Holistic Review: On first viewing, you get totally swept up in the emotion, the anticipation, and the fright... but each subsequent viewing is less convincing.

The Angels Take Manhattan is touching, beautiful, and a fittingly poignant farewell to Amy and Rory. I need to say that right up front because I want you to know that I really enjoyed it, even though it's going to be a little while before I say another positive thing about it. Because, you see, like Amy herself, The Angels Take Manhattan is also maddeningly illogical and defiantly uncooperative.

I seem to have the same problem with The Angels Take Manhattan that I did with The Power of Three. When you don't know what's going to happen, the emotion of it all is so strong that you get swept along with the story, and your gut reaction to the scenes overwhelms the tentative objections that your brain is trying to raise. But once you understand the full scope of the story, those tentative objections turn into a concrete realization that those story elements never quite came together. And when the bricks aren't solidly mortared, the foundation is weakened, and everything built on top of it begins to wobble as if the whole thing might collapse. Such is what happens here.

Initially, I thought the whole story made relative sense: the Angels' scheme, how Rory and Amy defeat them, and how and why Rory and Amy become stranded in the past. But now, having watched it three times, I can barely justify any of those things. Let's start with...

THE ANGELS' SCHEME

The idea of it is really cool: instead of scavenging for victims, what if the Angels could herd their abductees into one compound and feed on them over and over and over again. As the Doctor explains, "Every time you try to escape, you get zapped back in time." Unfortunately, the way it's executed, this concept falls apart pretty much immediately. You see, in order for it to work, we would need a story in which the Angels continue sending their victims further and further and further back in time. There's no reason why that wouldn't work, in theory: you have one Angel who initially captures their victims, sending them to 1938; the next Angel makes the rounds and sends them back to 1924; then the next Angel sends everyone back to 1919; and so on and so forth. It means that each Angel only gets to feed on each victim once, and that the final Angel would have to hurl the victims far enough into the past that their normal lifespan wouldn't allow them to catch up to their previous selves, but it's doable. Assuming, that is, that the Weeping Angels can travel through time, and coordinate their plan with Angels in other timezones. We've only ever seen them feed on beings in their current time zone, but given the nature of their existence, there's no reason why they couldn't flit back and forth.

The way their scheme is scripted, though, is muddy at the very least. Both Rory and Garner get hurled into the past, where they're fated to live out their lives in a small apartment until they die on the day that they originally stumbled into it. There's a very cool symmetry to that — not only does it neatly imply that the Angels can somehow calculate a person's remaining lifespan and then send them exactly that number of days back into the past, it also matches up exactly with what we saw them do to Billy (albeit not to Kathy, so it isn't a rule). The problem is that this contradicts what we know of the Angels, and the episode itself. Tailoring each victim's timejump to their specific remaining lifespan would require the Angels to send each victim back to a different day, but according to Blink, each Weeping Angel is individually linked to a specific year, just like the Angel who "eats" Rory and Amy at the end (although the Doctor is now claiming that "nobody knows" whether this is typically the way they operate). Yet The Angels Take Manhattan outright states that the Angels are sending the same people to the past multiple times. They can't both be true: otherwise you'd have Rory, say, getting knocked back to 1929 over and over again, and constantly reliving those same nine years, like the poor Master in The Curse of Fatal Death. Could there be seven different versions of Rory living in Winter Quay simultaneously? Would he be his own roommate, seven times over, or would each Rory get a separate apartment, and yell at the younger Rorys to keep the noise down?

The only alternative that I can see, to avoid both the "tons of duplicates running around" problem and the "too far back in time to meet your original self" problem, is this. It could be that with each attack, the Angels send their victims back in time (and space) by a couple of minutes: just long enough that, by the time they get back to their room, the Angel has already dispatched their earlier self. However, it's hard to imagine that sending people back in time by only a few minutes would be much more than a light snack for the Angels.

So, I can't quite figure out how the Angels manage to repeatedly feed off the same person. Nor can I figure out how this impacts the life expectancy of the ones who are snatched. First off, if the Angels corral them inside Winter Quay and never let them leave, how do they manage to stay alive? Obviously they can't even go out for groceries; do the Angels restock the refrigerator while they're sleeping? Do they run a cafeteria downstairs, where you have to blink every time you want the Weeping Angel lunch lady to serve you a scoop of macaroni salad? Do they relax their vigilance enough to allow the pizza delivery man in and out? (Did they even have pizza delivery guys in 1938?) But how would the residents earn money to pay them anyway? It seems to me like nobody would survive more than a week trapped in this place, which brings up another point: if killing himself prematurely allows Rory to cause a paradox which kills all of the Angels... how come nobody else has tried that? Winter Quay looks huge, able to house hundreds of residents. Are you trying to tell me that not one of those people felt so suffocated and hopeless that they ended their own life? Or is that only an issue if the Angels do, indeed, allow all of the incoming residents to witness their own death? If that's a rarer event than this episode makes it seem, then suicide would only be able to cause a paradox for the handful of people who saw their elderly self die, and perhaps Garner and Rory are the only people who have.

But for now, let's assume that this plan makes perfect sense, and turn our attention to...

THE ANGELS' DEFEAT

The paradox that Rory creates is entirely dependent on the Angels totally ignoring their usual modus operandi. They can move "faster than you can believe", in the blink of an eye, yeah? And they must surely realize that for Rory to escape the building would cause an untenable paradox. Wouldn't the Angels want to do everything in their power to keep Rory from escaping and killing them all? So how come they all hang around in the corridors doing nothing while Rory attempts to jump off the building? The only Angel that comes after him is the Statue of Liberty; shouldn't the rest of them be chasing him as well? Or do they assume (apparently incorrectly) that the Angel of Liberty will get anyone who goes up there? Shouldn't they be more vigilant, in general, about keeping people away from the roof? And how come the Angel of Liberty just sits there snarling and twiddling her giant thumbs the whole time, even when Rory and Amy completely ignore it for the 38 seconds that they're staring lovingly into one another's eyes? It could totally smack them down in that amount of time.

Which raises another point. Unfortunately, as in every other Weeping Angel story (although it wasn't as noticeable in Blink), the actors slightly undermine the scariness by not always looking at the Angels. You can't help but wonder why they don't get zapped into the past the very moment that they take their eyes off the Angels. In this episode, I first noticed the problem when the Doctor and River both turn their backs on the Angel standing behind the Doctor, when they flee the apartment. It becomes even more of an issue as Rory blinks continuously while otherwise maintaining his gaze on the Angel of Liberty... until the period from 34:44 until 35:22, the aforementioned 38 seconds during which Rory takes his eyes off it completely, to face Amy instead.

So these are all huge potential flaws in the script and/or the direction and/or the performances. But the very end is the worst. It's so heartbreakingly sad, and at the same time touchingly sweet, until you realize that they're making a huge issue out of absolutely nothing. It's built on several illogical assumptions or omissions which I would like to address one at a time.

RORY AND AMY'S FATE

1. First of all: the Doctor makes a big, big deal out of the fact that once you've glimpsed your future, it becomes fixed, unchangeable, set in stone. Sooooo, how is it that he was able to so thoroughly tinker with Kazran's past, in A Christmas Carol? The Doctor wanted to change Kazran's current state, so he went back in time and fiddled with Kazran's past until he got it right. How is this situation any different? (Having said that, I always took issue with the way the Doctor tampered with Kazran's timeline, so I much prefer his viewpoint here... but his hands-off approach wilfully disregards the show's internal consistency.)

2. Not only do we have Weeping Angels who continue to stand still when people stop looking at them, we also have Weeping Angels who somehow move even while they're being stared at. It's this sudden loophole that allows the Weeping Angel to take both Rory (while Amy is staring at it) and Amy (while the Doctor and River are staring at it). In fact, in Rory's case, the audience is looking at the Angel too. So how does it snatch them? That's not how it works!

3. Before he knows that Amy and Rory are going to get stuck there, the Doctor informs us that "I can't ever take the TARDIS back, though. The timelines are too scrambled." Okay. Why? Just saying it doesn't make it true, you know. I'd really like to know why exactly the timelines are so badly scrambled around New York and not, say, around London. The Weeping Angels have been there too, you know, not to mention any number of other aliens making temporal incursions. Cardiff even has a spacetime Rift, for goodness' sake! We've never, ever before heard of the Doctor never again being able to materialize in a particular location, so hearing it in this story smacks hugely of plot contrivance, particularly when we're given absolutely no reason why New York would be in the center of such a tangled temporal web. The story is also vague on where exactly the Doctor can never return: New York City in general? Or specifically the New York City of April 1938? Because, if it's the former, then the Doctor immediately proves himself wrong by going back for the last page of the book, just after River has dematerialized the TARDIS.

4. Even if the Doctor can't take the TARDIS back to rescue Rory, can we just take at look at River's wrist for a minute? Not the broken one; the other one. "How did you get here?" asks Rory, when they first bump into one another. "Vortex manipulator," replies River. So obviously she can use it to navigate through this temporal hotspot. And at the end of the story, she's still wearing it. Why can't she go back to 1938 and bring Rory back? Worst-case scenario, if for some reason vortex manipulators can only ferry one person apiece: the Doctor has to pop to the future to pick up three more, and then the three of them hop back to 1938, give one to Rory, and then jump forward in time to the TARDIS again. How hard is that? (And how is it that a vortex manipulator is more powerful than the TARDIS, anyhow, when it's nowhere near as advanced?)

5. But let's just say the vortex manipulator is no good for getting back again: the timelines are just so scrambled now that even it can't get through the traffic. (Incidentally, I don't believe that possibility for a second. And do you know why? Because after they've lost Amy forever, River mentions that she's going to take her book to Amy to be published. So clearly she can get back to 1938, and clearly she's going to see Amy again. So why the Doctor thinks he never can is just... stupid. Anyway.) There's one other glaringly obvious possibility that the Doctor never seems to consider. He can't go back to New York City in 1938, right? Well, um, 1938 is just a little bit bigger than New York City! Amy and Rory could take a train to Buffalo, Toronto, Poughkeepsie, Trenton, Boston, anywhere, and the Doctor could pick them up there!

Can you see why I'm getting the feeling that the Doctor just uncharacteristically gave up? If even I can think of at least two alternative solutions that make perfect sense within the logic of the story, then the Doctor should have been able to think of a hundred others. And it really takes the impact out of Amy and Rory's departure when you realize that the Doctor could rescue them in a heartbeat if he weren't so defeatist.

 
There were a few other assorted facepalm moments throughout the script, most of which didn't occur to me until the second or third viewing, but when they did, they seriously undermined the story's believability:

• The Melody Malone book is a cool idea, and I love the pseudonym, but boy howdy, does it cause problems. To start with, Amy complains at the beginning that the Doctor has read the book out loud to her before. So, unless he never finished it (which is possible, since he doesn't rip out the last page until now), the Doctor has read the book already, and Amy has possibly heard the whole thing herself. So why is it that until now, neither of them noticed that they were characters in the story? (Is it possible that she only means he read the beginning of the book to her, earlier in the afternoon?) Later, Amy reads aloud to the Doctor: "Page 43, you're gonna break something?" Didn't she notice that River's immediately preceding line is "Are you going to break my wrist, or hers?"

• Which leads neatly to the fact that if the Doctor wanted to subvert fate — which he clearly did, because he refuses to break River's wrist as the book dictates he should — then why didn't he go ahead and break the Angel's wrist himself? Surely that's no less radical an idea than refusing to break River's wrist and forcing her to think of a way out of the situation. (Although I guess the Angels must be really difficult to harm, or Grayle would've shattered this one in his attempt to inflict pain, not to mention that once word got out, their would-be victims would forever be hammering them to powder when confronted. Then again, that might even work in the Angels' favor: I bet a little masonry dust is a guaranteed way to make your prey blink!) For that matter, the excerpt that Amy reads doesn't say that he did break River's wrist, only that he was planning to, so maybe it didn't matter how the situation resolved itself! The Doctor really needs to get better at looking for loopholes before he gives up...

• I wasn't sure, at first, whether to classify this as "major pet peeve" or "major plot hole" until I realized that it's not just annoying, it's also a massive contrivance, so, into the "facepalm script moments" section it goes. Why, why, why does the Doctor heal River's broken wrist using regenerative energy? For starters, it shouldn't be possible: until now, we've only ever seen the Doctor deploy his regenerative energy within a few hours of his regeneration being triggered. The eleventh Doctor regenerated at least 200 years ago, so how come he can access this energy now? But beyond the unlikely mechanics, this newfound ability raises all kinds of scripting-shortcut red flags, namely: why has he never done it before? and, now that we know he can, what's to stop him from trotting it out again anytime one of his companions faces an injury, life-threatening or otherwise? After all, despite River's worries, this energy transfer doesn't seem to do him one bit of harm. So yeah, not really liking this. I can see it becoming the "medical emergency" equivalent of the magical all-purpose sonic screwdriver. Unless — and I really hope this is true — the only reason he's able to do it in this case is because River is part Time Lord herself?

• What's up with the ending? Amy herself made a big deal of the fact that, as a child, she waited outside all night for the Doctor, and he never returned. Later, in The Big Bang, we learned that he did return while she was asleep outside, and tucked her into bed. But this ending implies that (a) he never came back to tuck her into bed, because she's still sitting on her suitcase come morning, and (b) he did come back for her in the morning, because she seems to hear the TARDIS materializing. Are we meant to think "aww, how sweet, he does go back to see her" rather than "this makes a mess of everything we know about Amy's background"? He couldn't possibly avert Rory's fate, but he can massively rewrite Amy's childhood?

Now that I've addressed my bigger objections (smaller objections yet to come, FYI), I can turn to what really worked. High on that list: the Weeping Angels. I was never quite satisfied with the expansion of their powers in The Time of Angels, or their sudden desire in that story to kill rather than feed, so I was really happy to see that The Angels Take Manhattan returns them to their simple-but-effective roots. In fact, it's almost as if Moffat was completely disregarding the Angels' sophomore outing, because none of the Angels' new abilities are even mentioned in this episode, aside from their (still unexplained) ability to take over other statues. Oddly, the Doctor never even reminds his companions not to look them in the eye. But that's fine with me, because I like my tradional Weeping Angels the best. Just as in Blink, these Angels pretty much restrict themselves to staying still even when only the audience is looking at them, moving between cuts or blinks, and zapping people into the past. The one innovation that we get are the creepy baby Angels, which clarifies that the Weeping Angels do have a life-cycle of some sort, and baby Angels seem to have full control of their powers. (I'd wondered if perhaps they displaced Rory in space but not time because they were using him for practice to hone their abilities, but as it turns out, that was not the case.) Well, and we learn that some (if not all) of the Angels are female.

There are, unfortunately, some occasions where the monsters' abilities and limitations aren't adhered to as strictly as they could have been. I've already mentioned the fact that some Angels don't move even when nobody is looking at them, and one Angel does move even when people are looking at it. We also have Angels staring at one another, which they're expressly never supposed to do, when they surround the Doctor and River in Rory's apartment. Given that Moffat had similar problems when actors interacted with shadows in the Library, it makes you wonder if his monsters are too ambitious or if the director just really needs to hold the actors' feet to the fire, to make sure that they're constantly aware of what they need to be doing, or not doing. Because the rules of the Angels' behaviour becomes a little fuzzy, it must be said that they're not as scary here as they were in Blink, but I'm sure that's also partly because the element of surprise is lost. They may not have made me jump out of my seat, but the Weeping Angels never fail to startle me or send a chill down the spine. Even with these minor problems in their execution, they're still my favorite monster of the revival by far, and I can't wait to see them back again.

There is, of course, an even more momentous occasion in The Angels Take Manhattan: the final departure of Amy Pond and Rory Williams. Turns out I correctly predicted their fate last week, although at the time I never really thought it would actually happen! By this point, my relationship with Amy has grown from outright dislike to grudging acceptance with occasional admiration. After two and a half years in her company, I do feel like I have a good sense of her character, which is a far cry from the way I felt after The Eleventh Hour. So I'd say that Amy has definitely grown, and matured, and she's most certainly softened. It's clear these days that she does value and respect Rory — her utter devotion to him in this story is absolutely endearing — which I think has made a big difference in how I perceive her. In some ways, I'll miss her, but I'm not sorry that the character has departed. Even as much as she's improved, I was reminded throughout the episode of reasons why I can let Amy go without a fuss. Every time Karen Gillan says "Yowza", it sets my teeth on edge; we have another awkward Amy laugh after she says "Coffee."; and of course she just has to fit in one last "Shut! Up!" at Rory, and an "Oh, shut up, it's the glasses" at the Doctor. (River, naturally, gets in on the action too, telling the Doctor to "shut up" twice.) But there were moments when I really liked Amy. Her best moment in the story, and possibly in her entire run as a companion, is her steely determination in this exchange:

Doctor: "What have we got? Eh? Tell me. Come on. What?"
Amy: "I won't let them take him. That's what we got."
Me: (cheers!)

I also appreciated Gillan's delivery of "It's called marriage.", "You be a good girl and you look after him.", the way she sadly nods her head after the Doctor's "You see?", puts her arm around River, her heartstring-tugging sobbing as she prepares to say goodbye to the Doctor, and the disconsolate look on her face as she vanishes. It's Darvill, though, who gets the best lines, particularly during the emotional rooftop scene: "Well, they haven't taken me yet. What if I just run?", "This is the right thing to do.", "Great. The one time you can't manage it.", "Amy, I'm gonna need a little help here.", and "And anyway, what else is there?"

Rory, on the other hand, continues to be treated like the second-fiddle companion, even in his farewell story, even by the man who created him. Rory is the catalyst for the entire story, but — except for one shining moment — he never does anything. He just gets shuffled around by the Weeping Angels, like a game of Hot Potato, while the Doctor and Amy chase after him. Not only does he completely fail to extricate himself from his predicament, he walks straight into the Weeping Angels' trap at Winter Quay, without being coerced, for no apparent reason. If I'd just been attacked by a flock of malevolent cherubs (or putti, whatever), I don't think I would've beelined for the nearest imposing apartment building. Nearest diner, maybe! But not an apartment building. (Are the Weeping Angels able to exert some kind of mental control, too?) He seems to be totally oblivious to the danger posed by the Weeping Angels, despite having seen them "in action" (sort of) in The God Complex. Worse yet, he doesn't even get any hint of a leaving scene, or a farewell with the Doctor. One second he's there, the next second he's vanished, and we never see him again. As a departure, it's almost as abrupt as Dodo's. I know that it's meant to be shocking and hurtful, but Amy at least gets an opportunity to pen a farewell letter to the Doctor. Doesn't Rory have anything he wants to say? Or a message for his dad? (Will we ever see Brian again, and will anyone even tell him what happened to Rory?) The final straw is that when Rory vanishes, the Doctor is sad, and concerned about Amy's feelings, but it isn't until Amy disappears too that the Doctor falls apart with grief. Clearly he's far more upset about Amy's fate than he is about Rory's.

Come to think of it, though, it's not just Rory who's peripheral to The Angels Take Manhattan. Amy, too, is mostly relegated to "following the Doctor around" and therefore "chasing after Rory" for the entirety of the adventure. She does come up with the (frankly brilliant) plan to derive handy spoiler-free hints from River's book by consulting the chapter titles, but otherwise the plot is pulling her along rather than the other way around. It feels a bit weird, looking back, that both of the companions were so underused in their final story, particularly considering how much Moffat seems to adore them both. In fact, up until we learned that the Angels were after Rory, at around the 30-minute mark, I was beginning to feel that the story was almost free of plot. As it turns out, The Angels Take Manhattan does put the plot on the backburner — it's an extremely straightforward, simple tale — but that's because it wants to foreground the emotion. The real strength of this script is the way it paints the relationships between the characters: primarily, the Doctor's love for his companions, and Amy's intense devotion to Rory.

I've been under the impression that Moffat knew for at least a year how he wanted Amy and Rory to depart the series, but now, in an interview with Radio Times (on 03 October 2012), he's revealed: "How and why would they leave? And would they live or die? I wrote and rewrote. I had a completely different ending and threw it away. So many times over those mad few days, the fate of the Ponds changed. Alive, dead, alive, dead... Nothing felt right. Nothing felt inevitable." Which might explain why, rather than a perfectly-orchestrated departure story, we instead have one that's riddled with holes and inconsistencies. Nevertheless, aside from the painful oversights of Amy and Rory's fate, their final scenes are a highlight of the episode. We think we're about to get a happy ending, until the bittersweet twist is sprung... just when you think they've really escaped death, blammo, Rory's gone. And when you realize what Amy's preparing to do, and what she's willing to sacrifice to be with him, that's when the tears really start coming.

Given such a poignant script, Matt Smith has opportunities to tap into emotions that the Doctor doesn't ordinarily reveal. His snarling to River "You get your wrist out. You get your wrist out, without breaking it." took me aback, and his anguished "No!", when Amy decides to blink and let the Weeping Angel take her, is heartbreaking. Smith portrays the Doctor's grief very believably.

It's always great to see Alex Kingston back, and it's only appropriate that River gets to be present for her parents' final-ever TARDIS trip. The emotional script doesn't shortchange River, either: there are a couple of lovely scenes between her and Amy (first being comforted by Amy, and then comforting her in return before the Angel snatches her), and one particularly interesting scene with the Doctor, in which River seems to admit that she knows the Doctor will never really love her back. I'd always been under the impression that he did, what with all the romantic dates and the kissing and the marriage and the implication that they have lots and lots of sex when we're not looking. Or maybe all that's true but the Doctor's just using her, which of course is ever so much better. (Sarcasm alert.) If that's the case, no wonder River's beginning to feel despondent. Funnily enough, although flirting by Rose and Martha and Amy just aggravated me, I actually find it amusing when River does it. (Less so when the Doctor flirts back, but still!) I'm not sure why, but I think it speaks to Kingston's ability to make River likeable and interesting and complex, and not just a smug one-liner machine with in-your-face cleavage (which she could easily have been). The plot even tips its hat to her archaeology background, so it's nice to see her entire skillset contributing to the plot. And River, unlike everyone else, actually gets to dress up for the period, here rocking a trenchcoat and a really cool fedora, and a striking faux-corseted black dress. Among Kingston's great deliveries: "So. Girlfriend, then.", "Oh, you know. Texting a boy.", "So which is it going to be? Are you going to break my wrist, or hers? ...Oh no. Really? Why do you have to break mine?", "How?!" when the Doctor orders her to escape the Angel's grasp without breaking a bone, and her pained gasp when the Doctor knocks against her arm. I approve of the Doctor offering her a permanent spot on the TARDIS, although I suspect it's just as well that she turns him down. River Song is probably best in small doses, although I still love the first-Romana-crossed-with-Benny vibe that I get from her.

Grayle (Mike McShane) is interesting enough, as a minor baddie, but he really has almost nothing to do with the plot. His scenes, as far as I can figure out, are nothing more than filler, marking time until the real plot takes center stage. After all, there's no reason why the Angels couldn't have zapped Rory straight from 2012 Central Park to Winter Quay in '38, nor do the scenes in Grayle's mansion serve any purpose other than to illustrate the fixed nature of time, courtesy of River's broken wrist. Collectors as villains are rare in televised Doctor Who, but not necessarily in other genres, so perhaps that robs him of some of his effect... plus, it's difficult to imagine how on earth he managed to capture a Weeping Angel. Garner (Rob David) is appealingly wry, and might have made for an interesting "native" partner for the TARDIS crew, had he lived longer!

Yet again, the makeup team excels with the Angels, as do the post-production team who apparently added them into the exterior scenes, and who keep them completely still at all other times. I'm really dying to know how they achieve that effect. The makeup team also deserves a big round of applause for their amazing work with the old-age makeup in this story. It looks incredible and utterly believable, particularly on Arthur Darvill.

Murray Gold's score has a few heartbreakingly beautiful moments, particularly during the rooftop scene, and when Amy is sent back in time. As Grayle's elevator arrives on his floor (and again when he spies the Angel of Liberty, and when Rory arrives at Winter Quay), Gold includes a cue that sounds exactly like Mark Snow's "native ritual" accompaniment in The X-Files (also his shorthand for "something suspicious is afoot" in Nowhere Man). I like it!

I am, of course, delighted to have Nick Hurran back again this week. Given that my other favorite director also helmed a Weeping Angel story, I was looking forward to seeing what he did with them. Overall, it's not as stylish as Blink, nor do I think he milked the Angels for maximum effect, but The Angels Take Manhattan is still really well-executed, with some very clever shots. The first two times I watched the story, I didn't even notice that the Angel to Garner's left, as he enters Winter Quay, subtly disappears off its pedestal between shots. The first reveal of Rory's gravestone also made me gasp (although, how lovely is it that his middle name is Arthur?). And the slow-motion shot of Amy and Rory falling past Winter Quay as they cling to one another is powerful and sweet. Hurran gets some good scary moments out of the Angels, too. I loved the creepy shot of the Angel coming up the elevator behind Garner, the surprisingly subtle shot of giant fangs behind Garner as he reaches the roof, the flawless effect of the snarling fountain cherub, the moment when the lights come back on to reveal that the Angel has grabbed River by the wrist, the baby Angel blowing out Rory's match, and the later "lights off, lights on" cut to the Doctor and River lunging back from the advancing Angels in Rory's apartment. The creepiest shot, for me, was the close-up of the blank-eyed Angel with its cruel smile. Shudder. (Only one criticism: I didn't notice it the first few times I watched, because it's cool, but there's an unbelievably jarring cut in which the Doctor and Amy suddenly change location from a downtown city sidewalk to a pebble-covered shore on the other side of the river, in the middle of the Doctor's line "I don't / know, we're in New York!")

Hurran makes great use of the New York City setting, as well. All of the shots in Central Park, in particular, look gorgeous, and the story really shows off the Big Apple to great advantage. I don't know what Times Square ad it came from, but the shot of the 20-foot-high blinking eye is utterly fantastic and so thematically appropriate. My home country is doing really well out of the revival, with visits to Nevada, DC, Florida, Utah (twice!) and New York (also twice!). It's always a treat to visit a historical era, and the design crew pull off late-1930s New York really well. The interior of the apartment building is delightfully-old fashioned, particularly the antique scissor-gated elevator. The episode's period noir atmosphere is just fantastic, and really adds to its appeal.

Minor points:

• What exactly has Grayle hired Garner to do? Apparently he already knows where the Angels "live", so Garner's not just a detective. Is he paying Garner to capture one and bring it back? If so, good luck with that! Besides, he already has one adult and a handful of babies, so why would he need more? Given his numerous latches, he must also be fully aware that all he needs to do is leave his door unlocked and he'll have all the Weeping Angels he can shake a stick at. For that matter, what does Grayle want with River, and why does he think he needs to send his thugs to bring her in? What does he think she knows about the Angels that he doesn't?

• Both Garner and Rory seem to have the uncanny ability to step into the Winter Quay elevator and be dropped off on the correct floor, without having to press a button. Does the elevator somehow know where "their" apartment is? It's clearly not pre-set to always ferry people to the same floor, because Garner's apartment is 702 and Rory's is 802.

• How exactly are the Angels able to possess (or convert? or mimic?) any statue? Y'all know I'm a purist about these things, so in my mind, all Weeping Angels should have robes and wings and fangs. So the only thing that keeps me from grumbling overmuch about this "any statue could be an Angel" deal is that it takes the only "bad" element of Blink — that cheesy final montage — and actually makes it scary. (Although the Angels missed a trick by not possessing any of the winged statues that are already in Grayle's home!) Still, I must admit that I found it hilariously awesome that the Statue of Liberty turned out to be a Weeping Angel. (The moment they showed a shot of it, I did start thinking, "Hmmm...") How all of New York City didn't notice it moving, I'll never know!

• I really liked this week's title sequence. The icy blue tunnel paired with the green logo looks fantastic! I think they're smart to expand the logo changes from just textures to images as well, which gives them a lot more room to play!

• Amy's newspaper bears the headline "Detroit Lions Win Superbowl". First mention of Detroit in Doctor Who? Not to mention, the Lions fans around these parts will be pleased! Or, at least, those whose fandom also intersects Doctor Who...

• Cute Rory line, regarding Amy's new wrinkles:

  Rory: "I noticed them earlier. Didn't notice them! I specifically remember not noticing them."

• The Doctor thinks that Amy's reading glasses make his eyesight "much better"? Hasn't he heard of a thing called prescriptions???

• I'm a little bit skeptical of the Doctor's claim that he always rips out the last page of a book. He didn't bother doing it in City of Death! Is this just an eleventh-Doctor thing?

• Loved this line. It explains so much (without actually explaining anything at all).

  Amy: "Where did you get this book?"
  Doctor: "It was in my jacket."
  Amy: "How did it get there?"
  Doctor: "How does anything get there? I've given up asking."

• I'm intrigued by the reasoning behind why the Angels take Rory. And, for that matter, the Doctor and Martha, although in their case I assume the Angels wanted to separate them from the TARDIS. You'd think that snatching a time traveller would be a bit of a tricky situation for the Angels, because a time traveller is, presumably, just a visitor to that time period, and not necessarily meant to live out their lives there. So would that make them an even tastier meal for the Angels, or might it give them indigestion?

• Oh, sigh, this old chestnut again. Amy, honey, I know you know this word, even if you don't always make a lot of it yourself.

  Amy: "The Weeping Angels?"
  Doctor: "It makes sense."
  Amy: "It makes what?"

• When Amy first read that the Doctor was "gonna break something" belonging to a woman, for some reason my immediate assumption was that he was going to break Amy's glasses!

• I loved the very clever cut from:

  Doctor: (to Amy) "What did she say? Early what dynasty?"
  Grayle: (to River) "Early Qin, just as you say."

• Here's a real head-scratcher. Why is Rory surprised that he can read the Chinese on Grayle's vase? Surely automatic translation of written text has happened to him before, in 10 years of TARDIS travel. (Maybe it's just because it's never happened to him before without the TARDIS' presence? But if "it hangs around", then surely he's translated foreign writing during some of those periods back on Earth.)

• I didn't notice this until my second or third viewing, but it really made me laugh when I realized that, when he sees the Doctor and Amy, the vase painter says "Aiyaa!" just like my friend Katherine.

• Oh boy, another Random Plot Coincidence. The Doctor knows only the era from which the vase originates — not even the year, not what it looks like, and certainly not the exact day and place it was made — so how does the Doctor manage to pick the exact vase that winds up in Grayle's home?

• Also: since when is "yowza" written with an H? (I turned to Google for support: it gives me 69,500 results for "yowzah", compared to 3 million without the H.)

• River's being a little bit dense. If she's working in this time period as a detective who investigates Angels, then she must have been on the trail of the ones in 1938. But it didn't immediately strike her as a possibility for how Rory travelled there without a TARDIS?

• Creepy line:

  Grayle: "I wanted to know if it could feel pain."
  River: "You realize it's screaming. The others can hear."

• If an Angel can be too weak to send people back through time, like that one that grabs River's wrist, but it feeds by sending people back in time, then how is it able to regain its strength? Doesn't it get stuck in a catch-22? I guess it might be like someone who's so ill, they can't cook food or feed themselves... but, in that case, how does one feed a sick Angel? A similar issue arises toward the end of the story, in which a weakened Angel does send Rory back through time, after which the Doctor still describes it as weak. Shouldn't feasting on Rory's time energy restore at least a little bit of its strength?

• Loved this one, too. Amy sees right through him!

  Doctor: "Just a moment. Final checks."
  Amy: "Since when?!"

• But, eww! Using spit to slick your hair back? Really, Doctor??? That's just nasty. And he even does it in front of River. She's not gonna want to run her fingers through those gorgeous locks now!

• Oh, sometimes I hate paradoxes. So if "the person" that River killed never existed in the first place, then why did she get arrested for his murder??? And I still don't understand what evidence they had to arrest her.

• (stifling giggles) Clearly, ahem, the most vital use of the sonic screwdriver yet:

  Doctor: (scanning the Angel that has River's wrist in an unbreakable grip) "She's holding you very tight."

  Naw, really?

• Check out the manacle that's dangling off the Angel's arm: the hole is so huge, it should be able to pull its hand through with no problem!

• Might the Doctor have been able to free River by merely threatening to break the Angel's wrist? River looks away from the Angel, and blinks numerous times, while it's holding her, but it never changes its grip on her, so I don't know what it wants, but it clearly doesn't mean to kill her. So it's just possible that if the Doctor held a hammer and chisel to it, and then he and River both blinked, it might release its hold on her rather than risk its hand being severed. Surely worth a try, anyway. See above, re: defeatist Doctor.

• I wondered, at the start, why the Doctor appeared to have begun reading Melody Malone to Amy in the middle of the book... but when we see the list of chapter titles, it becomes apparent that we (and Rory) don't enter the picture until sometime between chapters 7 and 9 (out of 12), so I'm actually pretty impressed that the props department, Matt Smith, and Steven Moffat (or whomever wrote the full list of chapter titles) managed to synch up on it. So often, these things go wrong! (Then again, that also means that River included 7 to 9 chapters by page 43, so it must be a very short book.)

• This week's Line I Just Don't Get. Is Amy implying that the Doctor is bad at romantic gestures? But I didn't get the impression that he was trying to be romantic by healing River's wrist, so I'm not sure what she's getting at.

  Amy: "Stick to the science part."

• Another question about the Angels' plan that doesn't really bother me, but is a bit unclear. Are the Angels patrolling Winter Quay with the intention of feeding off each resident multiple times, or do they only feed on people who try to escape, as the Doctor later implies?

• Given how fast the Angels move, is it really likely that everyone would hear the Statue of Liberty approaching, as if she's just walking through Manhattan? I'm trying to convince myself that a being that large and heavy will have noisy footsteps no matter how fast it moves. But I think the problem is that we've never seen the Angels make noise before. Unless the ones with wings can fly and the ones without can't?

• Another possible solution to Rory's predicament is this: if the Angels zap Rory back to the same apartment 30 or 40 years previous, what happens if Rory tries to escape again? We're told that the Angels will send him back in time again, but where will they zap him to? They can't send him any further back in time or he won't meet himself on the day he dies. And if they did zap him back regardless, well, that would create a paradox too, just as good as the one Rory ends up causing by jumping off the roof.

• Why is the Doctor so sure that Amy won't get zapped back in time with Rory? Old Rory might be pleased to see her again because she died some time before he did, or because he misses Amy when she was still young and relatively kind to him. Besides, Old Rory didn't sound pleased to see her, he sounded desperate and frightened.

• Not quite sure I understand why creating a paradox and killing the Angels would cause the apartment building to un-happen. Are the Angels that tied in to the time energy that removing them removes everything? Or were they directly responsible for Winter Quay's construction, as Amy theorizes? (If so, I'd like to see how they negotiated with the architects!)

• Possibly my favorite line of the night:

  Rory: "I always wanted to visit the Statue of Liberty. I guess she got impatient."

• An excellent point, Rory! Nice to see this long-running plot element paying humorous dividends:

  Amy: "You think you'll just come back to life?"
  Rory: "When don't I?"

• So, when Rory and Amy jump off the side of the building, and Winter Quay is wiped off the face of the Earth along with most of the Angels, does that mean that everyone the Angels snatched and killed was brought back to life?

• Why does Rory walk back to the gravestone? (Always a bad sign! At least he doesn't say "I'll be right there", but then the setup was so obvious that he didn't really need to.) He doesn't seem to be going to fetch anything; or if he is, he completely forgets about it (perhaps understandably!) when he sees the engraving on the headstone.

• Why doesn't the headstone give birth and death dates for Rory and Amy? I don't think I've ever seen a headstone that only listed the age.

• Why would River even think that she had to send her book to Amy to get it published? What makes her think Amy would be in publishing?! It's another echo of Blink... the police officer / travel writer gets sent back in time and forges a new career in DVD / book publishing, for no obvious reason.

• When the Doctor realizes that the last page of River's book contains an afterword from Amy, why is he so desperate to get the specific last page from the book that was in his jacket? Couldn't he have found a copy in a bookstore somewhere? And, while we're on the subject, I find it very difficult to believe that he and Amy just took off out of Central Park without cleaning up their picnic basket! Maybe if they'd realized that Rory was missing while they were still sitting there, I would buy that they raced to the TARDIS without wasting time straightening up. But they decided to go for a stroll through Central Park instead (thus ensuring that Rory would have no idea where they'd gone off to, when he returned with the coffees), and wouldn't you want to take your blanket and picnic basket with you so they didn't get stolen?

• Afterwords usually make sense. This one must've had readers incredibly perplexed! Although I suppose if they could put up with Weeping Angels and TARDISes in their noir thriller, they wouldn't be fazed by much.

• Does Amy really want the Doctor to tell her younger self "how it ends"?!? Anyway, she knows full well that he does no such thing!

• Ooh, a trailer for the Christmas episode! And be still, my heart... is it possible that Jenna-Louise Coleman is going to be playing a historical companion? Oh, please let it be so! We haven't had a companion from Earth's past since Jamie and Victoria, unless Leela counts. Now if she turns out to be some kind of time-travel tourist, I'm going to be really disappointed!

The first time I watched it, this story had my eyes brimming with tears. Subsequently, that rooftop scene still gets to me, but I have to really work hard not to let my cynicism switch on during Amy and Rory's departure. I'm afraid that I've ragged on the story too harshly, but it's difficult to reconcile what my brain is saying (30 minutes with next-to-no plot relevance, sidelined departing companions, and reams of inconsistent plotting) with my gut reaction (it's so awesome to see the Weeping Angels again, the historical setting is so invigorating, and the emotion of Amy and Rory's relationship rings so true). It certainly scores better out of its emotional appeal than its logical plotting, but overall, The Angels Take Manhattan manages to be a success.