Recap : Doctor Who – The Angels Take Manhattan
BBC America
Science Fiction
8pm/9pm c/p
Saturday
45 minutes
Matt Smith, Karen Gillian Arthur Darville
(TV-14)
On the last episode, The Doctor took the Pond’s…I mean the Williamss’ out of the boring monotony that is regular life. It took the very subtile invasion of black cubes to do so, but the Doctor got what he wanted in the end, the companionship of his mother-in-law, Amelia Pond. In a very ominous conversation with Mark Williams (Rory’s dad), they discuss the aspects of what it means to be a Doctor Who companion i.e life expectancies, terms of termination. By the time the credits roll, Mark gives the Doctor the blessing to do what he wishes with the remainder of his family.
In “the angels take Manhattan” we start in 1930′s New York, the voice of a hardened P.I narrates, much more crime-noire than we are accustomed to seeing on BBC. He is called to an art collectors house to investigate his strange suspicions of statues that move in the dark. He is then chased through a high-rise and discovers the truth behind these statues, the fact he is in the same building as an old man dying, and that the statue of liberty is in fact a weeping angel herself. Cue the TARDIS hurdling through a tunnel of smoke. The Doctor and his companions are enjoying a picnic in Central Park(Current time stream), when Rory wanders off into a crime novel, that sends him to the time of the introduction scene. The Doctor and Amy search for poor Mr.Pond and discover the crime novel Doctor is reading is in fact written as kind of guide for him to go and rescue Rory and River, who is in fact the author of said novel.
The group soon discovers the preferred way of murder for the weeping angels is to keep sending victims back in time and let them live to death. They do this because the energy they use for time travel feeds the angels and keeps them going. The weeping angels got ahold of Rory, if you would rather avoid spoilers skip this last paragraph and avoid Facebook or Twitter till after you have seen the Episode.
As most of us know, this is in fact the last adventure of Amy and Rory, no surprises there. Over all the episode was disappointing, I don’t mean that I was bummed out by the very sexy Karen Gillian leaving the show , but some of the story and delivery were lack luster. It seems the whole point of the episode was to say good-bye to Rory and Amy, which left holes the size of….big holes in the story. The Doctor just kind of leaves New York after the companions death’s and doesn’t address the angels any further , even though they were in fact not defeated, what happened to the PI, the Collector, The evil Statue of Liberty. The seem to get the point across that the Pond’s leaving was very sad. At times it was almost like I had real human emotions, but giving this tin man a heart did not save this episode for me. Although the implications that River Song might be the next companion were intriguing to say the least.
