Note: Full Spoilers for the episode follow.
"I always rip out the last page of the book - then it doesn't have to end. I hate endings."
As an immortal cosmic adventurer accustomed to ricocheting in and out of people's decidedly mortal lives, it was an understandable gripe for the Doctor to grumble.
But for fans who have come to know and love the Ponds, it was also a fittingly poignant foreboder for an episode we've long known was coming - an adventure that would write Amy and Rory out of the show for good.
And, as Steven Moffat had so excruciatingly and consistently teased, in a 'heartbreaker' which not everyone would make it out of alive.
The Angels Take Manhattan had its minor narrative quibbles (more on those later), but still stood strong as a heartfelt, emotional end for the TARDIS' longest serving companions (since the show's noughties' return at least), and the best episode of the season thus far.
A pitch-perfectly atmospheric film noir teaser set the scene with style - as the city that never sleeps, the Angels had set up scary shop in New York with a temporal battery farm that could sustain them like never before.
When Rory was Angel-napped back to 1938, Amy, the Doctor and a returning River/Melody fought past temporal distortions and chilling cherubims to save him - just in time to see his future self die old and alone.
Despite the Doctor's assertions that you can't change a history you've already acknowledged, Amy and Rory stood destiny in the face, flipped the bird, and sacrificed themselves to create a paradox with the power to change everything.
It was only fitting that as the Who monster so closely tired to Amy's own story, it was the Angels that contributed to her own (kind of) demise. While they weren't at their scariest (though the creepy J-Horror giggle of the cherubims was a nice, new touch), they were the best choice in helping deliver a definitively final (albeit bittersweet) end.
Unsurprisingly, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill were as excellent as we've come to expect, bouncing from rompy humour to heartbreaking drama with ease. While the idea of a suicide pact isn't exactly the most jovial of potential exits, their decision to jump into the unknown together encapsulated their relationship - no matter the danger or the potential pitfalls, as long as they made the journey with each other, everything would be ok.
Kudos also to Matt Smith, who managed to break my already fracturing heart with his grief-stricken, surprisingly selfish reaction in the face of Amy's immediate sacrifice. Thanks to The Power of Three, his emotional connection to the Ponds has never been more heartfelt, and the importance of his travelling companions never more stressed - so it'll be interesting to see how he's handling things come Christmas time.
Admittedly, it left a few nitpicky questions - if the only thing stopping the Doctor seeing the Ponds again is the TARDIS' inability to land in New York, why couldn't he just drop into Connecticut and drive/fly/bike over the state line? If Melody can use her Vortex Manipulator to get her parents the book, why couldn't the Doctor simply borrow that? And bugger Amy, Rory and the Doctor in all this - will nobody please just think of Rory's dad, Brian?!
Intriguingly though, there's every chance these questions - and more - will be answered in the series' latter half. Fan speculation suggests the episodes we've seen already have aired out of chronological order, and then we have River's comments that the Doctor's become almost too invisible suggesting series arc-related plot points we haven't even thought about until now.
Ultimately, The Angels Take Manhattan succeeded in an already uphill battle by honing in on the romanticism of the Ponds' connection to the Whoniverse and each other, bringing Amelia's journey full circle with a flurry of poignant touches, and definitively writing them out in the most bittersweet way imaginable.
As far as final pages go, it's one we're happy to leave unripped.
Source : ign[dot]com
No comments:
Post a Comment