10 Doctor Who Moments You Didn't See Coming

3. The Pandorica Is The Doctor's Prison

Doctor Who Matt Smith The Pandorica Opens
BBC

There are so many moments in the Series 5 finale that would qualify for this list: young Amelia finding her adult self inside the Pandorica; the universe actually ending for once; Rory's return, and the Auton reveal; and even Amy's death.

But do you know what tops them all? That scene towards the end of The Pandorica Opens, where the Pandorica is revealed to be a prison, and the Doctor is sealed inside.

At the time, fans who didn't venture into those dark corners of the internet had no idea what the Pandorica really was. Throughout the episode, the Doctor himself speculates that it holds a powerful, galaxy-destroying creature - so it was a poetic, yet cruel twist of fate when it transpired that this creature had been him all along.

The resulting scenes of the Doctor being dragged towards his cell are chill-inducing even today, just like they were on that first viewing in 2010.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!