The final volume of this year's season of Who, Volume 4 contains the four climactic episodes of the season: Vincent & The Doctor; The Lodger; The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, as well as a free exclusive Top Trumps card and a special feature exclusive to DVD/Blu-Ray, The Monster Files. Vincent & The Doctor is a great story, mixing emotion, action and comedy in the way only Richard Curtis (Love Actually; The Vicar Of Dibley) can, and featuring a superb guest star in Tony Curran, with an incredibly moving ending investigating Van Gogh's tragic suicide. Meanwhile, The Lodger is a great example of Doctor Who trying to be different to its established sci-fi roots: from playing football to drinking wine, we see a lot of things our favorite Time Lord wouldn't usually do, making this more of a humour-based story than anything (light on plot and true drama). James Corden also helps make it a fun and enjoyable three-quarters of an hour, too. The finale of each season has always upped the stakes, but none more so than in Series 5, where, at the end of a thrilling 50 minutes of entertainment, Steven Moffat closed The Pandorica with the whole of creation destroyed and an alliance of the Doctor's old enemies trapping him inside the fabled box (not to mention River being killed as the TARDIS exploded, and Rory shooting Amy as he briefly converted back to his Auton roots, another shock twist no one saw coming!). But, then, to throw a whammy and do what most writers would not dare- cheat somewhat using time travel- is Moffat's true genius, making The Big Bang quite possibly the best Episode 13 yet (possibly: Journey's End and The End Of Time were probably on a par with it too). Is this DVD essential, however? No. We're so near the Series 5 box-set that unless you're desperate to see The Monster Files now, you should wait until all four of those features and all 13 episodes (plus new extras) come on the box-set this November. It's a great DVD, but wait until the amazing stuff.
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