Angels Take Manhattan - A Writer's Analysis
Most Doctor Who episodes revolve around the Doctor being clever, being one step ahead of everyone else and pulling a brilliant last minute scheme to outwit whatever baddies there were.
When you strip away the Doctor’s cleverness while threatening to take away two of the people he holds most dear, what are you left with?
The answer is: an episode that still manages to be fantastic despite its thinner-than-usual plot… and a heartbroken audience.
“You see?” — the price of spoilers
This is a spoiler filled analysis on the plot, individual and couple characterizations. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Plot
Liberty at Winter Quay
Plot-lite… Moffat Style
Moffat has this gift for writing these incredible, tight plots that you really have to pay attention and watch and then be completely blown away by how incredibly clever the Doctor was… again.
Except this time that’s not what Moffat wrote. You weren’t blown away by how incredibly clever the Doctor was… because he wasn’t. He had no way of defeating the Angels; the best he could do was hope to outrun them. It was River who figured out how to defeat the angels by “poisoning the well” with paradox, and then it was Rory and Amy who were brave enough to create that paradox. Before running after them with River, he even commented, “River, I don’t think this will work.”
And yet, you can help but realize this “plot-lite” was exactly the point.
Like many of the episodes in this first half of Series 7, the plot in Angels Take Manhattan takes a secondary role to the character story. Yet the characterization pay offs have consistently been so high that I’ve found this to be forgivable if not preferable. By stripping away most of what makes the Doctor a hero — his intellect, his plans, his saving the day — and you’re left with the man.
So as far as technicality is concerned, this is probably one of Moffat’s weakest plots during his tenure as head writer. Details which are usually hidden were practically spoonfed to the audience. (Landing in a graveyard! Rory’s grave! Written in stone! We see what you did there, Moffat!) Yet in this story, it was almost a blessing because we all knew that this would be the final episode for the Ponds; not having to look for clues made it easier to keep invested in the character portion of the story.
So while the plot was still there, it was far thinner than usual for a Moffat story, giving us just enough to carry the character story with a little wow factor with the Weeping Angels. (Because everyone loves Weeping Angels!)
That being said, this technically “bad” Moffat story is still worlds better than some writers’ best.
Paradox & Fixed Points
This being a Moffat episode, it’s no surprise that paradox and fixed points feature heavily as a technical plot device. Yes, Moffat is being timey wimey again: paradox helped kill the Angels and a fixed points were an essential plot device.
Fans may speculate that there are ways around it but remember what happened when the River refused to kill the Doctor and screwed with a fixed point. Much as the Doctor loves Amy and Rory, he knows better than anyone else what happens if you screw with a fixed point. (Time Lord victorious, anyone? Not to mention The Wedding of River Song.)
Yet, I think the Doctor knows himself well enough to realize that if he crossed Amy’s timeline again after she allows herself to be zapped back by the Angel, he will be tempted to screw with that fixed point, to save Amy and Rory from their deaths that landed them in the graveyard.
Luckily for reality, the 11th Doctor is no Time Lord victorious. He’s learned from his mistakes. And for that, he’s simply a lonely man in a box.
Damn you Moffat.
Characterization
The Angels Take Manhattan was the Ponds’ depature and Amy’s farewell to the Doctor but the characterization really focused more on the Doctor than anything else, how he reacted in the face of losing his companions.
The Doctor
The 11th Doctor sometimes seems to be the most emotionally immature of his recent incarnations. At his worst, he sometimes resembles a scarily precocious nine year old. And there were several moments in this episode where he was at his absolute emotional worst.
Amy and Rory: the Last centurion and the Girl Who Waited. However dark it got, I’d turn around and there they’d be.
The Doctor – The Wedding of River Song (Series 6)
In 11th Doctor’s everchanging universe, Amy and Rory are his constants, his security blanket. With them, he feels comfortable to be the dizzying mix of mad man, genius, and child all in one. They accept him for who he and generally defer to his wisdom but will still reel him in when needed, sometimes by the scruff of his neck. He needs them and he knows it. And that is why he loves them so much.
As Amy once observed in The Doctor’s Wife, when the 11th Doctor gets emotional, that’s when he makes mistakes. With the foreknowledge of Amy’s farewell, the Doctor loses it, wrapped up in the emotional repercussions. For the 9th and 10th Doctors, anger was more often brooding or simmering. The 11th Doctor is capable of similar cold fury but tends to express his anger and frustration as tantrums, as he did with River.
The Doctor demanding that River free herself without breaking her wrist
You get your wrist out, you get your wrist out without breaking it.
There isn’t too much left to expand on this aside from the fact that the 11th Doctor is damned near useless when he’s emotional. He’s not the genius madman that we’re used to seeing. He spent much of the episode as a tantrum prone wreck, unable to think of a viable solution to get themselves out of the mess before them.
Little boy lost — the Doctor after Amy’s farewell
In the end, Rory and Amy got a happily ever after; the Doctor does not.
What closure can the Doctor have? Amy’s afterword was another good-bye to him but what about his goodbye to her? In the grander scheme of things, Amy is analogous to Rose to the 9th & 10th Doctors. Rose was the main companion for the entirety of the 9th Doctor’s existence, whom the 10th Doctor inherited and who was the love of the 10th Doctor’s lifespan. (Says the author of this post begrudgingly.) Even so, the 9th Doctor got to bid Rose farewell as he regenerated and the 10th Doctor burnt up a sun to tell her goodbye. He had some form of closure.
What of the 11th Doctor and his lack of closure with Amy? For Amy, the last page was written long ago in her timeline. But even so, the Doctor has no real closure. He may have witnessed Amy’s farewell but his last words to her were pleading her to come back. There was no real farewell there for the Doctor and unable (or unwilling) to cross her timeline again, he may never get that chance.
You were the first; the first face this face saw. And you’re sealed onto my hearts.
The Doctor — Power of Three (Series 7)
I had some serious doubt as to how the Doctor would be able to move on if Amy and Rory were to be ripped from him in a fashion like this, where he is unable to save them or change their timeline. And of course, the answer is he will move on because Amy told him to, because she is the only one who could.
This will change the Doctor; only Steven Moffat and Matt Smith know how. And I can’t wait to see what they do.
River
River is truly the hero in this episode. It falls on her shoulders to keep her increasingly emotional husband in check, a thankless, impossible task. She does the quick thinking where the Doctor normally would, and keeping him safe by keeping her eyes on the Angel while it was taking Amy. And in the end, she is the one who is left to pick up the pieces of her shattered husband even though it was clear her own heart must have been broken as well.
If there’s one thing that was sorely lacking in this episode, it was the opportunity to explore how River feels. It is easy to forget that River was also her parents’ best friend. She had grown up with them since childhood; it’s only after she traveled back to Hitler’s era with them as Mels did she turn into her current incarnation as River Song. She has just as much, if not more, history with Amy and Rory as the Doctor does.
Relationships
Amy and Rory
The take away for Amy and Rory is simply love conquers all. Cheesy and sentimental? Definitely. Their love story may not have been very conventional but damned if it isn’t one of the most powerful ones I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Throughout Series 5, 6 and this part of 7, we’ve been treated to their love story which has never been easy. When we meet the older Amy, she’s grown up obsessed with her Raggedy Doctor and then agrees to run off with the Doctor the night before her wedding, hardly the beginning of a story book romance with her future husband! But the Doctor — rather, the Dream Lord — helps her figure out that she truly loves Rory. And when he’s erased from existence, her love for him brings him back.
Likewise, when we meet Rory he as a boy who had grown up in Amy’s Raggedy Doctor’s shadow who recoiled at the slightest reproach. But we saw him stand up to the Doctor right from the start and grow into the man who waited 2,000 years for the love of his life and became a hero and a legend in his own right.
Their love for each other has conquered pretty much everything time and space threw at them. So when the Doctor asks, “Tell me what we’ve got?” and Amy answers, “I won’t let them take him. That’s what we’ve got.” you better believe that their sheer force of will to be together means a whole damned lot.
In the end, Amy’s proclamation of “Together or not at all” rings true not only when they throw themselves off the building but also when Amy takes the risk of being sent back. Rory was willing to sacrifice himself but she won’t let him go alone. And later, she didn’t know that she’d see Rory again but knowing it was her best shot, she took it.
Their love wasn’t perfect but it was stronger than time and space.
River and the Doctor
River: When one is in love with an ageless god who insists on the face of a twelve year old, one does one’s best to hide the damage.
The Doctor: It must hurt.
River: Yes. The wrist is pretty bad, too.
River and the Doctor’s love dynamic is very different Amy and Rory’s yet it is no less powerful. The nature of their relationship means that they meet out of order, with neither being quite sure which version of their spouse they’ll meet. Yet their relationship works well for them. They work with each other well, even before the Doctor really knew who she was. In this adventure, they’re at a point in their relationship where he’s completely aware that she’s his wife.
The Doctor is the one who takes it upon himself to protect everyone. So who protects the Doctor? The answer: River. This is the man she loves; she’ll protect him at any cost and that’s exactly what she did in this episode. It’s a beautiful character study of River and who she is. We’re used to seeing her as pretty action hero-y and mysterious. But here, we get to see how she loves. She is the one who will prioritize the Doctor above all else. Unfortunately, in this episode, she does this at her own expense — breaking her wrist and attempting to hide it and later, tending to the Doctor’s grief while her own mother gets sent back in time by the Angel.
Rule #1: The Doctor lies. Addenda to that rule: River also lies. Unlike most couples, where communication is imperative to a successful relationship, the Doctor and River often lie, obfuscate and hold back information all the time. “Spoilers.” In this episode, River lies in an attempt to protect the Doctor. When he demanded that she get her wrist out of the Angel’s grasp without breaking it, she knew that what he really meant was that he wanted her to show him that time could be rewritten even though he knows it can’t.
The 11th Doctor has his own, clumsy way of showing his love for River. While her love for him much more resembles a wife to her husband, his love tends to look more like a clumsy teenager with his first girlfriend. The Nerdist calls their relationship chaste and I have to agree; the 11th Doctor’s attempts at physical affection are sincere yet adorkable in the housecat falling off the sofa sort of way.
Gestures like his healing River’s wrist with his own regeneration energy that really shows the depth of his love for River. Continuity nitpicking with the ability to do this at all aside, there aren’t many in this universe that the Doctor would use regeneration energy for. He earns a mighty slap from River for his trouble but she is a Pond, after all.
It’s only after they’re back in the TARDIS does the Doctor begin to realize how hard this must be for River; Amy and Rory were the Doctor’s best friends, but they were her parents. And if you watch River in the TARDIS scene, while she brushes off and says it doesn’t matter, it does. But even then, her priority is giving the Doctor what he needs to mourn. One can only hope the Doctor returns the favor later.
Now that Amy and Rory have left the TARDIS, I can only hope that there will be some more exploration of the complicated, crazy relationship between the Doctor and River. At least with River, the Doctor will never have to say good-bye to her, not really.
