https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-pandorica-opens-the-big-bang-by-philip-bates...

Philip Bates has written a fair bit of commentary, but this appears to be his first book. A short prologue states his case that the story succeeds because it is “an intimate tale on epic proportions”. The rest of the book provides supporting arguments.

The first chapter, “Balancing the Epic and the Intimate”, looks at how Moffat pulls off the feat of intricately linking the story with the preceding episodes of the season, and indeed how they are linked to the rest of Doctor Who.

The second chapter, “Myths and Fairytales”, interrogates the concept of fairytales, stopping off briefly at Pandora’s Box, and the way in which fairytale lore informs both the story in question and the character of the Doctor.

The third chapter’s title is “Anomalies”. Here Bates looks at the concept of anomalies and how they contribute to the plot of the episode, going (perhaps a little more than necessary) into the scientific concepts underpinning the term.

The fourth chapter, “When Time Travel Wouldn’t Help”, looks at the “rules” of time travel and how Moffat uses them to support the plot – referring back also to his first Doctor Who work, the short story “Continuity Errors“.

The fifth chapter, “The Trouble with Time”, which is the longest in the book, looks at the arrow of time, time loops, and (again) the current scientific understanding behind them, and the way in which they are used in the story.

The sixth chapter, “Endings and Beginnings”, is mostly about scientific understandings of the end (and beginning ) of the universe.

A brief conclusion meditates on the concept of “favourite stories”.

An appendix, “Good Question for Another Day”, attempts to unpack the question of why the TARDIS explodes and who, if anyone, is responsible.

This book lacks a lot of the things I usually like about the Black Archives – analysis of the development of the script or of details of the production -and includes a fair bit of science, which is not what I get the Black Archives for. But I can forgive a lot of it for Bates’ infectious enthusiasm for a story that I already liked a lot. ( )