Spoilers for a thing of great beauty: Doctor Who 2010 series finale - The Big Bang

Spoilers.


BIG FAT SPOILERS



MORE SPOILERS THAN YOU COULD WISH FOR.




MORE SPOILERS THAN YOU SHOULD READ.



BUT...



In case you can't guess....



I LOVED IT!







Episode review and thoughts on the series.

(Not seen 'The Pandorica Opens' yet?

Then take your time: you really need to see that before even trying to get your head around the finale)



The penultimate episode ended with bleak with extra bleak on top.

The TARDIS exploding; River inside in, looking out the doors to... stone? The companion (Amy) dead; dead at the hand of her would-have-been husband (Rory), now reincarnated as as a Nestene duplicate [that's Auton to most of us]. The Doctor trapped; locked in a prison by every baddie he's encountered* thanks to some timey-wimey manipulation of Amy's memory enabling them to bring the Doctor to them.

It all looked pretty hopeless. Would it just be fixed by a Rusty-esque big reset button? A Pond ex machina?

Well, kinda.

Except: somehow it just FELT better.

I've already watched this episode twice and to be honest I'll happily watch it plenty more before the iPlayer takes it away from me (boxset here I come).

There was so much to love: more Amelia Pond, the fez, using a well-known wedding verse and making it just SO uplifting, two companions in the TARDIS.

I could go on: Rory staying around 1,894 years; River in a time loop (and the Doctor turning up with the best use of 'honey, I'm home'); the calcified Dalek begging for mercy (not quite getting that River Song doesn't DO that short of thing); Rory saying 'how could we forget the Doctor?!'.

And I hopefully, probably, was not alone in nerd-land in grinning when the Doctor rewound back to the Flesh and Stone setting to reassure eyes-closed-Amy with his jacket on.

Satisfied sigh.

Sure, the Pandorica escape was a bit too straightforward: given how much some doctors wave the sonic around - no sniggering - you'd have thought the collected minds of the villains would have thought about setting a prison that DIDN'T open with a bit of sonic-ing. So much for the deadlocks...

But, it didn't matter. Not to me at least.

And to top it all, have you SEEN the current issue of Doctor Who magazine? Get that plastic bag cover off with its Doc and Amy pics and promotional text and marvel at the thing of beauty the design team have produced.



It may be matt, but in the words of another much loved series: shiny.

Truly, it matches the majesty of this current series for keeping it all on track.

It has been a rollercoaster ride - one that I am sure many did not expect to enjoy so much following the departure of Tennant. But many have rightly been won over. How could we have doubted you Moffatt?

From The Eleventh Hour onwards, the series has rarely took a wrong step (merchandise Daleks and inevitably Chris Chib aside). It has been 'magic': properly family entertainment. The weather may have thrown spanners in the works, and the footie hasn't helped, but I still managed to schedule curtains closed watching of the ep on time. Hilariously, two friends were both committed to be out Saturday night - neither are late-nighters. Yet BOTH texted me between 11.30pm and 11.45pm having stayed up especially to watch before they could cope with going to bed. Such excitement.

Thank you everyone: roll on Xmas and the next special!




* Or rather every baddie that the Mill and Paul Kasey could manage to recreate on the BBC's new multi-coloured shoe-string budget. It's rather like any other shoe-string budget but with the artifice of extra whistles and bells being available...