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

[turquoiseyes.livejournal.com]

I think the time paradox they created when they died sent the Angels away and the one that zapped them back to 1938 again was "a survivor" as Doctor says when he first zaps Rory back :) And he probably survived by jumping forward to that graveyard in NY in 2012.

So the 1938 New York should be back to normal, just locked away from the Doctor as a fixed point in time...

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

I suppose; it just bugs me that this, something that should be a major plotpoint, isn't explained within the context of the show. It frustrates me, because in my head there's nothing stopping the Doctor from getting to Amy and Rory, really, so there's all that drama for nothing (:

[turquoiseyes.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what you get when someone, and I'm not pointing any fingers(*cough*Moffat*cough*), bites of more than they can chew.

I'd almost given up on the show after witnessing him mucking up some things that were previously quite straight forward but I persevered along with you lot and nowadays just go along with the flow and use more of my "reading between the lines" power, since it seems someone likes to play artistic and leave things half-said and half-done, figuring we'll get it...eventually.

I just hope he actually has a way of tying up all the loose ends he created...no matter how late in the game the tying up occurs.

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

YES! There are so many loose ends. With RTD he always tried to tie up the loose ends into neat little packages. Like Bad Wolf, it's a message specifically for Rose and the Doctor that something bad is going to happen, majority of the time it's the Daleks.

I know he said time is a big ball, but things get to muddled and the joy of watching the show is kind of taken away when they keep revisiting moments and changing them. Example of that is when little Amy asks the Doctor if she could travel with him and she goes out and wait, I love that in Big Bang one of the last things he did was pick Amy up, put her to bed and tells her the bedtime story of all bedtime stories. And with TATM it kind of muddles that, because Amy asks him to go back and tell her a story when he already did.

Another loose end is that Amy was so lonely without her parents. She brings them back and then we hear nothing of them all series 6 and the episodes they were in in series 7.

[turquoiseyes.livejournal.com]

Exactly! RTD's way of doing things even reminded me slightly of Lost and how what seemed like just a simple little thing would turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg in the end. It even ties in with the "time is a big ball..." and we'd realise that that's why we couldn't see the way point A connected with point B because there was too much of a curve between them!

Yeah, it feels like Moffat tried to imitate RTD's way of tying up things, not realising that he tied one story's ending twice(like what you said with BB and TATM). I guess he lost the count...? Or something?

Though, that makes one of the theories I've seen floating around more probable-- the theory that everything that's happened in the last five episodes was shown in the reverse order and is actually going from ending to beginning, rather than from beginning to ending. Now, if it turns out that at some point the Pond story line started being told backwards, all of this would make much more sense...Sort of.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Haha, I like the idea that he lost count ;)

Well, we do know that 'The Power of Three' took place before 'A Town Called Mercy'. In 'A Town Called Mercy', the Doctor calls Rory out for leaving the charger for his phone in King Henry VIII's bedroom and when the Doctor takes them on their anniversary-trips in 'The Power of Three', we see our heroes hiding in said King's bedroom, with Rory's phone-charger lying on the floor beside them.

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

For me with RTD one simple thing sparking this huge thing I never saw coming was awesome. RTD was all about the little details. And when you go back to watch previous episodes, you feel like an idiot you didn't see it before. RTD was able to make the little things, when the huge red button appear, spark and you see the little links/hints to it.

In a way I feel that Moffat is sometimes like a child trying to build this huge sandcastle and then he gets overwhelmed or distracted by how awesome he thinks something is that he either drops it off too soon and says accept it because I said so, or he loses the direction he was originally going to take it. An example is in TIA fans knew way before TWoRS that it was River in the spacesuit. RTD had a way of making you think one thing and then surprising you by what it actually was. With BAD WOLF, it was everywhere you knew it had to mean something, then halfway you dismiss it because the characters do and it turns out to be something huge.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

In a way I feel that Moffat is sometimes like a child trying to build this huge sandcastle and then he gets overwhelmed or distracted by how awesome he thinks something is that he either drops it off too soon and says accept it because I said so, or he loses the direction he was originally going to take it.
Exactly! There is so much potential in his stories - and in his characters - but he just takes it too far. RTD was much more subtle, and while his stories certainly had plotholes, he still managed to tie it into a nice loop instead of a bundle of different strings mucked together, like Moffat does.

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

Every writer is going to have plotholes. The skill of the writer is making the viewer or even reader overlook them. And RTD would sometimes revisit those plotholes and fill them up. Like with leaving Jack behind after PotW, if you haven't seen the Children in Need special you have no clue why he didn't go back or why they couldn't go back or even if Rose really remembered Jack. At that time RTD was thinking ahead to Torchwood. Moffat's plotholes are more like land-mines.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Precisely :)

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Right! And I mean, with RTD there were still plenty of plotholes, but the overall plot made sense (as much sense as Who ever makes).

It takes the fun out of guessing, of thinking you have any clue what is going to happen. It's great to be taken by surprise sometimes, but when it keeps happening without any form of emotional character balance, it becomes redundant and boring.

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

Doomsday and Journey's End were the two that took me by surprise. Doomsday because Rose gets sucked into the parallel world. She comes back home and you're like YES! and you're sad cause she'll never see her family again, but you know the Doctor's worth it. Then nope guess what she's stuck there. Journey's End Rose fights her way back to the Doctor doing things we have no clue, I can't imagine how physically tiring it must be to be ripped for one reality, one time to another. And then the Doctor leaves Rose once again in Pete's World. But this time it's really okay because she has a part of him that no one else does, she gets to have the one adventure the Doctor can never have with a part of him, something even River can't do. (The two of them are going backwards, for River the glory days have happened and she approaching the end of them.) As for the Doctor you know he's gonna be okay cause he has the Doctor Donna and then nope that gets taken away. For me that is still one of the saddest and most heartbreaking way a companion could ever leave.

RT was able to use surprise properly. He left little hints all over the place, shoved back in the corner, sometimes right smack in your face. Moffat has to yet capture that for Doctor Who. Personally I think he's done a great job with Sherlock and I'm thoroughly please by it. There was a point that I was dying to see Doctor Who. But now I'm like, well it'll be up on-demand later, or it'll repeat, I don't have the same urge or desire to see it when it's actually on. With Moffat a lot of times the secondary characters have more depth to them than the primary ones. RTD did the same thing, but those episodes were for the secondary characters and not really the primary ones, because RTD understood the impact that the companions and the Doctor have on others without meaning too. Moffat seems to try and contain the primary characters most of the time. I really wanted to see Jeff come back. He was in one episode and then nothing else. Moffat tends to drop off characters.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Oh god, now I can't even remember who Jeff was???

[londonmarie.livejournal.com]

He was Amy's good looking friend in the Eleventh Hour who help the Doctor and all the big wigs use the virus the Doctor wrote to reset every clock, every digital thing everything to Zero to point to the Atraxi that Prisoner Zero was indeed on planet earth, and they'd track the source of the virus back to the Doctor. That's the only episode he was in, and when Amy and Rory got married he wasn't even at the reception neither was Jeff's grandmother.

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Oooh, right! Yeah, it would have been nice to see him again :)

[keep-counting.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I'm still hoping he ties them up, but tbh, I don't think he can/will. He has a very bad habit of just leaving things there, and ignoring them when they don't serve the purpose of his story anymore.