Rate and Discuss: The Angels Take Manhattan

[Stuart Wallis]

I've been trying to tell you all this since the Angels first appeared, but you wouldn't listen to me!

One day Si, one day they will be like us. Until then, smile - if nothing else it makes them wonder what you're thinking...

[Jon Masters]

I went 5/10 - it was good that the Angels were given back some scariness, but the whole internal logic of them and the time travel stuff was just a load of b@lloc#s - in my mind's eye I can see the Moff jumping up and down insisting like a small child that he had to make it so the Ponds could never be rescued, but it just doesn't work with even the tinniest amount of thought.

For once I wasn't hugely impressed with some of the performances either - or though that may have been because they were being forced to deliver some of the corniest dialogue ever in Nu Hoo. Funnily, the only issue I didn't have a problem with was the Liberty Angel - since there are pictures of the Statue, the Liberty one can't be the real one - in fact we never saw it move so it could just be a giant carved head on the roof of the building (that moves a bit and makes the building shake).

I might have given it more than 5 if we had a cast iron guarentee that we will never agin be troubled by

• River Song
• Timey Wimey plotlines
• The Ponds

But I'm not convinced the Moff could be trusted to keep any of these....

[Antony Cox]

I manged to catch up with this episode yesterday.

I'll come clean now and admit that I've been lazy and not read through all the comments here, so I'm not sure what the general concensus is. For me, it was uncharacteristically bleak and hard-hitting, even to the point where I was questioning how appropriate it was to have these two (presumably) well-loved characters throwing themselves off the top of a skyscraper in what is ostensibly a show aimed at children. I accept that they were doing it for a reason and not casually, but the whole image just made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

Having said that, I thought it was entertaining overall, and I still think the Angels are a fantastic concept and very scary, though they are being wheeled into the show a bit too often for my liking (I hate the over-use of villains).

7/10

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

As I recall it was only stated in Blink that the angels couldn't physically move when they were quantum locked not that they were harmless. The Lonely Assassins doesn't suggest harmless statues to me...

I'm going to have to watch this one again as I can't remember if River forced the Doctor to look away with her at the moment when Amy disappeared as if she did then I'm the one talking bollocks.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I'll come clean now and admit that I've been lazy and not read through all the comments here, so I'm not sure what the general concensus is. For me, it was uncharacteristically bleak and hard-hitting, even to the point where I was questioning how appropriate it was to have these two (presumably) well-loved characters throwing themselves off the top of a skyscraper in what is ostensibly a show aimed at children. I accept that they were doing it for a reason and not casually, but the whole image just made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

I actually had a much bigger issue in terms of potential suitability for younger viewers with the second half of series 6 last year. I can see your point about this episode but knowing that my soon to be 7 year old nephew is a big fan of the weeping angels so I don't need to worry too much.

[Rob McCow]

I think that the Doctor running to pick up the last page of the book is just about the most romantic image that they've come up with in this new run of episodes. Plus the way they made Amy want to be touched by the Angel was a brilliant contrivance.

Loved it, gave it a 9/10!

I think I've worked out the real threat of the Angels though. Never mind this stuff about sending people back in time, the real horror is how much your head will burst if you try to make sense of it all.
1 - Why don't the Angels simply wup everything else in the Universe? They seem immune to all physical threats and there are no apparent limits to their powers.
2 - How can moving something create energy? Surely it takes energy to displace people back in time?
3 - If the point about the Angels is that they can't move when they are 'Observed', how can you hear them moving about?
4 - How the 3645789 did they get set up for this story? How did the American guy chain one up? How did they build their 'Farm'? How did they get to Earth? Why didn't the one in the Graveyard polish off the Doctor and River as well?

The ending was all a bit 'Sting of The Time Bees' too... nah, never mind.

[Andrew Curnow]

I watched it again today, and I still enjoyed it. As regards why the Doctor can never see Amy again, he says (just before she gets herself zapped) that it "will create a fixed time" - I realise that this is just a bit of technobabble that doesn't really mean anything, a la Termporal Orbit perhaps, but at least it is sort of addressed within the episode.

How does River find Amy to get the book published?

Maybe she just looked her up in every Manhattan phone book for the 20th Century? Interestingly, though, in the final TARDIS scene River refers to her (future) self sending the book to Amy to be published, perhaps suggesting that she, ie River, would never be able to go and meet her either?

[Perry Vale]

Maybe she just looked her up in every Manhattan phone book for the 20th Century?

How does she know she'll be in Manhattan, and why should she be? And why doesn't/can't the Doctor do that?

[Jason Thompson]

As I recall it was only stated in Blink that the angels couldn't physically move when they were quantum locked not that they were harmless.

Quite true. They evidently are still conscious and able to influence things, as one that was being looked at was still able to cause the light to fade despite being stone.

[Jason Thompson]

Maybe she just looked her up in every Manhattan phone book for the 20th Century?

Who says she's in Manhattan? The Angel farm was undone. They didn't know where or when the Angel had sent Rory, and they didn't know if the Angel would send Amy to the same place and time. She took the chance that it would, and it paid off, but she could just have easily have ended up in an entirely different space and time.

As for the fixed time business, if all this stuff about the timeline being fixed once they have read it was true then that fixed time where the Doctor never sees Amy again was created back when River was still chained up when the Doctor read the chapter title 'Amelia's Last Farewell', so no matter what he said to her she had to do what she did because it was fixed anyway.

The fixed time coming about after reading ahead casts an intriguing light on some of the old historicals, particularly in the first season where they could not change history. Since Barbara knew about Aztec history and everyone knew about the French Revolution then those events were fixed and they could not change them....

[MinaHarker]

The fixed time coming about after reading ahead casts an intriguing light on some of the old historicals, particularly in the first season where they could not change history. Since Barbara knew about Aztec history and everyone knew about the French Revolution then those events were fixed and they could not change them....

Hang on, didn't the Doctor know about the deaths of the people on Mars in Waters? Why weren't those events "fixed"?

[Stuart Wallis]

...although The Tenth Planet was supposed to be a fixed point, and it was still in Ben and Polly's (and the viewers') future. Hmm...

[Jon Masters]

The thing to remember about time, especially about fixed time, is that it can do (or not do) anything that Moff wants or doesn't want it to do because Logic and Science ( and Continuity) should never , ever be allowed to spoil a Good Story.

Use your imagination people

[Stuart Wallis]

Which basically gives Moff even more of a licence to make it up on the spur of the moment than anybody else in the history of just about everything.

[J.R. Southall]

Well, that is how Robert Holmes did things, after all.

[SiHart]

But the Robert Holmes era is now a fixed point in history, and cannot be changed.

[Andrew Curnow]

Yes, I think it would be a bit unfair to single out Mr Moffat as the first guy on Doctor Who to make history both fixed and unfixed depending on how the fancy (or the story) took him. The Aztecs makes it (allegedly) impossible to change anything, even though only the following year the Meddling Monk is a real threat. Maybe it's as Jason suggests with his post, that it's not fixed if you don't know - so Barbara as a history teacher had no chance in Mexico, whereas maybe Adric who would presumably never even have heard of the Aztecs would have had more luck as Yetaxa...

[J.R. Southall]

Adric had a big impact on history (or pre-history), fixed point or not (I think Adric was very much a fixed point afterwards).

[Jason Thompson]

Hang on, didn't the Doctor know about the deaths of the people on Mars in Waters? Why weren't those events "fixed"?

Um, because, um...

Oh poo I don't know!

The whole 'what's fixed and what isn't' is a huge horrible mess and is usually ignored. Since the original notion of historical events being fixed was abandoned as early as the second season back in 1965 it's been largely ignored until the new series started making huge plot points about it. The fact that they make very little if any sense just shows how right the producers of the classic series were to ignore it, really!

Another aspect of the 'fixed time' idea I don't care for is that it has given the show a remarkably fatalistic outlook, which makes it seem that really there's no point in the Doctor and his companions actually doing anything because the Universe has already mapped out what they'll do anyway, and nothing they do makes any difference. I'm tired of plotlines that give us the end first and show us how we get there.

[Jason Thompson]

Adric had a big impact on history (or pre-history), fixed point or not (I think Adric was very much a fixed point afterwards).

Being caught in a matter/antimatter explosion caused by impact with Earth I don't think he was a point as much as a dispersed cloud of subatomic particles spread around the planet...

[Si Hunt]

As far as I can see what happened was this:

1. The "Aztecs", being a historical story, had to answer the question of how the TARDIS crew could go back in time. Going back in time meant they could, for example, shoot someone important and create a paradox. So John Lucarotti decided that they couldn't change anything, and that sorted that out. Events would always happen as we knew they did, because history was like a big waterfall you couldn't stop with a paddle.
2. "The Time Meddler". Lucarotti's theory revealed to be disasterous for anything other than a story about not being able to change the past. So from here on in they ignored it, and made out you COULD change the past, and that was the threat. Memories would change, reasons young idiot Vicki.
3. Everyone perfectly happy not to think about it until 2005, when someone finally decides to sort it out by explaining that SOME events are "fixed" and can't be changed, and some can be. It's not explained (yet) why some events are fixed, or which ones are and which ones arn't.

So the new series doesn't keep making plots out of it, it just strives to explain how both scenarios can exist. However, it actually throws up more questions than it answers, and an explanation for just why some events are fixed points would be nice.

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

So the new series doesn't keep making plots out of it, it just strives to explain how both scenarios can exist.

I'd have to disagree with that. The Fires of Pompeii explains it. The Waters of Mars is based around the whole business of Bowie Base One being a fixed point. The End of Time seems to play with it a bit as well, with the Tenth Doctor's death being a point that everything leads to. Then the whole of series 6 is based around the Doctor's apparent death at lake Silencio being a fixed point, and the finale has some weird history miss-mash going on when River changes that fixed point and it all has to be sorted out so the events do occur. And then the plot of this latest episode is all about fixed time points being made. They keep coming back to it and it keeps getting less and less sensible each time.

However, it actually throws up more questions than it answers,

Indeed. Not the least of which being the business with the Dalek leaving Adelaide Brooke alive in the flashback in Waters, supposedly because it knew Adelaide's mission to Mars was a fixed point, despite the Dalek in question being part of a plot to move Earth and use it to wipe out the entirety of creation before her Mars flight actually took place anyway...

[Perry Vale]

I've finally plumped for a vote on this and given it a 7/10. Was seriously considering a 6, but I love the scene on the roof with Amy & Rory (however suitable it was for a family audience), and Rory's "When don't I?' line is just hilarious.

[Si Hunt]

As I recall it was only stated in Blink that the angels couldn't physically move when they were quantum locked not that they were harmless. The Lonely Assassins doesn't suggest harmless statues to me...

Blink states not that the Angels can't move but that "they freeze into rock... they literally turn to stone... They don't exist when they're being observed."

This suggests they ARE harmless when quantum locked, and that they are literally stone; not even alive.

Si.

[Philipnet]

You guys do realise that this is all just fantasy, don't you.