Good Omens: Every Day

 "You know as well as I do how badly understaffed Hell is right now."

Crikey, that was a busy final episode. And, in the end, it was very good indeed. I still maintain that this season started well, ended well but had a fair bit of filler in the middle, and perhaps one could criticise the pacing in that this last episode had an awful lot of work to do. But there’s no denying that it’s very good indeed.

It’s an episode about Armageddon and the desirability or not thereof, yes. But it’s also an episode about love and choice. We finally get to see what happened with Gabriel and… he stopped being such an arse and started to parallel Aziraphale. He lost his enthusiasm for Armageddon, started to plot with the other side to avoid it… and fell in love with Beelzebub. With whom he concocted a plan. 

All this, though, is riffing on the relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale, and their unspoken love, with heartbreaking results. The intervention of Maggie and Nina towards Crowley is mature and beautiful. They’re not rushing into their inevitable relationship, because this is reality, but it’s strongly hinted that happiness awaits them. Their own intervention, urging Crowley to tell Aziraphale how he feels, is far more grown-up than a Jane Austen ball full of shopkeepers.

But, despite Crowley pouring his heart out, and that kiss, happiness is not to be for Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley is a realist, not cynical for the sake of it, and he is right to be equally wary of Heaven and Hell. After all, in the flashback, Metatron strongly hinted at “institutional problems”. But, alas, Aziraphale succumbs to temptation, not from a demon but from Metatron. A fancy title, a fancy office, a swanky job running a project known as “the Second Coming”… he’s learned nothing, in the end. Poor Crowley has no choice. In a sense, Aziraphale has become Gabriel, while Gabriel has become Aziraphale.

An extraordinary, courageous finale. Despite the high concepts, in the end, the point is that love needs principles. We can’t just give our hearts to those who turn out to be lacking in integrity. Crowley, in the end, is more moral.

Good Omens: The Ball

 "Well, it wouldn't be a Shopkeeper's Association without dancing, would it?"

This is another very good episode, with a delightful conceit, a witty script and typically superlative acting. It's still dragging out a rather thin amount of plot though. Only now do we discover that Gabriel, apparently, emptied his memories into a matchbox for some reason. What's going on? Next episode is the finale and there really doesn't appear to be all that much to finalise.

The central conceit really is brilliant, though: a Shopkeepers' Association made to be a ball from right out of Jane Austen, all for the purpose of bringing Nina and Maggie together. It's milked for all its worth, with a splendid collection of shopkeepers, especially the, er, seamstress. And the Doctor Who fan. Who dies, naturally. There are a number of characters here, though, whom I hope we shall be seeing again.

Muriel's clueless credulous is amusing too, as are the spelling deficiences of the hordes of Hell. Yet we also have several hints that Aziraphale and Crowley may well have... those sorts of feelings for each other. I suppose it says a lot that this can somehow manage to entertain so much with such a thin plot. Good stuff, but the further throiugh the season we get, the thinner the gruel.

Good Omens: The Hitchhiker

 "We'd like to apologise for the wait and the conditions, but we won't. Cheer up. Things could be worse, and they will be."

There's plenty this episode to amuse, but... isn't this season sort of treading water at this point? The first two episodes were superb, but it's looking increasingly as though there just isn't tgat much going on, just the Gabriel plot thread really, and it's all being padded out with minisides.

This time the minisode, while not the best, is decent enough, by the League of Gentlemen gang and featuring wartime London, prestidigitation, Nazi zombies and a fantastic take on the bureaucracy of Hell. But... it's pretty much the main point of the episode.

Otherwise... well, Aziraphale picks up a hitchhiker who turns out to be Shax, she tells him she's worked out whrre Gabriel is, and she then proceeds to persuade Beelzebub to order her to lead a full-on demonic assault on the bookshop. That's literally it.

There's entertainment to be had, but arc-wise, this episode advances things not one iota. There's literally no reason for it to exist.

Good Omens: I Know Where I'm Going

 "So Elspeth here has all the opportunities because she's so poor."

"That's lunacy."

"No, that's ineffable."

The above quote says it all. Like last week's "minisode" (I've finally worked out what's going on with those: they're the historical flashbacks inserted into the episodes), Aziraphale learns a damn good lesson on moral ambiguity, and on the fact that seeing morality s something literally dictated from on high may not be the best idea. Here, he learns that lesson in 1820s Edinbugh, complete with bodysnatchers, laudanum, David Tennant getting to use his real accent and the anachronistic use of "Flower of Scotland".

It must be sais, fun though the episode is. Yes, Muriel's attempts and pretending to be a human police officer are hilartious, but the effect of her being there is to prevent the Maggie/Nina romance plot from having to move forward too quickly so other stuff can happen. Aziraphale discovers a few clues in Edinburgh, but it isn't much.

Whatever has been going on with Gabriel gets curiouser and curiouser, though. Plus Shax, and Beelxebub, have worked out where Gabriel is, and this means war. Still, fun though this episode genuinely is, with another sparkling script, I'll be glad if some more actual stuff can happen next time.

Good Omens: The Clue

 "Shoemaking and obstetrics. Those have always been the twin passions of Bildad the Shuhite."

This is, of course, wonderful stuff. The stuff about Job (took me a while to recognise Peter Davison under all that make-up) is a delight, the perfect way to show us how Crowley first got Aziraphale to doubt that God was truly all-wise and all-benevolent, while Crowley subtly shows himself not actually to be as bad as he pretends to be. All of the flashback stuff is a delight- and shows Gabriel to be an amoral git, the sort of bad manager we've all had, a proper contrast with the innocent Jim of today.

The plot is fun, too. Aziraphale simply has to get Maggie and Nina to fall in love to stop last episode's miracle looking suspiciois to the senior management of Heaven. There's the mystery of a jukebox in an Edinburgh pub which eventually turns all records into the one Buddy Holly b-side. And the fact that of course the children of God's favourite goody-goody are going to be insufferably entitled. This is the best comedy in yonks, yet it has real subtext too. We must never take our morals from authority, but from our hearts.

Oh, and Jane Austen, that well-known bank robber, smuggler and spy, also wrote novels on the side. Who'd have thunk it?

Good Omens: The Arrival

 “I don’t believe the Almighty has actually created a suggestion box.”

This isn’t just wonderful television. It’s pure bliss.

Take the pre-credits flashback scene, a two-hander between Crowley and Aziraphale set at the moment of creation. Isn’t it a sketch right up there with the very best of Monty Python, the perfect hook for potential new viewers, deliberately rigging off Life of Brian while being every bit as good? Yet with the added joyful depths of David Tennant and Michael Sheen as actors utterly on top of their roles, the perfect double act? It’s exquisite.

That’s before we even start with the superlative comedy genius of Jon Hamm. This is first class comedy. Yet it’s simultaneously deeper than that. The conceit- that reality is as Christian fundamentalists see it, but that God therefore works in very mysterious ways indeed- is nicely distilled for the benefit of new viewers. This first scene at once encapsulates who the characters are and what the series is about.

So where is this seriess headed? It appears to be mysterious political skulduggery between Heaven and Hell, with the Almighty as a deeply cynical player of ten dimensional chess: a valid theological viewpoint, I feel. No witchfinders, antichrist children or witch descendents this time, although we do have what seems to be the beginning of a rather sweet romance between Maggie and Nina, two of Aziraphale's fellow street retailers of quirky goods. 

We also have lots of splendid interaction between our favourite two celestial beings, lots of office politics in Heaven- Doon Mackichan is already promising as the ambitious Archangel Michael. But it seems Gabriel is persona non grata, exiled to Earth with neither wings not memories- or, indeed, clothing- and only a seemingly empty box. And no sooner do Crowley and Aziraphale resolve to shelter him than we find that anyone found doing so will be subjected to "extreme sanctions". And this means... oh dear.

This is exquisite. Far more than mere superb telly.

The Sandman: Sleep of the Just

 "We begin in the waking world, which humanity insists on calling the real world..."

For once I manage to blog the first episode of a hot new streaming serial on the day of its release- yay me. Even better, it's Sandman. I haven't read all of the sixty-odd issues of Neil Gaiman's late '80s masterpiece, thick with meaning, literary allusion and proper '80s goth aesthetic, but I've read enough of the early issues to cover all of this first season which, I understand, covers the first two arcs. And it does so magnificently. Gaiman has a previous triumph under his belt in terms of transferring a print masterpiece to screen magnigicently with Good Omens. He's only bloody gone and done it again.

This first episode looks sumptuous, and the casting is triumphant. Tom Sturridge seems born to play Dream, helmet perfectly realised. Charles Dance as the Magus is a captivating villain, for Dream literally so. I'm not sure the chronology quite works (Dream is captured in 1916 when young Alex is a child, but Alex and his partner Paul are both still alive when Dream is (quite magnificently) freed after "more than a century" of captivity?), but the epic tale of Dream's capture and eventual escape is gripping telly, not only because of the concepts but the very real characters and their nicely drawn relationships- Rodericks cruelty to second son Alex after his first son dies at Gallipolli, or Ethel's fury towards the man who dares presume to decide whether or not she will keep her baby.

The Corinthian is a deeply disturbing villain, an escaped nightmare who seems to take the eyes of his victims, but many of these characters we shall see grow and grow in this questlike, epic and- yes- dreamlike piece of brilliance.

Good Omens: Lockdown

No regular blog post today, but you absolutely must see this...

https://youtu.be/quSXoj8Kob0

Good Omens: The Very Last Day of the Rest of Their Lives

“Just imagine how awful it might have been if we'd been at all competent."

It's the end, then. oh, I'm aware of what's been said in the media; Gaiman hasn't ruled out a second season, and he and Terry Pratchett even had at least some discussion way back when about a novel. But really; there are obviously no particular plans to continue and it all seems pretty much well-wrapped up to me.

It's a splendid finale, too. Oh, I realise it ends about halfway through with Newt breaking all the world's military computers with his superhuman klutziness while Adam firmly insists that a CGI Benedict Cumberbatch is not his father, in a bizarre reversal of The Empire Strikes Back, and we proceed to spend the rest of the episode in an indulgent celebration of Crowley and Aziraphale's six thousand year friendship. And why the bloody hell not? It's all highly entertaining, and the swap between the two of them to survive their respective punishments is, er, devilishly clever. Never mind that Mrs Llamastrangler guessed what they'd done, or that they're lucky that their respective punishments were indeed holy water and hellfire respectively. I'm far too entertained by this to be churlish about plot holes.

Even better, we get Agnes' new prophecies, and shipping of Sergeant Shadwell with Madame Tracey, as soon as he's checked she has an acceptable number of nipples. But best of all are our two friends, those magnificent actors Messrs Sheen and Tennant, and a superb adaptation of a splendid novel after three bloody decades. Wonderful.

Good Omens: The Doomsday Option

"Your car is on fire!"

Mrs Llamastrangler and I are somewhat distressed that there’s only one episode left to go, and a second series is unlikely given the sad, untimely death of the wonderful Sir Terry Pratchett. This is, if anything, the least good episode so far, much of which can be put down to its being Part Five. It’s still bloody brilliant.

We begin with Crowley at the bookshop, distressed that someone has apparently killed the man he now calls “my best friend” (although I love how Aziraphale, now partly played by Miranda Richardson whole role is suddenly no longer a bit part, has such a very English reaction to realising this), spends the whole episode in a state of furious, heroic, utterly David Tennant determination such that it’s tempting to call Crowley the central heroic protagonist of the entire series- I mean, he gets through the impassable hellfire that is the M25 in a burning car to get to Tadfield, where the delightfully British reaction of the local man whom he stops for directions and is too polite to point out that his car is on fire is one of the funniest scenes so far.

Interestingly, there’s far less piss-taking of the American military in the US airbase than there is in the novel, but everyone is gravitating towards there- the Four Horsemen, Anathema and the now-deflowered Newt, and of course Adam- who, having not been properly raised as an Antichrist, is sounding a little more sane. But there’s still time to mention Crowley’s intense dislike of the 14th century, something I was beginning to expect would remain only in the novel. And there is, of course, the ultimate nuclear cliffhanger...

It’s an energetic, fast-paced, apocalyptic penultimate episode. I suspect the finale will be anything but.

Good Omens: Saturday Morning Funtime

“Did you count their nipples?”

Adam, very much a Boy's Own Antichrist, is starting to affect reality in visually expressive ways which are a good opportunity for actor cameos but, of course, being exposed to New Age Twaddle can have a highly deleterious effect on any child, Beast or not. We meet a new Horseman of the upcoming Apocalypse- Pollution, Pestilence being a bit too old-fashioned these days. Apocalypse, though not quite now, is clearly quite soon.

I like the bit with Death following soon after although it's unfortunate that, unlike in the book, we don't really get the Terry Pratchett version. But then the Pratchett version can only really exist effectively in print. Far more televisual is all the palaver at Megiddo, but things are now too far advanced for either Crowley or Aziraphale to be able to square things with their respective Head Offices; both are rumbled. This episode mostly concerns their trying to deal with this fact, in Crowley's case a highly entertaining series of attempts to escape from everything. Hastur being trapped on a cassette tape is genius; Neil Gaiman was quite right to take this wholesale from the novel, our modern digital world be damned.

The bits with Newt and Anathema meeting being blown about and shagging, all as foretold by Agnes Nutter, is fun, as is any scene containing Shadwell. Derek Jacobi is nice in his little cameo as Metatron, a Kabbalistic figure who I just had to look up. And yes, that's quite the cliffhanger. More please.

Good Omens: Hard Times

"I didn't really fall. I just, you know, sauntered vaguely downwards..."

A surprising start, this time, as an extraordinarily long pre-credit sequence charts the history of what both Aziraphale and Crowley would no doubt refuse to call a friendship, and has a lot of fun along the way. So Crowley raises an eyebrow at God's genocidal plans as Noah builds his Ark, and it's in fifth century Britain that both of them realise they've been cancelling each other out with their various schemes so they may as well achieve the same thing by doing precisely sod all. It's all a rather funny addition and ends with a highly entertaining Second World War scene containing 66.67%  of the League of Gentlemen, which can never be a bad thing. and the other 33.33% is William Bloody Shakespeare.

Meanwhile, in the present day, the plot doesn't really advance much, but it fails to do so most entertainingly. We, and Adam, learn that Anathema is a new age type. Shadwell hasn't got much of an imagination. Crowley and Aziraphale are a superb double act, and both Sheen and Tennant are amazing. There's a new horseman- Famine.

It's all very silly in a very Douglas Adams kind of way. And there are few more pleasurable ways to spend fifty minutes.

Good Omens: In the Beginning

”Welcome to the end times..”

I've read the novel of Good Omens. In fact, I've read it half a dozen times, which puts it right up there with Life, the Universe and Everything. So you could say I'm the kind of fanboy you'd expect would be hard to please, except Neil Gaiman himself is showrunning this (Sir Terry being sadly unable to join him), and the cast looked mouth-watering. So, especially now I've obviously seen it, let us not pretend I'm not going to be saying I like this.

Because, well, even before we start it's clear that the source material is superb, and David Tennant as Crowley is the most appropriate casting choice since Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. But Michael Sheen as Azirophale is equally superb; Sheen is one of those actors who doesn't seem to have a style but simply to inhabit the character he's playing like a true chameleon, whether it's Tony Blair, David Frost or a moderate angel who is good mates with his fellow centrist from downstairs.

It all looks great, with loads of CGI, and it's a good way of structuring a first episode, with the backstory of, well, creation, but also of the ancient friendship between Crowley and Azirophale, and then straight into the old pastiche of The Omen. There are some nice additions, too. God as a narrator is a great idea, as is her gender. Jon Hamm as Heavenly middle manager Gabriel is inspired too, being to Aziraphale what Hastur and Ligur are to Crowley, and a bloody funny character too. The humour from the novel is translated intact, but the new stuff it just as funny. An excellent start.

Doctor Who: Nightmare in Silver

“I hate the future. It’s stupid”.

Right. Let’s get the cards on the table at the start. Neil Gaiman is god, and this is the best episode since, well, The Doctor’s Wife My expectations were huge, but I was not disappointed.

Ok, there were a couple of minor niggles with the production, not least of which was a bit of dodgy CGI. But the script was faultless. We will come to the Cybermen shortly, as this is the best Cyberman story ever, but there are so many other things to love about this story. It simply overruns with ideas and imagination and reminds me of the splendid DWM comic strips of 1980’s, which, considering Gaiman’s background, is appropriate. I also love the fact that, years after The Girl in the Fireplace, Doctor Who finally gets what must be an allusion to the Mechanical Turk, as we first see a Cyberman playing chess and then discover that Porridge (Warwick Davis) is inside.

This episode reeks wonderfully of a wider world, or should I say universe, ruled by an emperor and replete with little cultural trappings of the Roman Empire at its classical height. Also genius is the very concept of an abandoned amusement park in the dark. But this is recognisably Doctor Who: Neil Gaiman is enough of a fanboy to use the word “transmat” for teleporter and, well, he knows his Troughton.

Quite sensibly, in giving us the greatest Cyberman story ever, Gaiman refers to all the best Cybermen stories, all of which were Troughton stories. We see Cybermen emerging from their tombs and even a mock-up of a base on the moon. These new Cybermen look epic, with their blankly emotionless faces returning to the simplicity of the Wheel in Space design. These are genuinely scary Cybermen, who can instantly upgrade to overcome any difficulty. Massed CGI ranks of Cybermen may not look convincing, but individually these Cybermen are the best. I suspect, too, that these are the first real Cybermen we have seen since Silver Nemesis in 1988, proper Cybermen from our world and not that alternate reality that RTD gave us. Cybermats are upgraded to Cybermites, for the first time since The invasion we have a Cyberplanner, and there may even be a reference to Big Finish audio drama Spare Parts in the scenes where the Cyberman attempts to convert the Doctor.

Gaiman makes a number of wise decisions. In the partly Cybernised Webley, he gives the Cybermen a spokesman who is not actually boring to listen to. The scenes with the conflicted Doctor are superb, and allow Matt Smith to play a baddie. I feel I owe him an apology: I just don’t praise his superlative acting often enough. I also love the use of chess as a metaphor for the fight over the Doctor’s brain, and the way that this plays out throughout the episode. I’m reminded of The Seventh Seal.

So, basically, this is great, and Neil Gaiman should be forced to write as much Doctor Who as possible. There is also arc stuff going on, mind you. Angie and Artie, whom Clara is looking after, get their first and, I suspect, not last outing in the TARDIS. And it is established that the Doctor drops Clara off after each adventure and picks her up on Wednesdays. Under Moffat, being the Doctor’s companion is still a part time job. See you next week for the season finale.

Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife

“Did you wish really hard?”

No more Don’t Scare the Hare! Oh no… what are we Doctor Who fans going to talk about now? Never mind: this is utterly superlative stuff. It’s a one-off, of course. It would become quite tiresome if Doctor Who was like this all the time. But this is right up there with the very best. Neil Gaiman may be oh-so-slightly overrated in my book, but “overrated is a relative concept. He’s no Alan Moore (we long-haired blokes from the East Midlands rule!), but he’s head and shoulders above most writers.

It all looks great, too, and the visual style is very… well, Sandman. Just the opening scene, with the junkyard planet (an obvious nod to 76 Totters Lane- Gaiman, like all right-thinking people, appreciates ‘60s Who). The characters of Uncle, Auntie, Nephew and Idris come across as very endless-like, too. It’s a very atmospheric, dark, funny and, well, Gaimanesque scene. Incidentally, I’ve just looked up the name “Idris” on the ever-faithful and in all ways reliable Wikipedia. Apparently Idris was a (male) prophet and philosopher sometimes identified with the Biblical Enoch. Not sure if there’s any actual allusion there…

Anyway, on a slightly less pretentious note, we get a quick scene in the TARDIS- and another arc-related “We saw him die,” from Amy to Rory- and there’s a knock on the door. In mid-flight. It turns out to be one of those box thingies, as used by the Doctor to summon the Time Lords in part nine of The War Games. How very fannish.

So, there is at least one Time Lord still alive, it seems: the Corsair. In just a few lines, Gaiman gives us a fantastic sketch of the character, who keeps the same tattoo in all of his (or her!) regenerations. The Corsair is apparently outside the universe, though; for the first time since Castrovalva the Doctor has to burn up some TARDIS rooms to “give it some welly”. After all these years of travelling between universes being nearly impossible, it happens in two stories in a row.

The TARDIS power drains away; it’s “soul” has gone. The TARDIS crew seem to be stuck on this little asteroid in this pocket universe with no stars in the sky. And then, Idris, with her new soul (and we’ve already guessed what this “soul” is) comes running to her “thief” and kisses him, among other things (“Oh, biting’s excellent! It’s like kissing, only there’s a winner”). Idris is great, and Suranne Jones does a perfect job of making her exactly the right kind of eccentric while still being sympathetic. I love the timey-wimeyness of her speech, which gives the sense that she doesn’t quite exist in the same three dimensions of space and one dimension of time that we do.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory are taken to meet the “House”, an extremely large sea anemone creature surrounded by a massive, world-size shell. Right from the start we get the impression that House isn’t very nice. He “mends people” when they “break”, and lots of TARDISes have landed on him in the past. Already this is wonderfully fantastical and, well, Gaimanesque, always a much better fit for Doctor Who than hard sci-fi.

It seems there are lots of Time Lords here, and there’s an interesting conversation between Amy and the Doctor; he’ll have to tell the Time Lords what he did in the Time War. But that’s just it; he wants to be forgiven.

Incidentally, the Doctor seems to have told Amy an awful lot of intensely personal things about himself off-screen. He isn’t usually so open with his travelling companions. But some things about Doctor / companion relationships are timeless, and one of these is the classic “Doctor sends companions back to TARDIS when things get a bit scary” trope.

The little boxes make the Doctor angry: Time Lord have been lured here, exploited, and eventually killed, many, many times over. His confrontation with Auntie and Uncle reveals a lot; they’re patchwork people, like Frankenstein’s monster, made up of bits of other people, Auntie has the Corsair’s arm.

The Doctor finds Idris, and they start the wonderful conversation that lasts for most of the rest of the episode. The dialogue sings, and the relationship between them is so heartwarming. They’re like an old married couple, but they obviously love each other. There are so many great things here. When the Doctor first touched the TARDIS console, he said that it was “the most beautiful thing I’d ever known”. Wonderfully, he didn’t just steal her; she stole him because she wanted to see the universe and he was “the only one mad enough”!

It seems that House feeds on TARDISes, deleting the matrixes first to make them edible. As just destroying the matrixes would cause lots of unpleasantness, he simply dumps them into a convenient receptacle (or body) and feeds off the residual Artron energy once they die, usually quite quickly. This is really quite nasty when you think about it.

The nastiness continues to rack up during the middle of the episode. The moment Rory says to Amy that “We’re in the TARDIS, so we’re safe”, it turns out that they so aren’t. While they’re aboard the soulless Ship, House had an absolute godlike ability to do any sadistic thing to them that he wants to. As many people have said, House can be seen as an analogy of the power of the writer.

Just as nasty, if blackly and Gaiman-esquely humorous, is the scene in which Auntie and Uncle “pop off”. Oh, and Idris has eighteen minutes to live. But one thing that Neil Gaiman is very, very good at is mixing nastiness, humour and beautifully poignant feelings, all with a real lightness of touch (“I think you call me…sexy.” / “Only when we’re alone…”- it’s funny but it says a lot).

There’s a lot of fanwank at this point, all in the best possible way. For the first time in decades we get to see the corridors of the TARDIS. And they have old-fashioned roundels. Yay! And it seems the Doctor has been travelling in the TARDIS for “seven hundred years”, meaning that he spent his first two hundred years on Gallifrey, unless it’s more complicated than that. I’ve recently read the latest version of Timelink and it has some very interesting, and quite complicated, theories about that sort of thing. Most of it flew right over my head, but it’s a fascinating read.

The relationship between the Doctor and Idris / the TARDIS is great here- they argue like happily married couples do, in a way which is actually quite sweet and affectionate (“No, but I always took you where you needed to go.”). It’s actually quite romantic.

The scenes between our other married couple are not nearly as nice. House plays cruel games on Amy, exploiting her guilt over Rory waiting two thousand years for her. Back in The Impossible Astronaut, Moffat dealt with the psychological impact of this on Rory- his memories of all that time are quarantined away behind a door in his brain, hence his not being completely insane- but what must it be like for Amy to have the overwhelming knowledge that her husband did all that for her?

The Doctor and Idris set to building a functional TARDIS out of all the old dead ones (with old-fashioned roundels, again!), Idris communicates with “the pretty one”, and the plot chugs along. We get to see the old control room again- well, the oldest one that can reasonably survived in an HD-friendly condition- as they’re all archived. I love the fact that the TARDIS has archived “desktop themes” from the Doctor’s personal future!

The Doctor and Idris manage to outwit House rather cleverly, and the Doctor and Idris have a completely wonderful final conversation. The Doctor cries, and the Doctor never cries. It’s the end of a wonderful love story. And we end, of course, with the Doctor asking the TARDIS to take them “wherever we need to go.”

Idris has some final words for Rory:”The only water in the forest is the river”. What could that possibly mean, he asked, pretending he hasn’t yet seen A Good Man Goes to War?

Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang

The Pandorica Opens



“I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him.”

So. This is, actually, it. The end of the Marathon for me. It’s not the end of my reviews (or my blog), which will continue elsewhere (if you're reading this on my blog, that means here!) until they reach the present. But it feels great to have finally reach a goal which was set way back on 23rd November 2008 when all this began. I’ve got an awful lot to say about the Marathon, but I’ll leave that to another post in another thread. This review is going to be long enough.

Like its successor, this episode begins with a very long, very epic and very cool pre-titles teaser. We get cameos from Churchill, Liz Ten (she and River are contemporaries, and it’s 5145, which is not in the 51st century. Continuity error?) and Van Gogh, and another amusing escape from the Stormcage by River in what is fast becoming a standard trope of the series under Moffat. I love the Mos Eisley scene, where River acquires a Vortex Manipulator. The “hello sweetie” moment is a particularly good one, although of course Moffat will have to top it next time. And again. And again. Interestingly, by now the Doctor is by now looking rather pleased to be summoned by River. It’s all looking like a long game of romantic comedy, written by someone who’s supremely well-qualified.

The set-up takes us to Rome, 102 AD, where River’s determination to pose as Cleopatra is not dented by the fact that said monarch had died 131 years previously. We learn that Vincent has painted a… painting, of an exploding TARDIS, with some co-ordinates. It shares a title with this episode. What does this mean?

The Doctor declares the Pandorica to be a fairytale (fairytales again), said to be for imprisoning the most feared thing in the universe. Then we’re off on location to Stonehenge, before budgetary issues send us back to the studio and the “Underhenge”. And here’s the Pandorica. It certainly looks the part.

But the Pandorica’s opening. And many people known. They have for some time. And the skies are swarming with starships. Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans are mentioned. Then River reels off the names: “Terileptil. Slitheen. Chelonian. Nestene. Drahvin. Sycorax. Haemo-Goth, Zygon. Atraxi. Draconian.” This is such x-rated fanwank porn. Especially for we admirers of Gareth Roberts’ New Adventures novels.

I was relieved by the Doctor’s reaction to Amy finding the ring; however awkward it may be for him, he doesn’t lie to her and urges her to remember forgotten things. This, of course, hints rather heavily that something is about to happen Rory-wise. More hints follow- the Doctor refers back to Amy’s house, and how big and empty and strange it is, with “Too many empty rooms”. Amy’s life doesn’t make sense; the crack has evidently made her forget more things than just Rory.

There follows a rather excellent action sequence with a particularly scary Cyberman (we can’t have all exposition, no matter how brilliant it is), and Amy is saved by… Rory! And faints. I love the Doctor’s reaction to him- failing to spot the obvious and then poking him to make sure he’s real. Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill are bloody good actors.

While River vworps off in the TARDIS, the Doctor recaps the season arc to Rory (and the audience). River lands somewhere, and the camera pans to the screen. It’s 26/06/2010, and there’s a crack in the screen. Suddenly a voice says “Silence will fall!” I’m keeping note of exactly what that voice sounds like. No reason. And what’s this unexplained external force controlling the Ship?

River soon uncovers the truth; the entire Roman encampment, and even the Pandorica itself, are constructed from Amy’s memories. This entire situation is an elaborate trap. The Pandorica opens…

Meanwhile, in some rather brilliant scenes, Amy gradually remembers Rory. And he turns into an Auton and shoots her. Shoots her dead, apparently. Things are not going well. Particularly as the Doctor is going to be unable to stop the explosion of the TARDIS from erasing all of creation from history itself, on account of his being forever sealed in the Pandorica. Bummer. It seems a strange alliance, though. The last time the Daleks and Cybermen met, they didn’t actually get on. And Silurians? What are the Adherents of the Repeated Meme doing there?



The Big Bang



“It’s a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.”

Lots of witty lines this ep, but only one of them was ever going to be used for the quote…

It’s The Eleventh Hour all over again, shot for shot, as Amelia Pond prays to Santa. But things soon diverge; no TARDIS lands, and there are no stars in the sky, whatever that star cultist Richard Dawkins may think. But who’s that befezzed figure posting something through her letterbox?

All this timey-wimey stuff is such fun, and it’s great watching it start to unfurl. Amy’s words as she’s released from the Pandorica by her younger self are such a brilliant tease. After all, things have been simple so far, right?

So, Rory rescues the Doctor with some help from said befezzed future Doctor, and we’re off. Earth is the only thing left in the universe, the last light to go out. And Amy can only be saved by putting her in the Pandorica to slowly heal, to be revived by the touch of her future, younger self 1,894 years hence. And Auton Rory stands and guards the Pandorica for 1,839 of those years, disappearing only during the Blitz.

We get to see the timey-wimey stuff as the Doctor sets everything up. With a fez and a mop, naturally. And a drink snatched from Amelia’s younger self as she’s now thirsty. I love that bit. There follows a bit of bother with a stone Dalek, but luckily they’re saved by a security guard, who turns out to be Rory. Unsurprisingly, Amy snogs Rory. For a long, long time.

Unfortunately, a future version of the Doctor pops up from twelve minutes in the future, and immediately snuffs it. There’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind, and the Doctor springs into action. All of history is already starting to collapse, so there’s no time to lose; the young Amelia, now superfluous to the plot, has already been erased.

There are no stars, so the Doctor reasons that the big fiery thing in the sky is in fact the exploding TARDIS, complete with River, in a time loop. Good job it’s coincidentally providing the earth with exactly the same amount of energy as the Sun did, eh? But following a bit of fervent fashion criticism from Amy and the now-rescued River, the Doctor is apparently shot and killed just as he’s explaining his plans for “Big Bang Two”.

But, as River says, “Rule One: the Doctor dies”. All that stuff with the Dalek (and River being really rather bad-ass) is all just a distraction so the Doctor can do stuff with the Pandorica.

The Doctor plans to pilot the Pandorica into the heart of the TARDIS, which will get all of the pre-end-of-universe stuff still inside the Pandorica to explode, which will apparently put the universe back the way it was. One snag; the Doctor will be the wrong side of the cracks as they disappear, and will be erased from existence. He explains this to Amy is one last conversation, and urges her to remember her absent patents. She has no memory of them, because “There’s a crack in time in the wall of your bedroom. And it’s been eating away at your life for a long time now.”

The Doctor’s plan works, the universe is saved, and he slowly rewinds back through his life on the way to oblivion. We see the trip to Space Florida last week (love the specs, Amy), and Amy posting a certain note on the window of Craig’s local newsagent. We then see a certain scene from Flesh and Stone from a new perspective. Then it’s Amelia again, sleeping as she waits for the Doctor to return. Matt Smith is magnificent as he delivers one last speech to the sleeping Amelia. He accepts his melancholy fate, but knows that if only Amelia can remember him, there’s a chance.

At last, the morning of the wedding has arrived. We meet Amy’s parents. We cut to the wedding breakfast, and we’re waiting for the father of the bride to make his speech. And here, wonderfully, a gift from River, and the Doctor’s words from years ago, give Amy all that she needs to bring him back. Suddenly even Rory remembers: “I was plastic. He was the stripper at my stag. Long story.” Amy’s friends and family finally get to meet Amy’s notorious imaginary friend. And all the children present get to learn the notorious “drunk giraffe” dance.

I love Rory’s matter-of-fact acceptance that, from now on, he’s “Mr. Pond”. That says so much about him! River’s words don’t say much about her, though. I love it when she’s enigmatic like that. She’s still got the vortex manipulator, I notice.

The Doctor can’t sneak away; the happy couple follow him into the TARDIS and say their goodbyes, but not in the way he expects. There are things to do and adventures to have. And who exploded the TARDIS, and how? To be continued…

Wow. That was a bit good. 5/5.

As for this season, it’s in joint seventeenth place with 3.8/5, a somewhat middling score. This is a surprise to me; it feels much better than that, only being let down by a couple of less good stories, neither of which were absolute clunkers. Certainly the series arc stuff was better than anything we’ve seen before. I can’t wait to continue my viewing…