To coincide with the 10th anniversary of Doctor Who Series 5’s transmission, Obverse Books published The Black Archive #44: The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang. The story is partly set on 26th June 2010, the day the universe blew up.
The book is written by me, and I’m very pleased to share with you a preview of what’s inside.
The 10-page preview includes extracts from two chapters – the first on the myths and legends that feed into the story (notably Hediod’s tale of Pandora’s Box), and the second on the nature of time, in the serial and in the programme as a whole. The former, then, tackles history and how it translates to the Pandorica:
“In the source material, the presence of hope at the bottom is a curiosity. Some interpreted Hesiod’s work as meaning that hope will always remain; others that hope is held by the gods; and others still that hope itself is something bad. After all, why else would it be in a jar containing all the evils of the world?
Nonetheless, in The Big Bang, the role of ‘hope’ is transferred from the Doctor, to Amy, to the remnant particles of the previous universe. It’s only through a combination of these three that the universe is adequately (though not fully) restored.”
Meanwhile, the other extract applies real physics to Doctor Who:
“Time is too ephemeral a concept for us to accurately understand. Similarly, the universe is so vast that, if we properly appreciated its immensity, we’d get nothing else done. It’s astounding to consider that our heads are travelling faster through time than our feet. Tell your mates to astonish them, but don’t go into the nitty-gritty. What this equates to on an everyday basis is practically nothing. In a lifetime, it’s negligible. A one-foot difference amounts to 90 billionths of a second over a lifetime measured at 79 years. While it’s true that your head will always be older than your toes – and someone living in mountain ranges ages faster than someone at or below sea level – this won’t make any difference to your life whatsoever.”
If you’d like to read the full preview and get a gist of what the Black Archive as a whole is like, check out the PDF here.
Here’s the full blurb:
The TARDIS explodes. The universe is cracked. Space-time is collapsing. The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang typifies Steven Moffat’s ‘timey-wimey’ take on Doctor Who. It draws on the legend of Pandora’s Box and exhorts the power of memories.
This Black Archive explores how time operates in the Series 5 finale, in Doctor Who as a wider narrative, and in real life. How do anomalies and paradoxes work in the show? What might the end and beginning of the universe actually look like? And what caused the TARDIS to blow up anyway?
You can buy The Black Archive #44: The Pandorica Opens/ The Big Bang, with prices ranging between £3.99 and £8.99, from Obverse Books now!
