Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens

This season has been a rough ride of The Doctor, with some inexcusable lows and some incredible highs, but it looks as though everything is coming together for the finale to end all finales.

The Pandorica Opens - and next week's Big Bang - is already rivaling the excesses of the Russell T Davies era season finales with its fleet of alien spaceships gathering over Stonehenge for the opening of the Pandorica and possible destruction of... well... everything.

Events start with a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, entitled 'The Pandorica Opens', which finds its way to Winston Churchill and Bracewell in the Cabinet War Rooms, who then contacts River Song in prison.

She, in turn, escapes, steals the painting from the Royal Collection on Starship UK and - because The Doctor isn't answering her calls - leaves a message for him, which sends The TARDIS to the co-ordinates indicated in the painting.

The Doctor, Amy and River Song rendezvous at a Roman encampment in Ancient Britain, then ride out to Stonehenge - where the mythical Pandorica (said to contain the most dangerous being in all creation) is hidden in caves underneath the prehistoric stone circle.

There are clues along the way to what The Pandorica contains, but that's just part - possibly the simplest part - of the game that Steven Moffat is playing with us.

One of the strongest elements of this season, something that the almost-50-year-old show rarely does (despite the nature of The Doctor and the TARDIS), is its willingness to play with the nature of time.

This episode constantly jumps forward and backwards in time, bringing back people we thought dead, possibly killing characters we hoped were 'immortal' (in the sense that they would be in the show for much longer) and hauling in a terrifying rogues' gallery of The Doctor's opponents from across time and space: daleks, cybermen, hoix, judoon, nesteen, silurians, sontarans (even the zygons get a namecheck) etc

Brilliantly scripted by Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes, The Pandorica Opens was a well-paced, powerful episode on a cinematic scale that I never wanted to end. And then when it did I began wishing away the week until next Saturday.

I can see a possible way around at least one of the 'problems' we were left with at that shocking cliffhanger - involving something we saw, in part, during The Eleventh Hour - and are we finally going to crack the secret of River Song? Again, I have my own vague theory and fellow blogger Greywulf seems quite certain he knows who she is - but will we find out next week? Are we right? It kinda makes sense...

We'll have to wait and see. This is going to be a long week!

Of course, the $64 million question is: can Moffat conclude this two-part finale in style ... without resorting to reset buttons, deux ex machina or other cheap gimmicks that RTD would invariably pull out of his bag of tricks?

We've been let down so many times before in the new era of Who by brilliant set-ups to two-parters that have then crumbled in their wrap-up, but this is Moffat's chance to shine and wipe traces of earlier disappointment from our memories (as though they have fallen through cracks in time...)