Head. Desk. · 10:03am Jan 17th, 2013
Excuse me, folks. I need to slam my forehead into a solid object a few more times.
... Right, well, then. I'm all caught up with Doctor Who now, barring a few specials. Plowed through season six--which I greatly enjoyed, much better than season five--and the first half of season seven. I was a little alarmed going in, having read that head writer Steven Moffat was trying to move away from the overarching seasonal plotlines and two-part episodes of previous NewWho seasons, and instead make every episode a stand-alone adventure. But hey, "Asylum of the Daleks" was fun, even if Amy and Rory's relationship troubles could have used considerably more time to flesh out, "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" was brilliant and seemed like the kind of story Eleven should be starring in more often, "A Town Called Mercy" was a western with a teleporting cyborg cowboy, and these are all things relevant to my interests, and "The Power of Three" was good, though it would have been better as a two-parter--I wanted to see more of the Doctor as the Ponds' roomate, and a little more explanation of the big bad would have been appreciated.
And then I got to "The Angels Take Manhattan," and that's about when I started headbutting my furniture.
What. The. Hell. Seriously, what.
Spoilers ahead--hehe, I have to give Doctor Who spoiler warnings now, go me--for those of you who've been following along on Netflix.
So. A baby weeping angel in modern-day Manhattan zaps Rory back to 1938. This is good! Angels doing their creepy time-zapping angelly thing, I can get behind this. The Doctor and Amy, following a sexy noir detective novel/episode transcription written by River, have trouble getting back to 1938 due to an excess of temporal distortions, because the angels have been feeding quite a lot, but eventually get through at only moderate risk to the entirety of existence. There, they meet River, who's a professor now and therefore pre-Silence in the Library" but post-everything else. All good so far.
Except for the part where no one ever told Rory about weeping angels. I would have thought that might have come up at some point, what with Amy almost being killed by them, but maybe it never came up. So he gets zapped again by some baby angels in the basement, but instead of going back in time, he's sent to a hotel the angels have apparently taken over for use as a farm. There, he meets his elderly self, who dies shortly thereafter. The Doctor (arriving with Amy and River) explains that the angels are using the hotel as a farm. Renewable food sources. Except, uh. How the hell is that renewable? The angels feed off potential energy, hence why they zap people into the past. But what they're doing at the hotel is zapping people into the past and then forcing them to grow old there, apparently zapping them back to their rooms whenever they try to escape. But... simply teleporting someone shouldn't be creating potential energy for them to feed on. That's specifically why they zap people backwards in time. Just moving someone back to their room seems like it should expend energy. And they clearly don't keep zapping them further back into time when they escape, because both Rory and the P.I. guy at the beginning meet their elderly selves, and they would have already been long dead if they'd been continually zapped back and... argh.
Also, the Statue of Liberty is a weeping angel. Which seems like it should literally be no problem at all, because I can guarantee you that between tourists and security, there is someone watching Lady Liberty 99.9% of the time. Plus, when it moves, it goes slowly stomping around the still-lit and obviously populated city like a stone Godzilla, creating tons of noise and--one would think--drawing attention from the folks it passes by. Plus, what's the point?! Why is there a giant weeping angel? It has to require exponentially more food than normal angels, which is probably why they have a farm that doesn't actually produce any more food than just zapping people would, and it's never actually shown what it does, except that maybe it's the one responsible for the zap that sends people back in time to be imprisoned in the hotel, but in that case, why doesn't it just zap regular people instead of going to all the trouble, especially since it must be immune to the usual "turn to stone when observed" survival instinct of regular angels, and... gah. Arrrgh. Head. Hurting.
So then, Amy and Rory decide that the only way to escape the angels is to create a paradox via Rory's death, and they jump off the building, go splat, and wake up in a graveyard with the Doctor and River. Yay, happy! (Apparently, the Reapers are taking the day off, but that's a whole different line of niggling continuity.) The Doctor says that, thanks to all the timey-wimey nonsense back there, he'll never be able to return to 1938 again. And then, an angel that somehow survived the paradox pops out of nowhere and zaps Rory again, just after he reads his own tombstone saying he died in 1981. And Amy gives a tearful goodbye to her daughter and son-in-law and lets the angel zap her, too. And then the Doctor and River apparently leave the weeping angel that just killed their friends in the middle of a New York graveyard, because reasons.
So. Question.
Why don't they go back for Rory and Amy?! Sure, they can't go back to 1938, but what about 1939? 1940? Hell, it's not like the Doctor hasn't left them alone for years at a time already. They're smart kids adults in their early 30's, they'll be fine. Even if he can't go to New York directly, what's stopping him from going to New Jersey? Or, hell, going to Chicago and taking a train? Or going to Beijing and chartering a boat? Sure, long trip, little boring, but it's your best friends in the universe, you bow tie-clad doof!
Oh, right. Rory read his grave, so that's a fixed point in time now. Two things: one, what's stopping the Doctor from picking Rory and Amy up, dropping them off in their normal time period, and then bringing them back to 1981 before Rory dies? Second, and perhaps more important, regarding that whole "fixed point in time" thing... the Doctor just escaped his own preordained death with a robot/miniature space ship duplicate! HE knew his date of death--to the second!--and yet was able to circumvent it by being clever. Saving Rory and Amy requires only a fraction of that genius! You can even do it without creating a paradox, as outlined above!
Oh, wait. Three things. Who's to say the gravestone is even real and/or accurate?
Plus, River has her time vortex manipulator! Which has been clearly shown previous to be able to carry multiple passengers, and, according to her, is better for navigating rough temporal waters! Why can't she go rescue them?! They're her gorram parents! She can even do it without consulting the Doctor first, because she's River freakin' Song, and she doesn't need his gorram permission!
Finally, the urine-soaked icing on the fecal cake: it was a goddamn anticlimactic sendoff to two of the best and longest-running companions in the show's history. Bad episode, bad writing, bad sendoff. Especially coming on the heels of "The Power of Three," which would have been a much better stopping point for the two of them. They could have just said their goodbyes and bowed out on a high note, rather than being subjected to this massive, steaming anticlimax.
Steven Moffat, thank you for "Blink" and "Silence in the Library." But you should not have been put in charge of this show. And stop writing weeping angels episodes, you're just making them dumber and less scary every time you use them.
Sigh.
On the other hand, "The Snowmen" was pretty great.
Never watched Doctor Who, but I've always been under the impression it was... well... for lack of a better phrase, 'well thought out and depthful.' I join you in your head-desk.
This sounds good to me, actually. You can have a loose, wibbly-wobbly approach to continuity, or you can have season-long story arcs, but not both.
Yup. The Angels Take Manhattan was pretty much terrible.
Because DRAMA. I agree, expanding Power of Three into a two-parter would have been a great way to end the series, but this episode was really aimed at being emotionally dramatic. At least the statue of liberty had the grace to be completely ridiculous.
Yeaaaaahhhhh. Mofat does some pretty good stand-alone stories. I'm not so impressed with his overarching direction so far. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because there have always been bad episodes (Love & Monsters, The Twin Dilema, Planet of Giants, etc.). However, if he wants to be focused more on stand-alones, he needs more guest writers to come in and do one-offs.
720045
It almost always is, or at least does a good enough job of suspending my disbelief that I don't notice any glaring plot holes. Which is probably why I find "Angels Take Manhattan" so blisteringly awful.
720094
True, but doing away with two-part episodes seems like a headslappingly bad idea. Most of NewWho's best episodes were two-parters; the only really good standalones I can think of are "Blink" and "The Doctor's Wife." Having two hours instead of one gives the characters (and their actors) more room to breathe and gives the writers a better chance to build a compelling story. Something I've noticed about this season--and, really, Moffat's whole run--is that a lot of the things that Russel T. Davies would have shown on screen, like the Doctor reacting to a tragedy or loss, get shunted off-screen and happen between episodes. This gives Matt Smith more time to run around being wacky, which is fine, but it robs him of the emotional depth that Eccleston and Tennant got to show.
720651
Yeah, two-parters are fine.
GRRR. Okay, calm down.
I am sad we disagree here Kavonde. I really love Moffat's showrunning, though he has had some hiccups. His tenure so far has had far fewer bad episodes than RTD's did. I heavily disagree on Angel's Take Manhatten, but that's okay. It's a story built on emotion and acting more than logic. Yeah, plotholes abound. Doesn't stop me from crying every time I see it. I will mention though: you can't judge a showrunner by the episodes they write during their showrunning. Yeah, Moffat was WAY better when he wasn't. That's because his new job means a lot more work, and less time to specially craft stories that are essentially filler. And the episodes he DOES write are WAY better than the ones RTD did during his tenure. (Daleks Take Manhatten and Love & Monsters anypony?) I love the direction the show's going in, and I'm excited for more.
721418
Well, it's obviously a matter of opinion, and no one's going to convince anyone of anything, so I s'pose we'll just agree to disagree. About "Angels Take Manhattan," though, I get that it's more about emotions than logic, and normally I'm totally fine with that, but the logic is so bad that it actively ruins the emotional aspect for me. By not addressing any of the problems with the episode's premise, the Doctor and River seem to be willfully ignoring all of the potential solutions and just leaving Amy and Rory to rot. I can't reconcile that with the characterization of these people so far--they're not stupid, they're not evil, they're not callous, they've never seemed to secretly hate the Ponds--and so the emotional impact that Amy and Rory's departures should have is erased.
Maybe it helped that I watched the show in bulk, rather than having to wait weeks or months between episodes. Even the weaker RTD episodes--and yeah, "Love & Monsters" was pretty terrible--were eclipsed by all the great seasonal arcs. The flip side of the coin is that, while Moffat may have a lot of solid episodes under his belt, the lackluster seasonal arcs make the disappointing episodes stand out more and leave sort of a general miasma of "meh" in comparison.
Also, quick point of contention: RTD's credited as writing all of the season finales he was around for, and they were all amazing. Let's not go dismissing his entire body of work because he wrote an oral sex joke about a concrete slab.
Besides, I liked "Evolution of the Daleks."
722665
Really? I liked most of the season enders, but the same is true of all the Moffat ones too. I think it has less to do with the writing and more to do with the epic conclusion to the season. I haven't disliked a single season ender yet. But I can respect that. And again, I'd take the amazing acting and good enough story of Angels in Manhatten over Power of Three's BOREDOM any day of the week.
Yeah, I did have a few problems with that episode too, I felt like his explanation of knowing your own future and why he couldn't save them was a little lacking. As for the angels themselves.... you're right Lady Liberty =/= weeping angel... that was stupid, but the rest are fine, as for their food source, they feed on time energy, and I don't see why that is an issue, they don't JUST feed on the potential energy of a person's future 'lost' years, they do that, but remember the crack in time? They fed off that just fine... well, until it ate them... and I believe it is elsewhere implied that they feed off of the 'time energy' released from small scale paradoxes like the ones they were creating that prevented the Tardis from returning.
You know, now that I think about it, didn't Tennant visit the big apple shortly after that? I distinctly remember the Daleks recruiting pig aliens to build the empire state building at about this time.... shouldn't the Tardis have been unable to get there?
I'm also curious about the new companion, the snowmen timeline life of hers seemed pretty damn infatuated with him, will the new be the same way? and how is River going to react to that?
722671
I liked both of those...
Also, admit it: the Doctor on the Wii was pretty funny.