Doctor Who Series 7 Episode 5 - The Angels Take Manhattan - Review
Starring: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill & Alex Kingston
Written By: Steven Moffat
Directed By: Nick Hurran
So
... it's that time again. After two and a half series of travelling
in the TARDIS, it's time for us to bid farewell to Amy and Rory, and
it looks likes Steven Moffat wants to make the event memorable,
taking us back to Manhattan and bringing River Song and the Weeping
Angels back for it. It's fairly safe to say that Amy and Rory have
had a decent run out of the show, enjoying both audience popularity
and becoming the longest serving companions for quite some time. Now
more than two years since they first joined the TARDIS, their
departure feels appropriate and well-timed, so can Steven Moffat wrap
up their time on the show riding high?
The
Doctor, Amy, Rory are enjoying a picnic in present day Central Park
in New York, but when Rory goes to fetch coffee, he finds himself
sent back in time. He arrives in 1930s Manhattan, where he meets
River Song and learns that he was sent back by a Weeping Angel. The
Angels are all over New York, and the vast amount of time distortion
their presence has caused makes it difficult for the Doctor and Amy
to follow Rory back in time in the TARDIS. But when they finally do
make it, they discover the Angels have set a trap, and it may not be
one that everyone can survive this time...
Although
Amy and Rory are of course the big talking points of this episode,
I'll come back to them later. Instead, let's talk about the other big
factor from this episode, and that's the return of the Weeping
Angels. Back for their third proper TV appearance, it feels like
we're taking a more stripped down approach with them. Their last
story introduced a lot we didn't
previously know about them, such as “the image of an
angel becomes itself an angel”
thing. While it worked for that story, the Angels were still at their
most effective in Blink,
partly because it was an ingenious gem of a story, but also because
the lack of things we knew about them was what made them scary. The
way they've blown up in popularity in the five years since does
naturally soften their scare factor a bit, but I like Steven Moffat's
attempt to scale things back to the basics. So the approach is good,
the results … are a bit shaky. I'd argue this is probably the
weakest on-screen use of the Weeping Angels yet, but to be honest,
their use here isn't terrible either. For one thing, there's some
great imagery surrounding them. The cherub angels were very creepy,
and the Statue of Liberty being revealed as a Weeping Angel is just
gorgeous. At least it is on paper, as once you stop to think about
it, you realize it's not particularly good in practice. How on Earth
would it move? Has there even been a point in history where the
Statue of Liberty isn't being observed by someone? How did it make
the 3 ½ mile trip from Liberty Island to the Winter Quay without
being spotted? Even when it does get there, it doesn't really do
anything besides looking great. In fact, while the Weeping Angels as
a whole are more simplified and better for it, they don't get a huge
amount to do over the course of the episode.
But
I will say that if anyone should currently be directing the Angels,
then Nick Hurran is the one who deserves the job. Nick Hurran returns
to direct his fourth Doctor Who story,
and it wasn't already clear, it's worth pointing out that with each
episode he directs, regardless of the quality of the story, it at
least looks brilliant. This week's episode is no exception. It's one
thing I really can't fault at all in The Angels Take
Manhattan, as everything's
firing on all cylinders here. This is put across fantastically in the
rather long pre-titles sequence, where the presentation of everything
we see resembles an early noir film – the lighting, colours, set
design, costume and more all look brilliant. That opening five
minutes is one of my favourite bits from this episode. It may not
concern any of our main characters, but it could easily make a
standalone short horror film. Fast forward eighty years, and the
present day New York looks great too, and I enjoyed seeing the
Doctor, Amy and Rory starting this episode off by just trying to have
a break and enjoy a picnic in Central Park.
Going
now from one of the best things about The Angels Take
Manhattan, to one of the
worst as we get into some of the details of the story – let's talk
about the 'Melody Malone' book and its use in this episode. The book
is basically a way of giving the Doctor and Amy the script for this
episode, but one of the key points it establishes is that once you've
read something about your future self, then you have no choice but to
follow through with what the book tells you you're going to do.
Essentially, the future according to this book is fixed and
non-malleable. This is a really stupid plot point. It contradicts so
many episodes before it – characters change their own set futures in
this show all the bloody time! It even contradicts itself during the
course of this episode! For example, Amy ends up reading ahead and
discovers that the Doctor is going to have break something. It's
later revealed that because River Song has her wrist trapped in the
grip of one of the Angels, the Doctor has to break either River's
wrist in order to free her, or the Angel's wrist. The Doctor decides
that River's wrist should be broken because Amy read it in the book …
except she didn't read that specifically. To make things even less
clear, the Doctor doesn't break anything at all in the end – River
breaks her own wrist, which somehow enables her to free herself. What
are the rules here!? Can you or can't you deviate from the book? What
makes things even more annoying is that this book isn't even strictly
necessary! It's just another gimmicky framing device, and with some
slight script re-writes, you'd have near enough the same story
without all this rubbish!
Once
River does free herself, and the Doctor discovers her broken wrist,
the scene that follows is just plain weird. The Doctor chooses to
heal River's wrist with regeneration energy … only for her and Amy
to flip out at him, and River to smack him. Why!? It seemed like a
kind and moving thing to do, what's the big problem with the Doctor
doing this? Once again, we're dealing with a script with problems
that become crystal clear once you stop to think about what's going
on – even the Angels' plan. Here the Angels are running a human
battery farm, sending people from the present day back in time to the
1930s, and holding on to the people they've sent back. But why hold
on to the people they've sent back, when they've already fed on their
time energy? Keeping them in the hotel rooms, they're still going to
age and die – it's not like you can send them back all over again.
Why have the hotel system? Why go to all the added effort of making
comfy hotel rooms when it's of no interest or benefit to the Angels?
(Skip
ahead now to the next paragraph to avoid spoilers!) Out
of all this confusion and lack of clarity, there is at least one
scene that's near-perfectly written and that's Amy and Rory's moment
on the roof of the hotel. I loved Rory's explanation for why he
should jump off the roof – if he does, the Angels can't trap him in
the hotel room. This poisons the well and creates a paradox which
means the building never existed, and if that happens he can't have
fallen off anything. Simple and concise. Together with the opening,
the roof scene is probably the best bit of this episode. The dialogue
between the two is beautifully written and delivered with real heart
from Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill. Rory being too scared and
needing help from Amy to jump, and Amy asking him to be confident
enough to take her with him, feels so genuine and heart-wrenching.
The Angels Take Manhattan may
be a mess of a story, but the emotions and its big job of saying
goodbye to Amy and Rory are just fantastic. In the following scene,
the paradox works and Amy and Rory are spat back to present day New
York. Here we have their proper goodbye, and it's a slight shame I
have to say that while this scene is far from bad, I didn't find it
anywhere near as powerful as the roof scene before it. Part of the
reason why is that Rory doesn't get a particularly great goodbye,
he's just there one moment and gone in the next. A little part of me
liked the shock factor that it had, but it feels more disappointing
in hindsight. Amy on the other hand gets a terrific well-written
send-off, and once again you can really feel the emotions spiking.
It's an ending that brings out the Amy I love to see, as she chooses
to get zapped back to be with Rory, even though it means she can't
ever see the Doctor again.
I
feel The Angels Take Manhattan really
could've been something special and a lot of its problems could be
ironed out if it were just slightly longer. This is one of those
episodes that needed to be a good fifty/sixty minutes in length to
communicate everything properly. It could've done things such as
given River Song a bit more to do. You may have noticed I've barely
mentioned her in this review, and that's simply because she's doesn't
do much here besides saying witty or cocky phrases. With a greater
runtime, we could've also had a slightly better send-off for Rory,
and even be able to re-visit his dad, Brian. You can find a little
short scene online that was released not long after this episode
aired, and it returns to Brian to give his character a resolution. It
was written by Chris Chibnall but never filmed due to a lack of time,
and just those three or four minutes honestly could've improved this
episode a lot. It's a beautiful scene and it really should've been
included here.
Rather
than the belter of an exit we'd all hoped for, The Angels Take
Manhattan is one of those
stories that slowly falls apart once you stop to think about it. If
it weren't for the fact that its emotional core is so strong, and
Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill knock it out of the park with their
performances, there wouldn't be a great deal here I could talk
positively about. It's another of those stories in need of a couple
of re-writes and a slightly longer runtime to fully work. There's
grounds here for me to call this a bad episode, but I feel that would
be a bit harsh. I'll give Steven Moffat credit for something though –
his heart was in the right place when he was writing this and it's
clear that he wanted to give Amy and Rory a good send-off. It may not
quite be at that level, but it is at least a half-decent farewell.
The Angels Take Manhattan
6/10