suggests the London-centrism which the BBC has always presented. We have Oxford Street, with all the street furniture associated with the touristy idea of London.

There are also obvious London Underground trappings.

In one of the LU style lifts we see a monitor with a little girl and a blackboard. This is a reference to the old Test Card F which the BBC used to transmit in the days before we had 24/7 telly. It was designed to illustrate colour and geometric patterns which helped engineers test the picture quality. The girl was Carole Hersee, who went on to become a costume designer.

The setting of a space ark abandoning an uninhabitable Earth, is not a new one in science fiction and has featured twice before in Doctor Who, with the destruction of the planet featuring on another three occasions.

Back in 1966 we had The Ark, which is supposedly set in the far future after the Earth is no longer habitable, and we see the planet begin to burn.

1975's The Ark in Space features an entirely different spacecraft, and it is claimed that Earth has only been temporarily rendered uninhabitable due to solar flare activity. The planet survives and is ready to be repopulated, as we see in The Sontaran Experiment.

Frontios presented us with the fate of one of the spacecraft which fled the Earth. This can't be from the solar flare event, as there Nerva was supposed to be the sole repository of Earth's flora and fauna. The Doctor also states quite clearly that they are in the far future - so far that he might be in trouble from the Time Lords for coming this far - so the Frontios vessel has to have come from the final destruction of the planet. It might have been an independent vessel which left not long before the one with the Monoids on board, or perhaps it left because of some other event which occurred between the two Arks.

We know of one of these - the Ravolox incident. At some point in the far future the Time Lords destroyed the vast majority of life on Earth. It may be that some people foresaw this and managed to flee - we don't know the exact circumstances of what the Time Lords did, though it does sound as if it was a sudden event. 

Some people might simply have wanted to leave a crowded, polluted planet without needing a cataclysm to give them a push (such as the misguided Operation Golden Age followers).

The planet is definitively destroyed in the aptly titled The End of the World. However, we learn there that the planet was abandoned some time before and the Earth maintained for a long time - suggesting a long gap between the departure of the occupants and the final destruction we see here. This does not fit with what we saw in The Ark.

If Starship UK left before a solar flare type event, and a specific date implies this, then you have to wonder why they didn't want to wait a bit then go home again. Does this also mean that the future of Earth after this event is completely devoid of British people? That dating is Amy's age, which is given at just over 1300 years old - giving us a date of around 3300 AD.

The idea of a space whale is another very old one in Sci-fi. Doctor Who almost delivered one back in the early 1980's, when DWW and 2000AD comic writers Pat Mills and John Wagner tried to get a story about one made. This would have gone for the Jonah and the Whale notion of people surviving in the belly of the beast, and one version of the story - before it was finally abandoned - would have introduced the male companion to replace Adric.

Moffat brought back prequels for many of his stories, released on-line or saved for the DVD box sets. This episode had a TARDIS scene in which Amy accesses information about some of the Doctor's previous companions - concentrating on the female ones. Images of past companions appear.

In terms of the story arc, Amy mentions needing to be back home for her wedding the next day, and we see the crack from her bedroom wall replicated on the starship's hull. We also get a throw-forward to the following week's instalment as the Doctor gets a call from a certain wartime Prime-Minister, and we see the shadow of a well-known denizen of Skaro.

Next time: Winston Churchill vs the Recycling Bin Daleks...

Inspirations: The Eleventh Hour

Only once before in Doctor Who had we seen what could be termed a reboot of the series, in that a new season commenced with none of the existing characters from the previous year - neither Doctor nor companions. (The move from B&W to colour and the dawn of a new decade help to emphasise that a line has most definitely been drawn under the old set-up). 

The War Games ended with the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe all departing together, so that Spearhead From Space opened with a brand new Doctor, who would then meet a brand new companion. One element did cross over between seasons, but Lethbridge-Stewart was hardly a regular in January 1970. He had only been seen twice, a year apart, and was only the Brigadier, of UNIT fame, in a single story.

The Eleventh Hour would see a new Doctor, new companion(s), new showrunner and new producers, with no reference to the previous episode other than the resolution to the regeneration scene.

Steven Moffat began writing his first story as showrunner as early as January 2008 - an episode which he had provisionally titled "The Doctor's Return".

The companion, Amy Pond, was inspired by the character of Wendy in Peter Pan - a girl whisked away on an adventure still dressed in her nightdress. It was envisioned very early on that this would be on the eve of her wedding.

Amy's meeting with the Doctor first as a child, and then again as an adult, derived from The Girl in the Fireplace. 

An early draft had the Doctor forgetting about meeting Amy as a child due to the trauma of regeneration - so she recalled him, but he did not know her when they met up again later. This was when David Tennant was still contemplating staying on. The reason he did not recognise her was because she had actually first encountered him at the end of his Tenth life, and he would regenerate at the end of the 13th instalment - shades of River Song meeting the Doctor in reverse order.

Moffat plotted out a rough story arc of 13 episodes, which would culminate with the Doctor forced into a trap. If he failed to walk into it, a major conflict would worsen.

Once it was clear that he would be introducing a brand new Doctor, Moffat's idea was for the newly regenerated Time Lord to have a very short time in which to save the Earth - thrown into a situation when he had only just regenerated. This inspired the title - he being the Eleventh Doctor and the phrase "11th hour" referring to something happening at the last minute.

He originally set out to have an older Doctor, as Tennant and Eccleston had been relatively young men.

Matt Smith had originally auditioned for Watson in Sherlock, and Moffat had remembered him.

He decided to go with an even younger Doctor in the end - though one who could convey an old man trapped in a young body.

Smith looked at some old episodes and loved Patrick Troughton's Doctor, having seen Tomb of the Cybermen.

The "fish-fingers and custard" food scenes were inspired by AA Milne's The House at Pooh Corner (1928), in which Winnie the Pooh is woken up in the middle of the night by the arrival of Tigger who likes everything, as opposed to the Doctor hating everything until he hits on the fish finger / custard combo.

One of Moffat's sons had a crack in the wall above his bed - which inspired him to include this particular image.

Examining the crack, the Doctor says "You've had some cowboys in here" - the same phrase he had used when mind-reading Reinette in The Girl in the Fireplace.

The extra door / hidden room in Amy's house derived from a childhood dream Moffat had of visits to his grandmother's house.

The setting of events in a village came about as a counterpoint to the inner-city London settings of the previous years. Moffat wanted something out of Trumpton, and in a draft version had the Doctor describe Leadworth as Balamory.

Moffat wanted a big TARDIS interior, and was able to achieve this thanks to the Torchwood Hub having been destroyed in Children of Earth - freeing up studio space. This allowed for different levels and doors going off to other areas, which might be developed later. (RTD's console room was retained, as Neil Gaiman was already planning The Doctor's Wife).

The exterior of the TARDIS was inspired by the Police Box of the Peter Cushing Dalek movies - bigger, darker blue, and with white paintwork around the windows, and the return of the St John Ambulance badge, last seen in Season 3. Mark Gatiss had suggested this. (He was working on his Dalek story, which would see a redesign of the Daleks inspired by the same movies).

The TARDIS swimming pool (described as a bathroom) had been seen in The Invasion of Time, but had been said to have been ejected, due to a leak, in Paradise Towers.

Ten's sonic screwdriver is destroyed on the village green for two reasons - in-story, to make the Doctor's task more difficult, but also to pave the way for a marketable new version.

The Doctor dressing himself from items of clothing found in Leadworth Hospital was a deliberate nod to that other reboot in 1970, when the Third Doctor had collected items from the cloakroom of Ashbridge Cottage Hospital.

As it's a whole new set-up, we have a sequence where the Doctor challenges the Atraxi, which allows for clips from previous stories - classic and more recent - to remind the viewers that this is the same programme. Bizarrely, the clips include Sea Devils, who have never "invaded" the Earth; Hath and Ood - who were quite friendly and have never been near Earth - and Vashta Nerada, who also have never threatened the planet.

The clips of old Doctors come from The Time Meddler, Tomb of the Cybermen, The Sea Devils, The Pirate Planet, Arc of Infinity, Revelation of the Daleks, Time and the Rani, the Paul McGann thing, The Parting of the Ways and The Family of Blood.

Next time: Moffat finally proves that he can write rubbish as well as award-winning gems...

Story 214 - A Christmas Carol

In which the honeymoon of Amy and Rory is turning into a bit of a disaster. They are trapped on a space liner which is about to crash onto an alien planet. This world's atmosphere is permanently storm-lashed. The Doctor travels to the surface, arriving in the city of Sardicktown. The Sardicks are a powerful family who virtually run the planet. Kazran Sardick's father built a device which can control the skies, calming the storms. He is an embittered old man who is cruel to everyone. His father had made his fortune from money-lending, the borrowers providing members of their own family as collateral. They are held in suspended animation in caskets resting on an ice lake beneath his mansion. The Doctor witnesses a family seeking to have their relative released for a forthcoming mid-winter holiday - a young woman named Abigail. Kazran refuses to allow their request. He also refuses to heed the President's call to use his machine to allow the space liner to land safely. The Doctor is thrown out of the house, and has to think of a way to make Kazran change his mind. On hearing a Christmas carol playing over a tannoy, he has an idea. He will go back in time and try to make Kazran a less sociopathic man. Alone in his rooms, Kazran suddenly starts to experience different memories. He watches an old video diary he made as a boy - and sees the Doctor appear in it, addressing him in his present.

Young Kazran is bullied by his father. He longs to see one of the flying fish which sometimes descend from the ice clouds into the city, but his father never allows this. The Doctor decides to arrange for a fish to descend, using his sonic screwdriver to lure it to the house. It proves to be bigger and more fierce than he expected - a full size shark. It bites the end off the screwdriver, but then falls ill. The Doctor and Kazran must get it back into the clouds, and so they descend to the ice lake to use one of the people containers. The one they select is Abigail's. The shark recovers and attacks them, but Abigail's singing calms the creature. They place it in the the container and take it to the TARDIS, returning it to the skies. The older Kazran has fond memories of Abigail. The Doctor and his younger self decide to release Abigail every Christmas Eve, to spend the day travelling in the TARDIS. The Doctor has not noticed that there is a counter on her container, which is counting down towards zero after each trip. Kazran grows into a young man, and he falls in love with Abigail. They visit man places on Earth, including attending a party at Frank Sinatra's house where the Doctor gets himself engaged to Marilyn Monroe. Kazran knows the significance of the counter, and when the next Christmas Eve arrives, he shuns the Doctor - preferring to help his father perfect the cloud calming machine. He tells the Doctor that Abigail w as dying when she was put into hibernation. The counter indicates how many days she has left to live - just the one. The Doctor has tried the ghost of Christmas Past, and seemingly failed, so he next tries the Ghost of Christmas Present.

Kazran is visited by a hologram of Amy Pond, and is then projected on to the stricken space liner, where he sees the passengers and crew who he is going to let die. This fails to stir his conscience.
The Doctor then turns to the Ghost of Christmas Future - as he lets the young Kazran see what kind of man he will become. This finally does the trick. Kazran agrees to use the machine to clam the skies and allow the space liner to make a safe landing. However, the controls were isomorphic - responding only to Kazran - and he has been changed so much that they don't recognise him. The Doctor must find an alternative, and remembers how Abigail's singing had calmed the shark. Kazran knows that this will be Abigail's final day, but the Doctor points out that today - Christmas Day - is as good a day as any other. Abigail is released and sings to the sharks and fish, and the skies are becalmed. The space liner is able to land, and the Doctor is reunited with Amy and Rory. He must take young Kazran back to his own time, but the older Kazran intends to make this a Christmas Day to remember with Abigail...

A Christmas Carol was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on 25th December, 2010. It was his first Christmas Special - and the first for Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor. After his first one, Russell T Davies had inclined towards using guest artists as temporary companions for his Specials - Catherine Tate, Kylie Minogue, David Morrissey, and Bernard Cribbins. Amy and Rory do feature in this story, but only in limited fashion as they are trapped on the crashing spaceship. The Doctor instead teams up with various versions of Kazran Sardick, and Abigail. She is played by Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins. She hadn't acted before. The older Kazran is the main guest artist, Michael Gambon - best known these days as the second incarnation of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies, when he took over the role following the death of Richard Harris for the third instalment. Playing Kazran as a young man is another newcomer to acting - Danny Horn. He had only just graduated from stage school when he landed the role. The youngest iteration of Kazran was played by Laurence Belcher (who has played the young Charles Xavier in two of the X-Men prequels). He also played Prince William in a biopic of Princess Diana.

It goes without saying that the inspiration for this story is there in the title and the Doctor even acknowledges it in the dialogue - Charles Dickens' festive tale of the redemption of the miser Ebeneezer Scrooge. The Doctor arranges for "ghosts" from past, present and future to make Kazran change his ways and become a better person. (The Doctor plays the ghost from the past, Amy the one from the present, and Kazran himself becomes the ghost of the future). He's from a family of money-lenders, and even uses some of Scrooge's language - talking about the problems of "the surplus population".
Not sure where the shark comes from. Is Moffat thinking that Jaws is regularly shown at Christmas time on UK television? It may simply be that RTD had used up all the obvious Christmas icons to subvert.
Music plays a big part in the story, hence Jenkins' casting. Murray Gold had written songs for previous Christmas Specials, but here he writes a song - Silence Is All You Know - which is crucial to the resolution of the plot.

Overall, hard to go wrong when you follow Dickens' classic tale so closely. It was one of the highest rated Christmas Special in DWM's 50th Anniversary poll (No.97), beating the likes of The Next Doctor, The Runaway Bride, Voyage of the Damned.
Things you might like to know:

• This is the first Christmas Special in which no-one is killed (though Abigail's days are quite literally numbered).
• Despite hardly being in it, this is the first time that Arthur Darvill gets his name into the opening credits.
• Amy and Rory were on honeymoon when the Doctor had his recent reunion with Sarah Jane Smith and Jo Grant. He is dressed as a Centurion, and she a WPC - costumes we have seen them in during Series 5.
• Places which the Doctor takes Kazran and Abigail to include New York, Paris, Australia, Egypt and Hollywood in 1952 (Frank Sinatra's Christmas party) - according to Kazran's photographs.
• Moffat had previously written a short story in which the Doctor travelled back in time to change someone's behaviour and make them more likeable in his "present".
• And Paul Cornell had written a story in which the Doctor visited someone every Christmas Day.
• The Doctor gets rid of Kazran's servants by having them win the lottery. He had previously gotten the school teacher job in School Reunion this way, and would buy Donna a winning lottery ticket as a wedding present. In this instance, as Kazran points out, his city doesn't even have a lottery.
• Young Mr Belcher clearly recognises that the acting profession isn't a very secure one. He recently graduated from Oxford with a degree in classical archaeology. (Though I'm not very sure how many jobs there are in that field either...).
• And finally - this is my last post this side of Christmas Day unless some big news breaks, so I'll take this opportunity of wishing you all A Very Merry Christmas!!!

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.