We finally watched the final ep, to date, of "Doctor Who" — "The Angels Take Manhattan."
I will say that, as someone who never much cared for Amy Pond in the early days, it was a very well crafted and engaging tale. Further deponent sayeth not, for the somewhat-spoilery-time being.
(Except to note: hey, +Mary Oswell, that cover sure reminds me of a certain Trump …)
I've had a very mixed feel for the 11th Doctor and his arc, especially as I've been rewatching Doctors 9-10 (and repeats of each) with my daughter Kay. As noted above, I was never an Amy fan, especially toward the beginning when she was this sort of miraculous Mary Sue character who could solve problems the Doctor could not.
Later on, I've enjoyed the Amy-Rory-married-couple thing (much better than the Amy-Rory-Doctor-triangle thing). "The Slow Invasion" was a great ep 80% for focusing on their married relationship. And that was played forward in spades in this episode (echoed/contrasted with the River/Doctor relationship).
I've been mixed on Matt Smith as the Doctor, too. Too often it's felt like he's verged on camp, and the stories have been more about "Wow, boy that Doctor sure is a zany fellow, ain't he?" than action, adventure, or Human (or Gallifreyan) Drama That running away from reality to being a man-child makes a certain sense following the PTSD grief of the 9th Doctor and the denial-bargaining-anger of the 10th. (Kay and I are nearly to the end of the Tennant run, having just watched one of the creepier/depressing eps, "The Waters of Mars".) But it's been taken a bit too far — under Moffat's showrunning the series has veered from dramatic SF Lite into Madcap Fantasy too much of the time.
I will be very interested to see where Smith/Moffat take the Doctor after this ep.
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You had that design first, no doubt.
Well, when dealing with time travel, sequence and causality can get a bit tangled …
Yes, that Cover does look like a certain trump.
For me Amy and Rory are way stronger companions than Rose and Micky, or oh dear god Martha jones. I have enjoyed them quite a bit, as well as River. Alex Kingston has done a great job chewing the scenery and I chuckle everytime I hear “Hi, sweetie”.
While Doctor 9 had good moments, none of them really were him, they were things that involved him, but he was not really the focus. One way to know that Doctor 9 was not that good? Capt. Jack Harkness.
10 had his moments, but so much of his story arc envolved Martha that up until Donna, I really didn’t like him because everything involved Martha. When Donna showed up, both of the characters really shined, some truely classic Who moments during that time period.
For me Matt Smith is a great nod to #2 and the Ponds have have been a truely fun part of it since they, as opposed to most Companions since the beginning of the series, have truely had a full character arc that you would expect from a main protaganist. In a way, that was a very clever trick that Moffet did, he made the Ponds the protaganists and the Doctor the McGuffin in a Gee-have-you-ever-wanted-to-be-a-companion-and-not-the-Doctor kind of way that only was done during Tegan Jovanka’s tenure (Or possibly Ace).
All I know, is that there was much verklemptness at Pedzwell the night we watched The Angels take Manhatten.
They certainly developed into stronger companions, @bd, than the ones you mentioned. I’ve run hot and cold on River Song — I don’t think she’s always been handled well, story-wise (and her uber-competence, like Amy’s, got tiresome sometimes). I’d say, net-net, they’ve gotten better at using her effectively.
I disagree on #9 — the strong moments there did really involve or focus on him. “The End of the World”, “Dalek”, “The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances” all have some wonderful focus moments on the Doctor. If Eccleston had stuck around longer beyond the entire production company’s first season, I think we would have seen ever more better stuff.
I can certainly understand the verklemptness. It was a wrenching, roller coaster ep. I do want to see what comes next.
Amy and Rory have been my favorite companions in a long while. Yes, the whole Amy destiny thing was overwrought, I grant that. But they’ve been very good foils for the Doctor.
Frankly I did NOT like Rose, and she had an even bigger annoying destiny storyline.
Don’t get me started on how annoying Mickey was! In fact when Rory was introduced I was very afraid we were getting Mickey II.
I’m also not a huge Donna Noble fan. Yes, she had some good bits, and sparred nicely with the Doctor, but she never seemed like she really wanted to be there.
I think we’ve had three really strong, and very different Doctors in 9, 10 and 11. The darkness of 9 struck the right tone for the rebirth of the series, and I agree that given another season he’d have done some really great character stuff. Tennant had some of the best stories to play with and his arc was really strong.
Smith is harking back to what I loved about the first series Doctors. His whimsy reminds me of Tom Baker in the lighter episodes, but he quickly turns serious at need. I doubted Smith at first, but in the new series I’d put him just barely behind Tennant in level of Doctory goodness. Frankly the difference is my enjoyment from one to the next is very minor, I’ve loved the entire series since the reboot. I particularly like that the series has touched so much more of the central theme of Doctor Who- what it means to be Human, and how we can strive to be better.
It’s ironic that my hands down all-time favorite Dr. Who episode is still “Blink” which has the doctor in it for all of about 2 minutes.
@Arty – I had the same concern with Rory re Mickey. I was glad to see that wasn’t the case.
Having just rewatched the Donna Noble season, I have to disagree. She _loved_ seeing all that cool stuff out there, practically hopping up and down in a way I expect I would.
One of the occasional strengths but just-as-often-if-not-more-so weaknesses of the 11th Doctor years has been that it’s been more Amy’s story (as the framing at the end of this last episode demonstrates, harkening back to the first season of the 11th Doctor) than the Doctor’s. That’s fairly unprecedented, even in the Classic years. It’s made for some really good stuff (about 2/3 of the 2/3-excellent “The Slow Invasion”, for example), but also some goofy stuff, and it’s sometimes left Smith’s Doctor kind of hanging out there with little to do except quip, glower, or caper about.
“Blink” is one of the reasons I keep rooting for Steven Moffat, even where he’s fallen sometimes short as showrunner.