Series 5 (2010)
Episode title: The Big BangFeaturing: Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song
First shown: 26th June 2010
Related articles: Daleks
Guide: The episode begins with the Doctor sealed inside the Pandorica, River trapped in an exploding TARDIS and Rory holding the lifeless body of Amy Pond, whom he had shot with his Auton gun. As Rory hold the body of his love, a future Doctor appears wearing a Fez hat, and carrying a mop, and gives Rory his sonic screwdriver, instructing him to open the Pandorica to release the imprisoned Doctor. Rory does as he’s told, finding that the Doctor’s enemies are no longer alive, just mere imprints of their lives reside in the “Underhenge” and confusing the Doctor as to how he got the sonic screwdriver, before he realises that he must have come from the future. The Doctor learns of Amy’s state, and together him and Rory place her inside the Pandorica, which was designed to keep the occupant alive forever, and the Doctor reckons it can thus restore Amy’s life while holding it in stasis. The Doctor leaps forward to 1996 using River’s vortex manipulator while Rory stays behind to guard the Pandorica, creating a mythology of the “Lone Centurion” protecting the box that survives to the present day.
Due to the exploding TARDIS, stars have been wiped out of the Solar System and in 1996, no one has any knowledge of them, except for a 7 year old Amelia Pond, who draws them. Amelia receives clues from an unknown individual that leads her to the National Museum, where an exhibit on the Pandorica is being displayed along with a time line of its history. When Amelia touches the Pandorica it opens, revealing the alive and older Amy Pond and releasing her from the box. They are joined by the Doctor from 102AD, and Rory who is now working as a security guard at the museum to protect the Pandorica. However, there is also a fossilised Dalek on display, which is restored to life. The Doctor temporarily disables it and the four (the Doctor, Amy, Rory and Amelia) escape. The Doctor then uses the vortex manipulator to set up the events that free him from the Pandorica in 102AD and leave the clues that bring Amelia to the museum. The Doctor worries when Amelia disappears that the star-less universe is collapsing because of the TARDIS explosion, and they do not have much time before reality disappears completely.
A mortally wounded future Doctor arrives and collapses in front of the group, whispering something to his past self, before seemingly dying. The trio move on to continue fleeing from the Dalek, while the Doctor ponders the idea of the Pandorica being used to reboot the universe. They escape to the roof, where the Doctor sees a sun and realises that it is the TARDIS exploding, which created a time loop to contain the explosion. The Doctor listens in on the explosion and hears River’s voice and uses the vortex manipulator to rescue her. Having rescued River, the Doctor makes a plan to fly the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS to cause a second Big Bang, and recreate the universe. Before he can return to the Pandorica he is shot by the weak Dalek and jumps 12 minutes into the past, where he informs his former self to create a diversion so that he can work on the TARDIS. River confronts the Dalek which begs for mercy before she kills it. When the companions find the Doctor he is preparing himself for flight in the Pandorica and explains that once the universe is rebooted, Amy will be able to use her memories to restore all the people taken by the cracks in time and space, such as her parents, but he will be trapped in the void between the universes once the crack closes. The Doctor then flies the Pandorica into the explosion and creates a second Big Bang, restoring the universe.
The Doctor then finds himself rewinding through moments of his life, and we see moments from previous episodes that weren’t in the episode, such as a scene from The Lodger that wasn’t in the original episode, but finds that Amy can’t see him, but she can hear him. He uses this advantage in Flesh and Stone when he talks to Amy while her eyes are closed, telling her to remember what he said when she was 7 years old, which was seen in the original episode though it wasn’t explained at the time (obviously). Then he arrives on the day that he first met Amelia Pond, who is asleep outside waiting for the “raggedy Doctor” to return and take her away. He carries her off to bed and talks to her subconscious, about the man who “borrowed” a magic box that was “big and little at the same time. Brand new and ancient. And the bluest blue ever.” Deciding he’s had enough of travelling back through his life, he steps into the crack in Amelia’s bedroom wall and disappears, sealing the cracks in time and space.
Amy Pond wakes up on the morning of the 26th June, 2010, the day of her wedding to Rory where she finds she has remembered her mother, father and the human Rory back into existence. However, during the wedding reception she thinks she has forgotten something but it isn’t until she sees River’s blue diary with the TARDIS on the front cover that she recalls the Doctor’s story of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” which causes both the Doctor and the TARDIS to be restored. The Doctor joins in the wedding celebrations before leaving to give River her diary and vortex manipulator back. On board the TARDIS, the Doctor says that there are still unanswered questions about why the TARDIS exploded and the nature of “the Silence” that will fall. Before they can contemplate this issue, the TARDIS phone rings saying that an Egyptian Goddess has escaped on the Orient Express. Amy and Rory decide to join the Doctor on his latest travel, and the trio leave on their next adventure.
Oh, and if there was one thing we learnt in Series 5... Bow ties and Fez hats are cool!
This episode is a concluding episode of a two part storyline. You can read the first episode guide of the two parter by clicking here.