The Pandorica Opens
- You may be looking for the Doctor Who television story of the same name.
The Pandorica Opens was one of the final paintings by Vincent van Gogh, painted in 1890 and inspired by transmissions he picked up from 102 AD Stonehenge.
History
Stonehenge concealed The Pandorica, A prison box designed by The Pandorica Alliance to contain The Doctor. The Stones were secretly transmitters that broadcast a signal everywhere, throughout time saying "The Pandorica is opening". Vincent Van Gogh heard the transmissions in his dreams and painted "The Pandorica Opens".
It remained undiscovered behind a wall in an attic in France until 1941, when it came to the attention of Edwin Bracewell. Bracewell took it to Winston Churchill, and the two recognised it as a message to the Doctor. Churchill phoned the Doctor to alert him, but was diverted to River Song in the year 5145, alerting her of its existence. River escaped from the Stormcage Containment Facility in which she was being held, and went in search of the painting. She located it in the Royal Collection, where she tried to steal it so that she could deliver it to the Doctor. She was confronted by Liz 10 but was allowed to leave when she explained the nature of the painting to Liz. River poisoned a blue-skinned alien salesman called Dorium in order to get hold of a vortex manipulator. She time traveled to Planet One and wrote "HELLO SWEETIE ΘΣ Φ ΓΥΔϟ" the temporal co-ordinates for Britain, 102 AD. There she gave the Doctor the painting. (DW: The Pandorica Opens)
Plot
The Doctor and Amy Pond travel to the oldest planet in the universe where a legendary message turns out to be another "calling card" of Dr. River Song. Following the coordinates from the message, they arrive at Roman Britain in 102 AD and find Song posing as Cleopatra. Song explains that she has received warning of the the destruction of the TARDIS from a painting of Vincent Van Gogh ("Vincent and the Doctor") that was later discovered by Winston Churchill and Professor Bracewell ("Victory of the Daleks"). Churchill had attempted to call the Doctor himself to warn him but instead connected to Song, who subsequently escaped from prison and from Liz 10 ("The Beast Below"), and used a Vortex Manipulator to transport herself to the coordinates in Van Gogh's painting. The Doctor realizes the painting and destruction of the TARDIS may be connected to the "Pandorica", a fabled prison for the universe's deadliest being, and rationalises that it must be stored someplace memorable, the site of Stonehenge.
At Stonehenge, the Doctor, Amy, and Song find a passage to an underground area the Doctor dubs "Underhenge". Inside, they find the Pandorica, a room-sized metal box outfitted with every type of lock imaginable. The Doctor and Song become concerned when they discover the Pandorica opening from inside, transmitting a message across time and space, drawing forces from all of the Doctor's foes to Earth; Song warns that "everything that ever hated [the Doctor] is coming tonight". The Doctor refuses to flee and instead enlists the help of one of the Roman legion's in Song's command, part of "the greatest military machine in the history of the universe", led by a mysterious legionnaire willing to volunteer to help the Doctor.
As the aliens amass in Earth's orbit and transport down to the Pandorica, the group is split up; Amy is saved by the legionnaire who turns out to be Rory Williams. When they regroup with the Doctor, he is baffled by Rory's existence as he was killed and then consumed by the crack in time ("Cold Blood") and should have been erased from history. Rory explains that he only recalls dying one moment and waking up the next as a Roman soldier. Rory tries to connect with Amy using the engagement ring that he had left aboard the TARDIS, but she still is unable to remember him.
As more enemies gather in orbit, the Doctor momentary delays the aliens and instructs Song to take the TARDIS to collect the necessary technology to fend off the hostiles, staying in contact with her over time and space. Despite her adeptness at the TARDIS controls, she is unable to prevent the TARDIS from landing near Amy's house in modern-day Leadworth. Before leaving the TARDIS, Song hears a voice warning that "silence will fall". As she explores Amy's house, she finds elements such as Pandora's Box and the Roman soldiers within Amy's drawings and books; when she relays this to the Doctor, he becomes concerns that the events they are seeing now are imaginary constructs within Amy's mind. Song and the Doctor discover the date that Song has landed: 26 June 2010, the day previously discovered by the Doctor as the source of the time explosion that created the cracks. ("Flesh and Stone") The Doctor urges Song to leave that time zone immediately in the TARDIS, but the time machine is now remotely controlled by an unknown force, locking her inside.
The alien forces start to teleport in numbers into Underhenge; the legionnaires, including Rory, reveal themselves as Autons, though Rory tries to fight the Auton control and retain his human memories while protecting Amy. The Doctor is captured by his enemies, and is warned that he is being placed in the Pandorica to prevent the time explosion that created the cracks, despite the Doctor insisting that his TARDIS is the source for them. As the Doctor is forced into the Pandorica, the Auton Rory temporarily loses control and fires upon Amy, apparently killing her. Meanwhile, Song tries to reroute the door controls to escape the TARDIS, but is unable to do so before the TARDIS seemingly explodes. The episode ends on a cliffhanger as the Doctor is sealed in the Pandorica while a number of explosions begin to go off in space around the Earth.
Continuity
The episode title refers to the Pandorica, first mentioned by Prisoner Zero in "The Eleventh Hour", and later by River Song in the fifth episode of this series, "Flesh and Stone" where the Doctor declares he believes the Pandorica to be merely a fairy tale. Rory initially displays confusion at how he could have been "erased from time", having been absent during "Flesh and Stone" when the Doctor and Amy first encountered this phenonmenon.
In River Song's timeline, this takes place before the "The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone", where she mentioned being imprisoned in the Stormcage facility for killing a man. She is seen to be imprisoned here at the start of the episode. This episode also marks the second use (in the Doctor's timeline) of River's hallucinogenic lipstick. River's message in the extended cold open says, "HELLO SWEETIE" (used as her greeting to the Doctor in both "Silence in the Library" and "The Time of Angels") along with several characters underneath - supposedly the coordinates for finding River in 102 AD. The first two characters are "ΘΣ" which are the Greek characters theta and sigma. "Theta Sigma" was the college nickname Drax called the Doctor in The Armageddon Factor, which the Doctor confirms in The Happiness Patrol. The following characters are a date written in "the base code of the universe" from "Flesh and Stone", which is also used in Van Gogh's painting of the TARDIS explosion to guide the Doctor to the right date.
River Song announces alien races whose space ships have received the transmission from Stonehenge, in a section used in the preview clip of the previous episode. They are the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Terileptils, the Slitheen, the Chelonians, the Nestene, the Drahvins, the Sycorax, the Zygons, the Atraxi and the Draconians. Of these, the episode visually depicted only the Daleks (in the New Paradigm introduced in "Victory of the Daleks"), the Nestene (previously seen in the revived series in "Rose"), the revived-series Cybermen and Sontarans, along with the Judoon, Hoix, Silurians and Roboforms (seen in "The Christmas Invasion" and "The Runaway Bride"). Footage from Doctor Who Confidential showed artists dressed as Blowfish, Weevils, Uvodni and Sycorax for the same scene, but they do not clearly appear in the final episode.[6]
The episode also featured reappearances from Vincent van Gogh ("Vincent And The Doctor"), Liz 10 ("The Beast Below"), Winston Churchill and Bracewell ("Victory of the Daleks").
