Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan

[carmen_lj]

Right. Well. This is it. I'm scared. Scared, people. I don't want to cry too much. I mean, *of course* I'm not going to cry, but y'know.

• Fear of EMO aside, I'm absolutely loving this season of Doctor Who. Limiting the 'meta-story' to character development and letting there be a self-contained adventure each week, jumping cheerfully from genre to genre, has been utterly wonderful. Like Westerns, I'm not fond of the hard-boiled detective thing, but tend to like it better in a sci-fi setting (Star Trek: TNG can be blamed for this, mostly). And we get another storyteller voiceover, a dude this time, but fair enough after three women. Plus, heh, I know that other dude! He's actually an American too! ...or he was when playing Friar Tuck in Kevin Costner's Prince of Thieves, anyway.
  
  
• It's not just the genre-hopping (yeah, I'm getting this stuff out of the way early, since inevitably I'll be distracted later on) it's the look and feel of each episode. They're fantastic contrasts and they each look fantastic. The direction for ATCM and this one (so far, I'm only a few minutes in, but I've been kept distracted from "oh fuck off, hard-boiled detective nonsense" because it just looks so damn good) in particular: gorgeous.
  
  
• OMG pre-credits sequence, OMG. LOLARIOUS AND AWESOME.
  
  
• Sting! I recognise a music thing! I'm so proud.
  
  
• "Only you could fancy someone in a book." Oh, poor naive little Rory. He has never met fandom, has he? Or, y'know, people? Mr Darcy actually did exist before Colin Firth dived in a lake, y'know.
  
  
• I like Amy's glasses. I like that she has glasses. I like they are all hanging out and having a lovely time and NOTHING IS GOING TO GO WRONG.
  
  
• I hate endings too, Doctor, but my librarian friends are all going to come and kill you now for your booky vandalising ways.
  
  
• I don't want Rory to die after getting coffee. It will make be sad whenever I get coffee. AND I GET COFFEE A LOT. You get those coffees, Rory, get them and stay alive!
  
  
• Oh, OMG. Okay he did get zapped, but OMG RIVER. And OMG BOOK. And OMG THAT WAS COOL.
  
  
• Just flailing all the way in delight at just HOW MUCH I LOVE DOCTOR WHO for the next few minutes.
  
  
• Ah, and I like the establishment of The Time Travel Rules for this episode. Cause I've no issues with them being messed about with, changed, bent or broken, so long as that's set up first.
  
  
• OMG RORY'S GRAVE...we don't count as viewers, right? WE'RE NOT REALLY WATCHING THEM, RIGHT?
  
  
• "It's a gift of the TARDIS; it hangs around." I do believe someone just retconned quite a few things, the earliest being The Myth Makers (1965!) so that Vicki will still understand Troilus once the TARDIS has gone and thus gets rid of the plot hole that would suggest she's stuck in the past and isolated from everyone around her on account of not being able to understand the languages of ancient Earth, rather negating what's intended as a happy ending. (ETA: just reading this over before posting, I love this even more now it has sod all to do with the episode and really does seem to be a gratuitous retcon, heh.)
  
  
• Ooh, the Doctor left River a message for a change, cool. I shall take that as a keen hint of the equality of experience/knowledge in their relationship at this point. Especially when she sends a message back, heh.
  
  
• I want River's dress.
  
  
• I DON'T LIKE RIVER BEING SCARED. THAT MAKES THINGS REALLY SCARY.
  
  
• "Final checks." "Since when?" SINCE HE GOT MARRIED. OH. More episodes of the Doctor and River being married and knowing it please. OH AND A PARDON AND CONFIRMATION THAT SHE SPENDS AGES OUT OF PRISON. AND SHE'S A PROFESSOR NOW TOO. MARVELLOUS. Ahem. I really will be terribly sad if there's not more of this...though it does make SitL/FotD even worse really, going from this loveliness to that. BUT STILL.
  
  
• And then he read the last chapter and OH. (Yet I still have Utter Confidence this is going to end well, shusht; I don't believe Moffat would do anything truly horrid or nihilistic.)
  
  
• The Doctor losing his temper and River telling him to calm down and I JUST WANT THEM TO HAVE ALL THE SCENES THEY MAKE ME HAPPY.
  
  
• "There's a car out front, shall we steal it?" I LOVE YOU RIVER.
  
  
• THEY ARE REALLY MESSED UP. I love them, but, oh, so messed up. I do love Amy going to be all lovely and maternal at River though. And that River is willing to show her vulnerability to her mother.
  
  
• "Why not zap him back in time like they normally do?" Because they're baiting some manner of trap, trio of experienced time-travel adventurer people! Have you forgotten YOUR LIVES?!
  
  
• "I'm sorry Rory, but you just died." Please, please let the next line be "What, again?"
  
  
• Ah, we don't know who the storyteller is, the typist...Amy?
  
  
• "You think you'll just come back to life?" "When don't I?" See, it's an emotional scene, and yet I FEEL NO DESPAIR. For you cannot convince me what with all the coming back to life, with LAMPSHADING the coming back to life that there will be a horrible ending here.
  
  
• ARE THEY GOING TO JUMP TOGETHER? I don't how how I feel about that. But it is very them.
  
  
• Oh, fuck it, I did cry when they jumped. I tried not to, but, um, yeah. Oh well.
  
  
• Well, this is too good...WHAT AWFUL LAST MINUTE THING IS GOING TO HAPPEN? I was a bit worried there wouldn't be a final Pond huddle though. I like they got in a last huddle. WHAT BAD THING IS GOING TO RUIN IT? ...oh, well done Rory. Couldn't have just got in the bloody TARDIS could you?
  
  
• Bother, and again, with the crying. So they did die, but it's okay because most people do by the time they're in their eighties.
  
  
• Five minutes left. I expect a beautiful and uplifting epilogue now, thankee.
  
  
• "River, they were you parents. Sorry. Didn't even think." QUITE. "Don't travel alone." "Travel with me then." "Whenever and wherever you want, but not all the time." They really are smashing.
  
  
• And Amy as storyteller, yay. Sentimental, but not over the top. Emotionally satisfying; this is totally a goodbye I'm okay with.
  
  
• Well, I loved that. This is why: I love how small it is, how intimate, how there's no great villain, just an alien species doing what it does to survive, and that in this smallness that we say goodbye to Amy and Rory. I love that the answer is "run!" and that it's not about saving the universe or even the world but about the Pond family (all four of them), and their relationships, and their lives and who they are and how they save each other. That was the story of Amelia Pond, and it was awfully good.
  
  
  In a word: magnifique.
  
  Ooh, a Christmas trailer!

Comments

[elisi]

Indeed.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

It weren't bad.

[elisi]

Well, I loved that. This is why: I love how small it is, how intimate, how there's no great villain, just an alien species doing what it does to survive, and that in this smallness that we say goodbye to Amy and Rory. I love that the answer is "run!" and that it's not about saving the universe or even the world but about the Pond family (all four of them), and their relationships, and their lives and who they are and how they save each other. That was the story of Amelia Pond, and it was awfully good.
All of this, really. It was a love letter to love, and that is just wonderful.

Also, thanks for pointing out who the collector was, I couldn't place him. Except now I want an Amy/Rory vid to 'Everything I do (I do it for you)'. For REASONS. (Oh, I adore Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves... I was about 12 when it came out and I think it imprinted on me...)

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Ha! I love that movie something rotten, American accents and all.

[dqbunny.livejournal.com]

Lovely, lovely comments. I agree with all of them!

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! I am about as giddy as I can get about telly for how well those last five episodes worked.

[telyanofcelore.livejournal.com]

Well, the noir thing made me super happy, but apart from that, I totally agree with you! In every way! And god, I cried so much. I wasn't going to, but it was like The Girl Who Waited...

I'm glad they put the Angels back to zapping people to the past, and that they had them make a zapping farm, that was amazing and creepy. But what about angels getting stuck when they look at each other? There were several scenes where I was like 'good on you, Ponds, you have just trapped some Angels!'

[calapine.livejournal.com]

They disrupted the electricity, possibly? We see them mucking about with the lights sometimes.

I didn't have any problems with them being killers, but it's certainly more interesting them having them zap people into the past, yes.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I remember Mike McShane (Grayle) from when he was a regular on Whose Line is it Anyway?.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever properly watched that.

...

I also remember him as the Harkonnen leader in one of the Dune PC games, but feel that's a bit less classy than WLitA.

[nonelvis]

THAT'S where I've seen him! Thank you.

[eclecticmuse.livejournal.com]

He was my favorite of the recurring guests on British Whose Line so I almost had a stroke when I read he was going to be on Who.

[pextheunalive.livejournal.com]

I hadn't been keeping up with the new series news (not because of spoilers, but because of laziness and a touch of apathy and just being willing to let everything unfold onscreen when and where it will) and was delighted to see him magically appear onscreen.

I honestly thought he was dead or retired or whatever, so it was a happy surprise for me. :)

[jigglykat.livejournal.com]

My theory ended up being true, for once! I expected that they'd both get "blinked" and live their lives to death and the Doctor couldn't see them for some reason or whatever. Which I'm pretty happy with. Yes, it's sad, but it's bittersweet because they still got to live out their full lives together.

The part that actually hit me the hardest was when he was reading Amy's letter and it cut to little Amelia sitting in the garden because I have been WAITING FOR YEARS for that little thread to be tied up. No new footage, but at least they acknowledged it because it's always stuck out and bothered me.

Also, the fanart I reblogged on Tumblr of the Doctor apologizing to Brian. ALL MY CRIES.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

I am SCARED TO LOOK AT THIS FANART. I should probably spend SOME OF MY TIME TODAY NOT BEING V EMO RE PONDS.

[eclecticmuse.livejournal.com]

Is it the one where Brian's dropping the watering can? I lost it.

[jigglykat.livejournal.com]

Yep! There have been others, but that one hits really hard.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

See, I don't think that the Angels count as non-villainous here or as just doing what they had to do to survive. The Angels in "Blink" were maybe doing that, but deliberately time-looping people and keeping them in solitary confinement until they died of old age is definitely gratuitously sadistic and villainous.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, non-villainous is an exaggeration. But it's quite modest, their plan, one most monsters might scoff at in its lack of ambition: make a farm, have lots of food. (I suppose they're not letting them go because that means they have a ready food supply of people who've already disappeared, and it might get a bit suspicious of a whole lot of people started claiming time-hoppingness in the same area, so I wouldn't put it down purely to sadism.)

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

That was the story of Amelia Pond, and it was awfully good.
I think that about sums the whole thing up.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

She was Scottish. I expect I was biased.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Well, then Scottish people must have superpowers, because I am American and she got me, too. :P

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Yah, the Scottish superpower is our ability to deep fry any food and think we have made it better.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Judging by American county fairs, you have transmitted this power to your colonial descendants quite efficiently. :P

[gwynnega]

I agree! It was a lovely and fitting end for Amy and Rory. ::sniffle::

[yuvia.livejournal.com]

I just want to say YESSSS!!!! to everything you said.
I didn't like the western one, but... honestly, after this one, I don't care at all.

Yes, yes, yes and yes.
Just something else: "Please, please let the next line be "What, again?"" XD. OK, it could be just a little better.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

The Western was my least favourite too, but it did at least look terribly pretty.

[fyrdrakken]

A thing which occurred to me about that ending for the Ponds is that it's an echo of the way Reinette's episode showed the Doctor's perspective on the mayfly lives of his human friends: He comes to see them, they're starting to look a bit older - and then boom, there they are dead and buried in the blink of an eye, and he can't visit them ever again because of timey-wimey reasons.

Also, there was a bit of fanart I saw on Facebook (which means it's no doubt all over Tumblr) that's a newspaper clipping of Amy's obituary, telling about the wonderful life she and Rory wound up having together.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen that fanart - my current fanon is basically lizbee's story.