This Week in Doctor Who - 7/24/10

Yes, I'm very well aware what the date on top says, but that's when this was supposed to be written so I'm going to leave it as is. To be honest, I don't even know remember when the episode aired in America, as I watched it when it premiered in the UK so it's been well over a month or two for me... my bad.

Episode 13 - "The Big Bang"

At the end of my last review I made a little statement how parts of the episode felt like a "jumbled mess," that was before I watched this episode; which for about... three thirds of the episode is just going in and out and back and forth through time to solve problems, but really it just creates more.

What bothered me is that somehow the Doctor gets a watch-type device from River that allows him to travel time where he stands, and it basically just throws the rules out the door. Suddenly, instead of being trapped in the Pandorica, the Doctor from the future comes back and solves the problem, and then goes forward, and then Amy meets herself, and then they go back, and forward, and diagonal. Regardless of where they go, it's just the ultimate cop-out tool. Because then for every situation ever you could be like, "wait David Tennant, you don't have to die at the hand of Rassilon, let me just use my timey-wimey to go back and tell you 'Don't do it!' or some crap like that". Granted I know it's a show that revolves around time travel, but even the Doctor says he has rules about what he can and can't do. I think using a device to tell you past self what not to do is one of those things that just shouldn't happen.

But, despite the jumbling and rule breaking, when it all came together it was pretty cool, and for a finale, I definitely liked this better than "The End of Time" for the most part, Tennant's final moments aside. And the really awesome part of the episode was seeing the Doctor traveling back to all his adventures with Amy, even explaining his what-seemed-to-be bizarre wardrobe change in "Flesh and Stone"; and in the end it really brought the feeling together of that 'fairy tale' Moffat talked about before the new series started. Plus, fezzes are cool. Can't wait for the Christmas Special!

Overall Score: 9.2/10

I'll hopefully post the season recap before the next week is over.