doctor who: the angels take manhattan

[usuallyhats]

Short version: in the end, not terribly impressed.

To be fair, the iPlayer kept buffering, which didn't really enhance the watching experience, but I thought it was pretty great... up until "Amelia Williams". NOPE. THAT IS NOT HER NAME. And once I was angry about that, I got annoyed that the reasons for not being able to go back for Rory made no sense: they might not have been able to go back to New York, but surely they could've gone to, say, Philadelphia and pinched another car. And the gravestone's easily dealt with: there's not necessarily anyone actually IN that grave. Bah. Those two things basically killed the episode for me: I was just starting to cry when that stupid "Amelia Williams" appeared and I started swearing instead. So we now have a complete set of New Who companion departures I've disliked. And it's all the same problem - refusing to allow the Doctor and his companions to just go their separate ways, without having to have them be separated! forever! Why can't we have companions who go "that was fun, but we've had enough now"? And "we jumped off a building together and are now slightly traumatised" would be an EXCELLENT reason to want to call it a day.

(I was really hoping that they weren't going to go the "Amy and Rory are sent back in time" route, also, because what about Brian, and Amy's parents, and their awesome life we saw last week?)

THERE WAS SO MUCH GOOD STUFF IN THAT EPISODE WHY DID THEY HAVE TO FUMBLE IT AT THE LAST MINUTE ARGH.

This entry was originally posted at http://shinyjenni.dreamwidth.org/190623.html.

Comments

[usuallyhats]

I haven't seen Blink since it first aired, but nobody seemed to think there'd be a problem rescuing Rory when he first got Angeled, so I assume that in principle getting Amy and Rory back would be ok... the only issue would be that the gravestone would have to be there for them to see it, and that could be easily done. I thought the life they would've had was only erased because they weren't there to have it?

I'm glad that the actors got the ending they wanted, and I'm glad that Amy and Rory ended up alive and together, but apart from that, I was disappointed.

[airie-fairy.livejournal.com]

What makes me angry is the people who are responding in annoyance at the people DARING to be annoyed at "Williams," because for a man to take his wife's last name is a sacrifice, but a woman taking her husband's is just natural, you know.

[usuallyhats]

D: It's not even Amy taking Rory's name that I mindso much, though I'm not thrilled about it: it's the way her taking his name is framed (here and in The God Complex) as being a sign that she's grown up and settled down and put away childish things. Ugh.

[airie-fairy.livejournal.com]

I was even okay with it in The God Complex, because it was part of a bunch of stuff the Doctor said to upset her, and from her face when he said it she looked upset. But here it was this positive, accepted thing, and I'm sitting there going GRAVE. So I lost her on multiple levels.

[usuallyhats]

And we don't even get to see if Amy and Rory discussed it at all - it's just presented as being obviously what she would do. :/

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

What irks me is that Moffat's tried to make the Angels ever more menacing and scary (as if the idea of them zapping you back into the past and stealing your life energy and making you live to death WASN'T menacing enough!) - and as a consequence they've got less and less menacing and more and more inconsistent and Swiss-cheesey...

[usuallyhats]

I thought there were some nice twists this episode, like the Angel's farm, and the atmosphere was great, but yeah, the holes are getting bigger... And I think the Statue of Liberty being an Angel is one of those things that sounds great on paper but falls apart as soon as you actually try and do it!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I mean when is the SoL ever going to be NOT being looked at - especially once it *starts* moving?!

[wils.livejournal.com]

I was struck by the driving-from-Philadelphia theory too, but then again wouldn't the Doctor's reading of the final page of River's novel (Amy's afterword, it went something along the lines of 'we will never meet again') have created a fixed point which cannot be changed, and hence no more possibility of rescues / meetups ...? Same thing with the Doctor seeing their gravestone - makes their deaths a fixed point.

My thoughts :)

[usuallyhats]

True, but I don't think it would've been a fixed point until someone read it, though, would it? And just because he saw the gravestone doesn't mean they were necessarily buried there, or that they got there in a linear way... I did like the way the "last page" thing worked out, but I felt like the only reason the Doctor couldn't go back for them was because Moffat had decided he couldn't, if you see what I mean?