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!

I’m in urgent need of a massive rant about last night’s Doctor Who and why it caused me to call Stephen Moffat a failcake. It does contain spoilers, so I am deploying SpoilerVision for this.

Yes I understand that if I haven’t seen ‘Flesh and Stone’ and I click this link it’ll be ruined and I only have myself to blame.

Is this a disturbing new front on the digital divide? Lucky BBC HD viewers of Doctor Who were blissfully unaware of an on-screen trail for “Over the Rainbow” that popped up on the screens of the peasantry watching on BBC One.

Likewise, the last leader’s debate on Sky News was the same – the Sky News HD version (launched that day especially for the occasion) contained minimal onscreen graphics and no adverts while peasants watching on BBC News or Sky News Normal found themselves plagued by tickers and other distractions.

Suddenly people have a new reason to get HD: It’s altogether more civilised, for now. They’re going to hound you until you submit, you know? Get used to crappy drawings of Graham Norton.

For the record? That cliffhanger was pretty rubbish even without the trailer appearing over the top. Trust me, that distraction did Moffat a favour – it made you think you’d missed something good. Cliffhangers like this suck, they’re lazy writing and they leave you without a satisfactory conclusion to the episode. He’s literally just chopped a double length episode in half, a la the Matrix Sequels.

Moffat should take a tip from the writers of Lost on this one – they’re masters at suspenseful endings that make you tune in again and again and combining that with an episode structure that has a satisfying beginning, middle and end too. If it’d been Lost, they’d have escaped from the caves, been relieved and only at the very end would they have discovered some hint that their troubles are far from over. Perhaps the problem here is the conflict between the traditional Doctor Who cliffhanger versus what actually makes good viewing. But hey, at least I actually care now, which is points for Moffat at least.