A warning now: this will, indeed, contain spoilers. If you haven’t watched the episode and are clicking on reviews of the episode, my guess is that you’re actively seeking spoilers out.
Well, here they are.
The final episode of Amy and Rory Pond’s tenure as the Doctor’s companions has been a long time coming. We’ve known about it for quite a while, and things on the show this season have clearly been building to that point. At some point during the last episode, “The Slow Invasion,” I almost felt as though it was overkill. We’d been saying goodbye to the Ponds for awhile now and let’s just get to it.
I was an idiot.
The Doctor needed more time to say goodbye. Forget the Doctor, I needed more time to say goodbye.
“The Angels Take Manhattan” is, in my opinion, one of the finest, most heart-wrenching episodes of Doctor Who we’ve ever had. To me, Doctor Who is at its best when it’s being tragic with a dash of whimsy. This episode had all of that in spades. There were some parts left unresolved, particularly the entire Mr. Grayle subplot, but I imagine he was just zapped into the Hotel Quay as well.
This episode was about making hard choices. Amy made a choice to be with her husband that Rose never could. Rose would never leave the Doctor’s side. Amy would never leave Rory’s. I think it was better that way.
The emotional center of this episode is The Doctor’s inability to let things and people go. It’s not something we often see on the show, but when he is forced to say goodbye, we’re given the best episodes of the show.
Wrapped up in a 30s noir, “The Angels Take Manhattan” is a taut pulp story with weeping angels everywhere. The rest doesn’t matter to me. The fact that they force our protagonists into a difficult choice makes them the right antagonist. Kurt Vonnegut said to do horrible things to your characters so we can see what they are made of and we truly see what the Ponds are made of.
Though they’re separated from the Doctor, they still have each other.
As viewers, this separation breaks our collective heart and both of the Doctor’s to boot. He’s crying. We’re crying…
…but left to reflect on the episode, things really ended well. Yes, Amy and Rory will never be able to see the Doctor again, but they have each other. I said it on twitter and it bears repeating: This is the most traumatically depicted “happily ever after” ending that’s ever been put onto the small screen.
It’s a perfect and fitting end for the girl who waited and her Centurion. I’m sad to see them go, but I’m dying to see where the Doctor goes from here.
And now for a bit of a laugh:
Watching this episode with my son, he said, “I’m sad that Amy and Rory won’t be able to see The Doctor anymore. If I were the Doctor, I’d totally take the chance of blowing up New York. It has to happen at some point anyway, right? I mean, how else is there a New New York in Futurama?”
The Doctor returns in his Christmas special in December.