Doctor Who 7x05 - The Angels Take Manhattan

[keep_counting]

Yet another point-giving, rambling, and very incoherent review.



THE GOOD:

- The whole domesticity that is the Doctor and the Ponds outing in the park. +10

- The Statue of Liberty is an Angel. +20

- And +10 for playing 'Legal Alien'. It made me giggle

- 'It would be almost impossible!' - 'Loving the 'almost'' +5 for one of River's best lines

- Amy's glasses. +20. I wish I would look as attractive in glasses - especially because I'm half-blind and so need them.

- 'Yowza!' +10

- 'The Roman in the Cellar'. This amused me. +5. And +10 for Amy coming up with the whole 'looking at chapter titles'

- Amy and Rory. Going down together. +10

- 'And you really think you'll come back?' - 'When don't I?' THANK-YOU SHOW FOR MAKING ME LAUGH AND TEARING OUT MY HEART AT THE SAME TIME. +10

- Also thanks for finally using paradoxes right. It only took you three seasons Moffat. +5

- +5 for someone finally having enough sense to just CHAIN UP one of the Angels. Like, put it in a cage or something. Not even the Angels can move through walls, as evidenced by a LOCKED DOOR keeping them out.

- +10 for making the baby-angels REALLY CREEPY

- 'Well, I always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. I guess she got impatient.' Rory, you got to be so funny and cute this episode! +10

- I felt like Moffat held back with the timey-wimeyness this episode: it could have gotten much more cluttered and stupid than some of it was, and I really appreciate that we didn't get a repeat of some of his earlier missteps. Some of it was far-fetched (and we'll get to that later) but the core of the plot - the angels, the paradox - did make sense (as much as DW ever does). +5

- The Doctor reading aloud and Amy's attitude towards that. They're a family here, guys, and it pleases me a lot. +10

- Melody Mallone! I can get on board with that. +10

(points: 165)



THE BAD:

- Let's just start right of the bat, because there are a lot of things I don't like in this episode. Here we go:

- Amy, calling out to Melody in those last moments and then asking her to please take care of the Doctor, and saying nothing more than that. Seriously, Amy, say a proper goodbye to your daughter that doesn't revolve around the Doctor. -20

- I have to take away -5 for having the Statue of Liberty be an Angel, and then hardly using it at all. Then again, people would have probably noticed a giant statue walking around if it had been used more.

- 'Just you wait 'till my husband gets home' yeah, because River can't take care of herself, clearly. -10

- The whole Doctor/River dynamic is just so... screwed up. And on one hand, I like that Moffat actually isn't ignoring this fact: the way they talk to each other is not sweet-cheeks at all, they're very harsh and River has the attitude of someone who really resents the fact that she's in love with this mad man, and the Doctor's generally just all-over the place when it comes to her. On the other hand, I sometimes get the feeling that Moffat wants this because he thinks its an attractive prospect? Which its really not. They're messed up and kinda not good for each other, but they also need each other, especially now. I'm not going to take away points for this, it's just... observations. I don't know that I want more of this dynamic because it feels like its getting nowhere: especially because we know how River's story ends.

- Why the sudden inability to walk past a frozen Angel? If you keep your eyes on it, you can walk right past it - even touch it - without anything happening. No reason to run for the roof, really. -1 only, because it was such a small detail and that staircase was kinda narrow.

- The Angels are just not scary anymore. Yeah, the babies in the cellar kind of were, but nothing beyond that. -10 for having a whole city full of Angels, and hardly using them at all

- The Doctor running in slow-motion through the park. WHAT EVEN WAS THAT. LOL I'M SORRY. Matt looks awkward running at a normal pace, in slow-motion it was RIDICOLOUS BABY GIRAFFE WITH AN ADDED LIMB. I was all teary-eyed after Amy's goodbye and then WHAM. Lololol. -10 for killing the mood

- I don't understand why the Doctor can't go back and see them. I get that New York in that period is now Time Locked or whatever (not that Moffat thinks that counts for Skaro, but then again, no canon matters but Moffat's canon -.-), but can't they just take a trip OUTSIDE of New York? I refuse to believe that the whole of Earth is Locked in this period. -20 for taking away the Ponds forever, and not giving a good enough reason imo.

- Why did Rory go back and check out that particular gravestone? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT YOU TWAT JUST GET IN THE TARDIS ADJLKDJKSLJDKSLDHDSJK. -5 for tragedy

- I think that's the end of my review. Yeah, that's... you know. I'm done now. See ya in December guys, yeah?

Points for this episode: 84

Points for the season: 528

You know,

the Ponds are gone

and they lived happily together

but they'll never see the Doctor or River again

they'll never see Brian again. or Amy's parents

and we'll never see them again either

never ever

guys, the angels don't have the phonebox

they got the ponds instead

Comments

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I liked a lot about this episode. I'm not sorry that the Ponds have finished their run, and I think they went out well--really a couple, really grown up and bonded, after all the Amy shenanigans and her desire to have both Rory and the Doctor, and so on.

I'm intrigued to see a few episodes of the Doctor traveling with River. It's time to see more of them together, to find out why they fall in love (still not seein' that), and/or why they marry. It would be good, too, to get back to the whole complication of River living backward, so that we can see the Doctor forgetting as River remembers more and more. I've always liked the idea of a romantic foil for the Doctor who isn't young and innocent; now it's time to give that pair some screentime.

But that seems to have been just dropped by Moffat lately, like so much continuity with RTD's ideas.

And I'm doubtful that Moffat can write this relationship in a way that's interesting to adults and children alike, and - especially - that treats the two as equals in a real, substantive, and complicated partnership.

You've nailed a major problem with the River/Doctor relationship. Moffat is good at writing bad relationships cleverly, documenting them as they go south (as in his old sitcom Coupling), but he has no notion of how to make an adult relationship interesting.

Individually River and the Doctor are both really compelling, complex, funny, intriguing people, but when they're together they just do a kind of surface imitation of Hepburn/Tracy banter.

But Tracy/Hepburn banter was all about the joy of attraction. The characters they played weren't just turned on by each other in every line and look, but really admiring and fascinated by one another. In River/Doctor I see zero chemistry between the two actors, especially compared with how Tennant and Kingston clicked in their last scenes in the Silence in the Library episodes.

When Eleven and River together, they seem stiff and a little awkward, as if they don't really like one another. Alex Kingston smirks, and Matt Smith looks oddly young and antic and kind of giddy. He loses all the gravitas he had in his first episodes. And tough gunslinger River immediately has helpless meltdowns when he's around. A broken wrist makes her cry? Really?

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad that we were shown Amy without doubt as well: it wasn't a choice between Rory and the Doctor, because there was no question in her mind this time, of who she wanted to pick. That part of it was very beautiful.

I'm really still not seeing the whole love-thing, and I'm afraid its not coming for us, because of their time-streams. At any given point, one of them is going to be more in love than the other, because one of them will know more than the other. Added to the fact that the Doctor knows how River is going to die, we have a whole bundle of dysfunctional and a deeply unbalanced relationship. That's why it could never work, and tbh, I preferred it when River was still in prison, sassing away and breaking out occasionally. How these two can be a stable point in each other lives... it doesn't fit with the rest of their relationship, not at all.

And to your last point: that is sadly another one of the 'a woman needs a man' that Moffat seems to be forcing down her throats ocassionally. I hate to keep pulling that card, but there we have River, strong and unyelding, yet not taking proper action until her husband shows up and tells her to :(

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

I was a little disappointed with the graveyard scene. Rory gets zapped and yes it's no question in Amy's mind as to who she belongs with. The thing that grates me is when the Doctor says "Come along Pond" for the final time, I feel that there would've been a greater showing of how much Amy has grown if she corrected him by telling him that it's Williams and then says goodbye to him. There seems to be to me how she says "Raggedy Man, Goodbye" there's still a fraction of her that has chosen the Doctor over Rory. If the point of the episode was to show Amy's love for Rory, it really didn't come across, for me.

That's not to say Amy still doesn't love the Doctor in whatever fashion she's supposed to love him. But this was supposed to be the episode where Amy grew up, she's no longer waiting, there are no doubts, and she no longer needs her imaginary friend there for her, because she has the best friend she could ever have in Rory.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm, I actually disliked that it said 'Amelia Williams' on the gravestone, tbqh, because I like the idea of the girl either keeping her own name, or the boy getting the girls name, instead of the other way around. What I find annoying, is that the 'growing up' seemed to have already happened when the Doctor first let them go in S6, so this ending feels... artificial? Just not quite right, because I had already let them go after 'The God Complex'.

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

I totally understand a girl keeping her last name. I'm so fine with that. My problem with her always going by Pond is that it seems to keep her linked to her childhood, and it was to me a sign that she still hasn't grown up. For the character of Amy accepting her last name as Williams shows she's grown up and all the pretenses she had about the Doctor are gone. I think that they dragged the Adventures of Amy and Rory too long.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry, didn't mean to go all ballistic on you :) it can be viewed from that point, and in this final ending Amy really was the grown-up - even more so than the Doctor, who wasn't ready to let her go.

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

I know, but I keep thinking about TGC and how the Doctor addressed her as Williams and not Pond, and a lot of people got upset with about how sexist it is to have a woman take her man's name to be grown up. For me that's not what I got at all in TGC. Calling her Williams to me is that he is signifying that he understands at that point she has a whole life besides him and this is him recognizing it and accepting it. In TATM I feel that she is shown to be grown up, but that one moment where I feel it really counts to show her accepting that the Doctor isn't everything there is (Rory I feel always knew this, but Amy was still starblind) and they disappoint me there. In TGC I feel when the Doctor calls her Williams and tells her it's time for them to see how them for how they really are is the moment they both accept they've grown which for me is what the entire New Who has been about. The growth of the Companion into this amazingly wonderful kickass person. And to some degree the growth of the Doctor.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

I do think thats what Moffat wanted to convey as well :)

It's such an interesting discussion - is it the Doctor's story or the Companions? The Doctor shows growth, of course, but he is also over 900 years old and there is a limited amount of growth that can happen/can be shown, as opposed to a Companion who goes through more life-changing things, and grows in a shorter span of time as well. We have Rose Tyler, who ended up universe-jumping in order to put things to right, we get Martha Jones who walked the earth, alone and scared, for a whole year and saved everyone, we've got Donna, the unimportant temp from London, becoming the most important woman in the whole universe... and now we have Amy, finally admitting what she wants most, what she cannot live without: what she wants to do with her life.

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

The thing about Rose, Martha and Donna is that they were willing to put themselves in danger or even die. I don't really remember Amy willingly putting herself in a position to really save the universe by herself. I feel that Rose, Martha and especially Donna would do anything it took to save the universe. Amy grates on me nerves so much. She has her moments when I adore her and Karen is amazing, but Amy is so ugh! I want to slap you. I was honestly far more upset all the times Rory died more than I was with Amy.

I think that Ten's companions would never run away out of fear, but I think that if she were really offered the option she'd run and never look back.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Also notice how often Amy had to be rescued by the Doctor and Rory (without at least attempting to break out herself, or at least not being the least bit succesfull in this) compared to Donna, Rose and Martha. Actually, I can't remember one time when Amy blatantly saves the Doctor's life (I know we have her remembering him at the end of S5, but actual harrowing, jump-in-front-of-the-bullet-for-you as nearly all the other Companions have done in Nu!Who). It gets very frustrating when she's hailed as this symbol of feminity, and then she's reduced to a damsel and then a mother who appears to not care that much about her child (the writing for that was just horrible. Amy should not be accepting what happened to River/Melody. She should be tearing the universe apart and not caring about anything else but her daughter imo)