May 10: "The Big Bang"

One of the things people at the time commented on about this episode was that it required you to pay attention -- the time travel shenanigans with the vortex manipulator apparently had some people scratching their heads, trying to keep up.  Yet it becomes clear that Steven Moffat and company are working extra hard to make this aspect easy to follow -- all the business with fezzes and mops and conversations broken off before they're over is to make it clear what bits are happening when, and it's a clever way of handling this.  What's instead far harder to wrap your head around is how exactly the Doctor saves everything.

Part of this, I suspect, is a result of what we're shown on screen; the Doctor flies the Pandorica into the heart of the exploding TARDIS, which then causes the Pandorica to explode -- but then we start to see things rewinding.  This is meant to be the start of the Doctor travelling back up his own time stream, but how many of those viewers who were confused by the vortex manipulator jumps thought that time itself was rewinding, I wonder?

Rory, Amy, and the Doctor look at the exploding TARDIS in the
sky. ("The Big Bang") ©BBC

But then that's one of the wonderful things about "The Pandorica Opens" / "The Big Bang" -- this is a story that expects you to have been paying close attention.  So much of what we need to understand the ending is set up cleverly in other ways (such as the Doctor's conversation with Amy after she finds the engagement ring: "Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely.  And if something can be remembered, it can come back" -- a line important enough to show up in the "previously..." section at the start of "The Big Bang"), rather than just being outright stated, that this is a story that almost demands repeated viewings, with more revealing itself every time.  This is not a story that will hold your hand; instead it races along and encourages you to keep up, confident in the belief that you will.

This is doubly pleasing because even without the time-hopping, "The Big Bang" isn't remotely straightforward.  There's an awful lot of stuff to work through, what with the time stuff, the Cracks in Time, "Silence will fall" (and note that this is the first series of the BBC Wales version not to answer all the questions by the finale; we still don't know why the TARDIS blew up or what exactly "silence will fall" means -- those answers will have to wait for later)... but you never get the sense that it's too much.  This is Doctor Who at its most fearless, playing a game with myths and legends both ancient and modern and utterly self-assured as it does so.  It's full of striking imagery (Rory preparing to guard the Pandorica for 1000 years, the fossilized Dalek trundling down corridors) and wonderful big ideas (the sun is the TARDIS, the Pandorica contains pieces of the old universe that can be extrapolated) that spark the imagination.  But the best bits are the small moments, the quiet scenes: the Doctor trying to determine if the Auton Rory is still Rory, his conversation with Amy inside the Pandorica, and, perhaps best of all, his little speech to the seven-year-old Amelia Pond:

When you wake up, you'll have a mum and dad, and you won't even remember me.  Well, you'll remember me a little.  I'll be a story in your head.  But that's okay.  We're all stories in the end.  Just make it a good one, eh?  Because it was, you know.  It was the best.  The daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away.  Did I ever tell you that I stole it?  Well, I borrowed it.  I was always going to take it back.  Oh, that box.  Amy, you'll dream about that box.  It'll never leave you.  Big and little at the same time.  Brand new and ancient, and the bluest blue ever.  And the times we had, eh?  Would have had.  Never...  In your dreams, they'll still be there.  The Doctor and Amy Pond, and the days that never came.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Big Bang)

But then that's one of the great things about Doctor Who in general, and this story in particular: the gigantic and the intimate can exist side-by-side, each enhancing the other.  "The Pandorica Opens" / "The Big Bang" is about huge events, but it never gets so wrapped up in being epic that it forgets to be personal as well.  It strikes the perfect balance, and the final result is impressive.

It also marks the end of series 5, the first series with Matt Smith as the Doctor and Steven Moffat as the showrunner, and it's been a very strong run.  As I noted before, we get the sense that Steven Moffat has been thinking about this for a long time and so has had a lot of time to work it out.  This means that we get an impressively coherent and balanced series this year, with only one real disappointment ("Victory of the Daleks") in the whole run.  Part of this success is because Moffat has (either by accident or design) given us a varied series that feels naturally polished, as if it were always meant to be this way.  The emphasis has shifted subtly from Davies' era (Eccleston and Tennant in particular often felt like the romantic hero, while Smith is more like a mad uncle), but it hasn't shifted so far as to be unrecognizable to fans of the previous era -- this is still definitely the same show.

But another part of the success of series 5 is the performances from Matt Smith and Karen Gillan.  Matt Smith impresses from the start, with a timeless quality about his performance that suggests that he's both very young and very old at the same time, but nevertheless constantly experiencing things with a sense of child-like wonder.  Karen Gillan, meanwhile, provides a feisty companion in Amy Pond -- occasionally too brash and shouty, but always complementing Smith's Doctor extremely well.  And while Arthur Darvill isn't in this series the entire time as Rory, when he is he provides the balance between these two extremes.  The result is a genuine pleasure to watch.

A great set of stories, a fabulous new TARDIS team, and a show brimming with confidence in both the audience and itself: where will they head next?