The Angels Take Manhattan

[Albino Boo]

I've said this before but the Weeping Angels should have remained a one off. Each time they are trotted out they have previously established lore messed with and they lose impact.

Blink was brilliant, each subsequent angel episode has been increasingly worse (hopefully) culminating in this episode's monstrosity.

Internal consistency has pretty much been obliterated since Moffat took over. I know things got changed in the past but you can't even rely on something said in the same series being true a couple of episodes later now.

If you want internal consistency then you are watching the wrong show. Dr Who has always shifted things to suit the dramatic purpose of the current runner of the show. The Genesis of the Daleks episode contradicts The Daleks episode. In fact because of the episode Genesis of the Daleks the events of The Daleks episode did not happen because the 4th Dr changed the Daleks time line so the 1st Doctor couldn't have encountered the Daleks in the manner that he did. Dr Who has always been the creation of many writers and script editors and each have has their own take on things and the vast majority have never given a dam about internal consistency. Apart from anything else its impossible to be for the show to be internally consist, seeing that some of episodes only exist in script form and they don't know what the final broadcast edit came out like. How can you be consistent with something that you don't know what it contains?


If you want a longer and better informed opinion read this Blogpost http://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who.html . Paul Cornell has written the episodes Father's Day(2005), Human Nature(2007) and The Family of Blood(2007) amongst a load of DR Who novels,comics and audio prodcutions.

 

[Genixma]

While I never like the companions in the first place, didn't like Rose, didn't like Martha or Donna. In fact I've always preferred the one episode companions, not Mickey and Adam but, Madam de Pompadour, Forest of Cheem female, Oswin. But the Angels Take Manhattan seemed kinda rushed. Like it was planned to be a full length special but then they had to cram everything into one episode. I mean the end where there was one last Angel remaining was kinda unsurprising if not stupid in my eyes. It was like a badly made Deus Ex Machina that was just meant for Amy and Rory to somehow made to never see the Doctor again. I mean, I really wish there was a true goodbye between the Doctor and Amy. This is a companion that he's known since she was a little girl, I would of loved to have seen him try and find a way back to Amy and Rory but they're now an old happy couple a final farewell kind of similar to Madam de Pompadour excepts he gets to see them at their olden days. Instead of "good bye raggedy man" poof, oh I left a note on the last page of the book don't forget to read it!

And so on and so forth. Like I was saying the episode felt rushed, plot points seemed scatter shot. And it just didn't feel like an episode of Doctor Who it felt like Cliffnotes, a brief summary, a 5 second 'Hello' and 'Goodbye' to Rory and Amy. Without Rory getting so much as anything interesting to do in the episode. He felt more like Mickey just standing there looking pretty until he disappears off screen for who knows how long. I just didn't like it at all, suffice to say.

 

[IMAGinES]

Ok, so Rory connects with River and both are suddenly kidnapped and brought to that idiotic collector. Why? Pfft, don't worry about little things like that.

I think it's the same problem they had with the Western episode. You've got to have a rich / threatening benefactor because We're Riffing On Hard-Boiled Detective Novels, same way the Doctor talked the townsfolk down because We're Riffing On Westerns.

 

[needle]

Moffat's story arc for Amy has always been this Wendy/Peter Pan thing where eventually she grows up and chooses real life and Rory over the Doctor, we've seen it through season 5 & 6 with Amy's choice and in this first half of 7 with their 'real' life taking over (10 years feeling somewhat rushed needing to cram in the timeline of rory and amy's 2020 visit to themselves.)
With this focus from their very first meeting being that it would be Amy leaving the Doctor behind, a dramatic and emotional send off for the Ponds without the ever-child Doctor coming to find them again was a tricky write i suppose.
Considering we've seen 11 reboot the universe,let an old Amy never exist in favour of a younger one and reset all causality by faking his own death their end would have to be VERY final.
A paradox blocking travel + names on a gravestone i don't really buy into as the Doctor has actually seen River Song die at the library and happily adventures with her every other week without the slightest worry of her dying and changing fixed time, and as someone mentioned earlier he messes with famous characters through time every week and he knows pretty much all their fates.
As mentioned many times before he could pop back post 1938, have adventures, drop them back off and let them live out their lives eventually so they age and die according to the gravestone.
Amy's final words in the book seal it for me because Moffats law is - if its 'written' it has to happen, and Amys words indeed state they lived their lives from 1938 without ever seeing the Doctor again.
So for me this episode messily works! I suggest going with the flow and stop trying to figure out timey wimey stuff, it works for Amy's story start to finish and was brilliantly acted by the 3 leads.

 

[BartimaeusofNewstead]

11's reaction to losing Amy and Rory is what I think is most important about the episode, something I've seen very little other reviewers or fans talk about. Smith's Doctor is openly distraught at the turn of events at the end of the episode, much more so than Tennant. Who either a) Appeared emotionless to Rose and didn't even cry until she was gone. b) Didn't even try to stop Martha (yeah she didn't die or anything but he still could have showed some sadness). c) The Doctor-Donna's death by his own hand had him show very little outward emotion. Even the obvious sacrifice he made for Wilf was drastically underpinned by his "It's just not fair. This is my reward" speech. Which was more general shouting at the universe and not getting his own way.
11 looks for the first time since the series started again, genuinly upset at the loss of Amy and Rory. Maybe something to do with the whole "First face this face saw. You are seared onto my hearts forever" thing.

Doctor 11 is definitely more distraught at Amy and Rory's departure than any of the past ones in New Who, but whether that's a good direction for the character to take is a matter for debate. In both the 9th and 10th Doctor eras they made a big thing (in a subtle-ish way, if that's possible) of the Doctor's difficulties in relating to the humans he loves (and possibly in classic Who as well, though I haven't watched any). See a, b and c above. Cue doctor 11, and we get a far more pedestrian goodbye scene, with bog-standard emotions from a character who's entire premise is being different. And fine, this sounds like a massive improvement on the surface, but to quote from elsewhere on this site (Zero Punctuation's PoP retrospective review, to be precise) "...it was like watching the Hollywood film version of a favourite book, seeing beloved characters and themes boiled down to tired, marketable stereotypes until you want to rub Agent Orange into your eyes just to add a bit of colour to the dowdy, homogenised mess." Television has an enormous surplus of shows where people show human emotions, but Doctor Who should never be lumped in with them. The moment it is, things just get boring, and you start to realise how unlikable the character is without his Man Who Fell to Earth defense.

 

[KeyMaster45]

I didn't like this episode. It got off to a good start but the ending I just have to call bullshit and shenanigans on. I hated it, it was an awful way to write Amy and Rory out of the series. Matter of fact I'm putting this under my list of fanon discontinuity. Put aside that I already don't like this half season bullshit they've adopted, (fucking April...really BBC?) but as it stands now you could have Moffat himself tell me that this actually happened and I would still deny that it did.

Fuck this ending.
Fuck this half-season crap.
Moffat can blow this whole episode out his ass.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

This episode reminds me of back when Rose was first travelling with the Doctor, and they went to the future. The first thing she thought was that everyone she'd ever known was dead, and the Doctor all but laughed at her for being so dark. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, and the Doctor has to live in a time where people he knew have lived themselves to death, it's interesting to see how he handles it. Also, I fnd it interesting that for people like the Doctor, no one is truly dead until they've either been written out of time, or killed in some sort of time-locked zone.
Which reminds me, Amy and Rory basically just pulled a Gallifray, with a bit of a Rose and a madame de Pompadour tucked in. That should have been real emotional for the Doctor, seeing as he's been really sad about such things in the past. Or, well, in his past.

 

[ShadowHand25]

River was upset at the Doctor for wasting his regeneration power because they have a limited number of regenerations (remember that River used up all of her regenerations to cure the Doctor from poison). So he basically killed one of his "lives" to cure something that would have healed on its own in a couple months.

That was retconed out. Time Lords can regenerate an infinite number of times now.

Edit: Actually I think they made the limit 502 or something silly like that

It was 504 and it was only mentioned in a Sarah-Jane Adventures special. Russel T. Davies has since said that "that line should not be taken seriously."

 

[ShadowHand25]

I've said this before but the Weeping Angels should have remained a one off. Each time they are trotted out they have previously established lore messed with and they lose impact.

Blink was brilliant, each subsequent angel episode has been increasingly worse (hopefully) culminating in this episode's monstrosity.

Internal consistency has pretty much been obliterated since Moffat took over. I know things got changed in the past but you can't even rely on something said in the same series being true a couple of episodes later now.

This post speaks to a major reason why I've lost interest in Doctor Who the past few years. Moffat was, it seems, much better as a once-a-season or so writer than as a show runner. And the Weeping Angels are edging towards the overused and overpowered realm of the Daleks. I'm of the opinion that the Whoverse doesn't need yet another arbitrarily functionally invincible enemy.

Also, I outright hate that Moffat seriously thought he could make the Statue of Liberty an Angel. Angels are, when "locked", solid, single-piece statues made of stone; the Statue of Liberty was assembled from many separate pieces shipped over from France, and also is NOT MADE OF STONE--as I recall, it's copper and iron. It's such a stupid idea on so many levels ("The idea that there is ever a point at which someone isn't looking at the Statue of Liberty is pretty ridiculous" being another) I can hardly believe it showed up in a TV show expecting to be taken remotely seriously.

But the Statue of Liberty is a statue, and angels can turn any statue to an angel, which explians how Manhatten became infested with them.

That being said, I still agree that making an "Angel of Liberty" is pointless, since it's never not being observed.

 

[Logan Donnelly]

I've been through several threads and no one has mentioned the BIGGEST Plothole.
Season 5 - The Hungry Earth.
Amy and Rory get out of the Tardis and turn to the right and see (Very far away) The future Amy and Rory waving to them! So they had to have lived in their current time. The Universe Reset doesn't change anything. They're clearly coming back for the 50th anniversary because there's no way they can't return to their own time and do that moment?

 

[coldfrog]

A friend of mine posited the theorem, to which I agreed, that although "Blink" is scary, what makes it an amazing and memorable episode (at least to us) is that it is one of the few Doctor Who episodes that uses time travel as an integrated story mechanic rather than a plot device. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other episodes that used time travel for anything other than the path to the next monster of the week. Here, the entire story is based around how the Doctor and Martha manipulate events in the past to put together a puzzle to protect the people who ran across the angels next. While they're still a scary concept, the time aspect was an important part of that story, as well as making it a cool narrative technique by telling the doctor's story in small bits that the main narrative picks up piece by piece.

On top of that, the angels were an unknown threat. I think the biggest problem with the changing of the lore is that, now that you know the "trick" they had to introduce new threats with the same monster. Unfortunately, they never quite lived up to the original reveals, no matter how awesome the "counting" sequence in that one episode was.

What I always wondered is, couldn't the angels "eat" the Tardis? It is alive. Think about THAT feast of life energy or whatever. (OK, I learned not to question Doctor Who continuity long ago, but I love finding these things it's fun)

 

[orangeapples]

So has the universe finally killed Rory? It has been trying ever since the day he was introduced...

I'm not sad that Amy's gone. I never liked her much, but for some reason I think Rory's still got another revival coming up. He deserves one.

 

[Dangit2019]

River was upset at the Doctor for wasting his regeneration power because they have a limited number of regenerations (remember that River used up all of her regenerations to cure the Doctor from poison). So he basically killed one of his "lives" to cure something that would have healed on its own in a couple months.

Not like that matters in real life, as BBC will keep him loaded with enough energy to regenerate until the show stops airing.