Review:
Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens

512: The Pandorica Opens

‘What are you? Why are you sealed up?’ – The Doctor

Holy shit. Please excuse the coarse nature of this review’s opening, but it’s hard to write the noise of a jaw hitting the floor in sheer disbelief. Oh, actually, let’s give it a try: ‘shooooooooo – KRACK’. There, that wasn’t so hard.

This week, it all comes together. In just one week, on the 26th of June, the TARDIS is going to explode. The damage to the universe is insurmountable – cracks in time tear through the fabric of reality, swallowing everything in their path, causing the whole of creation to never have existed in the first place. But all this can be prevented… can’t it?

In his last hours on earth, Van Gogh paints one final masterpiece, a secret painting never revealed to anyone before. The painting and the message within make their way into the hands of Churchill, who in turn encourages River Song to escape from her confinement in the year 5145. River finds the painting in the clutches of Liz X, and sets about leaving a message for the Doctor. The Doctor finally discovers the trial left for him throughout history and finds River and the painting waiting for him at Stonehenge in Roman Britain. The painting? ‘The Pandorica Opens’, a picture of the TARDIS exploding, the exact date and time printed clearly on it.

Now the race is on for the Doctor. The Pandorica rests silently beneath Stonehenge, but not for much longer. It’s waking up, beaming a message to the rest of the universe to come and get it. Now millions of starships are heading to earth – every single alien race in all of existence are coming together to claim the universe’s ultimate weapon for themselves. And only the Doctor stands in their way…

It’s a fact with Doctor Who that the first episode of a two-parter is always the best. Judging from this opening to the finale, the second half has a hell of a tough job to live up to these expectations. This episode is, without a doubt, one of the very finest in the show’s long and glorious history.