Doctor Who: "The Big Bang" Review - IGN (original) (raw)

The end of the world as we know it.

Oh Moffat, you old scallywag you. We thought you had something cocky up your sleeve last week but we certainly hadn't banked on this. We've had stacked odds before, but nothing quite as calamitous as 'The Pandorica Opens' crashing to a close with the Doctor's eternal imprisonment, the death of a companion and the collapse of the multiverse.
And for this concluding part, we certainly got the Big Bang we were promised. From the off, the show tossed a curve-ball, starting exactly where the season began with young Amelia Pond, albeit in a universe suffering the effects of a total collapse of time and space. From there on in, 'The Big Bang' practically danced a jig on the carcass of expectation, confounding with a complete shift in time and a pre-credit cliffhanger that set the tone for a thoroughly breathless 55-minute time-hopping ride.

We said 'The Pandorica Opens' was audacious in scope but it paled in comparison to 'The Big Bang' which gave us disappearing stars, two Amys, a stone Dalek, Rory's 2000-year pledge, an increasingly ruthless River Song, a mind-boggling amount of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey cleverness, plenty of pay-off, even more set-up, an exploding fez and some genuinely emotional moments that ranged from fist-pumping to heart-breaking. Yet somehow the episode hopped nimbly through a narrative that - just about - made total sense.

We say just about as we're still trying to fill in a couple of gaps that suggest 'The Big Bang' might have been just a little bit too clever for its own good at times. For starters, how did the Doctor get out of the Pandorica in the first place (unless River Song's "Why do I ever let you out?" from last week wasn't quite as throwaway as we first thought)? Not to mention why exactly last week's intergalactic coalition bothered to plunder Amy's memories when nothing we saw seemed particularly out of the ordinary for the time-travelling twosome.

Reining the brain back in though - which is probably best given Moffat's capacity to confound - 'The Big Bang' simply dazzled with beautiful direction and an astonishing display of bravado and imagination. Its dialogue crackled, its set-pieces resonated and it delivered its payload in a mostly satisfying manner. Needless to say, Gillan and Smith relished the material - with Smith's two farewell speeches proving to be absolute stand-out moments, looking older and more broken than any other Doctor before him.

Yes, in some ways it was all smoke and mirrors - with much of the mystery and time-hopping merely serving to over-complicate a relatively straightforward reset story. However, Moffat's meticulous story-seeding throughout the series (continuity error be damned!) and some shameless crowd-pleasing moments - the Pandorica jettisoning into the heart of the explosion, Amy's 'Something Old…' revelation and of course that final 'Goodbye' - made for a wonderfully wide-eyed, genuinely magical adventure.

We've had a fair few wobbles through Season 5 but, as far as we're concerned, 'The Big Bang' ended the series on an unquestionable high. And that's not even touching on things still to come - from the truth about River Song and the 'Silence' to the reason the TARDIS exploded in the first place. It might all be over for now but we genuinely can't wait to see where Moffat, Smith, Gillan and the TARDIS take us next.

Doctor Who: "The Big Bang" Review