The Big Bang (Doctor Who)

212b – "The Big Bang"
Doctor Who episode
Cast
Doctor Matt Smith (Eleventh Doctor)
Companion Karen Gillan (Amy Pond)
Others Alex Kingston – River Song Caitlin Blackwood – Amelia Susan Vidler – Aunt Sharon Frances Ashman – Christine Barnaby Edwards – Stone Dalek William Pretsell – Dave Halcro Johnston – Mr Pond Karen Westwood – Tabetha Nicholas Briggs – Dalek voice
Production
Directed by	Toby Haynes
Written by	Steven Moffat
Script editor	Lindsey Alford
Produced by	Peter Bennett
Executive producer(s)	Steven Moffat Piers Wenger Beth Willis
Production code	1.13
Series	Series 5
Running time	55 minutes
First broadcast	26 June 2010 (2010-06-26)
Chronology
← Preceded by "The Pandorica Opens" Followed by → 2010 Christmas special

"The Big Bang" is the thirteenth and final episode in the fifth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is the second part of a two-part season finale started with "The Pandorica Opens", at the end of which The Doctor is trapped, the TARDIS destroyed, and Amy Pond has been shot by an Auton replica of Rory Williams. It was written by Steven Moffat, the head writer and executive producer of the series.

Plot

Following from the cliffhanger of the previous episode, the Doctor is sealed in the Pandorica, a prison designed for him by his greatest foes and baited by elements of Amy's childhood imagination, while River Song is trapped in the TARDIS as it explodes, triggering the end of the universe. As the episode begins, the Earth, Moon, and what appears to be the Sun are all that remain in a starless black void. In 102 AD, the Auton replica of Rory, having shot Amy, is still holding her lifeless body when a future version of the Doctor, wearing a fez & using a Vortex Manipulator, briefly appears and gives Rory his sonic screwdriver, with instructions to open the Pandorica. Rory releases the imprisoned Doctor, who places Amy inside the Pandorica where she will be revived and held in stasis. Rory, ageless due to his Auton nature, stays with the Pandorica, guarding it through nearly two millennia and creating a mythology around the box that survives to the present day.

The Doctor jumps forward in time to 1996, and provides hints to the young Amelia Pond—who has dreams of a star-filled sky—that lead her to the National Museum, where the Pandorica is on display. Amelia's touch opens the Pandorica, releasing her older self. Rory, now a security guard at the museum, arrives just in time to save the Doctor, Amy and Amelia from a fossilised Dalek. After an emotional reunion, the Doctor uses the Vortex Manipulator to pass his screwdriver to Rory in the past and rescue River from the TARDIS. The group flees through the museum, pursued by the Dalek, which the Doctor surmises has been re-activated by the light of the Pandorica. They meet a mortally wounded version of the Doctor from twelve minutes in the future, who whispers something to his past self and seemingly dies. The Doctor explains that a fragment of the original, star-filled universe is inside the Pandorica, and if they can transfer it to every point of the collapsing universe simultaneously, they may be able to "reboot" reality. He is then shot by the Dalek, and jumps twelve minutes into the past. Rory and Amy escape, while River confronts the Dalek- which uncharacteristically begs for mercy when told her name.

After jumping back twelve minutes, the Doctor did not die, but instead directed his earlier self to create a diversion, giving the wounded Doctor the opportunity to program the Pandorica to fly into the Sun-like source of light: the TARDIS, exploding simultaneously at every point in space and time. When his companions return, the Doctor explains that once the universe is rebooted, Amy—having lived near the cracks in the universe all her life—will be able to use her memories to restore people who have been erased, and that he himself will be trapped in the void between universes once the cracks close. The Doctor then pilots the Pandorica into the TARDIS explosion, creating a second Big Bang and returning the universe to normal.

The Doctor then finds himself rewinding through his life as an observer. Amy can hear but not see him, and as he passes through the events of "Flesh and Stone", he takes advantage of her closed eyes to tell her to remember what he told her when she was seven years old. Arriving on the day he met Amelia Pond ("The Eleventh Hour"), he finds the young girl asleep outside, waiting for her "raggedy Doctor" to return. The Doctor carries her to bed, and tells her a story about a daft old man who "borrowed" a magic box that was "big and little at the same time. Brand new and ancient. And the bluest blue ever." He then steps into the crack in Amelia's bedroom wall, sealing it completely.

Amy wakes up on 26 June 2010, the day of her wedding, to find she has remembered her mother, father and the human Rory back into existence. During the wedding reception, however, she feels as if she is forgetting something. When she sees River Song's diary, its cover fashioned after the TARDIS, she tearfully recalls the Doctor's story of "something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue", causing the Doctor and the TARDIS to be restored. The Doctor joins in the wedding celebration.

After the wedding, the Doctor gives River the Vortex Manipulator to return to her time. River sadly warns him he will soon learn who she truly is, and that it will change everything. Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor explains to Amy and Rory that unanswered questions remain about the destruction of the TARDIS and the nature of "the Silence" that will fall, but before they can contemplate that, the Doctor receives a telephone call alerting him to the presence of an escaped Egyptian goddess on the Orient Express in space. Rory and Amy decide to join him, and the three leave on their next adventure.

Continuity

The episode revisits several scenes from earlier in the series. The first scene in the episode mirrors the start of "The Eleventh Hour", except this time the Doctor does not crash into Amelia's garden, instead appearing later to direct her to the museum. Upon the TARDIS's restoration Rory tells Amy's parents that "I was plastic" and that the Doctor was "the stripper at my stag do", the latter event having been seen in "The Vampires of Venice".

As the Doctor rewinds through his life, he sees events which relate to "The Lodger", but which were not shown in that episode. His conversation with Amy during the events of "Flesh and Stone" appeared in that episode, though it was not clear that this was a Doctor from a different timeline. Finally, he arrives in seven-year-old Amelia's house the night she waited for him in "The Eleventh Hour".

Early in the episode, Amy's aunt states that she does not trust Richard Dawkins (who appeared as himself in "The Stolen Earth") due to his support for the existence of stars.

Broadcast

The Appreciation Index for this episode was the highest of the series at 89. The final rating for the episode was 6.12 million viewers on BBC1 (excluding BBC HD viewers). This ranked the show number 9 for the week ending 27 June 2010 on BBC1 and number 11 for the week across all channels.

Home video releases

A Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray containing this episode together with "Vincent and the Doctor", "The Lodger" and "The Pandorica Opens" is due to be released on 6 September 2010.

Reception

Dan Martin of The Guardian wrote that the "finale was brilliant – a classic modern fairytale unfolding before our eyes". IGN gave the episode a rating of "Masterful", describing it as "wonderfully wide-eyed, genuinely magical adventure", adding that it "ended the series on an unquestionable high". Gavin Fuller, writing for The Daily Telegraph, summarised the episode as "interesting and enjoyable, but not quite the spectacular conclusion you might hope for." He particularly praised Matt Smith's portrayal of the Doctor in the scenes of his sacrifice and rewinding of his timeline, and also described the presentation of the Universe collapsing as "effective". However, Fuller had some criticisms of the plot, seeing it as potentially confusing. He also expressed disappointment with the "easy" solutions to some of the problems facing the Doctor in this episode. Fuller also wrote that the episode's solutions were "rather paradoxical in nature [since the Doctor] only escapes as Rory lets him out once given the means to do so by the Doctor travelling back in time once he's escaped.", though Martin in The Guardian excused this paradox due to the episode being set "in the eye of the storm as history collapses [and so] ... hardly working to the same rulebook".

External links

• The Big Bang on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki
• "The Big Bang" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage