New Who Review for The Big Bang

[puppetmaker]

Spoilers behind the cut and in the comments. You can now talk about the season as a whole. The only reason I am putting things behind the cut is that some people haven’t had a chance to see the episode yet.

Well that was fun wasn’t it? The pay-off was nice. I have one or two quibbles but we are talking that timey-wimey kind of stuff that you just kinda backburner when it comes to Dr. Who.

I do like how everything in the season was relevant. Including what looked like a few continuity goofs but turned out to be something else entirely.

And a round of applause for the actors. They managed to make it entirely believable and some of that dialogue was a mouthful. And River Song was redeemed in my eyes.

I am grateful that Moffat was given the reins and allowed to do what he wanted to do with the Mythos.



I think the sequence between Amy, River, the Doctor, and that poor Fez was one of the funniest of the season.

They did a lot of extra footage this year to splice together this episode. I am sure that some fan has gone back and tracked all the shots and where they were dropped in. Rather clever I thought.

So Amy remembers things that didn’t exist. I still think that she is in a pocket universe. Again the companion as Deus Ex Machina is used. I am really hoping that this doesn’t happen every season from now on. I really don’t mind if everything isn’t connected. Or go back to a couple of episodes telling a story and have done with it.

How does Rory remember he was plastic? Yeah, that bothered me a lot.

But it was all niggling points. Overall I was quite happy with the whole season.

I am looking forward to the next season. I have a feeling that we are going to find out about River and why Daleks aren’t happy to see her.

Comments

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

I think Rory remembers he was plastic because Amy remembered it when rewishing the universe back.

[tiggerallyn.livejournal.com]

The question of the memories is a tricky one.

Neither Amy nor Rory should remember anything; the events of the season didn't happen to the Amy and Rory we see at the wedding. As an example, a real stripper, not the Doctor, would have jumped out of the cake at Rory's stag party. Rory clearly remembers the Doctor jumping out of the cake (since he tells Amy's mother about it), but if anyone were to ask the participants of the stag party, they're going to remember the stripper because that's what really happened.

My suspicion on Amy and Rory's memories is that, because they were at the eye of the hurricane when Big Bang II happened, they retain some echoes of the life that they didn't live, the life where they met the Doctor and traveled with him.

I harbor doubts about Amy's memories bringing her parents and Rory back to life, however. I think the Doctor told Amy in the museum to remember her parents as a way of comforting her, because the Doctor would have known that in a universe without cracks (because he and the TARDIS were unhappened and erased) her parents would have been there — no cracks means no falling through cracks means no parents were unhappened. I do, however, think that Amy remembering the Doctor acts much like the mental signal Rassilon placed in the Master's mind, a homing signal that the Doctor could use to break through from the void into the new universe.