Rate and Discuss: The Angels Take Manhattan

[Anthony Williams]

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

Heresy!

[Jason Thompson]

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.

See my point above. The same episode shows us one that is being observed and is frozen into stone but is still able to cause the light to go off.

[Si Hunt]

Maybe it was a moving Angel out of sight that was making the light go off.

After all, we'd not know because we were obviously not looking at it.

Si.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I'm glad that in last week's Radio Times Moffat made it absolutely clear that whether or not he changed the rules to achieve this Amy and Rory and both definitely dead and not coming back*












*at least until they start doing 11th Doctor Big Finish audios

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

I'm no expert on fixed points and all that but I can't help that think that if time travel were ever possible and if it turns out to be a simple as 'choose a date and time and off you go' then I can't imgaine that once you got to your chosen time and date than you cannot then influence the future.
If you are there then potentially if you have the means you can change anything.
I guess what I'm trying to say is why would certain things be fixed points?
I realise from reading this thread that there's not yet been a proper explanation to this in the show. Regardless, I'm struggling to think why one event would qualify as fixed over another - I mean how does the universe know what's important and what isn't?

How could an event be immune from influence?

For example: let's take a 'Day of the Daleks' type of situation where a person from the future goes back to eleminate someone from the past.
If our time traveller points a gun at our 'Sir Reginald' what would stop that bullet from killing him (not including our sniper being a bad shot)!
Would a big protective bubble appear round Reggie?
Would the gun suddenly vanish?
Would a series of silly events occur everytime our sniper goes to pull the trigger (like a tree branch suddenly falls on his head, his mobile phone rings or an alligator suddenly appears and eats him)?
Actually you could write a whole episode like that - it's sounds like you could have a lot of fun with that!!!

Do you see what I mean though - I can see how people might decide that certain events are special and are fixed points - but if all this were real: how could nature decide?

I think I've over done it; my head hurts!

[Logo Polish]

I guess what I'm trying to say is why would certain things be fixed points?

It's purely a narrative contrivance, allowing them to have situations where something can't be changed, and others where something can. Also an attempt at reconciling contradictory claims about the nature of it in different stories. There isn't supposed to be any particular internal logic to it, it's just a means of having it both ways.

[Rob McCow]

This 'Fixed Point' could depend on the companion.

I only mention this because in 'City of Death', the Doctor claims that he and Romana have a special relationship with time.

So perhaps the Doctor exists outside of time's effects, but the fixed points that he claims exist depend on his companions' personal histories. So that's why Barbara was unable to write the history of The Aztecs, but could be pretty fundamental in changing the future history of Marinus for example; it was outside her own timeline.

This theory was pretty sound until Waters of Mars, when the Doctor had no companions from the future of the event, but still claimed that the death of everyone on the MarsBase was inevitable. Perhaps this was because he had the newspaper reports of their deaths beamed into the TARDIS?

Anyway, in Amy's case the fixed points became points that would affect her own personal timeline, rather than that of everyone in the Universe.

[Jon Masters]

I don’t have quite so much of an issue with the ‘fixed points in time’, as with all the fuss made over the details being written in the book and the gravestone. The Doctor goes on and on about details being read as preventing any changes to the future but just a moment’s thought shows that to be a load of cack.

For example:

The details in the book are not the truth at all, but were written that way because Amy did glance at those particular pages and remember what she’d read. It’s a fictional book – there’s nothing at all to say that what was written wasn’t made up, rather than fact.

The gravestone doesn’t prove that they died at those ages, or even when they died. The story seems to rely on us believing that we saw Rory die and that this is his gravestone, yet all the things that happened in 1938 were removed by the paradox of them jumping off the building (that’s the only way they could have survived the jump). But the gravestone looks newish, suggesting that it’s not long been put up. So if Rory’s in his thirties, and died at 82 then he’s been sent back to , say, 1962, not 1938 (the Doctor says the surviving Angel is weak but still dangerous).

Or if somehow he did still die in 1938 (just somewhere else) then the Angel has sent him back to say 1888 (BTW Amy could still die on the same day if she was 5 years older than Rory). Since the Doctor doesn’t know when he’s gone to he seems to be implying that he can never visit New York again at any period in time.

Or Rory and Amy went travelling for a long time and on their death beds were returned to New York at this time and were buried in this graveyard. And the afterword that the Doctor reads (and Amy wrote) is complete fiction because the Ponds end up travelling with the 12th Doctor, or Captain Jack, or River Song pre Library.

Or Amy and Rory are still alive but put this gravestone up because they remember the gravestone being there from their history.

Or no-one can be rescued after an Angel has sent them back in Time( but then how can the Doctor and Martha get rescued in Blink ?)

Or…. The list goes on. You could get a whole season on DW Unbound out of all the possible ways of getting out of this (maybe they should launch a competition).

I do understand that Moff was trying to create a storyline where it was impossible for the Ponds (or at least Amy) to never return, but he should have had the guts to kill her off rather than this half arsed attempt which doesn’t stand up to even the smallest scrutiny. I pity the parents of any young fans who are trying to explain to them why Amy can never come back – esp as DW fans are known to be quite bright.

[J.R. Southall]

The book was written by River Song, though, after the events of The Angels Take Manhattan and relating the events of that story as they took place. The reason the Doctor and Amy don't recognise the very first part of the book is because that part was fiction, up until the point at which River could start relating events as they happened with her involvement or were related to her by the Doctor, Amy and Rory. The book would have related exactly what was seen on screen.

The BBC edition of it will essentially be the closest thing we'll get to a Target book for the New Series.

[Si Hunt]

How do you know?

Si.

[Jon Masters]

The book was written by River Song, though, after the events of The Angels Take Manhattan and relating the events of that story as they took place. The reason the Doctor and Amy don't recognise the very first part of the book is because that part was fiction, up until the point at which River could start relating events as they happened with her involvement or were related to her by the Doctor, Amy and Rory. The book would have related exactly what was seen on screen.

No, that's what we're supposed to accept, but
(a) The first part may not be fiction - River must have been hanging around in 1938 New York for a while, as the Crime Lord Guy knows about her being a PI
(b) Although (tenuously) the Doctor might recognise River from the cover, there is no way he knows that the book is fact not fiction at the time

And given how much River knows about how dangerous it is for the Doctor to know his future (SPOILERS !), she could completely break the paradox by NOT writing the truth in the book, except for the bits that the Doctor tells her they have already read.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

How do you know?

Assuming you mean how does JR know that the Melody Malone book is the closest we'll get to a new series target novel the answer is because BBC Books have said they currently have no plans to do any novelisations of the new TV series. In this age where everything comes out on DVD and Bluray within weeks of transmission the market that existed for the classic series novels isn't there for the new.
That said they did experiment with novelisations of the first series of Sarah Jane (although the fact they didn't do novels of the subsequent series speaks volumes if you'll forgive the unintentional pun) so there's always a chance they may have a change of heart later on or RTD may even decide to try and supplement his pension by writing novels of the 9th and 10th Doctor TV stories himself.

If your question referred to the first part of JR's post I'll leave it for him to answer.

[SiHart]

Ahh yes, but they have done an ebook of the Melody Malone book, which is available now!



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-A...9944722&sr=8-1

[J.R. Southall]

No, that's what we're supposed to accept, but...

If your question referred to the first part of JR's post I'll leave it for him to answer.

Well okay, you can "make up" any explanation you like for what was in the book. But the sense of what the writer of the episode was giving us is that River is relating the events that she was involved in, or that the Doctor Amy and Rory were, and that the book would have detailed those events exactly as they were depicted on the screen. Given that the Doctor didn't read ahead, and that those sequences where they did read from the book matched what was happening on screen, there's no reason for River not to write the story exactly as it happened, as she has lived through it and knows she is safe to do so.

And yes, Jon, (a) might well be right. The point is, it doesn't matter.

The whole point of the book being in the episode is Steven Moffat having a little fun with the concept of River Son's "Spoilers!" diary. He's just showing us one way in which actually making use of such a volume might be troublesome, and demonstrating that in his fictional universe, the laws of time might be flexible to a point, but that there are certain areas that are still fixed; and this is why Amy and Rory are trapped in New York at the end of the episode, and the Doctor can't go and find them.

Now, you can choose not to accept these things. But as Steven Moffat is in charge of the show, and has written them in himself, I'd say there's precious little chance of their being contradicted over the coming months and years.

[Jon Masters]

But as Steven Moffat is in charge of the show, and has written them in himself, I'd say there's precious little chance of their being contradicted over the coming months and years.

His track record so far suggests that the exact opposite is probably closer to the truth.

I guess I just hate it when characters, including the Doctor, are railroaded into behaving in different (and often stupid ) ways because any writer deems it to be so to make their story work. (I'm glaring at you, Impossible Planet !)

[Jason Thompson]

Indeed. it all gets a bit silly. Why does the Doctor have to break River's wrist to get her out of the grip of the Angel? Because Amy read it? OK, but all Amy read was a conversation, not a description of what actually occurred. And the conversation did indeed take place, but everything else after that was unknown territory. How did he know that if they read further on it didn't say: 'but the Doctor decided 'what the hell' and smashed the stone Angel's wrist, freeing River with no injury to her'?

And the whole business about fixed time is surely unnecessary when the Doctor has no idea when and where the Angels zapped Amy and Rory to? Surely the mere fact that he has no clue where or when to find them is enough to stop him seeing them again?

If the result of this new idea of this incarnation of the Doctor being the only one who ever goes off and leaves his companions and then occasionally drops back in to pick them up for a few more adventures is that an absurdly complicated and nonsensical plot like this has to be conceived to explain why he eventually stops going back for them, then I'd call it a bad idea.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Rory died 3 times by the end of the episode. A record even for him.

[Perry Vale]

I do understand that Moff was trying to create a storyline where it was impossible for the Ponds (or at least Amy) to never return...

Was he? I don't read about such things these days, but if true that possibly explains my disappointment with this episode. Amy and Rory have become my favourite Tardis crew of all time, and I wanted better for them than this. Or something different at least. My overbearing thoughts and attitude to that is simply....why bother? The smartest among us know that it takes a line of prose to bring back Rose Tyler from an unvisitable, and unreachable universe.

Although thinking about it more, I guess Amy got the sending off she always would. Introduced as a fairy tale character from the off, she ended off going out as a story in a book...

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I finally got round to watching this for the second time last night and I have to say that any reservations I had from the first viewing crumbled away. I pretty much adored it from start to finish.

I'm also pleased to say it answered (for me at least) the question of how the churchyard angel was able to zap Rory and Amy back in time. At both the key moments no one was looking directly at the angel so it had just time (in Amy's case literally a couple of seconds) to position itself right behind them so it wasn't quantum locked again until they both disappeared.