The point was supposed to be that it was the perfect prison, i.e. impossible to open from the inside. I guess even with that allowed, ymmv.

Think the poster meant "cloaked".

The Doctor openly states when they first find it that it's easy to open from the outside, the point in the Pandorica is that you can't open it from the inside, at all. The only reason he doesn't crack it open when he first finds it is because he (wrongly) suspects that there is something very, very dangerous indeed inside it.

When they locked him in, they locked the sonic in with him. Had he been able to access it (which he couldn't as his hands were fastened in place), then he still wouldn't have been able to get out using it from the inside. They didn't think that there would be a second one (sort of), just like they didn't think that there might be a second person able to fly the TARDIS (namely River).

I would have thought that if you're going to go to all the effort to create a perfect prison, make it easily unlockable when empty, and impossible to unlock from the inside, and you never want your prisoner to be able to escape, you would take more care to ensure that no-one could unlock it from the outside once it's full.

Point taken. It would have been a bit of a shame for the show if the doctor had never escaped the pandorica though.

As I said, I don't think it occurred to the Alliance that there would be a second screwdriver outside the Pandorica. It probably didn't occur to them that a version of the doctor from after he'd been freed would come back and free himself, but then why would it?

If it seems weird that it can be opened so easily from the outside, couldn't you just explain it away by saying that the two sonic screwdrivers interacted with each other in some way? That the same object existed both outside and inside the perfect prison, and therefore could break open the lock?

Exactly, I think that's the point that the episode hinges around. They have gone to a lot of effort, and are still basically shortsighted. I mean, given that you want the prison to be openable by sonic screwdriver - because the Doctor is the only person you want to trap - there is one time and one time only that you want that to be possible. After that, switch that mechanism off. They put in about a million layers of locking, and not a single one of those magical deadlock seals that pop up everywhere else?

Or anyone else... All the companions of the newly rebooted Who have flown it at some point.

As in piloted the TARDIS on their own? I didn't realise that was the case.

It doesn't need to be 'on their own', does it? When you first learn to drive a car, you can't do it on your own, but that doesn't mean that after practice you'll always need someone there. With enough practice, anyone could pilot it.

When the Alliance mentioned that only the Doctor could pilot the TARDIS, it was noticeable that he didn't correct them.

You said all the companions of new who had flown the TARDIS. I read that as implying that they had flown it on their own. I Knew Donna could fly it after the metacrisis, and Rose kind of piloted it in the parting of the ways, so it didn't seem impossible that martha, Jack and Amy had also flown it solo after a fashion at some point. Apologies for the misunderstanding.

I hiope I didn't sound sharp - I'm trying to give up ciggies, so it might read a little harsher than I meant it to be...

To be fair, the second they closed the Pandorica the Universe ended and they were reduced to stone. Not easy to make sure the prison is secure when you've been petrified.

No need to apologise - no offence taken.

Am I the only person who finds it odd that the Daleks and Cybermen - at the very least - went to so much trouble to NOT kill the Doctor?

Sure, locking a bloke with a time-machine, a sonic screwdriver and friends on the outside could just be a slight lack of foresight on their part but if they knew that he was going to destroy the universe and believed that preventing him from piloting the Tardis again was the way to prevent that, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just blow him away?

Even if the Daleks had new car syndrome and didn't want to get blood on their shiney new paint-job, they could have got one of those Autons to chop him up with their nice little swords.

A room full of ruthless killing machines and the most diabolical villains in the universe and what do they come up with - they put him in a box - without even searching him.

Dunno about you but Daleks just became a lot less scary. If you ever meet one face to face, expect to hear those immortal words - "You will be told in a firm voice to go and sit in a comfy chair inside a box!!!"

That was one of my main arguments for it being an overlord manipulating things for the reboot of the Universe (this time with added extra bad-guy...).

This, in conjunction with the Alliance falsely believing that only the Doctor could pilot the TARDIS, leads me to believe that there was someone/thing overseeing it all, and manipulating them.

I know you don't share the 'single evil overlord' theory, but it does seem to help tie these incongruancies together.

It still requires someone to want the Doctor imprisoned for eternity without him even being aware of the passage of time rather than killing him.

Is there some advantage to not killing him?

I can think of two things off the top of my head (plus a third one that's just nasty but seems silly)

1> "Someone" wanted the Tardis and she would have destroyed herself if the Doctor died. Placing him in the Pandorica was necessary for them to gain control of the Tardis and divert her to wherever she was entombed in rock.

2> The Doctor actually engineered the whole thing because he needed "someone" to believe he was out of commission - possibly the same reason as the suppsoed death in Utah.

3> "Someone" regarded imprisoning him for eternity - even if he had no knowledge of it happening - as a form of torture.

was it ever explained why the taris blew up at all?

I really can't remember what triggered it. I only remem River saying 'I'm sorry my love...' then BOOM. But why?

It didn't blow up - but it did.

The Tardis placed itself and River in an infinite loop so it started to explode but effectively froze.

We do not know why the Tardis was supposed to explode. We are lead to believe that it would and that just about everyone in the universe knew about it in advance - except the Doctor.

Quite how they'd know about something that - if it had "happened" in the future - would automatically mean that there's no way anyone could remember it or travel back in time from after the event to prevent it is a mystery (for mystery, read "don't ask or you'll shatter the illusion ).

We're also lead to believe that the exploding Tardis caused the cracks in the universe which then rippled backwards and forwards in time.

The implication is that the cracks exist not because of the Tardis exploding, but because the collapsing universe was pulled back together by the restoration field, leaving cracks, in the same way a smashed vase repaired by super glue would leave cracks.

My theory is that in the pre-big bang2 version of reality, River was a future incarnation of the Doctor. As soon as she started to pilot the TARDIS, the Doctor was being locked inside the Pandorica. Therefore, the TARDIS was being piloted by a paradox of sorts, causing it to explode.

No - my theory was that the manipulation behind the Alliance knew how the Doctor thinks, and that he/it needed to keep the Doctor alive to cause the necessary resetting of the Universe.

The force behind the Alliance made sure that the Doctor was in a prison instead of being killed, as he/it knew the Doctor could escape. However, with him away from the TARDIS, that same manipulative force could cause the TARDIS to explode, thereby ripping apart the Universe. He/it would have known the Doctor would come up with the reboot plan (as he just so happened to have all the ingredients to hand...), which was the actual goal...

Although, for why I have yet no idea!

No, not at all. The cracks were removed by the universe being restored, not the other way round. As the Doctor said to River after taking the readings in Flesh and Stone - "One day there'll be a very big bang, so big every moment in history - past and future - will crack." He later identifies 26/06/10 as "The date! The date of the explosion where the crack begins."

One possible reason is that they were worried that the Doctor and the TARDIS were so linked that damaging one would damage the other - therefore the safest thing is to keep things exactly as they are for all time. Yeah, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. They would have done better to make an inpenetrable prison for the TARDIS, wouldn't they?