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

[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 :)