Series 5 (2010)
Episode title: The Pandorica OpensFeaturing: Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song
First shown: 19th June 2010
Related articles: Daleks, Cybermen, Autons
Guide: The episode begins with a painting done by Vincent van Gogh, after his meeting with the Doctor in the Vincent and the Doctor episode, depicting the TARDIS exploding. Several years later, Churchill and Bracewell (Victory of the Daleks) find the painting. Churchill attempts to contact the Doctor but instead gets hold of River Song (prior to the events in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone) in the 52nd century. River escapes her current imprisonment and goes to find the painting, which is now in the possession of Liz 10 (The Beast Below) before obtaining a Vortex Manipulator and travels to the past to alert the Doctor by writing the words “Hello Sweetie” onto the oldest planet of the universe, along with co-ordinates for the Doctor to meet her at.
The Doctor meets River in 102AD while she is posing as Cleopatra in Roman Britain. River shows the painting made by Vincent and the Doctor realises that the Pandorica isn’t a fairy tale after all, and is probably located near to where they are. They travel to the Stonehenge site where the Doctor, River and Amy find a passage that leads under Stonehenge, which the Doctor terms the “Underhenge.” Inside, they find the Pandorica, a metal box that has every kind of lock imaginable, but the Doctor and River become concerned when they find that the Pandorica is opening from the inside out, transmitting a message across the whole of time and space. River discovers that everything that ever hated the Doctor is coming to Earth that night, and pleads with him to escape. He refuses, and instead finds help to defend the area from a volunteer group of Roman legionaries. Suddenly a Cyberman suit stuns the Doctor, looking for a new host. Amy is protected by a Roman legion who turns out to be Rory, who baffles the Doctor (when he wakes up) by being alive, as he was erased from time and space by one of the cracks in the universe (Cold Blood). Rory is also confused, as he only remembers dying one moment, and waking up as a Roman soldier the next. Rory attempts to use the engagement ring to connect with Amy but she is unable to remember him.
The Doctor temporarily delays the aliens arriving in orbit around the Earth while River pilots the TARDIS to Stonehenge (as it was left where they first met near the beginning of the episode), however River finds the TARDIS under some outside control, materialising at Amy’s house in Leadworth on the 26th June, 2010. River finds pictures of Roman soldiers and a book on Pandora’s box in Amy’s bedroom and relays this information to the Doctor, who worries that everything around him was constructed out of Amy’s mind by his enemies to entrap him. River is told to leave the time zone she is in immediately, but when she steps inside the TARDIS she has no control over it, and is trapped inside as it dematerialises. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Amy discover that Rory, and the rest of the Roman soldiers are Autons, who capture the Doctor and force him back to the Pandorica.
Rory attempts to retain his human consciousness to prevent him killing Amy, while the enemies of the Doctor (Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans) arrive and reveal that they formed an alliance to stop the Doctor and built the Pandorica as a prison to hold him, as they believe he is the cause of the explosion that rips time and space apart. The Doctor pleads that they have the wrong person and that it will be the TARDIS that causes the explosion, but they do not believe that anyone other than the Doctor can pilot the TARDIS and imprison him inside the Pandorica. The episode ends as the Pandorica seals the Doctor inside, River is trapped in the TARDIS, and Rory kills Amy just as she remembers him, while explosions in space surround the Earth.
This episode was the first part of a two parter. You can find the episode guide to the second part by clicking here.