Okay I’ve spent the last few hours collecting screenshots and transcribing dialogue from the series so far in order to highlight the big unanswered questions and the clues about what might happen in the next episode. It contains spoilers for most of the series, but only speculation about the Finale. Be warned!

If you’re interested, the post is hidden behind SpoilerVision™ again.

Yes, I’m interested, please show me the full post. That would be lovely.

This post is protected by the magic of SpoilerVision™ as it contains spoilers. Obviously.

Yes, I have seen ‘The Pandorica Opens’, please let me read this ‘review’ of yours.

UPDATE: I have watched this episode a second time now, and have picked apart “Season 5″ for the unanswered questions and clues about how this might all be resolved with the result that my opinion has softened. I did actually enjoy this episode, for what it’s worth. This whinging is more about the show as a whole, which really is badly timed because Moffat might – just might – be about to prove me massively wrong. With that in mind, back to the original post..

The non-spoiler version is pointing out my frustration with cliffhangers and the limitations of the ‘Monster of the Week’ formula that this show is bound by.

Mr Moffat’s already got himself a second series. He can afford to be braver, more innovative. Even though the post-Movie revived series has been around for quite a while now, it’s still feeling quite fresh and full of potential, but the format is still an antique, not having changed much from the days of the First Doctor.

It feels decades behind some of the shows coming out of America. It’s nice that Moffat’s brought in the mystery of the ‘crack’ into most of the episodes, but in reality they’ve simply been teasing. It’s not materially changed anything that’s happened. None of the characters have really learnt anything, or changed, or progressed. Nothing’s been resolved or will be. You could easily miss every episode between the first episode and the last and you’d really have missed out on nothing.

No, Doctor Who remains bound by the terrible power of the reset button. Nothing ever changes. The episodes end, the button is pushed, and while the faces and names change over time, everything always goes back to how it started: A man, in a box, travelling from place to place battling against the monster of the week.

Moffat’s abrupt cliffhangers are infuriating, too – and also a throwback to old black and white adventure shows like Flash Gordon. It’s lazy, sloppy writing. Considering how this episode ended, it’s going to require a Deus Ex Machina to resolve. It leaves viewers with an incomplete, unresolved experience and then, next week, gives them another incomplete experience too. Even if you have a cliff hanger, even if you’ve got a long running story arc through your series and through your show, every episode needs a satisfying beginning, middle and end. If you can’t do it, show the next episode straight away. Make it double length.

It’s called treating your audience with the respect they deserve.

I don’t know why I care about this so much, if I’m honest. I just can’t stand that the reasons given for choking the only half-decent SF show the British put out is by saying “it’s only a children’s show” or “it’s traditional”. Not good enough.

Warning: There may be spoilers in the comments. You have been warned!

Why do England players – normally superstars at their clubs (although I really only have other people’s word on this) turn into brain damaged cabbages when playing for their country?

Perhaps it’s the fact that they get paid £750 for a defeat, £1000 for a draw and £1,500 for a win – a sum so low that this year they’re donating their fees to charity it matters so little to them. They’re doing it, apparently, for the love of the country. They’re doing it for the English, most of whom think they’re shit and not trying hard enough.

That’s why Wayne Rooney decided to have a go at the crowd for booing them, and you know what? I agree with him. If all he’s getting from this tournament is shit from the manager, shit from the press, shit from the crowd and finding the games themselves frustrating… what exactly do you expect to happen?

They are not performing monkeys. They’re not your slaves. They’re professional sportsmen who seem to be coming to the conclusion that none of this is worth the aggro… and I think they’re right. It’s not.

They’ve got nothing to prove individually – they’re already in the best clubs they can get into, their jobs are secure. They’ve got all their advertising deals already sealed and signed irrespective of how far they get in the tournament. There’s nothing – absolutely nothing – in it for them. Not one single thing that, when you really think about, means anything at all to them as individuals. National pride? What if they’re not really that Nationalist? I mean, these are guys who work in the most ethnically diverse professions in the UK. They work with people from all over the world, and they see that it is good. We expect them to be Nationalist about it? Really?

I don’t really know a lot about football – so take this entire post as the entirely ill-informed load of rubbish that it is (and understand that’s why I’ve sworn an oath not to mention the World Cup on Twitter) –  but I do think they’d be better off sending a bunch of unknown younglings at the beginning of their careers to go out and play like those careers depended on it. Send a team hungry for success with something to prove, instead of a bunch of pampered fat millionaires who perform best when playing for successful teams and huge buckets of cash: Neither is true of the English National Team.

Just saying, like.

The Daily Mail really understand their readers well: Women who hate women. No newspaper has more critical, negative things to say about women and no newspaper is enjoyed by so many of them. It’s a paradox, but it’s also a business opportunity. Anyone fancy lending me some money so that I can start a Woman’s Magazine called, “You’re Shit!” and fill it with misogynist rubbish that explains in detail exactly what’s wrong with women. It’ll make a fortune.

Today’s piece of feminist baiting is the news that “Put down that beer and wash the dishes! Wives spend ‘six days a year’ nagging their husbands“. Hee! It’s man-hating too! Men are infantile morons who do absolutely nothing and need wives to act as a mother substitute because they’re so dirty and lazy! Everyone’s a piece of shit to the Daily Mail!

But, okay, let’s see where this has come from:

A study of more than 3,000 people carried out by health campaign group Everyman…

A study! Oo! Impressive. Very scientific, obviously. So, off I go to the Everyman website to find out some more about the study.

Survey conducted by One Poll with a sample size of 3,000.

Ah. So… not so much a study as… well… a survey. Disappointing. How was it conducted? What was the methodology? What questions were asked? Call me a bit sceptical, but I’m not entirely convinced by the soundness of this particular ‘study’.

No doubt Everyman imagined they’d get a nice, controversial story in order to help them with their campaign to raise awareness of testicular and prostate cancer. They write,

Women play a vital role when it comes to the health of the men in their lives and they generally lead by example in keeping up with medical checks.

Men on the other hand commonly need more convincing to go to the doctor if something is wrong.  In the case of cancer, if symptoms are picked up early, the chance of recovery is so much greater. It’s imperative that men put more emphasis on their health, otherwise the nagging will continue!

In other words they’re being provocative in order to try to save some men’s lives. The Daily Mail, on the other hand, doesn’t really care about all that fluffy, poofy nonsense and writes,

Other complaints included not helping to wash the dishes, drinking too much and not visiting the doctor to get checked out.

The majority of women were not ashamed about nagging, with 87 per cent admitting to giving their partner a hard time to get them to do something.

I’m sure the Everyman campaign are simply thrilled by this “Hee! Women are total c**ts aren’t they?” coverage their efforts have earned them.

There’s no way I can top this masterpiece:

A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria when he ‘mooned’ a group of Hell’s Angels, hurled a puppy at them and then escaped on a bulldozer

Truly the mind of someone born to write a sit com. One starts with the necessity to assault Hell’s Angels. Okay, fair enough. Then one considers in what way to assault them. Presumably while the bikers remain on bikes one is confronted with the necessity to throw something. The question then becomes… what should be thrown? A hammer? No, that’d be too dangerous. A brick? That has the same problem. No, it needs to be something relatively harmless, so that that it forms more of an insult than an assault.

He looks around his room. He realises that a soft toy would be perfect, but he’s thrown his out years ago. No, the only thing remotely chuckable is Hans Gruber, his little golden labrador puppy. Good idea? Bad idea? Man, it’s a GREAT idea. They’ll NEVER see it coming. Never. So, great, that’s the assault taken care of. He grabs Hans and pops down to the known hangouts of the Hell’s Angels and considers his next move.

He’s dimly aware that the Hell’s Angels are going to be pretty angry once they’ve had Hans thrown at them. Of all the insults, nothing could be greater. And they’re on bikes while he’s on foot the odds of making a clean getaway seem slim. Some sort of… getaway vehicle… is required. He looks around and sees an unattended bulldozer and thinks, yes, yes, that there is my means of escape. That’ll be perfect.

Sir, I salute you.