Review: Doctor Who “The Angels Take Manhattan”

Ah, here it is. The mid-season finale, and the farewell to the Ponds. Or is it the Williams’?

As a note, spoilers are discussed.

Before we get into the real meat of the episode, lets discuss the elephant in the room: the Weeping Angels.

In the season 3 episode “Blink,” Moffat introduced us to the concept of statue monsters who can only move when they aren’t being observed (in an episode, by the way, that starred the lovely Carey Mulligan). In this episode a series of rules were laid down: as long as they were being observed, the Angels could not move via a defense mechanism; the Angels purpose was not to kill you but to send you back in time while feeding on your time energy; the Angels were in every way imaginable terrifying.

Since then, the Angels have been elaborated upon in a two-part episode from season 5. Now, not only do the Angels endeavor to send you back in time, but they can leave an imprint. They can be captured on film, but they can also take over the film. On top of that, because they needed to get so much worse, the Angels can infest your soul and take over your body, having attempted to do this to Amelia Pond and having successfully done it to a Red Shirt.

Now, as we reach “Angels Take Manhattan,” a new element has been added to the table: not only are the Weeping Angels the regular Angel-esque statue we’d seen, but all statues — something that had been playfully hinted at in “Blink” but never elaborated upon, because to do so would defeat the purpose of calling them Weeping Angels. This results in baby angels (those little cherubs you often see on fountains, which makes sense) and the Statue of Liberty (which makes no sense) also being Angels in disguise. In addition to that, the Angels are now clever enough to create a base of operations to farm time energy in order to feed themselves, and in a seemingly glaring error of judgement, now freeze just for the sake of freezing.

There’s an old saying: a joke isn’t funny once you explain it. Such is also the case with the weeping Angels. When we had nothing more than “Blink,” the Weeping Angels were a terrifying entity of unknown proportions, so viciously horrifying that every statue you saw had since become a point of reference for jokes and terror. However, at this point, the Angels just aren’t that interesting anymore. They don’t have the staying power that the Daleks or the Cybermen do, because even those seem to live beyond the consistent upgrading (it at least makes sense; they’re machines), and were better off reserved to any number of one-off Doctor Who villains. Yet, since Moffat seems incapable of leaving anything alone, we are given the Statue of Liberty as a Weeping Angel, and no longer are they remotely scary. They’re just ridiculous.

That’s the downside of the episode in a nut shell. No matter anything else about this particular episode, it proves that Moffat’s insistency for repetition in places that it is simply not needed results in complete disinterest in what used to be supremely entertaining. C’est la vie.

All Angels aside, there’s actually a lot to like about the episode. For one, this is Moffat writing in the style that won him his position of show runner in a similar fashion to “Blink.” Instead of DVD extras leading towards a conversation across time, we now have a book that foreshadows and in fact retells the plot of the episode. It plays off of things we’d learned, ends up as a pay-off to events introduced in the beginning of the episode and basically operates as one of the most interesting episodes of the season thus far. Where other episodes basically played it straight from Point A to Point B, “Angels Take Manhattan” actually subtly elaborates on elements of the Doctor Who mythos, straightening up aspects of the wibbly wobbly timey whimey stuff (if not actually making too much sense out of any of it). This is, for once, Moffat building upon Doctor Who instead of just hiding behind a corner and throwing a dollar on a string out at the audience.

On top of that, there are tons of quiet little cues thrown into the episode. We have more time with River, which always seems to open up new possibilities and new mysteries. The credits get a bit darker, and there are a few lines that sound familiar in regards to the Doctor not liking others aging and needing to not be alone, both of which are recurring statements. We even have a moment where it’s mentioned that the Doctors presence is disappearing from the universe, which seems like a Davies-esque clue of something bigger occurring, especially in light of the first episode. Moffat’s reign on the show has been pretty much a massive assassination of subtlety, so it actually comes as a surprise that there are actual moments placed in the show that could be important and aren’t simply there to play some kind of pun-related game by the close of the episode (“I’m a doctor!” “Doctor who?”).

Of course, it all culminates with the farewell of the Ponds/Williams’, in a moment that is somewhat telegraphed but still heartbreaking. Here’s the thing about Amy and Rory: when Moffat took over the show from Davies and the basic elements of the companions changed, the Doctor, Amy and Rory were a family. That’s the chief difference between Moffat and Davies’ handling of the Companion Character; no longer was this someone to keep the Doctor company, but rather someone to relate to the Doctor when no one else would. We grew with Amy and Rory in so many ways, watching Amy grow from a kissogram to an author, Rory from a nurse to a highly respected doctor. We saw them through trials and tribulations, and we’ve seen what happens when they’re forced apart. It’s safe to say that we have grown closer to Amy and Rory than any companion since the show relaunched, and while they certainly have affection for the Doctor they’ve been singularly united in their infinite devotion to each other: the Centurion and the Girl Who Waited.

So, all telegraphing aside, seeing them leave is certainly an emotional sequence. While a bit of it is certainly a bit sappy, it’s tough to see the Ponds go just as it is tough to see any friend leave. We might want a new Companion, but we don’t actually want to see them leave — and when they do, it’s tough not to let jut one, single tear roll down your cheek quietly which you hide from everyone else in the room. For all the things that Moffat is guilty of doing to the show in a negative way, the insistance on building up the Ponds and making them a believable, relatable couple in a fantastic environment is certainly the best of all his changes. And darn it if Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill don’t act the hell out of their goodbyes.

So the Doctor is on his own again and we’re left to wait until Christmas to get some semblance of an idea what is up with the whole Oswin thing. This has been a week half-season (to the extent that I couldn’t even bother to write reviews for two of the episodes), but there’s no denying that Moffat gave the Ponds the farewell they deserved.

Now: no more Angels, OK? We get it.