7X05 The Angels Take Manhattan (Grading/Discussion) (SPOILERS!)

Discussion in 'Doctor Who' started by Samurai8472, Sep 29, 2012.

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Grade "The Angels Take Manhattan"

Poll closed Oct 30, 2012.
  1. The girl who waited

    100 vote(s)
    64.5%
  2. Something borrowed

    35 vote(s)
    22.6%
  3. Average

    10 vote(s)
    6.5%
  4. Is it bad that I really miss this?

    3 vote(s)
    1.9%
  5. You're Scottish, fry something

    7 vote(s)
    4.5%
  1. Samurai8472

    Samurai8472 Admiral Admiral

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    [​IMG]


    This is it. The end of the ginger and nose era.
     
  2. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Jan 9, 2008
    I haven't been impressed with this series so far but I thought that was great.
     
  3. G2309

    G2309 Captain Captain

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    Feb 28, 2009
    Fantastic episode. Shame to see the Ponds go they were my favourite nuwho companions. Very well written and constructed episode, another great use of the weeping angels. The scene with the matches was clever and great acting from them all.

    I wish they had a bit more on the relationship between river song and her parents though. Considering how much Amy mourns not getting a chance to be a proper mum. They rarely see her as shown by the slow invasion episode.

    They'll be missed.
     
  4. zarkon

    zarkon Captain Captain

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    Angels back to blink standard here. Great episode, statue of liberty cracked/creeped me out in equal measures.
     
  5. VDCNI

    VDCNI Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Generally decent episode until the last 10 minutes with the double bluff & Rory randomally deciding to look at the headstone which was almost unwatchably bad.
     
  6. Baldus885

    Baldus885 Captain Captain

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    4/5.

    I've found this season quite weak so far, but this and Asylum of the Daleks have been the two better ones. This episode was much better than I was expecting.

    Edit: River's cleavage didn't do it any harm...
     
  7. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

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    Great opening - my kind of show, with a good cheer/laugh going into the titles. Great location shooting! Very un-Cardiff.

    What's with Matt Smith's walk in NY? He's fucking channeling Norman Wisdom...

    Hm, logical. This episode's very well constructed. No tears - they're trying too hard and I'm just admiring it rather than feeling it. Pretty much what I thought would happen. Would have been tear-jerking if they hadn't bigged up that it was supposed to be tear-jerking, if you see what I mean. Would have worked better as a surprise emotion thing.

    Cool ending, nice closure and wrap-up. Great sequel to Blink too. The big girl was underused... *Really* didn't need the foreshadowing and stage-managed hype among the fan networks, though that didn't hurt this episode as much as it hurt Asylum IMO...

    Easily Moffat's best since season 5 - none of his season 6 stuff was this good. Rory was especially great. I wonder what the Doc will tell Brian...

    A couple of minor niggles - The Doctor says he can never take the TARDIS back to NY, then does so about 30 seconds later. This also means that the whole "can never see each other again" is bollocks. I bet they'll be back for the 50th.

    Oh, and Grayle was just Van Statten with the serial numbers filed off.
     
  8. Pindar

    Pindar Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    What did the announcer wait, like 1 second before shifting on about the national lottery?

    Anyway pretty good, it was a decent farewell, Amy and Rory were fine just the poor Doctor who is the worst affected.
     
  9. wamdue

    wamdue Admiral Admiral

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    I cant get the time line of Rory Williams straight in this episode, first it appears he is sent back by an Angel, hence why you see his grave in present day NY, before the Doctor is able to get to NY.

    So that explains the old Rory in the bed, who is seemingly mistaken for Rory who was about to be sent back in time, by the Liberty Angel, and never actually goes because he kills himself. Creating a paradox.

    So the paradox plays out, and we are back in the present, where Rory is again zapped back into the past, can the Angels feed on his life energy twice? Rory would not have had any energy to feed off, or was the first time paradoxed out of time, despite us seeing the grave at the start of the episode.

    the problem with this half of the series, is that its trading water, we all knew Rory and Amy were leaving, and they had already had a good exit, so really it felt like the show was hanging around until the new companion joins, which is something that Doctor Who should ever do.

    River kinda sucks the fun out of the Doctor in this episode, or was that Rory and Amy deciding what they should do.

    In the end Rory is zapped back near the end of an episode, after everything seems like its ok, not unlike when he was wiped from the universe by the crack, only this time Amy goes with him.
     
  10. G2309

    G2309 Captain Captain

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    Feb 28, 2009
    The episode shows why people might not want to travel with the Doctor. The idea of living the next 30-40 years alone in some temporal hole is scary. When they were on the roof top and Amy asked if Rory could do it to her, I expected him to say "yes" in reference to the girl who waited episode/
     
  11. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Jan 9, 2008
    I thought that when the paradox happened they simply went back to where they were previously and he simply *ran* across new year to pick up the book.
     
  12. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

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    Oh, yeah, my bad- I forgot the graveyard (the one obvious Wales location) was meant to be in NY!

    I still bet we'll see them again...
     
  13. Brefugee

    Brefugee No longer living the Irish dream. Premium Member

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    Oct 12, 2007
    Only just finished watching it (and thus still processing what happened) isn't time shifting brilliant, well in the context of SkyPlus!

    Thought it was some proper fried-gold, me and the other-half began to well up when it became obvious what Amy would be doing.

    I've liked all five of these episodes, but that was a notch or so better than some of them.
     
  14. Mitty

    Mitty Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Just awesome. I cried when they jumped off the roof, and again when Amy zapped back. But the biggest spine tingling moment was we finally got an explanation for the TARDIS sound at the end of the eleventh hour with young Amelia waiting in the garden, which made me ball my eyes out even more.
     
  15. Sagart

    Sagart Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Northern Ireland
    Very disappointing. No tear-jerker, no shocks. I'm sure River knows she's going to see them again. As I'm sure we will too.
     
  16. Serial thread killer

    Serial thread killer Vice Admiral Premium Member

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    I would have liked a scene with the doctor and Rory's dad.
     
  17. Takeru

    Takeru Space Police Commodore

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    I didn't understand how the gravestone is supposed to make their deaths a fixed point in time, it's just a stone, how does it prove anything? For all we know Amy and Rory buried their poodle and wrote their own names on the grave because they saw the stone in the future.

    It was a big mistake the show showed the Doctor dieing and kept yapping about how his death is a fixed point in time only to reveal that only the damn robot being shot and the Doctor giggling and waving inside it was the fixed point. How is the audience supposed to take the fixed point in time business serious if there's always a way to weasel your way out of it?

    I'm not even sure what the big deal was at the end, the Winter Quay was destroyed and most angels killed by the paradox, right? The remaining angel couldn't send Rory and Amy to the creepy room of dieing alone, it had to use the regular method to dump them somewhere in the past where they just live their lives. River even meets them and gets Amy to write the afterword. If the Doctor can't go to New York Amy should have just written "Afterword: Dear Doctor, pick us up in Kansas City on April 4th, 1942. Bring a gravestone. Thanks. XOXO Amy and Rory!"
     
  18. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

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    Just noticed that when the detective is got at the start on the rooftop, the typing reads "The Dying Detective" - a Holmes story. Wonder if it's a hint of one of next year's Sherlock episode sources?
     
  19. Mister Fandango

    Mister Fandango Fleet Captain

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    Sep 6, 2012
    Except that's not what he said. He said he can't interfere with that particular snippet of the timeline again, because doing so would create a second paradox which would rip New York apart. And he was saying that while in NYC, which was more than clear in the episode.
     
  20. The Mirrorball Man

    The Mirrorball Man Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I didn't think it was particularly emotional, but it was a fitting end for the Ponds, and a very effective horror/suspense story.