This is the most obvious one because the myth Pandoras Box was directly mentioned in these episodes a couple of times. Moffat isn't one to be subtle. As a refresher, Pandoras Box is basically about the first woman on Earth. Prometheus, a titan, steals fire from Zeus and teaches all of the humans how to use it. As punishment, Prometheus is nailed to a rock and forced to have his innards eaten by vultures every day and Pandora is used as his other punishment as she is wed to Prometheus brother. She is given the notorious box as a wedding gift and was told to never open it, which kind of defeats the point of a gift, but its a mythology so it doesnt have to make sense. Predictably, she ends up opening the box and subsequently all of its evils unto the world, but also releases hope, too. You've gotta love hope. The point of Pandoras Box is that a small, seemingly harmless action can have great consequences on other people. So what does this have to do with Doctor Who, you ask? Well, this is where the connection gets less obvious. Doctor Who features a lot of symbolism revolving around the TARDIS, and what does the TARDIS happen to be? A box! There are really two versions of a box opening in the Pandorica episodes, though. One is the actual Pandorica, which is meant to hold the most dangerous thing that ever existed", and the other box is the TARDIS exploding. The other box - the Pandorica - holds hope, which, in this case, is either the Doctor or Amy. The moral still stands - even the little things that one does might lead to crisis later down the line. Everything that happened in the Pandorica episodes was caused by a domino effect - none of it would have happened if he'd never opened the TARDIS doors in the first place. But the universe is still pretty happy that he did.
Alexa is a Doctor Who writer on Whatculture. She lives in the boring state of Illinois, USA. She is an anthropology and creative writing student. When not writing or watching Doctor Who, she is probably cuddling with her pet hedgehog, playing Super Nintendo, and reading horror novels.
