35.12 The Pandorica Opens

[matthewsee]

Apart from River, I was quite surprised on the returning characters this season who have popped back here for the season’s penultimate episode.
Vincent’s portrait of an exploding TARDIS was disturbing.
River pretends to be Cleopatra and it was revealed later on that the real Cleopatra is in Egypt and dead. Oh my what were the chances of River pretending to be a queen who had just died.
Shocking moment with the severed Cybermen arm and head with the latter being put back together with its body.
Surprising Rory comes back here as a Roman centurion and amusing how long it took the Doctor to notice him.
Who is that Voice?
Thrilling revelations that the centurions including Rory are not real and that they are Autons.
What a sight of a lot of the Doctor’s old enemies including Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans and Autons being together.
A very unexpected alliance with a surprising reason – to save the universe from the Doctor.
Gloomy music leading to the cliffhanger. Will the Doctor get out of the Pandorica and has Amy survived being shot by Rory.

Confidential Cutdown 5.12 Alien Abduction:
Similar in name to the K9 episode Alien Avatar.
Steven Moffat said there was a need for things to go mad and mad it went indeed.
Nick Briggs sure showed his delight in seeing all those monsters together.
This episode spends a considerable time looking at the filming of the horse riding scene.
The actors in particular Matt Smith showed that pretending to ride the horses was not as simple as it seems.

[chase]

Terrible, horrible episode. The Doc's speech: Hate it. Long winded, embarassing and badly acted. Poor plot. What was going on? Wait, it does not matter if they cannot get it across to me on screen. DW has become bad. Matt's acting has really become bad. Just an awful script, awful execution. back and forth with no reason. Oh, and Rory's back after being killed off. It has happened how many times since? To him, the Doc, and Amy? Killing off any hope of an tension. Awful meaningless and boring

[matthewsee]

River acquires from Dorium a Vortex Manipulator which Dorium says used to belong to a Time Agent. This Time Agent is undoubtedly Captain Jack.
The Vortex Manipulator is not the only item that River got that used to belong to Jack. In her introductory story Silence In The Library/Forest of the Dead, she used the squareness gun and Steven Moffat has said that this is the same gun that Jack was seen using in The Doctor Dances the concluding episode of his own introductory story.
If River keeps on getting property that used to belong to Jack perhaps a meeting between them should be rectified (and no I wasn’t thinking about their real-life alter egos both being in the unrelated TV series Arrow).
The fact that The Pandorica Opens, River and Jack’s introductory stories were all written by Steven Moffat is certainly not a coincidence
As to Jack not having Vortex Manipulator anymore it looks it was taken from him not long before he came back to contemporary Earth in time for Miracle Day.

[matthewsee]

In the season 35 DVD release in the Monster File on The Alliance when talking about a Cyberman in The Pandorica Opens, the episode’s director Toby Haynes says that it was Frankenstein-like.
Frankenstein is the name of the scientist who created the monster not the monster itself and it was quite obvious that Haynes was alluding to the latter not the former, a common misperception of just who was Frankenstein.

[matthewsee]

The Seventh Doctor’s Pandorica Speech:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9_OkgWaRIs
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG9Z5djon7w

[matthewsee]

In the penultimate episode of Doctor Who Confidential season 5, Alien Abduction, the corresponding episode to The Pandorica Opens, the main episode's director Toby Haynes described the scene in which Rory could not stop himself from shooting Amy as a Romeo and Juliet moment.
Whether Haynes knew about it before, Amy herself Karen Gillan had played Juliet in a Romeo and Juliet sketch in The Kevin Bishop Show.

[matthewsee]

Matt Smith as the Doctor and my wife Karen Gillan as Amy on the cover of Radio Times in June 2010 ahead of the broadcast of The Pandorica Opens with them by Stonehenge the site of the said episode:
news.whoviannet.co.uk/2010/06/karen-gillan-featured-in-this-weeks-radio-times/