Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens – Series 31, episode 12

SPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching Doctor Who on BBC1. Don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen The Pandorica Opens Dan Martin’s episode 11 blog “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 thing in the cosmos.” So to recap: the Doctor has been trapped inside the Pandorica by all of his deadliest enemies. Amy is dead at the hands of Auton Rory. And oh yes, the universe has been destroyed. There are cliffhangers; there are things being knocked out of the park. And then, on another level entirely, there is this – the most audacious of showstoppers, with every single element of the series locking together to make for the ultimate darkest hour. At a preview screening of the episode, Steven Moffat said that he was mindful of The Pandorica Opens overshadowing the other episodes– but frankly, given its scale and scope and sheer cinematic intensity, it couldn’t help but do so. Certainly, you can see what the budgets for episodes such as Amy’s Choice and The Lodger were being saved up for. From the off it’s one long continuity love-in, with cameos from Vincent, Liz Ten, Churchill and Bracewell all playing their part in the papertrail that leads River to bust out of jail and write the first words in the universe – “Hello Sweetie,” of course. The Stonehenge scenes swoon with cinematic might. The Armada of spaceships are a fan’s dream: not just the Daleks and Cybermen of rumour, but Sontarons, Autons, Silurians, Judoon, Atraxi, Zygons, Draconians… And still no clue yet as to who or what the actual Big Bad is going to be. In fact so much happens that the heroic return of Rory almost feels like a minor plot point, though that may be because we all knew it was coming. Amid all this spectacle comes the most heartbreaking climax between Amy and Rory, and surely the most dramatic cliffhanger in Doctor Who history. “Does it ever bother you, Amy, that your life doesn’t make any sense?” Some clues, finally, about who, or what, or indeed when, impossible Amy Pond actually is. Here is a world created out of the imagination of that young girl. The Roman Gladiators coming to rescue her, animated from her short story ‘Invasion of the Hot Italians’. Rory, apparently remembered back into existence by her confusion at finding the engagement ring. And the most obvious one of all, the Pandorica itself, a prison box constructed out of her favourite story as a little girl, Pandora’s Box. A story, remember, about all the evils of the universe being released when a box belonging to a girl being opened. Amelia really must have been one disturbed little girl – and we know who surely contributed to that, don’t we? “I hate good wizards in fairytales. They always turn out to be him.” This idea of the Doctor being the most dangerous thing in the universe is of course a well-mined seam of Who lore. But the sight of him falling at the hands of an alien alliance even scarier than the Con-Dems, is the stuff that bends minds. But there he is, stuck in a prison box that was never even supposed to have existed, a trap created out of the imagination of his best friend. I’ll be honest here: you need to watch this episode at least three times to get a proper handle on every little bit that’s going on. Thing is, you’ll want to. “Stonehenge is transmitting.” As well as the final episode, next Saturday is also Glastonbury festival, which takes place just up the road from Stonehenge. Are we reading too much in to wonder if the two things could be related? Or is Matt Bellamy from Muse going to be revealed as The Master? Next Week! The episode is called The Big Bang. So with no universe to speak of, can we assume that it’s going to be created all over again? 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