The Big Bang

After last weeks daft mish mash of throwing in everything but the kitchen sink it was nice to see the series resolved with a decent storyline. Drawing on similar David tennant story lines such as the master two parter it still had its bad points but overall provided Smith and Gillan with a chance to show what it was got them the jobs in the first place and I thought they did very well in this episode. The pair of them work well together and if they are given the chance of decent story lines to follow will show their worth. Overall series 5 was poor. Not the fault of the actors simply the writers. Alex Kingston and Arthur Darvill brought something interesting along and the River Song character is intriguing. The Angel episodes were excellent and the Van Gogh one was a damn good story if silly monster. The first episode introduced the characters well enough but mostly it was poor. The potential is there it just need Steven Moffat to up his game. As a Doctor Matt Smith has performed adequately and given glimpses of what they saw in him in the first place. Of the 3 new incumbents to the TARDIS he ranks a poor third but has shown what he is capable of given a good storyline. He is energetic and funny and reminds me of the 2nd Doctor Patrick Troughton. Hopefully the writers will give us some real meat to the sandwich of Doctor and Pond next time round and we will get to see Matt Smith consistently do justice to the role as did Tennant and Eccleston. Overall I rate the series 5/6 out of 10 but with glimpses of 8/9. Not too bad as such simply.... disappointing.

The change of cast is always an adjustment for everyone, but by the end of Season 5 I got used to Matt Smith as the Doctor. In general, the cast - great.

The stories - OK. The fans of Russell T Davies seem to criticize this season. Steven Moffat fans are singing his praises, despite the obvious fact that neither of them wrote that many of the episodes.

The nag that I got from watching this season was a sense of Deja vu, the stories seemed familiar, safe and contrived. Before this season started I heard a lot of talk about how Moffat was to bring us a darker, deeper Doctor, which captured my interest. How was this going to work out? I asked myself; well pretty much same-old- same-old really! At the end of this season you will have a feeling of 'Well... oh... hmmm....good...now what?" and the lure of the line from River Song "Next is when everything changes", which was used almost from the very beginning of the new series (Even Captain Jack!).

Season 5 is enjoyable but forgettable, let's hope for more from season 6.

... December 2014 to be precise and (most fans should be OK with this) I went back in time to make a few points:

* when I first saw this episode in real time (or that version of me contemporaneous with the episode as aired) I recall being happy and anticipatory. Life was full of promise. Going forward, the series would I reasoned be at least this good every episode possibly better. Well, I was wrong, don't want to annoy any die-hard fans but the reason I am (in the future) re-watching the entire Amy Pond series as opposed to watching the current (late 2014) Dr Who in real time is that the older version (the one being reviewed) is not merely slightly better, it is better on an order of magnitude that staggers the imagination. So much for the promise of a brighter tomorrow

* frankly on rewatching I was gobsmacked by how sharp the writing was. I mean you could cut a steak with it. Just the ending of this season could be a clinic in film school. At the end, in the last few minutes, in addition to wrapping up loose ends, the writing team (the two of them) not only manage to riff off the "something old, something new" adage -- AND MAKE IT IMPORTANT TO THE STORY! -- but the word banter when the doc does not understand whether he is proposing to River or asking her if she is single....?

Folks, this is beyond good writing, it is in a class by itself

Bottom line -- there is a not an IMDb rating high enough for this series arc. They say that you can show comedies to people in the hospital and they will get better. They should try showing this series to people who have given up on life ... to see if they can find their spark again.

Worked for me

The Pandorica is ready for the Doctor, and he is placed inside.

I find some parts a little hard to rationalise, the return of Rory was quite shoddily done, whilst the alliance between Cybermen, Sontaran and Teletubby Dalek seemed unimaginable.

A nice link back to the first of Tennant's episode, and we see how life affected young Amy without his influence. A world with no stars, all it needed was for someone to say the stars are going out!!

I had spent a week imagining if we were going to see Drahvins, Sycorax, Zygons, Attraxi, so I felt a little bit robbed. Even the title The Big Bang suggested something on epic proportions, it did not deliver big, being the least epic final to date.

I find it fun, but a wee bit smug in parts, it cannot help applauding itself for how clever it is, it's also long drawn out, more action would have been better then some of the padding. That said it is unique, fun and imaginative.

River Song proves to be a continued delight, and I enjoyed the Amy storyline, the wedding and parents were nice. How cool was that scene when the Dalek gets restored, I also liked that the scene from the Byzantium Garden now made sense. The Pandorica Opens was so big and wonderful, this was good, just a bit of a let down in comparison, 7/10

After watching the cliffhanger to "The Pandorica Opens", i remember thinking to myself "well how are they going to follow that up satisfyingly?" luckily, writer Steven Moffat, as normal, succeeded. With this season finale i was expecting a huge explosion fest, the sort of thing i was accustomed to during the RTD era, luckily Moffat is more clever in his stories, and wrote a very interesting, and clever story, don't want to spoil anything, but believe me, it was possibly the most clever story the show has ever brought out, and it ties in, perfectly almost, with the rest of series 5. Now, don't get me wrong, this episode was not perfect, there were plenty of plot holes, for example: how can Nestene Rory still be there if the Nestene's never existed? (i can except that maybe Amy wouldn't have disappeared since she still exists in this alternate timeline, and maybe the doctor was protected by the Pandorica). Still, nothing is flawless, and the plot holes aren't nearly as annoying as they were back when Davies was writing.

The stone Dalek is very effective, and it's actually pretty intimidating (something i wasn't expecting from the teletubby daleks) and it even managed to make me jump at one point, it really is pretty amazing that one Dalek (and one that's not even WORKING properly) can seem more powerful than a whole empire of them.

The emotion in this episode is frequent, and there are several time's where you may be on the verge of tears, the difference between Moffat and davies' writing in my opinion, is that Moffat can write interesting characters AND a good story, whereas with Davies it tends to be one or the other.

The resolution of the episode is a deus ex machina, but it helps that they give it some build up, and properly EXPLAIN it, rather than just pulling it out of nowhere, and giving us an incredibly vague explanation for it. Plus, it actually make's some sense, unlike RTD's little deus ex machinas.....

Overall, this is an excellent season finale for an overall good season with only a few weak points (Victory of the Daleks, and "The Hungry Earth/ Cold Blood".