First of two reviews - The Angels Take Manhattan.
You ever have a really great date with someone or else meet someone at a party and just hit it off so well, then you start thinking, “Wow. I’ve never met someone at a party and gotten along that well. They really must be someone special.” Then you meet up and spend a full day together and you’re oh holy god this person is a mess. Tyler Durden calls them single serving friends.
The writer of The Empty Child, of Blink, of Silence in the Library running the whole show? This is the dream. Those are the best episodes in the whole series! Why, every season we look forward to episode 8 or 9 when we know we’re going to see those special words - “Written by Steven Moffat.” Where could this go wrong?
As it turns out, Moffat might have been a single serving writer. When he didn’t have to worry about what he wrote affecting anything beyond the edges of an episode - two at most - what he did was brilliant. Because the ideas were brilliant. The moments were brilliant. But ideas and moments to not a series make. All of his failings are related to that - character development, contradictory laws of time, space, and Gallifray. He’s done his best - I honestly believe he’s tried - on the first one, the characters. It’s just not his strong suit. And as to the latter, I don’t even think he tries.
It’s my least favorite kind of writing - the self-important kind. The kind where the writer believes their idea is SO COOL that nothing else really matters. So, he dumps whatever pleases him into each episode or each season and supposes that if it’s big enough and bright enough and full of enough tense shadowy moments with statues we won’t notice that it doesn’t fit into the whole picture. Was Russell T. Davies so much better at this? No. But he bit off less to chew. He didn’t attempt much grand and important. It’s kind of like the difficulty scores at the Olympics. RTD did a 15 point vault and got between a 13 and 14 every time. Moffat is always trying for 17 points, no matter what. And when he sticks it - Jesus. Magic. But when he falls on his ass you just have to go, “my God, man, can’t you do a few flips for once and leave it alone?”
Anyway, last night was fine. I’ve learned to stop asking questions about where in River’s timeline we are, why she was there (besides for it’d be fun if she were), how the Doctor can heal her, all of that. Those sorts of timey wimey things can be fluid if he wants them to be. I guess. But he drags character in it for the same effect. We’ve been threatening Amy and Rory since the last four or so of last season. It’s practically been ten episodes of vaguely, confusingly changing the relationship between Amy and the Doctor and Rory as well. So when it happens one more time, for the last time, last night, it didn’t mean much. I cried when the Doctor had to break Amy’s belief in him in The God Complex. Last night it was just, “finally.” Not because I wanted them to go but because I’m tired of Moffat using them as a pawn. What’s worse, the way they went had nothing to do with their time here. Rory got snagged by an angel. Shit luck, that’s why they left. Not because their lives were being ruined by it. Not because Amy had grown out of it. Not because the Doctor was getting too attached. Just pure crap circumstance. Thankfully, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are brilliant, and they brought something to it themselves.
Maybe the fresh companion will give Moffat new, more interesting, more consistent ideas. After all, she can’t be River’s mum as well, can she?
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