Crossing off the Ponds – Angels Take Manhattan reviewed

As we prepare to ‘cross the pond’ for the end of this run of Doctor Who with The Angels Take Manhattan, we also get ready to cross the Ponds off the list of travelling companions [sic]. I have already made my prediction on how they get written out permanently (see here) but I am sure the actual story will be more complicated and surprising than that. Anyway, I will see you after Saturday evening – hankies ready! Say hi to River and remember, Don’t Blink!

The Story

Once there was a boy called Rory Williams who loved a girl called Amy Pond. They married and settled down but their life together was intertwined with wonderful adventures with a man called The Doctor and his blue box that travelled in time and space!

Things got so confusing that Rory and Amy met their daughter Melody who became known as River Song (and who one day would / wouldn’t kill The Doctor), and Rory kept dying! One time he got airbrushed from history then came back as a sort of android who spent 2,000 years guarding a box in which Amy waited for him (he had just shot her!)

One time Rory, Amy and The Doctor were in Manhattan when Rory got zapped back in time by a Weeping Angel; he bumped into his daughter River (now using the name Melody Malone – did she marry?) who cleverly wrote a book that The Doctor was reading so that Amy and The Doctor could come back to them.

Back, then, in 1938 Rory watches and older self die of old age; to create a paradox and defeat the Angels Rory commits suicide. Amy loves him so much she jumps with him. Time goes odd and all four of our heroes end up back in the present. Sadly a last Angel zaps Rory again and they see his gravestone. The power of love was so great that Amy also let the Angel take her back so that she and Rory could live out their lives in the past.

Gripes and Moans

I couldn’t engage with this; much to like with good tension from the stripped back Angels and weren’t the child Angels upsetting?! Great performances as well but I could handle what seemed to be a plot written thinly enough to allow all the characters to get emotional and have meaningful dialogue to get towards an ending that was pretty predictable. My guess (here) was not bang on but was on the right lines.

My moans include:

Statue of Liberty – really? When I was inside it I could have sworn it was man made
Even if they have faith would they really have jumped from the building to their suicide?
Is time able to be re-written or is it fixed? Why does fixed mean no popping back to visit? How does River get to write a book for Amy to publish? [And about to be put up for sale – see here!]
Why the big ‘don’t travel alone’ piece?

Overall

I may have been watching too critically; this has plus points it just didn’t have a story to me. I found the end piece in the cemetery less polished than the rest as though the suicide leap should have been the end stranding our lovers in the past.

I can’t forgive the Statue of Liberty either!

I may get the book if it isn’t too dear. Who knows! I assume it