The Angels Take Manhattan

Melody... you look after him; and you be a good girl and you look after him.

The Angels Take Manhattan is the much hyped dismissal of Rory and Amy. I say much hyped because all of Season 7A was a very drawn out notice on the fact that they were leaving. This story hits you pretty well in all the right emotional points but there are elements where plot and emotional convenience cause things to fall by the wayside.

Plot Summary

A detective named Sam Garner is engaged by a rich mobster named Mr. Grayle. He is given an address to a building called Winter Quay and makes his way there, warned to beware of moving statues. Garner enters the building and finds an old version of himself lying in a bed. He runs but is blocked by a group of Weeping Angels. He runs to the roof where he is captured by an angel in the form of the Statue of Liberty.

In 2012, the Doctor, Rory and Amy are relaxing in Central Park, the Doctor reading a book he found in his pocket about a detective named Melody Malone. He rips out the last page and places it in their picnic basket, not wanting the story to end. Rory decides to go out and get coffee. He does but on his way back, he hears a strange noise. In a darkened portion of the park, he is attacked and transported back to 1938 where he comes face to face with River Song.

As he reads, the Doctor sees his, Amy and Rory's name in the book and how Rory disappeared while getting coffee. They go to search for him but find nothing. They then run to the TARDIS with Amy peeking ahead to get a date. The Doctor tries to land in 1938 but the angels have made so many manipulations of the time stream that the TARDIS is bounced out and they land in a graveyard outside the city back in 2012.

A confused Rory and River are taken by gunmen to the home of Mr. Grayle. Grayle, not interested in Rory, orders him locked in the basement. River is brought to the study where she finds a chained angel. Noting an odd translation on a piece of Chinese porcelain, she transmits the word through her vortex manipulator. Grayle flicks the lights, allowing the angel to grab River by the wrist. Grayle then demands to know everything about the angels.

Amy reads a bit more in the book, revealing that Grayle's house has several examples of Chin Dynasty. The two of them travel back to a porcelain house in the Chin dynasty to send the message. The Doctor also chastises Amy as she reads further along, noting that if she reads it, it will become a fixed point in time. They then receive the word signal from River that he had the painters put on several pieces in Chinese. He follows the signal, creating a large disturbance as he rips through the time distortions surrounding the period.

In the basement, Rory is in the dark and hears skittering around. He lights a match, given by one of the gunmen and sees small stone cherubs looking at him. He lights another match and notes that they have moved closer to him. He tries to back away but is trapped against a wall. He lights another match, only to have it blown out by a cherub next to him. He then vanishes from the dark basement.

As the TARDIS arrives in Grayle's home, there is an electrical discharge which knocks Grayle out. The Doctor finds River while Amy searches for Rory. He is dismayed to learn that he must either break River's wrist or the Angel's just as Amy read. Amy proposes reading the chapter titles of the book to learn things without risking spoilers. However, the Doctor becomes enraged when he reads the title of the last chapter "Amelia's Farewell" and angrily orders River to think of another way to escape the Angel's grasp.

The Doctor follows Amy and pulls her back from the basement, seeing a dropped book of matches and stone cherubs around. River emerges, trying to disguise the fact that she broke her own wrist to escape. They figure they can track Rory's signal as he has been transported in space but not time. Learning that River did break her wrist, the Doctor becomes angry but is chastised by Amy.

Amy waits for the tracker to narrow Rory's location while a chagrined Doctor apologizes to River and spends regeneration energy healing her wrist. This angers her as she sees it as a waste but their renewed spat is cut short by the tracker targeting Winter Quay. They steal a car and drive to the Battery while two angels, posing as statues outside, walk in the left open door to attack the waking Grayle.

The group arrives at Winter Quay and find Rory entering a room with his name on it. An old man calls to Amy from the bed. She goes over to find an old Rory who dies in her arms. The Doctor realizes that the Angels have created a farm, sending anyone who tries to escape back into the past of the building and continuously feeding on that energy. Amy proposes that they run for if Rory dies someplace else, it'll create a paradox and undo what the Angels have done, killing all of them.

Rory and Amy manage to run to the stairs but are cut off from the exit and run towards the roof. The Doctor and River are slightly behind and get attacked by a pack of Angels. They dash out the window and begin climbing up the fire escape.

On the roof, Rory and Amy are trapped by the Angel Statue of Liberty. Keeping their eyes on it, Rory climbs to the edge of the roof and urges Amy to push him off. He figures that if he dies now, it'll undo everything and he'll be fine but can't bring himself to actually jump. Amy, unwilling to lose him, climbs up with him and they fall together as the Doctor and River climb up. As they fall, the paradox manifests and the whole region collapses.

All four reappear in the graveyard where the TARDIS landed earlier. The Doctor proposes they go find a pub but as Amy and Rory walk towards the TARDIS, Rory stops to notice his name on a headstone. As he does, an Angel attacks him from behind, causing him to vanish. Devistated, Amy begs the Doctor to go get Rory in the TARDIS but he can't due to the paradox keeping all time travelers out. Amy then says her goodbyes and turns her back on the Angel, allowing it to send her back to Rory.

The Doctor and River leave in the TARDIS with River going over what she has to do to ensure the Doctor gets the book. She tells him that she will suggest that Amy include an afterward when she has the book published in the past. The Doctor directs the TARDIS back to Central Park and finds the basket with the last page in it. On it, Amy tells the Doctor that she and Rory are fine and charges him not to travel alone. He then travels in the TARDIS to give young Amelia a quick flyby for hope.

Analysis

The Angels Take Manhattan is a good story and resolves one of the main conflicts during the whole of Amy's travels with the Doctor: Rory or the Doctor. Now, I thought it was rather clear for the duration of her time that it was always Rory (which was what made The Asylum of the Daleks so odd) but others felt that needed to be a bit more spelled out so I can understand Steven Moffat being so explicit. It is not without it's flaws though.

The Doctor is fairly good here but he's also a bit overemotional. This is the first manifestation of the "hating goodbyes" and one of the only ones that I can recall. Obviously each personality of the Doctor takes on new characteristics but he seems so hamstrung on the can't say goodbye to Amy that it seems to weaken him to the point of not being able to function. Granted, the Eleventh Doctor has made a special bond with Amy but he should still be better than a gibbering wreck when it comes to losing her.

I do like his interaction with River and this is one of the few episodes where they function on the same plane of knowledge. Usually it's one of them having a leg up on the other in terms of knowledge. Here, they are both working towards the solution with the same info and it makes them function more as a team or even as a married couple. River helps make up for some of the shortfalls in the Doctor's emotional make up and it's a nice balance. I also happen to think that River looks very nice in the detective noir outfit.

Amy and Rory are pretty good although Rory doesn't get much. He gets the nice emotional scene on the rooftop with Amy but he's the damsel in most of this story, but that is where he did tend to be more often than not so it's fitting. Amy is also good as she is a bit more grounded in her reactions. She plays the adult more often than not between the Doctor and River and gives a certain amount of gravity to some scenes that might go awry. She also has two very nice emotional scenes with her commitment to die with Rory in the fall and then in the decision to let the Angel take her to Rory rather than stay with the Doctor. Overall a very strong story for her.

The Angels were pretty good in this. The scene with the cherubs in the basement was properly unnerving with all the various "monster in the dark" tropes you could want. The idea of an Angel farm actually makes a lot of sense, although I'm not sure how well the people could be contained within the building in the past unless it was of tighter security then. Yes the Angels could zap someone into the past but unless there was something in the past to hold them there, they could just escape and be running around turn of the century New York. I can also understand the desire for the visual of the Statue of Liberty as an Angel, but when you but any thought into it, it's really rather stupid, especially in the second scene where it just has to stand there while Amy and Rory decide whether or not to fall off the roof.

That scene is actually one that contains one of the problems with the Angels in this story: inconsistency. It's well known that an Angel moves when you don't look at it. While Rory is climbing on the ledge, Amy locks eyes on the Angel and allows him to look away. However, when Rory is talking to Amy and she is deciding to jump with him, he looks down at her and she looks up at him. At that moment, the Angel should have taken them both. It's dramatic license but if you make such a big deal about your enemy in such a fashion, you shouldn't draw such attention to when you don't do it, especially with such a big Angel hovering in the background.

Everything else about the story worked pretty well. I liked the fact that it was very obviously the actual Central Park they were filming in at the beginning and the end. Most everything else had a nice moody feel to it and I liked the fact that Steven Moffat came as close as he's ever done to indulging in the no-win scenario. He almost never does it so it feels good when he does.

That being said, there is no good reason why the Doctor couldn't travel to New York in the 1940's, several years after Amy and Rory arrived and see them. Perhaps he makes the decision to not let them travel because of the dangers to the time line and I can buy that. But there is no reason he can't at least visit. River certainly makes it clear that she will be traveling to them to ensure the manuscript gets published by Amy so a certain amount of travel to them is not impossible.

My head cannon guess would be that with their deaths fixed in the past (70s-80s), he refuses to visit them for fear that he will take them back into the TARDIS and disrupt the timeline further. That's the only reason I can think of but it also makes the Doctor something of an emotional twat for being so dramatic. He can't trust himself so he has to act as though they've died. Again, Steven Moffat doesn't indulge in the no-win scenario much so his natural habit of trying to find a loophole to ensure a happy ending for all does create some rather nasty plot holes.

Still, especially if you lose yourself in it, the story makes a strong emotional impact and is very easy to enjoy. The good highly outweighs the bad and the bad really only kicks in if you're of the more pedantic nature, which I can be now and again. It's easily the best story of Season 7A and a good send off for Rory and Amy. I'd happily sit down with anyone to watch it, although I clearly wouldn't recommend it to anyone as their first story. There's far too much backstory and emotion required to initiate someone with a story like this.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5