Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang

This two part story was fun. It was entertaining. There were plenty of plot twists. However, it still has the feel of a RT Davies season finale. There is the demand for something bigger and better, the inevitable deus ex machina resolution and the resulting irritating 'reset switch.' I may be largely on my own in this disappointment. Most fans really loved this story.

Pandorica Opens was full of surprises and things for fans to chew over. Some aspects of the story bothered me. For instance, the ease with which the Doctor's enemies had come together in alliance and the fact that they had opted for such an elaborate plan. Why not simply find the Doctor and kill him?

There was plenty of emotional drama in both episodes. Perhaps a little too much. We have seen a lot of emotional drama this season and I would rather like to see something a little more subtle and understated. Unfortunately, the fast pacing of the stories leaves little room for that. I must admit when Amy appeared to die at the end of Pandorica Opens, I felt a sense of deja vu. We all knew Rory was coming back, so there was soemthing tedious about seeing Amy die too. Can't we have somebody staying dead for once?

It used to be the case in Doctor Who that you could never interfere in your own timeline. It would be disastrous if you meet yourself in the past. That seems to have been abandoned in The Big Bang. I hope this will not be a permanent change to the way Doctor Who works. A lot of reviewers noticed the obvious nod to Bill and Ted's Bogus Adventure.

My biggest complaint about the story is the cosmic scale. The entire universe is destroyed. The Doctor resolves the problem by creating a second Big Bang. Is there anything he cannot do? If the Doctor can re-create the universe after it has been destroyed there is nothing much left for him to do now. What is going to happen in the next season finale? I suggest, what would be good for the next season finale would be just a plain old fashioned villain with a dastardly plan with a monster or two thrown in. I get weary of the Doctor having to deal with such constant cosmic threats.