The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang [TV/2010.6.19 ~ 6.26]

(artwork by Sean Longmore)

★★★★☆

  Series 5 is Steven Moffat on his early-days creative high, and the finale two-parter perfectly represents his enthusiasm for the future he'd be integral in crafting. The script for The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang cleverly zips between bombastic, large-scale splendor and intimate, heart-to-heart drama, and as far as I'm concerned it nails what it's going for. One of Moffat's best two-parters? Oh, definitely.

  Some people tend to think of The Pandorica Opens as the superior episode; I think different. While the first part does have the fun Pandorica speech (a frankly clever way to show who the Doctor is — he may be playing the pawn in someone else's game and he may even know it, but he's not going down without a fight), it's The Big Bang where Moffat gets to utilise his smartest ideas to make a fun and dire end-of-the-universe scenario that somehow beats every previous new series finale out of the water in terms of sheer scale. The Doctor travelling between past and present to influence events in order to save the universe is clever and very fun to watch, but the meat of the episode is definitely his relationship with Amy Pond, and what he means to her as the one guiding light through the red-haired girl's troubled years fractured by time. Everyone seems to know they've got something speical in their hands and pulls in their weight, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan especially. If the rest of Series 5 didn't convince you of Amy, this surely did. Beneath all that bravado and self-assurance, she's still just the young Amelia that waited for her raggedy Doctor.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  

  Doctor Who as a blockbuster with brains as well as heart(s) — what's better than that when you're craving for something witty and exciting in equal measure? A new Doctor on hot fire (I'd go as far as to say that this two-parter is one of Matt Smith's finest turns as the Time Lord), a set of companions just married and about to get it on (hence the "Big Bang") and oh so many hints towards the story threads to come. Nostalgia aside, I found The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang to still be a great Doctor Who adventure, let alone a series finale.