The Pandorica Opens – S31 (5) 12

[Anonymous @]

@bluesqueakpip – Thanks to the time vortex, the TARDIS experiences all possible futures, so she knew that there were timelines where Amy & Rory could be brought back, rendering River non-paradoxical. She also knew that the Doctor would need River in the future, so she made sure that River continued to exist, in spite of the paradox. She didn’t reject River’s paradoxical existence, she made it possible. Sort of like when the Master turned her into a Paradox Machine, but on a much smaller scale, so the modifications weren’t necessary.

[Anonymous @]

*bangs head on desk*

Of course, @MadScientist72 – the thing that we were all referring to – the apple – and little Amelia remembers her mum did them that way.  She remembers her mum.

Now, are we all aboslutely certain that Amelia’s parents were taken by the crack? And possibly taken the very night 11 showed up?  I’m leaning toward MadS’s explanation right now, that Amelia/Amy is The First Impossible Girl.

I’m excited by the debate this episode has thrown up – as @jimthefish said, this is exactly what this site was set up for, and specialises in.

[Anonymous @]

@steve-thorp  – OK, being quite rubbish at cryptic crosswords (and cricket is inexplicable to me  🙂  ), pleez essplane how duck = zero.

[Anonymous @]

@shazzbot  Re duck=zero

The term is a shortening of the term “duck’s egg”, which was in use before before Test Cricket began. When referencing the Prince of Wales’s (later Edward VII) score of zero on 17 July 1866, a newspaper wrote that the PoW “retired to the Royal Pavilion on a “duck’s egg”.  It is believed that the term comes from the similarity in shape of the number “0” and that of a duck’s egg. The Oxford Dictionary still cites “duck’s egg” as an alternative version of the term.

[Anonymous @]

@fatmaninabox – my, what an eclectically erudite crew we are on this forum!

Thanks for the info … it makes me wonder if all of this was planned – Amy Pond, duck pond (with zero ducks), Prisoner Zero – it’s like The Eleventh Hour was one big cryptic crossword.  But far more entertaining.  🙂

[stevethewhistle @steve-thorp]

@Shazzbot,

@fatmaninabox

I have heard that the tennis score “love” (= zero) derives from the French “l’oeuf” (= egg).

Have we collected enough yet to make an omelette?

🙂

[Anonymous @]

@shazzbot  Erudite? Moi? Nah, I ‘googled it’ 😉

To be honest though, I knew it had something to do with eggs and ‘0’ being a similar shape but was curious as to it’s origins. You’re post just, erm, ‘egged’ me on to finally look it up 🙂 Hmm, I wonder what the origins of “egging someone on” are?

@steve-thorpe  I’ll have cheese, onion and mushrooms in mine, ta. Ooh and a pinch of chilli powder 🙂

[Anonymous @]

@fatmaninabox –

On this side of the pond we use “goose egg” to mean the same thing (minus the cricket).

[Rewvian @rewvian]

So this episode has two parts, I will make a second post for the other one.

The main plot in the episode is The Doctor is summoned to Stonehenge in Roman times, by a painting of the TARDIS blowing up that Van Gogh made.  Seeing connections to the other episodes from the season was great.  Ultimately River Song is the one who retrieves the painting and reunites with the Doctor.  Stonehenge hides the Pandorica, an ancient prison that bears some similarities to Pandora’s Box.

While fending off invasions from many of his enemy monsters, the Doctor gets a little help from Rory, who returns as a Roman soldier.  Seeing the Cyberman head behave like an octopus and try to grab onto Amy was creepy, and we learn it had a drowsy dart inside of it.  Drowsy Amy is saved from its body by Rory, but doesn’t remember him.

The Doctor and River learn that whatever is inside of the Pandorica is opening it up.  River for whatever reason returns to the TARDIS and flies it, and it brings her to Amy’s house.  There she finds books about the Roman Empire and Pandora’s Box, and figures out that everything in this scenario was pulled straight from Amy’s life.  It turns out that the combined efforts of the Daleks, Cybermen, Judoon, Sontarans, Silurians, Atraxi and Nestene Consciousness among others have teamed up to trap and imprison the Doctor in the Pandorica.  The reason being they blame the Doctor for the cracks in the universe that the TARDIS caused.

Amy has a breakthrough and remembers Rory, but despite his best efforts Rory is still a robotic killing machine and only partly in control of himself, and shoots Amy in the abdomen.  The Doctor is locked away in the Pandorica, and River Song is trapped on the TARDIS as it apparently explodes.

I’d say this is the most villains we’ve seen on-screen at once, and the biggest alliance between them.  It is a little rough to buy that the Judoon and Atraxi would ever work with most of these enemies, and the Daleks would probably think all other races below them.  We also never directly see the Atraxi and the Nestene Consciousness among other things, but it’s kind of understandable why.  Anyway there were so many villains in the room I almost expected the Doctor to shout, “You’re all under arrest!”, like Dick Tracey.

I want to finish up the season so I’ll go ahead and watch the next part, so I can do another post on The Big Bang.

[Rewvian @rewvian]

Now let’s talk about the S5 finale, The Big Bang.

I didn’t quite like how in the first part of the episode, they made it sound like something was in the Pandorica already when it was vacant.

This episode marks the introduction of the fez for the Eleventh Doctor.

The universe “collapses” and all of the Doctor’s enemies have been reduced to stone and rubble.  The Doctor from some future moment teleports in with River’s wrist device and gives Rory his sonic screwdriver, to open the Pandorica and free him with.  They put Amy inside of the Pandorica to be freed by (and heal from) her younger self in present time.  Rory guards the Pandorica for over 2000 years.

Rory becomes a guard at the museum and still watches the Pandorica.

The show has this obsession with making it seem like the Doctor is going to die during the season 5 and 6 years lol.

History continues to collapse and little Amy vanishes.  (I’m not sure why just her younger self.  And while we’re at it the thing about interacting with past selves has changed a lot since the Eccleston years.)  The Doctor looks for the collapsing TARDIS, but doesn’t have to look far because it’s taking up a segment of the sky.  He teleports to get River out of the TARDIS.  I like that Amy and River teamed up to put an end to the fez trend before it sticks!

The Pandorica contains atoms from the universe inside of it, and the Doctor hopes to revive the collapsing universe with the help of it.  River Song works out that piloting the Pandorica into the raging explosion of the TARDIS might cause a big bang and do the trick.  Of course there is this angle where doing so will trap the Doctor in another dimension.

The Doctor arrives in the TARDIS and sees bygone events.  It transports him back to the Time of Angels where he speaks to Amy when his past self walks away.  (I did not check to see if he had his tweed jacket on when he talked to her back during that episode.  But great planning if true.)  Then it transports him back to little Amy the night she waited outside for his return with luggage in tow.

The Doctor’s sentiments about hating repeats is pretty emotional.

Amy’s life becomes repaired and she suddenly has parents.  She finally goes through with her wedding and marries Rory, who also exists for sure again.  Amy is given the spoiler book that belongs to River Song, and it is blank.  (It gets its writing back in a bit.)

Amy saves the Doctor by remembering him, apparently bringing him back into existence in her dimension.  I liked the something borrowed, something blue scene leading up to it.  The Doctor dances with the little kids.  And Amy and Rory continue their travels with the Doctor.

I should point out that I had always remembered disliking this episode because I remembered it seeming like a cop-out and an easy fix to several problems.  Upon my rewatch nothing happened at all like I was remembering.  And there were a lot of things done to resolve the issues.  I enjoyed the The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang much more than I thought I did.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

I wasn’t going to comment much on this, since Rewvian just did, but it starts so well I can’t contain myself. The first three scenes are derived straight out of previous episodes – Vincent, Churchill and Bracewell, and River in Stormcage. Lovely to see River’s hallucinogenic lipstick is still as effective as ever. And as a bonus, we get Liz 10. (I would have liked to see a lot more of her, but we didn’t. I expect Sophie had other commitments).

On previous occasions when we’ve had everybody-and-his-dog (like, The Stolen Earth) it’s always felt a bit fake to me, as if all those people were there for the sake of appearances but didn’t have much to do. Kudos to the Moff for making all this motley crew into an integral part of the story.

WHY did the Roman legionnaire (legionary?) greet the Doc as ‘Caesar’? I kept looking for psychic paper; I have only just now realised the Roman has a smear of lipstick on his face. River, of course. Who once again used her trick of leaving a message for the Doctor – this time graffiti-ing ‘the oldest cliff face in the Universe’ with space-time co-ordinates.

That was a LONG pre-title sequence.

This episode is full of lovely moments – DOCTOR: No, but if you buried the most dangerous thing in the universe, you’d want to remember where you put it. – camera pans to reveal Stonehenge. (Was Stonehenge erected to mark the Pandorica, or was the Pandorica placed under Stonehenge? Not that it matters much).

I enjoyed the little reminder of River’s random timeline –
AMY: Okay, this Pandorica thing. Last time we saw you, you warned us about it, after we climbed out of the Byzantium.
RIVER: Spoilers.
AMY: No, but you told the Doctor you’d see him again when the Pandorica opens.
RIVER: Maybe I did, but I haven’t yet. But I will have.
Oh, of course!

Umm, and –
DOCTOR: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
AMY: How did it end up in there?
DOCTOR: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
RIVER: I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him.
Waaah! This is why a re-watch is so rewarding, the Moff is always scattering little clues or ‘loaded’ lines or easter eggs around!

That was a good jump scare when the Cyberman head opened and a skull dropped out. Gave me the creeps. Kudos to Amy for bashing it against the wall. And then Rory (!) spears the Cyberman. Rory?

It’s fun watching the Doctor miss the point – DOCTOR: Yes, I know that, Rory. I’m not exactly one to miss the obvious.
As River would have said (had said/would say), penny in the air…

And here is the big reveal – the Pandorica is a trap, a prison for the Doctor.

And Rory, who (on one level is an Auton, created like the other Romans by the Nestene Consciousness using Amy’s mamories of her picture book to fool the Doctor, but who has all the real Rory’s memories) shoots Amy against his wishes.

I love all the ironies in this episode. Dalek: “Only the Doctor can pilot the Tardis”. That’s what he’s always saying to River! “You will be prevented.” Presumably, therefore, if the Doctor can’t pilot the Tardis, he can’t take it to wherever it will explode and destroy the Universe.

And the Tardis explodes with River inside it, Amy has just died, and the Doctor is trapped in the Pandorica. Now that’s a real set-up for part 2.

What a cracker of an episode! I love this show!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

And I was going to comment on The Big Bang, but for some reason I was content to just watch, my commenting instincts seem to have been exhausted with ‘Pandorica’.

And Rewvian has commented at length anyway.

I do think re-watching helps, second time around you have an idea of the outline of the complicated plot to hang the details on.

[Rewvian @rewvian]

@dentarthurdent My memory of these episodes was honestly pretty far off from what actually happened.  It’s amazing how much your brain can forget and fill in the holes over time.

I might slow down on my rewatch now.

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent  and @rewvian  i love these 2 episodes and now I am going to watch them!

Stay safe

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