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Browse New Who reviews

The Lone Centurion, star cults, a petrified Dalek and the universe rebooted? This episode prompted some of the most heated debates on WBW yet!

We open on Amelia Pond flaunting her fantastical star paintings to a horrified Auntie Sharon and Christine. Fortunately, however, she is lured to the national museum by a strange man and told to wait there until dark when all the adults have gone home.

Drawn to the key exhibit at the museum, The Pandorica, young Amelia touches the box and thence releases older Amelia, which is when things get complicated. Even more-so when Rory appears yet again!

Through a series of Bill and Ted-esque shenanigans, The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River, seemingly the only people left in the collapsing universe, rush to stop a revived Dalek and the erasure of the universe itself!

Listen to our (quite frankly hilarious) review of this hugely divisive episode, that picks up where The Pandorica Opens left off!

Here's what we think of N073 The Big Bang

We rate Doctor Who stories on a scale from 0.0 to 5.0. For context, very few are excellent enough to merit a 5.0 in our minds, and we'd take a 0.0 Doctor Who story over a lot of other, non-Whovian stuff out there.

Leon | @ponken

4.6

Drew | @drewbackwhen

3.7

Marie | @hammashandjelly

4.6

Here's what we think of N073 The Big Bang

We rate Doctor Who stories on a scale from 0.0 to 5.0. For context, very few are excellent enough to merit a 5.0 in our minds, and we'd take a 0.0 Doctor Who story over a lot of other, non-Whovian stuff out there.

Leon | @ponken

4.6

Drew | @drewbackwhen

3.7

Marie | @hammashandjelly

4.6

Here's what you think 4 Responses to “N073 The Big Bang”
  1. Michael

    The Doctor spouts Star Trek Voyager technobabble, and presses reset.

    Things I liked:

    1. Attempting a different finale (deviating from the ‘big bad’ model of seasons 1-4).
    2. erm…

    Beefs:

    I call bullsh*t.

    1. How did the Doctor escape the Pandorica to tell Rory to let him out of the Pandorica?
    2. Were Amy’s parents sucked into the crack? If so, how does Amy exist (was she adopted?). How has Amy still got drawings of the Doctor in her bedroom if the Doctor never existed? With hindsight of River’s origins, how can River exist if the Doctor never existed, in order to give the Tardis spoiler diary to Amy so that Amy could remember the Doctor for him to re-exist?
    3. If the Doctor’s foes were erased, how could they have imprisoned him in the Pandorica in the first place?
    4. So, now the rule is ‘just remember people and they re-exist’? Are you kidding me! Why has the crack even been a threat this whole season? Why doesn’t the Doctor just remember Sir Jorah and all those poor clerics that were erased in ‘Flesh and Stone’. Bring those dudes back!
    5. The Doctor survived a direct extermination, again! Please stop! You’re making the Daleks look like chumps!
    6. How can the sonic screwdriver open the galaxy’s most “perfect” prison but not a regular lock in ‘Vampires of Venice’
    7. Seriously, Rory has zero psychological damage after waiting nearly 2000 years? Look at what a few years being lonely did to Luke in Last Jedi! What’s Rory been up to all this time?! Why hasn’t he become an expert in languages or origami?

    This episode was either genius or an emperor’s-new-clothes-epic-fudge.

    2.1/5 serious migraines this episode gave me.

  2. Kyle Rath | @sinistersprspy

    Pandorica 2: The Big Bang-ining

    This reverse country song sees everything come back thanks to a memory.

    A Wibbly Wobbly Fezzy Wezzy and a whole lot of Moffatty Magic make this closed loop open up a lot of questions.

    To keep things simple, here’s what I like:

    All the Timey-Wimey. All the Eleven.

    in DW nothing ever really goes away, and that can be a good thing.

    The fantastic teeny-bopper Amelia Pond.

    He’ll hath no Fury like a River scorned.

    Rory and the Wee Parents & Rubber Matt Smith.

    Despite the early onset hand-waveyness of the Moffat Era, there are some fun and lovely moments in this second part.

    It is slightly more than just okay.

    3.8/5 Stoned Daleks would have been waaayyy funnier…..

  3. Tracey | @yecartniatnuof

    Never liked Bill&Ted-style closed timeloops. How did things happen on the way in, the “first” time? To remedy, please read my solution:

    I am Rory. The world just ended in a cataclysm of supernovas. I found out I’m a plastic duplicate who exists outside the normal flow of spacetime. I killed my wife as the duplicate programming took me over. I fought it off, but too late. I held her lifeless body and asked for a miracle, but none came, and she was claimed by the erosion of reality. Now alone, it occurred to me that I knew the plans of the Nestene who programmed me. The Doctor was locked in the Pandorica- if both still existed. My Amy was gone, but maybe I could save the Doctor. The Pandorica was disintegrating; it crumbled to my touch. I told the Doctor as much as I could bear to. He guessed the rest. He was silent. Then finally he told me he could fix it, rewrite things. He’d go back and free himself from the Pandorica sooner, saving Amy by placing her in it. The Pandorica with Amy in it (with her head full of universe) would shelter more of the earth for longer, until the Doctor could work out a way to save it. But I’d still have to endure the trauma of shooting Amy, because that was what broke through my programming. And I will. Because I am Rory. No one will take that away now. Not ever.

  4. David E

    So..the previous episode was verging on epic. Can Moffat follow that with an even more epic resolution??

    Erm, no, he can’t.

    I’d call this the absolute opposite of epic.

    It seems that all of those thousands of aliens vanish off the face of the planet as soon as The Doctor is put in the pandorica, like within minutes. Rory can just sidle up to it and open it…is there no one keeping guard?

    All the stuff with Rory keeping watch over the box for thousands of years is quite nice, unfortunately Amy is such a horrible cow I have real trouble rationalizing why on earth he would do such a thing.

    The scene shifts to modern day where we’re suddenly told that the universe is vanishing bit by bit. We spend ages just wandering around a deserted museum with one dalek covered in porridge. How did we go from every enemy The Doctor has ever faced to just one fucking porridge dalek?!

    It’s also a bit much for me to swallow that if the TARDIS explodes it fucks up literally everything in the universe. There used to be tons of these things flying about. What’s more we never find out who is responsible for it!! Rubbish!!

    Have to find a positive here I suppose. Matt Smith’s silly dance at the wedding is quite fun. The Doctor going back through previous episodes is good as well.

    However, the previous episode was so expansive and grand and this feels so small, self-contained and weirdly uneven. It’s hard to believe it’s written by the same person!

    Big Bang? More like limp dick

    1.7

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