Rate and Discuss: The Big Bang

[Andrew Curnow]

They never bring up the reason why Amy's brain is so special (one speculation could be that since she's lived next to the crack for so long, perhaps that's why her brain works the way it does- but again, it's not explained, it's just a speculation

I watched it again tonight, and it's stated twice (might even be three times) that Amy is special because of the time crack in her wall; I think the phrase used is "the universe has been poring into your head". So I don't think that's explanation, that's pretty clear.

At this point one has to ponder that this magic box, which can recreate the entire Universe, shoot up through the roof into a burning time machine, and bring someone back to life, was created by a few monsters to lock the Doctor up in. Someone REALLY overdid the extra functions at the design stage didn't they

Not sure I agree there Si. Isn't the point more that the Doctor has made a solution out of whatever's to hand (which, at his best, is what he always does). The box is solely designed to be something you can't escape from, so totally sealed off from the outside world. That's all.

The recreating the entire universe comes because by definition everything sealed into the box at the moment it closed last week belongs to a universe which existed - once the Doctor was there, and unable to escape, the universe was unmade, so the very atoms & cells & whatever outside the box were different to the 'original universe' ones 'saved' inside the box. That's not a design feature, it's just a reasonably, logical extrapolation of what the box is. (IMHO.)

Similarly, as regards it flying, that was due to the Doctor wiring in the Vortex Manipulator, it again was not a feature of the box. Although it's a lovely image of the Dalek Alliance Planning Meeting...

Dalek: Shall - we - add - in - a - flying - feature?
Cyberman: That would not be logical.
Sontaran: It'd be cool though, let's do it!

A box which last week defied any attempt to open it, but this week could be opening by a sonic screwdriver or a five year old girl.

I'm pretty sure it opened last week (wasn't the episode called The Pandorica Opens in fact). True it took a while, but wasn't there some line about it activating - presumably while it's operating (ie, there's somebody inside it) then it's still 'on', so it opens in a moment. That's different from booting up from cold I would think.


Re-reading, I'm sounding like a bit of an apologist, so apologies if it's an annoying post. I really enjoyed it (as much tonight on BBC Four as last night) but I do know what it's like when others rave on about how marvellous an episode is, when it left you cold or even worse, really not liking it (for me, that was the episode with Van Goch a few weeks ago).

[Larry]

5/10

The more I see Arthur Darvill, the more I prefer him as the companion. He's pretty much come out on top as being more interesting than Karen Gillan (he can carry serious scenes whereas Gillan just falls flat- she does humor well, but drama? Not so much) Amy started off the series very feisty and interesting as a character. As the episodes have gone by she has mellowed substaintially and went from being like a Donna (at Donna's best) to a Rose/Martha (at their worst)

.

can't agree wth you there the scenes where Karen, has had to show reall emotion like both times when Rory, died she was brilliant she certainly IMO dose the tear jerking emotion very well.

[egdcltd]

My favourite scene in the entire episode was when, whilst Rory's doing his bit after shooting Amy, and it's all melancholy, the Doctor suddenly appears out of nowhere wearing a fez and carrying a mop. A total "Huh?"

[Andrew Curnow]

Watching again tonight, a few bits I really liked - the image of the stone Daleks against the jungle background, reminded me of Daleks Masterplan (although that's probably just me). Less fanboy-y, the moment where Amy realises Rory has watched over her for almost 2000 years (listening to the museum voiceover about the Legionary) was very moving. And, the exchange between the Doctor and Rory leading to that - bizarrely, I especially liked the way Matt Smith says (in answer to the question, would she be safer) "Obviously".

[Si Hunt]

I really liked the TARDIS being "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue". Why has no-one thought of that before, it's a description which fits it perfectly!

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Apart from it not being new.

[egdcltd]

I think it was new because it had just remade itself.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Oh, and it turns out Pip's question was answered after all! whereas, it seems Rory's tag was just a massive prop blunder and I was wrong about the dream (the shape though, I was right, it was the Doctor running through Amy's house).

We never saw him running through the house though. So that one's still up in the air.

[Jason Thompson]

At this point one has to ponder that this magic box, which can recreate the entire Universe, shoot up through the roof into a burning time machine, and bring someone back to life, was created by a few monsters to lock the Doctor up in. Someone REALLY overdid the extra functions at the design stage didn't they?

But it can't do those things. It can't recreate the Universe. It can only do that because the Doctor put it in the TARDIS explosion, which was permeating the whole universe. It can't fly. It only did that because the Doctor wired in the vortex manipulator. Keeping people alive inside it was a reasonable extrapolation of the perfect prison: even death is not permitted as an escape.

However, why it should have been able to use a living DNA sample obtained from outside to restore the person inside remains a mystery. Since it was built to contain a Time Lord why would it react to a human touching it at all?

[Si Hunt]

Apart from it not being new.

But the TARDIS DOES always look new. To me it does anyway - shiny and bright and new, yet somehow ancient. I think there was a line in the story to this effect. It wasn't entirely literal.

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

presumably while it's operating (ie, there's somebody inside it) then it's still 'on', so it opens in a moment.

But it's supposed to be a perfect prison, designed for one purpose: keep the Doctor contained forever. That means that it only needs to open once, then close once the Doctor is in there. There is no reason it should ever be opened again once its purpose is fulfilled, and certainly not by something as simple as a sonic screwdriver (remember that a sonic device like that is not something only the Doctor has: Miss Foster had one in Partners In Crime), or by a living version of whoever is inside it touching the outside. Think about it: the aliens know the Doctor has many incarnations and travels through time. They imprisoned one incarnation, presumably on the basis that they knew that the other incrnations were not going to be responsible for the destruction of the Universe. So, they stick him in a box on Earth, the planet most often visited by any incarnation of the Doctor, in a box that can be opened if another incanration finds it and waves the sonic screwdriver at it or touches the outside! All those aliens and they came up with that? That's a CRAP prison!

[Perry Vale]

24 hours on, I still can't gather my thoughts enough to post. I loved it, for so many reasons. So many. I'll be back. Hovering above the 10/10 vote.....

[Andrew Curnow]

But the TARDIS DOES always look new. To me it does anyway - shiny and bright and new, yet somehow ancient. I think there was a line in the story to this effect. It wasn't entirely literal.

Except possibly the Eccleston/Tennant coral version, I'd say the inside always looks new, while the outside old.

[Jon Masters]

There's no point trying to be logical about any of this series, because there is no internal logic to any of it, not even what the cracks were or what they did. Everything was done for show and effect, to let the writer / the Moff tell the story they wanted to tell, and nothing was allowed to get in the way of that. If it was a necessary story element that the Pandorica should start to sing or tapdance then that's what would have happened.

Start trying to pull one thread and you'll end up with a pile of wool. I take comfort in the belief that

• the Moff will have now satiated his lust for timey wimey stories, and hope that we never get them again
• that no-one will be ever be able to take the p~$$ out of the dodgy plot holes in the Classic stories without destroying most of this series.
• I can live with never knowing who River Song or the Whispering Voice is, and would sooner never find out.

Oh, and 5/10 overall

[Wayne]

There's no point trying to be logical about any of this series, because there is no internal logic to any of it, not even what the cracks were or what they did. Everything was done for show and effect, to let the writer / the Moff tell the story they wanted to tell, and nothing was allowed to get in the way of that. If it was a necessary story element that the Pandorica should start to sing or tapdance then that's what would have happened.

Start trying to pull one thread and you'll end up with a pile of wool. I take comfort in the belief that

• the Moff will have now satiated his lust for timey wimey stories, and hope that we never get them again
• that no-one will be ever be able to take the p~$$ out of the dodgy plot holes in the Classic stories without destroying most of this series.
• I can live with never knowing who River Song or the Whispering Voice is, and would sooner never find out.

Oh, and 5/10 overall

If you think about it logicaly/rationally then it's shit.
But in Moffat's 'dark fairytale' Harry Potter world, it's fine, because in a fantasy context, any old shit works, because you can just believe something into existence without having to have a proper reason for it.
Moffat has sidelined all internal logical by turning Dr Who into Enid Blyton's The Magic Faraway Tree. You either believe in it or you don't. It's a brilliantly clever scam. If only because i myself can actually believe in the rules that he's created, even though i know that logically it's rubbish. That's the power of good fantasy writing. You know it's a load of toot, but you can still go with it.

[Si Hunt]

Just to clear something up, the Pandorica did not "defy all attempts to open it" last week; the Doctor stated he could easily open it, he just didn't want to 'til he knew what was inside.

Of course, that opens up an almighty flaw in the villains plan: if the Doctor had said "sod it" and opened it before they'd all arrived, he could have worked out their plan in a jiffy and scarpered.

Si. :mobile

[Rob McCow]

That's a CRAP prison!

The plan must have been that the Super Friends were going to guard it against maraudering self-aware Autons with Sonic Screwdrivers. That slightly went by the wayside when they all ceased to exist.

if the Doctor had said "sod it" and opened it before they'd all arrived, he could have worked out their plan in a jiffy and scarpered.

The Auton guards would probably have stopped him. Anyway, the Super Friends would have compared notes about how the Doctor behaves, so they'd have known that he'd have been too intrigued to just run off.

I have no problem with the logic of the season finale. Moffatt played by the rules he created. As soon as the Doctor said 'History can be re-written', everything in this season finale was consistent and possible. Also, they made the big point in 'Cold Blood' about being able to bring someone back if you hold on to their memory. So the way the Doctor was brought back was fine by me.

[Perry Vale]

Moffatt played by the rules he created.

This is the key to why I loved this whole series so much, I think, and I'll return to it when I post further. Have watched it a second time now, and enjoyed it even more.

[SiHart]

I think it worked because the season as a whole played by the same rules. The fairytale theme hopefully had its culmination in this episode and they can move away from that now and try something a little different perhaps.

Si xx

[Perry Vale]

I think it worked because the season as a whole played by the same rules.

Agreed, in fact I'd argue that all the episodes played by the rules of "Checkov's Gun", which is a style I far to prefer to how RTD wrote.

[Paul Monk]

The idea of internal rules is interesting and something I've pondered for a while now. It crops up in children's television loads. If you watch anything on Cbeebies you'll soon discover that most good childrens shows (the ones that really capture the kids imaginations) are the ones that create a world with its own rules and logic and then stick to it even if (as Wayne says) that world is a load of rubbish. Hence Teletubbies and In the Night Garden work brilliantly and are hugely popular, because, I think, they stick rigidly to their internal rules. Shows which don't, including the Tweenies, seem to be less popular because they try to fit in with everyday life and don't follow their own rules.

Anyway I loved The Big Bang. It was great fun and its nice to hear some marriage gags pop up.

[Jason Thompson]

Agreed, in fact I'd argue that all the episodes played by the rules of "Checkov's Gun", which is a style I far to prefer to how RTD wrote.

Indeed. Flesh and Stone is a textbook example. The first scene is full of dialogue explaining the artificial gravity field and what happens if the power fails and it shuts down, and lo and behold, at the end exactly that happens.

Contrast that with Journey's End, in which everything is fixed by a bank of controls we never even saw before it became useful to the plot right at the climax.

[matthewsch]

The whole show itself has internal rules that contradict reality but are consistent in the Whoniverse - time travel for a start! Moffat's season logic is laughable in the real world, but in a universe where you can magically travel to times and places long since gone inside a blue box, surely anything is possible, as long as it is consistent inside the fictional environment that has been created. And that is what I love about this show, especially Series 5. It's creative, magical, childlike, fun, adventurous, spontaneous, but most of all, impossible.

[Perry Vale]

I think it was new because it had just remade itself.

Exactly. Another example of Moffat using "Checkov's Gun", The Tardis renews itself in The Eleventh Hour, as it is needed as part of the conclusion to the series finale. So, he turns a production decision (the desire to rebuild the set for HD) in to a plot point. Good work, imo.

[Jon Masters]

Brace yourselves....

I think it worked because the season as a whole played by the same rules. The fairytale theme hopefully had its culmination in this episode and they can move away from that now and try something a little different perhaps.

Sorry, guys, but I just can’t let the last few posts go unchallenged.

For a start, Moff deliberately rewrites the logic from Blink into how the Angels work for series 5 – adding new powers is OK, but completely ignoring rules you established before isn’t. Here they're feeding off radiation like Kastrians and running around in plain sight of each other. Of course he would say that you get a better story by doing so, but I would argue while you make some things better, you diminish the story overall by making other things worse.

Even more significant is the same attitude towards the series’ whole arc – the cracked universe.
Let’s look at the way the ‘crack’ behaves. In some stories it merely acts as a magic door, to get people or creatures from one part of the universe to another (Eleventh Hour, Vampires of Venice). At other times it causes anyone coming into contact with it (or its light) to be erased from history. (Flesh & Stone, Cold Blood). At other times still people get right up to it and stick their hand in with no ill effect.

Then there’s erasing from history – which we’re reminded numerous times means that you never existed. So

• Amy’s parents are erased from history – and yet Amy still exists.
• The original Angel in F&B gets erased, but the clerics killed by it don’t reappear, and the Byzantium still crashes (its heavily implied that the ship was sabotaged to crash, presumably by the Angel as it ends up in exactly the right place).
• People disappear but alternative people don’t appear. When all those clerics vanish are we really to assume that Octavian went on such a dangerous mission with so few personel ? What we should be getting is the appearance from nowhere of the clerics who would have been picked for the mission now those who vanished never existed.
• Same for Rory – if he never existed then who saved the Doctor from being shot at the end of Cold Blood ? And are we really to assume that if Rory had never existed Amy wouldn’t have had an alternative boyfriend (or that any other detail of her life being different) ?
• Even the remembering bit changes from story to story – one minute Amy can remember the missing clerics because she’s a time traveller, the next you only forget people who are in your personal timeline.

I have much less of a problem with the final episodes, probably because Moff has had to be far more careful with his plotting. If you take it that there are three alternative timelines

• The original where the Superleague make and carry out their plan, the TARDIS explodes and the cracks appear.
• The one where the Universe is collapsing and there are no stars visible from Earth
• The one where the cracks are sealed because the TARDIS doesn’t explode

and our heroes are jumping across, as well as backward and forward, then most of it works just fine.
I’d still object to all those alien races suddenly having time travel technology (or were the Daleks happy to give everyone a lift), and somehow nice new Amy who never grew up with a crack in her wall suddenly gets replaced (psychologically) by our old Amy - that’s not very nice. It also doesn’t explain so well how the TARDIS explosion could be traced back to a particular day when later we’re told that its exploding at all places and on every single day.

And all of this is before we start complaining about the misuse of the real world science

As for erasing the Doctor – there are too many consequences of that for us to end up with a perfectly happy universe and an Earth with an Amy and Rory wedding – if only because Turn Left proved that there was no-one left to defeat the Dalek Crucible and the Universes ended anyway. Nor is there any more valid reason for Amy to be the one to remember the Doctor since the River Song who leaves her diary for her clearly remembers who he is.

I’m glad people have enjoyed this series, but as I said elsewhere I felt it was a sequence of ‘cool’ images and scenarios rather than a set of strong stories (as exemplified by ‘Romans at Stonehenge’ and ‘all the Doctor’s enemies that we have costumes for team up’ and ‘Rory kills Amy’ ).

In many ways I’d love to get away from the ‘big story arc – huge finale’ model that has worked well in the past, but to me actually seems to be stifling the show. How great would it be to have 13 un-connected adventures in series 6.