June 21: "The Angels Take Manhattan" / "P.S."

(Our last look at this title sequence, with a lot of blues and silvery greys and a logo tinted verdigris...)

It's got logical problems and plot holes you could drive a truck through (how can the Statue of Liberty make it to Winter Quay -- how can there be no one in the City That Never Sleeps looking at the statue for the duration of its walk to Manhattan?  If the Doctor can't get back to New York to rescue Amy and Rory, why can't they just go somewhere else instead so the Doctor can pick them up?), but it doesn't really matter.  Steven Moffat has chosen to send Amy and Rory out not on a big epic daring story, but on a quietly creepy one that is utterly determined to yank on your heartstrings as hard as it can.

Having provided us with an army of Weeping Angels gathering their strength in "The Time of Angels" / "Flesh and Stone", here Moffat chooses to go back to a different idea from "Blink": that Angels feed off your time energy by sending you back in time (presumably to a time and place where you won't make much difference) and harvesting the potential left behind.  To that end we're presented with a human "battery farm" for the Angels to feed off of: they grab you, stick you in a big apartment building, and force you to live your life there.  It's a creepy idea that lies at the heart of the story.

But since we're in New York City (For real!  Actual proper NYC!), we also get a nice dose of that film noir feel, with '30s detectives, dark wet New York streets, and an overweight, rich collector (Mike McShane), who's probably the closest thing to Sydney Greenstreet they could get.  (This is after a sequence in 2012 New York -- you know, the sequence with the least realistic thing ever in Doctor Who²⁴² -- that's designed to show off New York's cosmopolitan side as much as they can.)  We even get a pulp-y narrative in the form of Melody Malone's book, which also serves as a clever plot point; because it's narrating things that are currently happening, looking at the book constitutes solidifying history, making it a fixed point.  ("This isn't any old future, Amy, it's ours," the Doctor says.  "Once we know what's coming, it's fixed.")

Rory and Amy prepare to jump. ("The Angels Take Manhattan")
©BBC

This is of course Amy and Rory's last story, but nevertheless it's Matt Smith's performance that is the most riveting.  Not that he's exactly a slouch in other stories, but here he's a whirlwind of frustration and pain, trying desperately to change history and ultimately unable to do so.  His scenes with Amy and the book are wonderful, his foot stamp of frustration after he's learned that River's wrist is broken and she's angry at him for using regenerative energy to heal her (presumably because she's (sort of) part-Time Lord), his utter anguish at the thought of losing Amy forever... it's incredibly good.  Smith sells the emotional climax of the story possibly more than anyone -- and given that Karen Gillan isn't exactly phoning it in in her last scene, you get a sense of just how good this cast is.  From Arthur Darvill's terrified-yet-brave performance as Rory ("If this place never existed, what did I fall off of?" he says, standing on the ledge.  "You think you'll come back to life?" Amy replies heatedly.  "When don't I?" Rory replies, with a touch of sardonic wit) to Alex Kingston's reined-in River Song ("Never let him see the damage.  And never, ever let him see you age.  He doesn't like endings"), the acting alone makes "The Angels Take Manhattan" a fabulous piece of work.

And that's really what this episode is about: the relationships and the performances that this cast has built up over the past three years.  To have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory is a cruel trick, but it feels right -- and as the Angels "kill you nicely" (as the Doctor noted in "Blink"), Amy and Rory are allowed to live out the rest of their lives.  Isolated from friends and family, but nevertheless together.  It's a bittersweet moment, but it's fitting (particularly given the way the Doctor has been coming and going into the Ponds' lives -- a simple parting would never feel right) -- and that's when the episode really goes for it, with the final "afterword".  It's a beautiful way to end Amy's story, to reveal that the Doctor did actually go back to the young Amelia after she waited that night, that he didn't leave her completely hanging.

So this is goodbye to Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, and it is sad to see them go.  I wasn't quite sure about Amy in the early days, but she quickly settled down to become a really outstanding companion -- she and the Doctor always felt like a great team, one that just naturally fit together.  And with the supremely talented Darvill thrown in (Rory is personally one of my favorite companions), the dynamic didn't shift too far in one direction or the other but instead cohered into a smooth, natural fit.  It is genuinely sad to see them go, but that's the nature of the show: always moving forward.  And while "The Angels Take Manhattan" brings an end to Amy and Rory's story (and to the first half of series 7 -- or "Series Pond", as Doctor Who Magazine took to calling it, given the large gap between the two halves²⁴³), it does so in a supremely confident (even if not always logical) way.

But there's one last piece to get view.  The original plan for the series 7 boxset was to include a brief scene called "P.S.", but ultimately this fell through due to "actor availability clash" (according to author Chris Chibnall's Twitter account) -- which almost certainly means Mark Williams was unavailable.  But somebody liked this enough to show us some storyboards, with narration by Arthur Darvill, and it was released online by the BBC as such.  It's not even a deleted scene, really, but it gives some nice narrative closure to Rory's dad Brian, who was essentially left hanging at the end of "The Power of Three".  "P.S." shows us Brian reading a letter from Rory, explaining that he and Amy have gone away and won't ever be coming back but that he loves his dad very much, and the gentleman delivering this letter, Anthony, is their adopted son -- and therefore Brian's grandson.  ("He can tell you everything," Rory writes in his letter.  "He'll have the family albums, and I realise having a grandson who's older than you is so far beyond weird, but I'm sorry.")  It's a short scene, but it does provide a nice sense of closure for Brian (and is rather fitting for today, what with it being Father's Day in the United Kingdom and the United States).

Next up: Christmas 2012 and "The Snowmen"...







²⁴² The New York Record (not a real newspaper)'s front page headline reads "Detroit Lions Win Superbowl [sic]", which feels like a cruel joke at the state of Michigan's expense.  (Although admittedly, in our universe the Lions did have their first winning season that year since 2000, so things were at least looking up, but if you know anything about the Detroit Lions you can immediately see how implausible this is.)
²⁴³ You sort of see their point, but the entire series was commissioned and filmed in one unit, which is why just about everyone else treats it as a single series.