hafital | Doctor Who -- The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang (Reply)

That was a lot of fun! I rather prefer "The Big Bang" more than "The Pandorica Opens," but there was much to love in both episodes, and a few things to hand wave or roll my eyes at. lol.

Things I loved:

~ The Eleventh Doctor, from start to finish.

~ 3 ON THE TARDIS. YES. Can we keep it that way? Seriously, I hope Rory is staying, and that it's not just for a wee bit, and they go back to just one companion.

~ I'm still not wild about the Rory/Amy plus Doctor dynamic. Don't get me wrong, I love the OT3 aspect dearly, but can do without Rory always chasing after Amy chasing after the Doctor. I WANT A REAL THREESOME! Broken up into pairs, though, I'm ALL OVER IT. Meaning Doctor/Amy, Doctor/Rory (by far my favorite! *smishes them*), Amy/Rory (although Amy/Rory is troublesome to me, despite how cute they can be together).

~ The Doctor's inventive dancing. O.o

~ The reveal of Amy in the Pandorica before the credits.

~ The hilarious horseback riding. WHAT WAS THAT? That was so wrong, but hilarious.

~ River is kind of scary. I'm intrigued. Still a little uncomfortable with the River/Doctor dynamic, but that's okay.

~ I was thrilled that the whole Jacketed!Doctor theory actually proved to be true!

~ The exploding TARDIS as the Sun.

~ The vortex manipulator time travel. :D :D :D

~ Every single second that Eleven was on screen, times eleventy. <3 <3 <3 Eleven <3 <3 <3 (did I say that already?)

Things I didn't like:

~ Moffat has skill in constructing elegent plots, we've seen it in the past, but I have NOT seen it in evidence with series 5. He's employed the same steamoller method of plotting that RTD used (steamroll over the plot hole; explain away with a pithy line of dialogue), and with more or less similar results, imo. (meaning messy, improbable plots with plot holes the size of the TARDIS interior). Usually, I hand wave away the plot holes, but sometimes they're distracting when they're particularly ridiculous.

~ Little Amelia and Amy together was a distraction. One pithy comment greater than "Complicated" would have been nice. Without it, I just kept thinking of Nine and Rose.

~ Also, there was no explanation for the convenience of River's presence at the wedding to help Amy remember. I'm guessing we're supposed to assume some things -- rebooting the universe came from Amy's POV, thus River's presence is explained by virtue of the fact that some small corner of Amy's mind River was there. However, that doesn't follow. a) That's a lot of assumption; your audience needs just a wee bit more and River being special is not enough imo, b) we're already having to swallow the far fetched notion that Amy's remembrance reconstructed the ENTIRE UNIVERSE including the Doctor's whole life, all of it, c) which, although it's a stretch I can be go with it but then I would have preferred it to be ALL Amy's doing. Without a more intrigal explanation for River's conveniently triggering Amy's memory, it looks like tacky plotting, there only to prop up the River characterization and future storylines of River/Doctor, and it makes the whole plot, which is in turn the basis for the entire series, weaker than it is already. It smacks of lazy writing to me. River could have served the same purpose in a much cleaner fashion.