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The Pandorica Opens
Finally. Watching his season 5 stuff up until now, I was beginning to think Moffat had lost the ability to write compelling Doctor Who episodes. Apparently, he just put all his good ideas into the finale, and the rest of the season had to make do with what was left.
So, yeah, I enjoyed it. There were a couple of things that didn't make sense on a superficial level, and a couple of things that made no sense on a more significant level, but overall, I liked the ideas he had. Oh, and Amy didn't get locked up in the TARDIS doing nothing. That was a plus. (By the way, did we have a Doctor lite episode this season? We had one in all seasons so far, except season 1. But I can't really see if there was one this season; I don't think so.)
I'm still ambiguous about River. She's just so sexualized. Why the hell does it have to be hypnotic lipstick? And I am still put off by the idea of her being able to fly the TARDIS, but, yeah, I know. That's just me getting butthurt about Moffat not respecting my fanon.
I liked the idea of all of the Doctor's enemies forming an alliance to take him out. Not that they ever would--Daleks and Cybermen and Sontarans are far too one-dimensional to do anything as complicated as forming an alliance with anyone, let alone one another--but hey, good for Moffat if he's expanding the range of those old enemies to include more than just floating around and making long exposition speeches about how they're planning to kill the Doctor this time. It was all a little predictable--when the Doctor started talking about "a trickster, a warrior", I went, well, sounds like you, Doc--but hey, I'm the last person to demand super-complicated plots.
Generally, I thought the episode had a very good basic concept, and was realized rather well--I think it would have profited from more detail when it came to the actual, mechanical workings of the plot, though. What exactly did they do with Amy's memories? How did they set up that trap? The Doctor was ultimately drawn to the Pandorica by River showing him Vincent's painting--but that painting was only made because the TARDIS did explode, so the alliance would have had to build their trap around that, and by locking the Doctor in, they would prevent the TARDIS exploding (or they think they would), which would un-happen Vincent's painting, which would mean that the centerpiece of their trap was gone. That's not the only problem I had; there were several things where Moffat just didn't offer any explanation, not even any random technobabble. Mostly, I'm confused about the thing with Amy's memories. What exactly did they do, and were those all real Romans or all fake Romans, or part real and part fake, or . . . what?
Well, I'm looking forward to see next week's plot resolve.
comment on LJ
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Oh, I'm not criticizing. Or, you know, I'm not criticizing Moffat, at least not about this. It's just that in the sixties, all villains were rather one-dimensional, so if you're working with a robot villain that was created over forty years ago, you have to take some liberties if you don't want to end up with a villain that is completely ridiculous and can't be taken seriously.
I sort of love the idea that the biggest threat in the entire Universe is the Doctor himself xD It's not a totally new idea but I still like it.
I liked that, too--although I was a little disappointed at the whole idea that the Alliance was making a mistake locking the Doctor in. The TARDIS is the thing that causes the crack, and the Doctor is the only one who can prevent the TARDIS exploding--so he's, by default, the Good Guy again. And the Alliance are the Bad Guys, or at least the Stupid Guys, for locking him in. I'd've preferred it if locking the Doctor in had actually been a working solution--if it could have saved the universe, at least in this instance. It would have played up the ambiguity of his character. But, you know, that's details. It worked the way they did it.
I liked River in this episode--I like her in general. I just don't like it that she has to be, as I said, all that sexualized. It's just the same as the Charlie's Angels movie--those are strong female characters in the lead roles of an action movie, but still, the number of times they have to sexually seduce someone to get information is staggering. James Bond has lots of sex, too, but he only ever does it because he feels like having sex. He never uses it as a tool; he never has to whore himself out like that. And it's the same, to a degree, with River Song. A lot of the time, she is forced to use her sexuality as a weapon, when she could just as easily have used something else. That's what bothers me a little about her character.