The Big Bang: A Girl, a Museum and an Empty Night Sky
The Big Bang opens brilliantly and ends with Amy’s wedding, but the time-travel escape in the middle left me a bit flat after The Pandorica Opens.
The Big Bang opens brilliantly and ends with Amy’s wedding, but the time-travel escape in the middle left me a bit flat after The Pandorica Opens.
The Pandorica Opens is a finale that lives up to the hype: a message from River, Stonehenge, Rory in Roman times and a trap for the Doctor. Spoilers ahead.
The Lodger strands the Doctor in a Colchester flat share with James Corden, a football match, and an upstairs that shouldn’t exist.
Vincent and the Doctor takes Van Gogh to see his own exhibition, and then refuses to let that fix anything. The finest hour Series 5 has produced.
Cold Blood takes the Doctor under Cwmtaff to broker peace with the Silurians, and one killing on the surface undoes it. A haunting finish.
The Hungry Earth sends the Doctor, Amy and Rory to a Welsh village where a drill has gone too deep and the graves are emptying. Silurians await.
Amy’s Choice puts the Doctor, Amy and Rory in a sleepy village and a dying TARDIS, with a Dream Lord twisting the knife in both.
The Vampires of Venice drags Rory along to 1580 to save his engagement, and finds a house full of girls with fangs who turn out not to be vampires at all.
Flesh and Stone ends the Weeping Angels two-parter with a blind walk through a forest of statues and a crack in the universe that eats people whole.
The Time of Angels sends the Doctor, Amy and River Song into a maze of statues, and the Angels are as scary as ever. Here’s what I thought.
Victory of the Daleks puts Matt Smith’s Doctor in Churchill’s war rooms with tea-serving Daleks. I loved the idea, less so the new paint job.
The Eleventh Hour crash-lands Matt Smith’s new Doctor in Amelia Pond’s garden, in a debut with a few hiccups and a stellar Karen Gillan.
The End of Time Part Two: Rassilon returns, Wilf knocks four times, and the Tenth Doctor refuses to go quietly. Here’s what I made of it.
The End of Time Part One brings the Master back wrong, gives Wilfred Mott the best scene of the era, and ends by opening a door onto the Time War itself.
The Waters of Mars traps the Doctor on a doomed Mars base where everyone must die, and watches him decide that the laws of time no longer apply to him.
Planet of the Dead is a sunny heist on a bus, until a passenger tells the Doctor his song is ending and puts a number on it.
The Next Doctor drops the Doctor into 1851 London to meet a man claiming to be him, in a Christmas special about grief, identity and a very large Cyberman.
Journey’s End gives Donna the Doctor’s mind and the universe its best hour, then takes it away from her in the cruellest ending the show has written.
The Stolen Earth takes the planet out of the sky, brings every companion back at once, reveals Davros, and ends on the show’s cruellest cliffhanger.
Turn Left changes one small decision in Donna’s life and watches Britain collapse without the Doctor, in the bleakest hour Doctor Who has ever produced.
Midnight traps the Doctor in a stranded shuttle with something that steals his voice, and lets a busload of frightened people become the real monster.