Tardis Party: Doctor Who episode close-up ~ The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang (New Season 5/ 2010)

‘Hello, Stonehenge!’ Fans weren’t sure about Spinal Tap’s booked-at-the-last-minute support act

Phew! It’s been long, it’s been winding, it’s been wibbly-wobbly (and, yes, timey-wimey) and, maybe most of all, it’s been damned colourful (almost as much as Colin Baker‘s Sixth Doc ‘Technicolor Dreamcoat’), but finally it’s here – yes, peeps, we’ve reached the end (just in time for the big 50 itself) of George’s Journal‘s looks-back at/ close-ups/ reviews of essential Doctor Who episodes past, with this very post.

Ooh, but what a fitting focus for the final of the faster-than-time hurtle through the time vortex this journey’s been! For, yes, it surely gets no better in ‘NuWho’ than The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang, the simply stupendous finale to Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith‘s and present show-runner Steven Moffat’s first season at the collective helm of the time console.

Sit back and relax then, folks (not least because all this Who celebratory stuff‘s nearly over round these parts, ho ho), but – at the same time – don’t forget to beware a Sontaran strong-arming you into the Pandorica. Unless you fancy an eternal nap, that is…

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Doctor: Matt Smith (The Eleventh Doctor)

Companions: Karen Gillan (Amy Pond); Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams); Alex Kingston (Professor River Song)

Villains: Christopher Ryan (Sontaran Commander Stark); Ruari Mears (Cyber Leader); Paul Kasey (Judoon); Barnaby Edwards (Dalek – voice: Nicholas Briggs)

Allies: Caitlin Blackwood (Young Amelia); Tony Curran (Vincent van Gogh); Ian McNeice (Winston Churchill); Bill Paterson (Bracewell); Sophie Okonedo (Liz Ten)

Writer: Steven Moffat

Producer: Peter Bennett

Executive Producers: Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger and Beth Willis

Director: Toby Haynes

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Season: 5 (12th and 13th of 13 serials – 50- and 55-minute-long episodes)

Original broadcast dates: June 19/ June 26 2010

Total average viewers: 7.1 million

Previous episode: The Lodger

Next episode: A Christmas Carol (Special)

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When left temporal co-ordinates by would-be love interest-cum-enigmatic-time-traveler Professor River Song (the result of a trail of messages left through time by recent allies Vincent van Gogh, Winston Churchill and future queen of ‘Great Britain’ Liz Ten), the Eleventh incarnation of The Doctor (all floppy hair, tweed jacket, bow-tie, braces and youthful eccentricity) and his present companion Amy Pond (a fiery yet fiercely adventurous, sexy Scottish redhead) meet up with River at the site of the co-ordinates – just outside Stonehenge in 102 AD. In fact, they meet her in a tent where – via her handy hallucinogenic lipstick – she’s slyly tricked the Roman soldiers around her into believing she’s Egyptian queen Cleopatra, as is her wont.

She shows the Doc and Amy a painting (thanks to the aforementioned trail) by van Gogh – it’s clearly a vision of the TARDIS exploding, contains the co-ordinates of where and when they are and is named ‘The Pandorica Opens’. Amy asks what the Pandorica is, only for the Doc to scoff at River’s explanation that it’s supposed to contain the most fearsome thing in the entire universe. He says it’s merely a fairy-tale. Still, Vincent’s vision suggests it might be more than this and – figuring if someone wanted the ideal marker for where they’d hid or buried the Pandorica, where better than Stonehenge? – the trio ride off to the great stone monument.

Eventually, they find their way beneath Stonehenge and there, indeed, discover the Pandorica – a great cuboid box. According to legend, the Doc explains, locked inside it was ‘the most feared being in all creation, a trickster soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies, who could not be reasoned with’. Amy likens it to her favourite story, the Greek myth of ‘Pandora’s box’; she’s already mentioned Roman history was her favourite school subject. The Doc points out that one should never ignore such a coincicence – ‘unless you’re busy, then you should always ignore a coincidence’.

On further investigation, he and River quickly conclude not only is the Pandorica slowly unlocking itself and opening, but also Stonehenge’s pillars are operating as giant transmitters beaming this message out to everything and everyone in time and space (hence how poor Vincent was assailed by the ‘vision’ in his dreams). Worried by this, River reverses the signal being transmitted and discovers that every one of The Doctor’s direst enemies are amassing over the Earth in ten thousand spaceships, ready and waiting for the Pandorica to open. River and Amy wonder what they can possibly do, but The Doctor’s firm they can do nothing but stand and fight; besides, they possess at their disposal ‘the greatest fighting machine in the history of the universe – Romans!’.

River moves off to get help from the Romans, leaving Amy, alone with The Doctor now, the opportunity to ask him about something on her mind. Why did she, earlier in the TARDIS, find an engagement ring in his jacket pocket? Trying to get her to remember something momentous she’s forgotten, he tells her it belonged to a friend of his who’s fallen out of the universe, but the ring is a trace of him that might just be able to bring him back. Amy, though, cannot remember this person as Rory, her fiancé and lifelong friend, whom was killed and erased from all existence in a recent adventure, thus the ring isn’t going to aid in his return. The Doctor persists, however; he tells her there was a deep reason why he chose her as a companion – doesn’t she ever wonder why she lived in such a large house with so many rooms? Doesn’t she ever think she herself doesn’t make sense?

Suddenly, the pair are attacked by the remnants of a Cyberman (a one-time guard of the Pandorica?), which knocks out the Doc and attempts to assimilate Amy. She, though, is saved by a Roman soldier – more than that, it’s Rory! Still not remembering who he is she wanders off (having been knocked-out too but with a dart) to rest in the nearby Roman camp. Rory can’t explain how he died and suddenly awoke to become a 2nd Century Roman; the Doc suggests that he’s never before seen ‘a miracle’, but why shouldn’t this be one? Plus, Rory has to be patient, as Amy simply can’t remember him yet. Returning to Stonehenge above, the Doc then addresses all the spaceships overhead. He advises them not to try and get past him to claim the Pandorica because they should all remember how he’s beaten them so many times in the past… and then let someone else try (see video clip above). This should buy them some time, he confides in Rory.

Now in the TARDIS, River tries to fly the machine (having previously known The Doctor, at least in her time-line, if not his, she knows how to), but for some reason of its own volition it takes her to a house elsewhere in England. This, she concludes from looking inside, is Amy’s home – for it contains a photo of her with Rory (the latter in fancy-dress as a Roman centurion) and books about Pandora’s box and Roman historical facts. All of these details refer not just to Amy, of course, but also their current adventure back in time with the Romans and Rory (as a Roman) in ancient Britain. Immediately she contacts The Doctor and he agrees with her (especially after verifying the day River has arrived at herself is exactly the day when he first met Amy and removed ‘a crack in time’ from her bedroom wall) that it’s very bad news; indeed, all the coincidences point to their present adventure being a trap. Someone must have engineered the whole set-up and lured the Doc to the Pandorica at this very point in time by using Amy’s memories as building-blocks for their plan. In which case, the Romans are unlikely even to be human, even though they themselves believe they are.

The Doctor: People fall out of the world sometimes but they always leave traces, little things you can’t quite account for… faces in photographs, luggage, half-eaten meals…  rings. Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely, and if something can be remembered it can come back

River attempts to return the TARDIS to a safe time and place, but the machine’s compromised and as she tries to exit a stone wall appears in the doorway blocking her way out. Meanwhile, back at Stonehenge, just as Rory has managed to make Amy remember who he is, the Pandorica has finally opened and his fellow Romans robotically ‘awaken’ to reveal themselves as Autons (plastic humanoids controlled by the Nestene Consciousness). Amy asserts she will never leave him again, yet it’s too much for Rory who’s fighting against his now Auton-state and, his body betraying him, shoots Amy dead with the Auton gun hiding behind his hand.

Beneath Stonehenge now, a collection of The Doctor’s greatest foes, including Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans, materialise before the Pandorica and inform him they have all banded together to place him in the Pandorica (therefore it’s actually him who’s supposed to be the great dangerous being of legend) for it’s foretold his TARDIS will destroy the universe. The Doc pleads with them it can’t be so, not least as he’s not the one who’s piloting it at this critical moment, but they don’t listen and force him into the Pandorica and close it – seemingly for all eternity. And in the future, River not being able to control nor escape it, the TARDIS explodes and creates a chain-reaction – one-by-one the universe’s stars and planets around the Earth explode and cease to exist.

The story now shifts to the year 1996, specifically from the viewpoint of Amy (then known as Amelia) as a child. One day she mysteriously receives a leaflet through her door inviting her to visit the National Museum, thanks to someone having circled on it the Pandorica exhibit and writing ‘Come along, Pond’. The man whom hastily delivered it appeared to have been wearing a fez. Dragging to the museum her Aunt Sharon (whom owing to Amelia’s lack of parents has brought her up), Amelia makes straight for the Pandorica box and, owing to another message (‘Stick around, Pond’), hides until closing time and after her aunt’s given up looking for her. Now, she approaches the Pandorica and, touching it, is stunned to watch it open… yet inside is not The Doctor as we’d expect, but the grown-up Amy from Stonehenge in 102 AD, whom announces to her younger self ‘OK, kid, this is where it gets complicated…’.

Back at Stonehenge in 102 AD, following the TARDIS’s explosion, all the stars (and planets) in the sky have vanished, yet Earth oddly remains; indeed, this is exactly the same state as in Amelia’s 1996. And, despite nothing stirring around him, Rory is still alive cradling the dead Amy in his arms. Just then, from out of nowhere The Doctor appears, wearing a fez and manipulating a device on his wrist. He informs Rory all is far from lost and the Auton-human must free him from the Pandorica using his sonic screwdriver, which he instructs Rory must then be placed in Amy’s top pocket. Then he disappears again by punching the controls of the wrist device.

Bemused, Rory does as he’s told, helping a dazed Doc (the one from 102 AD) out of the Pandorica, whom quickly deduces he must now set in motion the chain of events the ‘other Doctor’ and Rory are enacting. When asked by Rory why the alliance of his enemies around them are now frozen as stone, he explains they’re merely after-images because none of them existed in this reality owing to the universe’s destruction. And when probed about saving Amy, the Doc says he could do something for her if he had the time. To this, Rory punches him across the face, delighting the Time Lord – ‘Welcome back, Rory! Had to be sure [he was still the real Rory beneath the Auton plastic]!’). The two now place Amy in the Pandorica, the Doc assuring it’s ultimate-prison-construction means it boasts an immensely powerful ‘restoration field’ that will bring her back to life and keep her alive until it’s opened in the future (in 1996 by Amelia) from whence the fez-wearing Doctor came. The Doc must now use River’s wrist-watch-like vortex manipulator to travel to the future and become that future Doctor – however, ever the lovelorn loyal fool and to the Doc’s disbelief, Rory claims he’ll stay behind to protect Amy locked in the Pandorica for the hundreds of years until it’s opened, for as an Auton he won’t die, so long as he ‘keeps out of trouble’.

Back at the museum in 1996, Amy and Amelia watch a video accompanying the Pandorica’s display detailing a myth that a Roman centurion has stood guard over the mysterious monument throughout history (during which it moved about Europe), right up until the last time he was ‘sighted’, dragging the box away from its Blitz-torn WWII London location hit by a German bomb. Their viewing is interrupted, however, by a Dalek approaching them seemingly from out of the blue and, just then, the Doc from 102 AD appears thanks to the vortex manipulator. The trio take cover from the Dalek and are saved when a museum guard strides from the shadows and disables the Dalek with a shot from the gun behind his hand – it’s the ‘Auton Rory’, who’s finally reunited with Amy after over two thousand years looking after her in the Pandorica. The Doctor suggests the Dalek must have been restored by the ‘light’ (or the restoration field) from the now open Pandorica, which also contains billions of atoms from the universe destroyed by the TARDIS exploding. From a nearby exhibit he offers Amelia a fez, but she declines it so he wears it instead.

He then completes the tasks of fixing his, Rory and Amy’s ‘timeline’ (on Rory recognising him as the ‘future Doctor’ whom appeared at Stonehenge due to his fez) by traveling backwards and forwards in time and relaying the instructions we’ve already witnessed him give Rory back then and deliver the messages to Amelia. Following this, the trio head to the roof for safety, for the Dalek is coming back to life, but on their way there come across another Doctor (seemingly from the near future) dying before them. Before he snuffs it, this Doc whispers in our’s ear – whom declares he now only has 12 minutes to live. Additionally, they notice that Amelia has disappeared; The Doctor eerily explains that she must have vanished because all time is collapsing simultaneously as the TARDIS is still exploding throughout all history. The three of them are anomalies in this time-line (not least not properly belonging in this universe) so they likely have longer than Amelia did before they each disappear.

The Doctor: We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? ‘Cause 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…

On reaching the roof, the Doc goes on to point out that what appears to be the sun burning full and bright in the sky isn’t it at all, for it’s died along with all the other stars and planets; it’s in fact the TARDIS still in the process of exploding – and as it’s doing so constantly throughout time it’s keeping the Earth ‘alive’ and warm. He amplifies the familiar TARDIS-sound it’s generating through a satellite dish and, with the help of Rory’s Auton-enhanced hearing, notes a voice in the sound – River’s voice. Of course! She hasn’t died in the explosion, because inside the TARDIS’s console room, the machine has put her in a time-loop to save her life. The Doc uses the vortex manipulator then to collect her from the TARDIS; her first action being to snatch the fez from his head, throw it in the air and blast it with her laser gun, despite his protestation ‘I wear a fez now; fezzes are cool’ (see bottom video clip).

Thinking at high speed (as usual), The Doctor has come up with a plan to save the day. As the TARDIS is still exploding (simultaneously throughout time), he should be able to pilot the Pandorica into the heart of the explosion and, due to the Pandorica’s ‘restoration field’ and its billions of atoms from the previously-destroyed-universe, recreate that universe in a gigantic second big bang that will also seal the cracks in time for good. River, however, points out the plan’s downside. In order to achieve this, the Doc will have to be inside the Pandorica, therefore he’ll be sealed on the other side of the cracks in time and, in bringing everything else back, he’ll cease to exist himself. Just as he’s rushing back to the Pandorica to enact his plan, though, he’s shot with a bolt from the fully restored Dalek and uses his vortex manipulator to disappear. Knowing he now must be where they encountered the dying near-future-Doctor minutes before, Amy and Rory race off to this spot while River remains behind to shoot the Dalek dead.

Arriving at the spot where the Time Lord should be, Amy and Rory are confounded to discover he’s nowhere to be seen. Joined now by River, she reminds them The Doctor often lies and they realise he must have followed the advice of the near-dead Doctor’s whispered words in his ear – deceive them to buy himself time so he can strap himself into the Pandorica without them trying to stop him sacrificing himself. Arriving at the box then, Amy bids him a tearful farewell and, finally, he explains to her why he took her with him as a companion – her life in such a big house. Why didn’t she share it with her parents? What happened to them? Amy panics when she can’t remember and the Doc reassures her that it’s not her fault; her parents were consumed by the crack in time in her bedroom he healed on first meeting her. If he’s successful at ‘rebooting’ the universe they’ll return so long as she tries hard to remember them, just as she did in remembering Rory back at Stonehenge. With that, he flies the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS and…

… sits up on the floor of the the machine’s console room, delighted he’s survived. However, he realises that not only is Amy also there, but him too – neither can hear him and they’re versions from his near past. He must be rewinding through time – and so he does, back through all his adventures with Amy (‘Hello, universe; goodbye, Doctor’). Eventually, he ends up in Amelia’s bedroom back in 1996 (the night she’d waited for him to return after he first met her, him having crash-landed the TARDIS in her garden). She’s asleep and he regales her with a bedtime-story-like tale of him and the TARDIS (‘brand new and ancient and the bluest blue ever’ – see above pull-out quote). And then he steps through the last remaining crack in time, which can’t seal until he’s behind it. Seemingly having half-heard him, Amelia wakes up and finds nobody in the room, so settles back down to sleep.

Fourteen years later, Amy wakes on her wedding day and – to her somewhat bemused surprise – is overjoyed to come across her mum and dad in her house (she’s clearly remembered them successfully so they’ve returned in the re-set universe, even if she doesn’t remember doing so – or, by extension, doesn’t remember The Doctor or any of her adventures with him). Later, during her and Rory’s wedding reception, the latter hands her a gift an unknown woman gave him for her – it’s a blue diary with a TARDIS-like-embossed blue cover, but all the pages are blank; in fact, it’s River Song’s diary and Amy sees her (but doesn’t recognise her) enigmatically walk past a window. When she questions why someone would give her this, Rory suggests the old wedding saying ‘something old; something new; something borrowed; something blue’. And then as a sad tear falls from her face to the diary and she notices male wedding guests wearing familiar garb – a bow-tie here; braces there – a thunderbolt suddenly strikes her.

She interrupts her father’s speech and declares that ‘the raggedy man’ whom she’d always claimed had visited her when she was a child wasn’t a figment of her imagination – he was real, is real; he’s The Doctor! She states that he was so clever, ecnouraging her to try her damndest to remember and leaving her the hint of something ‘borrowed’ and ‘brand new and ancient and the bluest blue ever’ on her wedding day – that is, the TARDIS, of course. And then, right in the middle of the room materialises the TARDIS, out of which steps a tuxedo-sporting Doctor, whom admits he’s certainly impressed by Amy this time, while Rory exclaims ‘it’s The Doctor; how could we forget The Doctor?’.

After sharing in the wedding celebrations and showing off some truly horrendous dance moves, the Doc sidles away and back to the TARDIS, now parked in Amy’s garden. There he comes across River once more, to whom he returns her diary from Amy – the content on all the pages (now the latter’s restored him to the universe) having returned. These details, however, while from her past with him are from his future with her, so he hasn’t peeked at them. They flirt perhaps more so than before and she returns to her own time via her vortex manipulator, leaving him to enter the TARDIS quietly. But he’s prevented from making a sudden getaway – and happily so too – because Amy and Rory approach him and ask him to stay. Suddenly, though, the TARDIS’s phone rings and the Doc’s regaled with how an Egyptian goddess is on the loose on the space Orient Express. Another adventure beckons, so he tells his companions it’s time to say goodbye… the newlyweds lean out the doorway and cry ‘goodbye’ to their 21st Century Earth-bound world and the Doc sets the TARDIS zooming off through time and space once more.

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Why is Pandorica/ Big Bang the final essential offering from this blog of all Doctor Who episodes/ serials? Because, quite simply, it’s my favourite story from Matt Smith’s Tenth Doctor era; in fact, from all ‘NuWho’. Yes, I’ll happily admit (being a big fan of Charles Dickens and practically all things Scrooge), the story that directly follows it – 2010’s festive special A Christmas Carol – runs it close, but unlike that otherwise terrifically atmospheric, highly frolicsome and utterly heart-warming story, Pandorica/ Big Bang simply has absolutely everything you could want from a Doctor Who adventure – and, yes, more.

First of all, it’s an epic, dramatic, romantic, witty and thrilling two-parter finale to its season (more: its plotting, in true Moffat-scripting style, twists and turns more than a slinky snake covered in butter – you really don’t see coming the twist that it’s the Doc who belongs in the Pandorica nor all the ‘wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey‘ frolics in Big Bang).

Additionally, it acts – like previous ‘NuWho’ season finales – as a more than fitting closer to a series-long story arc, specifically addressing the ‘cracks in time’ gambit, Rory’s having died, Amy’s forgetting this and his and Amy’s pending wedding, which appeared/ were alluded to in earlier episodes (more: the Doc going back through his timeline sees him go back through previous episodes; bringing Rory back and having him ‘kill’ Amy brings genuine emotional resonance to their romance previously played for laughs and deepening the mystery of the ‘silence will fall’ message feeds into next season’s arc).

Plus, it features, as should every excellent episode of Who, a smorgasbord of unforgettable moments: Amy bringing the Doc back into existence and the TARDIS materialising at her wedding; the Doc in a fez and River then destroying said fez; him, Amy and River investigating a tomb carrying burning torches; an alliance of Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans and more forcing him into an interstellar prison-cell; Amy emerging from the Pandorica instead of the Doc at the start of Big Bang; and (more! more! more!) both the Doc’s awesome Stonehenge speech to all his enemies’ spaceships and his quieter, even more powerful, clever-clever speech to the sleeping Amelia.

With its thrills, spills, surprises, laughs, largesse, epic canvas, intimate characterisation and fantastic fairy-tale atmos amid all the time-travel twists and turns and pseudo-science and tecnho-gimmickry, Pandorica/ Big Bang succeeds and delights on every level. Few episodes of television drama satisfy without a caveat to mention and genuinely warm the cockles and the heart (especially modern TV drama) but, for me, this slice of Who magic and majesty does it absolutely every single time.

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Obviously written to conclude not just the first season of ‘NuWho’ he’d overseen, but also to conclude its story arc, Steven Moffat‘s Pandorica Opens/ Big Bang was always intended to have as big, epic and dramatic a feel as possible. Less well known, however, is the fact the title of the story’s second half was chosen as much because it was a personal joke of its scribe as for its narrative relevance.

Apparently, The Big Bang wasn’t just intended as a reference to the ‘second big bang’ The Doctor causes by flying the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS, but also as a reference to what newlyweds Amy and Rory got up to in their bunk-beds aboard the TARDIS immediately the episode finished (as could have been worked out after watching the next episode – 2010’s A Christmas Carol – and as was subtely referenced in the following year’s mid-season finale, 2011’s A Good Man Goes To War, when the Doc reluctantly works out when Melody Pond/ River Song was most likely conceived aboard his space- and time-machine. Doctor Who episode title as double entendre then? Sounds good to me.

Perhaps the most eye-catching element of Pandorica‘s production is the fact filming was allowed at the real Stonehenge monument on Wiltshire’s Salisbury Plain. There were strict conditions the cast and crew had to abide by, though – per the usual regulations at Stonehenge, nobody was allowed to touch the stones, nor bring heavy equipment into the space, nor light it from anywhere but the ground. In which case, only minimal filming could actually be done there, thus, a replica of the world famous site was erected at Margam Country Park in Wales’ Port Talbot. ‘Foamhenge’, as it became known, was a lightweight replica that accommodated four days’ worth of shooting, including the Doc’s speech to the spaceships overhead (described by the episodes’ director Toby Haynes as the character’s ‘big pop star moment’).

Haynes was particularly keen for the chamber under Stonehenge to have an eerie, ghostly, adventure film-like atmosphere, citing the tone and style of Indiana Jones as a touchstone for its scenes (flaming torches included), so much so he had music from the Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) soundtrack played to inspire Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Alex Kingston as they entered the set (the biggest ever constructed for ‘NuWho’ up to that point) in character.

Moreover, River Song’s outfit for this double episode was inspired by the togs of that other of Harrison Ford‘s back-catalogue, namely Star Wars‘ (1977) Han Solo. She, the Doc and Amy, of course, ride horses across the Plain to reach Stonehenge; except they didn’t really – only their stunt doubles actually rode any equines. For close-ups, the thesps actually ‘rode’ bouncing saddles mounted on the back of a moving truck. Haynes has remarked that, surprisingly, the budget for Pandorica/ Big Bang (which, as they were filmed together, means they can be taken together too when it comes to the pennies) was actually lower than for other episodes of its season, despite the double-parter’s epic, grandstanding ambitions and entirely successful realisation.

Pretty much immediately heralded by critics as among the elite of ‘NuWho’ episodes, this story was almost universally acclaimed on broadcast – and by the punters too: The Pandorica Opens‘ ‘audience index’ was 88/100, the highest for its season; only to be broken a week later by The Big Bang‘s ‘audience index’ of 89/100. Just as significantly (if more prestigiously), Pandorica/ Big Bang also won the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), the fifth time a Who episode had won the award – and of those five, the fourth Moffat-penned effort to do so (the others being 2005’s The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances, 2006’s The Girl In The Fireplace and 2007’s Blink).

When you let the dust settle then, Amy’s tear drop on River’s diary and after the TARDIS has finally materialised at the wedding, Pandorica/ Big Bang can only be seen as one hell of a Doctor Who story (in truth, it’s not just my fave ‘NuWho’ effort, but also in my wee little opinion, probably by a hair from Matt Smith’s perfectly coiffed fringe, still the best). And, given where it belongs in the Doc’s chronology, most importantly of all you might say, it ensured the outstanding Season 5 went out with a big bang. In the words of Basil Brush then… Boom! Boom!

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Previous close-ups/ reviews:

Blink (New Season 3/ 2007/ Doctor: David Tennant)

Rose (New Season 1/ 2005/ Doctor: Christopher Eccleston)

Doctor Who: The Movie (1996/ Main Doctor: Paul McGann)

The Caves Of Androzani (Season 21/ 1984/ Doctor: Peter Davison)

The Five Doctors (Special/ 1983/ Main Doctor: Peter Davison)

City Of Death (Season 17/ 1979/ Doctor: Tom Baker)

The Talons Of Weng-Chiang (Season 15/ 1977/ Doctor: Tom Baker)

The Deadly Assassin (Season 14/ 1976/ Doctor: Tom Baker)

Pyramids Of Mars (Season 13/ 1975/ Doctor: Tom Baker)

Genesis Of The Daleks (Season 12/ 1975/ Doctor: Tom Baker)

The Ark In Space (Season 12/ 1975/ Doctor: Tom Baker)

The Dæmons (Season 8/ 1971/ Doctor: Jon Pertwee)

Inferno (Season 7/ 1970/ Doctor: Jon Pertwee)

The War Games (Season 6/ 1969/ Doctor: Patrick Troughton)

An Unearthly Child (Season 1/ 1963/ Doctor: William Hartnell)

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