Doctor Who 7.5 "The Angels Take Manhattan" Review

"New York: the city of a million stories.  Half of them are true, the other half just haven't happened yet.  Statutes the man said, living statutes that moved in the dark."  Garner (Rob David) is a PI who is paid $25 a day plus expenses.  Grayle (Mike McShane) asks of he believes in statutes that can move.  Only they can't move when you look at them.  "The address was an apartment block near Battery Park he said it was where the statues lived.  I asked him why he didn't look himself.  He didn't answer.  Grayle was the scariest guy I knew.  If something scared him I kind of wanted to shake its hand."  'S Garner' on the door but it wasn't his place, not yet anyway.  There's an old man in the bed who is Garner.  "They're coming for you - they're gonna send you back in time...I am you."  'The Dying Detective"  is typed on the typewriter.  Statue of Liberty is behind him on the roof.

The  Doctor (Matt Smith) reads aloud from a book "...packing cleavage..."  Amy (Karen Gillan) doesn't want him to read aloud.  The book is written by Melody Malone PI in New York.  Did anyone think Melody as in River when he said that name.  Amy doesn't like him saying "Yowza" either.  Rory (Arthur Darvilll) adds only the Doctor "could fancy someone in a book."   Something's different about Amy, her glasses.  The Doctor says they "make her eyes look liney."  Rory tries to be diplomatic; saying "yes/no, not noticing them."  They kiss and the Doctor finds it humiliating when they do that.

He tries her glasses on, but hey her glasses were square rimmed, not round like he wears!  She wants him to read to her and he tears out the last page, "then it doesn't have to end.  I hate endings."  He reads: "...saw the thin guy..." i.e Rory.  Who meets River (Alex Kingston) "hello dad."  She doesn't know how he got here.  She is Melody!  The Doctor found the book in his jacket.

The year is April 3rd 1938 and River didn't come in the TARDIS since there are many time distortions in the city.  She used a vortex manipulator, "it's less bulky than a TARDIS.  Well she always used one of those.  It's impossible to land the TARDIS here.  Amy mentions weeping angels in a cemetery.  The Doctor explains the weeping angels take them back in time but Amy says they didn't start out in a graveyard.  On Page 43 she tells him he's going to break something. She has to stop reading ahead and "if you find that Rory dies...once we know it's coming, it's fixed."  Amy tells him time can be rewritten.  That's his line, he knows that, but it can't, not once you've read it - it's written in stone."  As in Rory's headstone which reads: " In loving memory Rory Arthur Williams."  Why did the Doctor refer to Rory dying, he could have said anything but he utters that specific phrase.

The Doctor needs landing lights.  The vase River looks at in Grayle's mansion is early Ming dynasty.  Rory can translate the Chines letters.  River tells him "a gift of the TARDIS hangs around."  Rory is looked with the babies, ie. cherubs and is given some matches.  China 221 BC, the Doctor has permission from the emperor to be here.  "Yowzah" is written on the vase and River says, "hello sweetie."

Grayle doesn't want anyone to see what's behind the curtain and turns out to be a weeping angel.  She sends the Doctor a message, "yowzah" and he locks onto the signal.  The angel grabs River's wrist.  River: "just you wait until my husband gets home."  The Doctor does a "final check" and fixes himself up for her.  "Sorry I'm late honey, traffic was hell."  He asks, "where now Dr Song?"
River: "it's Professor Song to you."  She was pardoned and there's no record of his death.  His existence, he deleted himself from every database."  The doctor replies River said he got too big.
River: "didn't you used to be somebody?"
Doctor: "weren't you the woman who killed the Doctor?"
River: "Doctor Who?"  Oh not that again!

She asks why he must break her wrist. Amy read it in her book and he has no choice.  River hasn't written it yet so they can't read it. River doesn't like the cover, but she was dressed like that when she came in.  Amy suggests they can read the chapter titles.  Chapter 11 Death at Winter Quay.  The Doctor is frantic when he reads Chapter 12 Amelia's Last Farewell.  Which is meant to be in reference to her last farewell to Rory, but in fact it isn't that at all!  He tells River to get her wrist out without breaking it and change the future.

Amy can't find Rory and he's disappeared from the cellar.  He's at Winter Quay.  He's been moved in space but not in time.  River got out but she doesn't tell him she broke her wrist after all and did change the future, kind of.  River: "that's marriage honey."   So she's not that good as he says she is. Why lie to him anyway?  he asks.  River: "When one's in love with an ageless god who insists on the face of a 12 year old...hide the damage."  The Doctor replies it must hurt.  River: "yes, the wrist is pretty bad too."  He heals her wrist using regeneration energy and she slaps him for wasting it.  She tells Amy to " ...never ever let him see you age, he doesn't like endings."

The door reads 'R Williams' now and old Rory "just died."  'Death at Winter Quay' is typed.  People get zapped back in time and creates time energy and the angels feed on it and send them back feeding off their time energy, like a  battery farm (at Battery Park.)  New York is the city that never sleeps.  There's plenty of food source and they're coming for Rory.  They will zap him back here and he will live here forever in that room until he dies in that bed.  Amy wasn't there cos he was pleased to see her.  Rory thinks he can run.  The Doctor tells him it's already happened.

River says if Rory got out it would create a paradox, the whole place would never have happened.  The Doctor says they need power for that.  Amy says they've got her. (The power of love.) They will run forever.  Amy: "husband run."
River: "husband shut up."  Hey the Doctor says that, shut up a lot that is.  They run.  Rory always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty.  He wants to jump over the edge so he will "die twice on the same building on the same night" creating a paradox.  Killing the angels.  Amy wants to jump with him.  Rory asks "when doesn't he come back to life."  Dying is better than old age without Amy.  "To save you I could do anything."  Amy wants him to prove it and take her with him.  Amy: "changing the future, it's called marriage."

They all end up at the cemetery again after they both jump.  The Doctor says they collapsed the timeline and "came back here where we belong."  Rory asks in a cemetery?  The Doctor hugs them and doesn't want them to do that again.  Rory looks at the gravestone which now reads: "Rory Arthur Williams Age 82."  Rory disappears and there's an angel pointing to the gravestone.  The angel is a survivor.  The Doctor says he's in that New York apartment.  River calls Amy 'mother.'  Amy wonders if there's room for another name and will the angel send her back to the same time.  River adds it's her best shot, all she has to do is blink.  "Me and Rory together" it's where she belongs.

The Doctor is despondent and doesn't want her to go, she'll be creating fixed time.  "I will never see you again!"  He was being selfish, well he had to be, also for us too.  Amy: "raggedy man, goodbye."  The gravestone now reads "and his loving wife Amelia Williams Age 87."  Inside the TARDIS the Doctor apologizes to River, they were her parents.  "Sorry, didn't think."  River says it doesn't matter.  What matters is he shouldn't travel alone, as Amy says.

River can travel with him but not all the time.  She will send the book to Amy to get published so she'll get Amy to write him an 'Afterward.'  'Maybe he'll listen to her.'  He recalls the last page, as did we and it's still there in the picnic basket, as is the basket!

Amy: "afterwards by Amelia Williams.  Hello old friend and here we are.  You and me on the last page.  By the time you read these words Rory and I will be long gone.  So know that we lived well and were very happy and above all else know that we will love you always.  Sometimes I do worry about you though.  I think once we're gone you won't be be coming back here for a while and you may be alone which you should never be.  Don't be alone Doctor.  And do one more thing for me.  There's a little girl in the garden.  She's going to wait a long while, so she's going to need a lot of hope.  Go to her, tell her a story.  Tell her if she's patient the days are coming which she'll never forget.  Tell her she'll go to sea and fight pirates.  She'll fall in love with a man who'll wait 2,000 years to keep her safe.  She'll give hope to the greatest painter ever lives and save a whale in outer space.  Tell her this is the story of Amelia Pond and this is how it ends."

Oh but we don't want it to end.  Did that have you in tears?  SO that's how the Ponds, Williams actually, left the show.  At least they didn't get killed off as most were expecting but got to live and get old.  Only live apart from the Doctor which is what he couldn't stand and didn't want.  That's what happens when you get to close to companions, but he needs them around.  So did anyone tell Rory's dad?

River somehow always ends up in a black dress somewhere doesn't she, re black dress with the Daleks in Manhattan.  Anyhoo, in the afterwards Amy refers to the episodes: The Eleventh Hour, The Curse of the Black Spot, The Big Bang, Vincent and the Doctor, The Beast Below.  Steven Moffat said he "completely changed" the ending he was writing and Karen Gillan cried when she read the script, that is when she got round to reading it.

Don't think Amy and Rory could have ever been killed off as they were rather well loved companions and though they were separated from the Doctor, they could never be apart from each other, after everything they went through.  It took the Doctor to bring them together in Asylum of the Daleks after that ridiculous divorce they were going through and they couldn't be apart now and not for all his woeful pleadings either, he would have realized that eventually.

Most of the filming took place in Central Park in April 2012, including some night filming.  The cemetery was in Llanelli, Wales and other shots were filmed at Bristol and Cardiff Universities.  Have to complain that Rory didn't get much of a send off being taken back like that and Amy didn't hesitate in wanting to join him.  She didn't want to stay with her raggedy old Doctor, no matter how much he wanted Amy to stay.  It was Amy's choice and she chose Rory - always.  SO much emotion and sadness and yet River never flinched even if the emotion showed in her face.  She knew how strong love is and she wanted Amy to be with Rory for as much as River loves the Doctor.

River and her vortex manipulator, could she visit them with it.  Even if she could 'send' Amy her book, where would she send it.  Not to that hotel since the hotel no longer existed cos of the paradox that Rory and Amy created when they jumped.  So when the angel sent Rory back, was he was presumably sent back to the same time and year but not the hotel, and Amy too.  So they wouldn't be stuck in that hotel together if it was destroyed.

A fixed point in time cannot be changed as we saw in the Impossible Astronaut and the Doctor's Death.  Tine can't be rewritten once you've read about it, that's a new one and River didn't mention her "spoilers" as she did non-stop before.  Oh and the flickering lights in the hotel when Rory went there.  But why did he go there and what made him enter it to begin with?

River being concerned the Doctor was using his regeneration energy on her why?  But hey she was/is his wife. Also River correcting him, she's not a Doctor but a Professor, as she was when we first met her in Silence in the Library.  No mention of him no longer not being able to recall her.  Maybe another time, as this was definitely Amy's story.  Yet he will travel to see the little girl in the garden won't he.

As for Chapter 12 Amelia's Last Farewell, this didn't turn out to be for Rory but to the Doctor as she bid her raggedy Doctor goodbye forever.  So much emotion exuded from all the cast but Matt's portrayal of the Doctor just gets better with age.  No pun there.

River and her line of "texting a boy."  Also great to see Amy finally calling herself Williams and not Pond, showing she embraced her life, both their lives in the end.  Karen cried in that final scene in the cemetery for real. We'll miss our fave companions Amy/Rory, Karen/Arthur!!

Can't help but think PI Sam Garner was named for James Garner, the actor who played Jim Rockford PI in The Rockford Files.  They always used to mention his expenses in that, though it was $200 a day plus expenses.  The first name Sam probably cos of Sam Spade, fictional PI in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon novel.

Also when the Doctor tried on Amy's glasses they were round rimmed, Amy's were square rimmed and when he read the book they were still round rimmed glasses!  Just like the ones Matt Smith wore in Bertie and Dickie!

Some parts of this episode drew me back to the season 6 ep The God Complex. Amy saw herself in one of the room sin the hotel as Amelia waiting for the Doctor with her suitcase.  he tells Amy he's not a hero, that it's time she stopped waiting for him.  Which she finally did and even more so here.  Also Rory says, "not all victories are about saving the universe."  This one was clearly about saving Rory or even Amy but seems strange how the Doctor was unable to do that here, as he always has come up with some plan in the past.

 In 6.11 The God Complex, the weeping angels were also in one of the rooms and the Doctor reassures Amy they weren't real when he puts his hand through them.  Amy: "don't blink."  Here she does "blink" and in some ways this could be seen as a piece of foreshadowing here - that she and the others come across the angels again and it is them who separate the Doctor from his beloved companions forever.  In 6.11, the Doctor also tells Amy he's just a mad man in a box and here River alludes to not having two psychopaths  in the TARDIS at the same time.  In 6.11 the Doctor also acknowledged Amy as Amy Williams.  She went on to call herself Amy Williams when she was reunited with Rory.