Doctor Who S5e12 "The Pandorica Opens" [Spoilers]

[Lord Woodlouse]

Lets have loads of enemies appear out of nowhere from every corner of Doctor Who from across TIME and SPACE via. these stupid crack things.

Where was that stated? They just said those cracks were a threat to the universe that will destroy the universe (or all, really, in colloquial conversation getting nitpicky about that is excessively pedantic. Why would the Daleks give a shit about universes that don't contain them?). Don't think anyone used them as a transport conduit. They were all there because they all got signalled by their outpost.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Pretty much every space faring species knew of these cracks by that point, with The Doctor being oblivious because, ironically, he's the one laying them everywhere in his wake. Weren't the species in Venice trying to get a new colony started because their planet was wiped out by the cracks? It wasn't just the bigwig races noticing something amiss. And we know you can't use these cracks as a conduit to cross space-time, because it either messes with your mind (like with Rory, supposedly) and throws you to a random time period and possibly another location, like a Quantum Leap, or you just never appear again, like the clerics and Angels.

So whoever is turning up around Roman Earth is whoever was around at that time and knew of The Doctor turning up for that trap. I'm sure those with temporal technology used it e.g. Daleks, or maybe some helped bring other species to the event too like the Silurians who could help with the Auton Rory.

Did anyone else get Lost vibes with the final few minutes? Reminded me of the end of season five.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The synopsis for next week's final episode seems to indicate a mostly Doctor-less episode told from the perspective of a young Amy it seems. I do love these grim endings, even if we know it all comes up roses later. It's much like when we got "Utopia", which was a fairly standard fare up until the last ten minutes which pretty much made the episode. But there's something more awesome about the enemies of the Doctor ganging up to save the universe from him, yet still fucking it up. If the series was ever going to come to a final ending, I'd love it to be like this with The Doctor losing and with his loss, everyone paying for it. Pity unlike most other series, DW will carry on and not have a real ending, which makes the finales harder to do when you're trying to make it more dramatic, much like 24 and having a bigger threat every season eventually had to change as it got silly.

[hongi]

Which still doesn't explain Rory's continuity of conciousness; notebooks can't replicate personal memories and even if they somehow could with the help of Dalek supertechnology or something, anything in Amy's house would contain info from before Rory joined the Doctor.

IIRC, Rory doesn't reveal too much in this episode about how much he really remembers. Maybe they reconstructed the most important or recent memories such as the one where he dies, by the method that NecronLord suggested, and he's blank on the rest.

[NecronLord]

I figured the Alliance all assembled because they'd probed the cracks and found a piece of the TARDIS or other evidence inside them. Hence why it's only species that know the Doctor.

[hongi]

Assuming the story about how a 'good wizard' trapped the warrior in the Pandorica is a garbled account which filtered backwards into time, I'm thinking this wizard might just be the Master and the mastermind (pun intended) of the whole scheme. He's piloted the TARDIS before, so he's not unfamiliar with the controls. And the Silence, related to the Sound of Drums?

[Revy]

I don't think the Master or the Time Lords will be involved. Remember that RTD wanted to use the Daleks in the End of Time, but wrote them out when Moffat revealed that he planned on using them in his run. Plus the fact that they're relatively recent and extremely obvious, and I don't think they'll go that route.

What confuses me is River - we all figured that she was imprisoned for killing someone, strongly hinted to be the Doctor, quite probably in the season finale. Except before any of the episodes events really gets going, she's already imprisoned in that Storm facility. So ... who did she kill then? It's not like she can kill the Doctor in the next episode and get imprisoned for it, because this episode already began with her in prison. Whoever the 'good man' was that she killed and got locked up for, she's already done the deed before the episode begins. So we're not going to see? Who did she kill?

And, and as to the cracks *not* being used for travel, what about Prisoner Zero? He used the first crack we ever saw to escape from his prison, and the fish aliens in Venice said that they saw other worlds through some of them.

I don't understand the end scene either. Why is everything blowing up? I thought the TARDIS blows up and creates cracks in the universe, but we don't actually see the TARDIS explode do we? We see a whole bunch of stars going nova, but why? What caused that? And are we really supposed to buy the idea that a single old model TARDIS exploding has the power to destroy the entire universe? That seems a bit of a stretch.

It'd be interesting if the villain turns out to be the Dream Lord - ie the Doctors subconcious evil takes control of the TARDIS via the psychic link he shares with it, and is responsible for remotely controlling it. There was a hint at the end of that episode that he/it was still around, and the Doctor does share a mental connection with his TARDIS after all. Perhaps it wants to erase all of his enemies from existence because it's bored with the Doctor running around saving people from them all the time.

[mr friendly guy]

Assuming the story about how a 'good wizard' trapped the warrior in the Pandorica is a garbled account which filtered backwards into time, I'm thinking this wizard might just be the Master and the mastermind (pun intended) of the whole scheme. He's piloted the TARDIS before, so he's not unfamiliar with the controls. And the Silence, related to the Sound of Drums?

I thought that was just a myth spread by the allies who created the Pandorica to trap the Doctor. Gives it an air of mystery, something which the Doctor's curiosity might find hard to ignore.

[hongi]

What confuses me is River - we all figured that she was imprisoned for killing someone, strongly hinted to be the Doctor, quite probably in the season finale. Except before any of the episodes events really gets going, she's already imprisoned in that Storm facility. So ... who did she kill then? It's not like she can kill the Doctor in the next episode and get imprisoned for it, because this episode already began with her in prison. Whoever the 'good man' was that she killed and got locked up for, she's already done the deed before the episode begins. So we're not going to see? Who did she kill?

Could she have been a repeat offender? Maybe she was in there for stealing or whatever future-hopping archaeologists do.

I don't understand the end scene either. Why is everything blowing up? I thought the TARDIS blows up and creates cracks in the universe, but we don't actually see the TARDIS explode do we? We see a whole bunch of stars going nova, but why? What caused that? And are we really supposed to buy the idea that a single old model TARDIS exploding has the power to destroy the entire universe? That seems a bit of a stretch.

Is that even scientifically possible? We see all the galaxies going kablooey at pretty much the same time, but for the light to reach us so that we could see all the galaxies exploding, they'd have to have exploded a long while back and not immediately in the present.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You're going to make me cry if you nitpick the science of DW any more here.

The TARDIS clearly has a lot of power within it, and when it's not working too well or been hijacked by some unknown force, we don't know how badly it can really screw with space-time, but it seems badly enough to cause reality to basically fall to pieces (and stars going nova are NOT going supernova. Clue's in the name, people).

In any case, it's happening, and the space-time cracks seem random in their effects anyway. The one in Amy's bedroom didn't expand or absorb and allowed travel with conciousness kept intact and memories too. The ones in "Flesh & Stone" and "Cold Blood" did appear to expand and certainly didn't show any worlds on the other side, though Eleven could just about pull something out of the crack before it got risky.

[Hillary]

I thought that was rather fun. Mrs H picked that the Doctor was going to be what was housed in the Pandorica (as she said, who is the only thing more powerful than the many enemies of the Doctor) but she fortunately kept quiet as I had absolutely no idea what it was going to be. The fact that Amy was shot and the TARDIS blew up with River inside leaves us in no doubt that the shiney red reset button will be pushed at some point but that's not such a big problem as long as it is done well (with Moffat writing it, this is at least a possibility).

Things I liked.

- The Doctor's enemies all ganging together to stop the end of the universe was an interesting twist and not the horrendous mistake I thought it would be.

- Amy's memories being used as the trap for the Doctor and the Romans all being Autons. I thought that was rather a nice (and believable) touch.

- Stonehenge being the marker for the Pandorica. Another nice idea (and I'm a bit of a sucker for Stonehenge anyway) as no one really knows what it was actually built for.

- Rory and Amy's scene was well done. A great piece of acting by Rory as well - desperately trying to fight the conversion into full Auton mode and failing.

- River. A much better written part than her role in the Angels story (which again points to the fact that the script editor is not doing his job). I loved the whole bit at the beginning where she tracks down the picture and leaves the Doctor the cryptic message.

Bits I didn't like.

- "There isn't a God but there is this one man". Jesus Doctor zzzzzzzzzzzzz

- The horrible "come on then, who wants it" speech from the Doctor at Stonehenge. This whole "fear me" shit really leaves me cold.

- What the fuck were the Silurians doing there? Did the costume department threaten to strike if they didn't use them again?


I'm really looking forward to next week. Please don't let me don't Mr Moffat.

[Crazedwraith]

I thought that speech worked quite well. Especially compared with the earlier one in Time of Angels because its clear in this one the Doctor really isn't in awesome self confidence mode. He's just trying to bullshit them to hold them off.

[generator_g1]

What confuses me is River - we all figured that she was imprisoned for killing someone, strongly hinted to be the Doctor, quite probably in the season finale. Except before any of the episodes events really gets going, she's already imprisoned in that Storm facility. So ... who did she kill then? It's not like she can kill the Doctor in the next episode and get imprisoned for it, because this episode already began with her in prison. Whoever the 'good man' was that she killed and got locked up for, she's already done the deed before the episode begins. So we're not going to see? Who did she kill?

I don't think we'll be seeing River kill the Doctor any time soon. It could be his 12th or 13th incarnation though.

[Dahak]

For some reason the thing with River Song cheapens this episode a bit for me.
We know she won't die, and she'll meet the Doctor later in her life, so it doesn't feel as bad when the Doctor gets locked up. If it was some random Character of the week, then there might be a tad more suspense there.

[Hillary]

For some reason the thing with River Song cheapens this episode a bit for me.
We know she won't die, and she'll meet the Doctor later in her life, so it doesn't feel as bad when the Doctor gets locked up. If it was some random Character of the week, then there might be a tad more suspense there.

You could really say that about any episode of Doctor Who. He is certainly not going to die, almost certainly his companions won't die and the day will more than likely be saved.

In any case, you are ignoring the fact that timelines can change. For example, in the Silurian double bill, the fact that the Amy from 10 years in the future was seen waving at the start of the episode was no guarantee that she'd survive her kidnapping. In the same the way, the fact that the Doctor has met River later on in her life is no guarantee that she'll survive this time (that she obviously will is besides the point).

[TC Pilot]

I think what I find most surprising is that no one here's brought up the fact there were black legionaries present. What, no repeat of the Venice thread?

[Srelex]

That's because there were actual black legionairies from North Africa present among Roman armies, IIRC.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You could really say that about any episode of Doctor Who. He is certainly not going to die, almost certainly his companions won't die and the day will more than likely be saved.

In any case, you are ignoring the fact that timelines can change. For example, in the Silurian double bill, the fact that the Amy from 10 years in the future was seen waving at the start of the episode was no guarantee that she'd survive her kidnapping. In the same the way, the fact that the Doctor has met River later on in her life is no guarantee that she'll survive this time (that she obviously will is besides the point).

No one's considered that the timeline being screwed this much might be precisely because River dies before she has to in some borked time-loop.

[Crazedwraith]

That time loop's been pretty much borked since Ten's screwdriver exploded in Eleventh Hour. Eleven's is green not blue and red.

edit: OK,as soon as I posted that it sounded stupid. The screwdriver issue is a pretty minor paradox compared to being blown up via TARDIS detonation.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Which is why it's not so easy to dismiss everything as "Oh, they have to survive, we've seen them elsewhere/when". Even certain supposedly immutable parts of the timeline seem to be getting affected now, as we saw in "Waters of Mars". There's no real guarantee that River has to survive this, although obviously Eleven will, since he's the eponymous character of the show.

The events leading up to "The Pandorica Opens" could be what creates a whole new timeline with the previous universe being destroyed as a new one is formed in its place. So, everyone dies, but then a new reality is formed, with or without certain similarities to the one just taken out e.g. sans-River.

[Lord Woodlouse]

I think what I find most surprising is that no one here's brought up the fact there were black legionaries present. What, no repeat of the Venice thread?

Rome had an African Emperor in Septimus Severus, too. Though granted he wasn't black.

[mr friendly guy]

That's because there were actual black legionairies from North Africa present among Roman armies, IIRC.

There were also black people in Venice as well, but that didn't stop people complaining about a BBC quota policy for minorities or something. Granted I think its more likely that people are a bit more cautious to sprout off in case they are wrong, after the oh so obvious example of Othello of a black man living in Venice in that era.

[Crazedwraith]

Or possibly they just didn't notice. I certainly didn't.

[Hillary]

No one's considered that the timeline being screwed this much might be precisely because River dies before she has to in some borked time-loop.

There is also, of course, the fact that the writers have happily pissed all over the continuity of the programme many times in the past and will no doubt do so again

[generator_g1]

As River Song would say..... SPOILERS! But still take them with a grain of salt until the actual episode....
Spoiler

Clicky

* The "Future Doctor" thing from 'Flesh and Stone' DOES happen, and has been confirmed by people who have seen the scripts.
* The Pandorica has a rather useful feature, in that it keeps you alive... forever. (Which is good, considering what just happened to Amy.)
* Amy has a very special brain because she grew up next to the crack for so long.
* Auton-Rory is responsible for releasing the Doctor, and Amy gets locked inside the Pandorica while the Doctor goes off to find the right "fuel" to bring her back to life, leaving Rory to guard the box. Stuff happens and Rory is left waiting a LONG TIME, hence the "love that lasts a thousand years." He becomes "The Lone Centurion" and is spotted throughout time guarding the box. (and as some fans have pointed out, this actually makes him chronologically older than the Doctor now!)
* Rory doesn't stay an Auton though, and he supposedly ends up human by the end.
* The TARDIS does explode, but it's not how you think.
* There is a wedding at the end, and one person who has seen the episode says that the ending is cheesily reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz.

Finally, there are some pretty strong indications that Omega shows up at the end. (possibly played by Jason Isaacs, aka Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter films) He may not be a traditional big bad though, and it's possible that his appearance is just a teaser for bigger events to occur in Series 6.

The main evidence in favor of the evil Time Lord's return come from two independent posters on Gallifrey Base; one who claims to have seen some concept art, and another who says that he was shown a suit of black "armor" with big gauntlets labled as "Omega." As for Jason Isaacs taking over the role, he was seen entering a closed door meeting with Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and John Simm a few months back (after this episode was filmed, though). This led to much speculation that he could be taking over the role of the Master next year (or possibly just appearing in a future season of 'Sherlock', which Moffat and Gatiss also produce), but considering that another informant has teased that "a Harry Potter actor has a surprise role in the finale," some of that speculation has shifted towards him possibly being Omega instead.