Attack of the Cybermen review ["Paula Moore"]

In 1986, the Cybermen were thwarted in their plan to restore Mondas to the solar system by the First Doctor. In 1985, the Sixth Doctor and Peri must stop time-travelling Cybermen from destroying the Earth and preventing their defeat.

What's in a Name?: The Cybermen never really attack at any point. They defend themselves against the Cryons, kill those who enter the sewers to preserve their secret and plan to use Halley's Comet to destroy Earth but they never really do any actual attacking. Perhaps it should have been called Convolution of the Cybermen.

When and Where: The Doctor and Peri land in Shoreditch, 1985. This isn't long after The Twin Dilemma, as the Doctor is still recovering from Jaconda, and is shortly before Vengeance on Varos. For the Cybermen, this is between The Tomb of the Cybermen and Scorpius. For Lytton, this is a year after Resurrection of the Daleks.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "A little gratitude wouldn't irretrievably damage my ego."
• "More bulges than an antenatal clinic."
• "That's bonkers." / "That's debatable. It's also the truth."
• "You said you came from Fulham!"
• "Lytton? Tall, lean, dark, well-spoken? The sort of man who might shoot his mother just to keep his trigger finger supple?"
• "Please remove your TARDIS from Telos before you need rescuing again."
• In The Twin Dilemma, we were introduced to a thoroughly unpleasant Doctor who suffered bouts of cowardice and paranoia-fuelled murderousness. Damage control has started quite soon with Colin Baker giving a performance that's harder than we'll meet in season 23 but that we can absolutely buy as the Doctor. He's a little prickly towards Peri at the beginning of the first part and isn't as accessible as a character as his predecessors, but he's infinitely more watchable. His scenes with Flast are some of the best of the story and show off the gentle side that we didn't get so much as a glimpse of in his debut appearance.
• If you were to ask a fan to select a John Nathan-Turner character to return for season 22, they'd say Aunt Vanessa, the Ergon or Lady Madge Cranleigh. Okay, maybe not, but Lytton probably wouldn't be one of them either. However, Maurice Colbourne is a talent that it would have been a shame not to see again. This is a character that, in the hands of a lesser actor, could easily be one-dimensional and unconvincing. Instead, he becomes one of the most memorable of the Sixth Doctor's guest stars.
  
• The Cryons might not be the best-realised monsters of all time, but they're a perfect foil for the Cybermen. Airy and sensual to counter the stolid Cybermen with soft feminine voices that contract with the Cybermen's deep and masculine ones. The actresses are handicapped by costumes that not only severely limit their vision but that stand in the way of a believable character with its odd design. They do a great job and help make the second episode easily the best of the two, although I understand that this is an unpopular opinion. Flast's death ends up being one of the most poignant moments of the story, refusing to tell the Cybermen anything and allowing herself to be pulled from the subzero temperature she required to live. Varne dies saving the Doctor and Rost tells him to leave the planet before more had to die for him. It's a topic that's brought up relatively often in New Who ("How many have died in your name?") but not so much pre-2005.
• Classic Doctor Who is almost always overlit. Look at the ship from Four to Doomsday or the sea base of Warriors of the Deep or, in fact, any set from any '80s story. The moodily-lit sewer is a rare example of lighting done right in this era, giving us a more sinister and eerie setting than we're used to with John Nathan-Turner's Doctors. Yes, it's an idea ripped straight from the script of The Invasion, but points for execution.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Next year? That's almost now!"
• "I don’t think I’ve ever misjudged anybody quite as badly as I did Lytton."
• One of the biggest problems with Attack of the Cybermen is the overwhelming and unprecedented amount of continuity, with a lot of the plot relying on elements of The Tenth Planet and The Tomb of the Cybermen. At the time, the public hadn't seen either of these stories since their transmission in the late '60s and almost certainly weren't in the minds of any but the Ian Levine's of the world. To lean so heavily on plot points from so long ago makes this story feel almost like fanfiction and makes it overly complicated and borderline inaccessible to the casual or to the newer viewer. The scene where the main characters are prisoners aboard the TARDIS is laden with exposition.
• The score for this story is truly abominable and easily among the very worst of the show. It's out of place, against the genre and sometimes downright intrusive. It almost brings the whole episode down as a result because it's difficult to take some of the scenes entirely seriously.
• Attack of the Cybermen gets a lot of flak for being too violent. It certainly has a very high body-count, but I don't necessarily object to that. What I do object to is the Doctor's off-screen battery of one of Lytton's constables in the sewer, which is inexcusable violence on the Doctor's behalf. Using a gun against a Cyberman when his own life, as well as the lives of Peri and absolutely everybody on Earth, are at risk is one thing but beating up a human being just isn't the Doctor. What makes it worse is how blasé he is about it afterwards.
  
• A Cyber-Controller, a Cyber-Leader and a Cyber-Lieutenant, each outranking one another... It feels too much and makes the Cybermen feel overly bureaucratic. These are cyborgs that surely shouldn't require so much devolution. Perhaps the Cyber-Lieutenant should have been excised. 
• It's not an issue confined to this story but the Cybermen have far too much personality and too many human mannerisms. They could get away with the mannerisms more in The Tenth Planet where there definitely felt like there was a biological element to them but in The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion they felt more mechanical. Here they are saying "excellent" and emoting and squabbling and it all feels so wrong. Without the cold calculation, they're just any old monster of the week. Also, the Cyber-Controller's a bit fat.
• Killing off important guest characters is absolutely fine and should even be encourage to raise the stakes and make the villains that much more dangerous and hateable. The problem with Bates and Stratton isn't that they're killed off but that their story, which began in the first episode, never went anywhere and had no resolution or real impact on the plot. Their plan to escape fails when the third accomplice dies and they don't manage to get the head of a Cyberman. They kill another and get one, then head to Cyber-Control with Stratton in a Cyberman suit. They die there. What was the point in this plot thread?
  
• The story ends on a very abrupt note. Cyber-Control blows up, the Doctor says he misjudges Lytton and then the episode ends. If it was going for a Doctor Who and the Silurians ending, it missed the mark with the Doctor's rumination failing to resonate nearly as well as the Third Doctor's reaction to the regrettable murder of the Silurian colony.
• Peri starts off this season in a truly horrific outfit. John Nathan-Turner was clearly doing it for the straight male audience, but having both of our leads in ridiculous costumes makes it very difficult to believe the story. They look their worst in episode one, when they're traversing the mundane streets of London.
• Flast sets fire to a Cyberman's arm and what does it do? It bats at the flames with his gun. What an idiot.

His Constant Companion: The two workmen and Payne are killed in the sewers. A Cyberman is shot by one of Lytton's gang; two are killed on Telos by the escapees; another is killed by the Doctor in the sewers using his sonic lance; and in the TARDIS, Russell shoots one in the head with his own gun and then kills another with a cyber gun. Russell is killed by a tap on the shoulder by a cyber fist. Varne and Rost shot a Cyberman to save Peri. Flast is exposed to temperatures of 15 degrees or above by the Cybermen. Bates, Stratton, Griffiths and Varne are shot. The Cyber-Controller is stabbed by Lytton before the Doctor shoots him and other Cybermen. Lytton dies in this fight. The remaining Cybermen are killed by the explosion of Cyber Control.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor beat up one of Lytton's constables and then handcuffs the other without even trying to question him. Does the Doctor not care about what the constables were up to? Why not at least attempt asking them?
  
• Why are the Cybermen on Earth?
• Did Lytton and the Doctor even meet in Resurrection of the Daleks? Was there an untelevised adventure where they met again? And how would that make sense given that the Doctor describes Lytton as having been an agent of the Daleks the last time they had any interaction?
• If Lytton's transmission has been answered by the Cryons, why is it ongoing?
• The Cryons are on Telos at a point in time after The Tomb of the Cybermen, meaning they're in the 25th or 26th century. How, then, do Lytton and the Cryons communicate? How did they get his transmission?
• How did the Cybermen get into the TARDIS? It's always seemed to be self-locking and enemy-proof.
• Why do the Cybermen hesitate when the Doctor tells them to wait? They were given the order to shoot Peri so shouldn't they carry that out regardless of what her accomplice says?
• Wouldn't saving Mondas be a paradox? It would mean that Telos was never colonised by the Cybermen, meaning they couldn't have saved Mondas.
• Isn't the TARDIS in a state of temporal grace? How did Russell and the Cybermen shoot one another?
• Why do the tombs look nothing like they did in The Tomb of the Cybermen?
• How come the Cybermen are going rogue? What was that all about?
• Peri visited London with the Fifth Doctor in The Kingmaker, yet claims here that it's her first visit to the city. Perhaps she meant her first visit in the modern day.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor mentions Jaconda, the planet that they visited in season 21 finale The Twin Dilemma.
  
• The Doctor has called Peri by a number of his previous companions' names, including Susan, Jamie, Zoe and Tegan.
• The Doctor has also called her Zodin, the name of a villainess fought by the Second Doctor offscreen. She was mentioned in The Five Doctors.
• Lytton appeared as a Dalek agent in Resurrection of the Daleks.
• The TARDIS materialises in Foreman's Yard, first seen in An Unearthly Child. It will show up again in Remembrance of the Daleks.
• Cybermen were previously seen in the sewers of London in The Invasion.
• Mondas was destroyed in The Tenth Planet.
• Telos and its ice tombs were visited by the Second Doctor in The Tomb of the Cybermen.
• The Cybermen have a ship on the dark side of the Moon, just as they did in The Invasion.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I will never stop singing the praises of Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, but I was dreading watching this story again. All that I could remember was Lytton's hands, all the continuity (Foreman's Yard - why?) and the Doctor being unpleasant to the whiny and oddly-dressed Peri. I was very surprised to find that it's actually rather good and not nearly as unfocused as I remembered it being. Having fully stabilised, the Doctor is a defined man now and is so much easier to watch. This is helped by the gentle scenes he shares with the Cryons and that he becomes a prisoner of the Cybermen, meaning that we get to see him in a far different position than that of the ultimate authority that he was in The Twin Dilemma. The Cybermen are easily one of the weakest aspects of this story and the second episode is, despite the continuity, better than the first but this is still an okay story. Attack of the Cybermen comes close to a B, but ultimately earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Season 22)

The Twin Dilemma (Season 21)  |  Attack of the Cybermen  |  Vengeance on Varos

Instant Karma review [David Llewellyn, James Goss and Jonathan Morris]

Toshiko Sato has just come out of a relationship with an alien, the perfect cover to join a mindfulness group which she suspects has been killing people by stopping their organs or causing their heads to explode. 

She's right.

When and Where?: Cardiff, 2007, between Greeks Bearing Gifts and They Keep Killing Suzie.

The Doctor's Case:

• The first two series of Torchwood were frequently a bit rubbish, not only in terms of stories but in terms of character development as well. Fortunately, Big Finish are on the case. Ianto forgetting about Lisa and suddenly beginning a sexual relationship with Jack, who he seemed to hate, makes a lot more sense thanks to Broken. This time, they're dealing with the fallout of Greeks Bearing Gifts (the first of two Tosh-centric episodes, the last being To the Last Man). She's feeling weak and betrayed by Mary but recovering from her hurt over hearing her teammates' thoughts.

The Valeyard's Case:

• Unfortunately, this story is unfocused and not really that interesting, perhaps as a result of it having three writers. Simon and Janet have powers somehow and after Simon kills his dog, Janet kills him. That's all there is to it. Early on in the story, it looks like Tosh and Simon might have some sort of interesting relationship, but they quickly become enemies, depriving us of what could have been a good focus - Tosh developing a friendship with a vigilante. Instant Karma would have been no different if Tosh had never joined the mindfulness group, which is forgivable if the main character learns something or has their own arc along the way. Tosh doesn't.

I'll Explain Later:

• How did Simon and Janet get their powers? Where did they come from?

This Reminds Me...:

• Tosh makes oblique references to her telepathy and the results of that, as well as her relationship with Mary, from Greeks Bearing Gifts.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Tosh can fade into the background very easily and it's when she's paired up with a decent character with whom she shares an interesting relationship that she really shines. Look at her with Mary in Greeks Bearing Gifts, Jack in Captain Jack Harkness, Tommy Brockless in To the Last Man, Owen in Believe (where the two truly stole the show) or Stephen Heinz in torchwood_cascade_CDRIP.tor. She was an engaging character in Zone 10 because she was being a leading lady, driving the story onwards on a solo mission, like she never was on TV. Instant Karma is one of her weakest stories, where the plot would unfold the exact same way if she hadn't been present. Simon is the real main character of this story and, even then, it's not a particularly exciting one. Instant Karma is disappointing, and that earns it a D.

Torchwood Main Range

Goodbye Piccadilly  |  Instant Karma  |  Deadbeat Escape

The Krotons review [Robert Holmes]

Robert Holmes is often considered Doctor Who royalty, by the fans and the crew (including Eric Saward) alike. Spearhead from Space, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Caves of Androzani... This man wrote stories consistently ranked in the upper echelons of classic Doctor Who stories. The Krotons was his first script, originally submitted as an independent, non-Doctor Who script. Let's see how it was and if it shows the greatness that was to follow...

When and Where: The Krotons is set on the planet of the Gonds in a binary sun system. For the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe, this is at some point after The Isos Network, itself a few days after The Invasion.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Yes, well, Zoe is something of a genius. Of course, it can be very irritating at times."
• "Great jumping gobstoppers, what's that?"
• "Now go away and don't fuss me. No, come back. What's this? It's all right, I know."
• "We only know what the Krotons tell us. We don't think. We obey."
• The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are a trio that I don't see enough praise for. The characterisation of each of them is just perfect, with each having a distinct relationship with one another. It's more like Ninth, Rose and Jack than Eleventh, Amy and Rory. After the Doctor and Jamie had some time to themselves in The Invasion, the Doctor is paired up with Zoe and they work together marvellously. A pair of geniuses, with the Doctor irritated by Zoe and Zoe believing herself to be the intellectual superior, but they still have an affection for one another that transcends such squabbles. Zoe does something stupid in doing the Krotons' test  and the Doctor shouts at her, continuing to do so as he sits himself down to do the test himself to save her. He's not doing it because it's the right thing to do but to save his friend. Are we sure Second and Jamie are the iconic pair?
• The Krotons work best in the first two episodes as supposedly benevolent and almost paternal figures. They dispense knowledge to the Gonds and embrace the cleverest of them as their companions, taken to their home to live a new life alongside them. The Gonds who do well at their test feel an intense feeling of pride because they feel how pleased with them the Krotons are. It's a shame that they didn't continue in this parental direction that would have been far more interesting than what we got.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Aye, you wouldn't be so tough without these guards round you." / "Get back. I accept your challenge." / "Oh you do, do you? Aye, well, that's just fine with me then." (For a master of dialogue, this is a very unusual exchange.) 
• "I'm forbidden to discuss the secrets!"
• The Krotons look terrible, most noticeably in wide-shots. It's hard to feel threatened by what looks like a robot in a skirt. Holmes's idea of a creature grown from crystal is one that couldn't have been realised in the '60s without a significantly higher budget. The Birmingham accent, though, is very strange to hear come out of an alien. They're a reasonably ominous force in the first two episodes, but as soon as we see them in the flesh, as it were, they lose credibility.
• The guest characters are functional but not developed at all, and in order for the viewer to want the defeat of the Krotons, we have to care about the people whose lives they've affected. And we don't. The revolt isn't interesting and nor is Eelek's quest for power, or whatever his motivation was. It never really felt as though it connected with the Kroton storyline that much.
• If the robes of honour look that cheap, I'd hate to see what the dishonoured Gonds have to wear.

I'll Explain Later:

• How come the Doctor wasn't crushed by that falling ceiling? 
• Has Gond civilisation really able to function without going outside for all these centuries?

This Reminds Me...:

• A people whose information is kept limited and who are trained not to think. This is an idea that we'll see again in The Long Game, except in that story it's the news. In this one, it's education.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Krotons isn't a very popular story and when the classics of Robert Holmes are rolled off, it's one of two stories that people ignore, the other being the imperfect The Mysterious Planet. Is it a bad story? No, not at all. The personification of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe is done extraordinarily well and they're truly a delight to watch in this story. It's tightly-plotted with some pretty good dialogue and an interesting premise, and is greatly helped by the fact that it's only a four-parter so it doesn't drag. The guest cast are forgettable, the Krotons don't look great and their Brummie accent is unusual, but I think it's good, and deserving of a B.

Doctor Who (Season 6)

The Invasion  |  The Krotons  |  The Seeds of Death

The Invasion review [Derrick Sherwin]

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are fired at from a spaceship hidden on the Moon before materialising on Earth, where they find themselves entangled in the mission of the newly-formed UNIT. Genius Professor Watkins has gone missing and not everyone who enters the main office of International Electromatics come out.

When and Where: The Web of Fear took place over forty years after 1935, making it 1976 at the earliest. The Invasion is in the summer four years after this, setting it in 1980. Sarah Jane Smith comes from 1980 and this takes place seven months before Spearhead from Space, so this couldn't be possible. Perhaps it's the summer of 1979 and the Brigadier was wrong about it having been four years. This means that all of UNIT's adventures from Spearhead from Space to, at least, Robot are set in 1980. Let's ignore anything that might have been said in Mawdryn Undead.

However, Last of the Cybermen explicitly dates this story as being set in 1975, meaning that The Web of Fear was in 1971 and the Third Doctor's involvement with UNIT began in 1976. This contradicts what Professor Travers says in The Web of Fear about how the Yeti attack in Tibet was over forty years before - it would have been only thirty-six years. Perhaps he wasn't very good at maths?

To conclude, The Invasion takes place in either the summer of 1975 or 1979. I'd be inclined to think 1975 given that Last of the Cybermen is the only bit of TV/Big Finish media to actually give the specific date.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
  
• "Do you not write anything on paper at all?" / "I'd only lose it if I did. Writing on a wall's much safer. You can't lose a wall, can you?"
• "Next time, read the notice on the door!" / "Oh, don't tell me you can read as well. What else can you do?"
• "If there's trouble to be found, the Doctor and Jamie can't miss it."
• "Hey, are you stinking rich?"
• Cyberman reveal in episode 4
• I've seen some complaints that The Invasion is too long. Perhaps episodes 3 and 4 could have been merged, but otherwise I find Tobias Vaughn and International Electromatics to be good enough villains in their own right and more than tide us over until the Cybermen emerge. Vaughn is a memorable human villain
• In the '60s, we've had screaming girls like Susan Foreman and Victoria Waterfield travelling in the TARDIS as our heroes and identification figures. Then we've had guest characters like Samantha Briggs in The Faceless Ones and Isobel Watkins in this story. Strong, capable, active women more than capable of travelling time and space. Isobel is one that might be irritating if she was a companion but she functions perfectly well in this story, being more than just a replacement for Anne Travers. She's an ambitious photographer with a few quirks (namely writing on walls because they're more difficult to lose than bits of paper) and is very much a feminist, rebelling against what she sees as the Brigadier's bigotry. She has a fun relationship with Zoe and brings out more of the girl behind the scientist. Saying all this, she might have needed a Donna-style mellowing before being a companion.
  
• Despite being devoid of emotions, when Cybermen die they scream for some reason. However, there are times where it's not a bad thing. The cries of the Cybermen at the end of Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel as they come to their senses and realise what they are is chilling. The mad Cyberman in this story, like in Tennant's story, has a valid reason for screaming and it's a very scary thing to witness, hobbling through the sewers shrieking.
• The quality of the animations of lost Doctor Who episodes are variable. Quite a few are rudimentary and unimpressive, but episodes 1 and 4 of The Invasion are absolutely beautiful, carrying so much atmosphere and conveying action so well.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "I think those crazy kids have gone off to the sewers to get photographs of the Cybermen."
• "Yes, sir. Something called a Cyber-megatron bomb."
• Episodes 3 and 4 feel like padding. It's fortunate that the Doctor and his companions are charismatic and watchable enough that I don't mind.
• The Cyberman voices are borderline incomprehensible at times and are a real step down from The Tomb of the Cybermen (at the time of writing I've not yet watched The Wheel in Space).

I'll Explain Later:

• Where did these Cybermen come from? Are they from Mondas? If so, why do they look and sound so different to the Cybermen that arrive on Earth some years later in The Tenth Planet?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe go looking Professor Edward Travers, who helped fight against the Great Intelligence in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear. Jack Watling was, unfortunately, unavailable for filming for this serial or his creators refused to allow him to be used because of their experience in writing The Dominators. It depends where you look. He later appears in Downtime.
• In the animation, the car that takes the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to London bears the licence plate "11-22-63", the airdate of the first part of An Unearthly Child.
• In the animation, it says "Bad Wolf" on Isobel's wall.
• Jamie previously met the Cybermen in The Moonbase, The Tomb of the Cybermen and Zoe's first story, The Wheel in Space.
• Kevin Stoney (Tobias Vaughn), Sheila Dunn (the computer voice) and Clifford Earl (Major Branwell) previously appeared in The Daleks' Master Plan as Mavic Chen, Blossom Lefavre and the station sergeant respectively. Edward Burnham (Professor Watkins) previously appeared as Professor Jeremiah Kettlewell in Robot. Ian Fairbairn (Gregory) previously appeared as Questa in The Macra Terror.
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: On a scale from Silver Nemesis to World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, The Invasion definitely falls on the higher end of the Cyberman stories, although this isn't really because of the Cybermen themselves. Tobias Vaughn is a menacing, smooth-talking villain and the first appearance of UNIT proves that it deserves to be the staple that it became in the Third Doctor's era and beyond. The Doctor, Jamie, Zoe, Isobel and the Brigadier are all fantastic and such an easy cast to watch and listen to. The Invasion is very good, and that earns it an A.

Doctor Who (Season 6)

The Mind Robber  |  The Invasion  |  The Krotons

The Rings of Akhaten review [Neil Cross]

Clara goes on her first adventure in the TARDIS, asking to be taken "somewhere awesome". The Doctor takes her to Tiaanamat, an asteroid orbiting Akhaten where a song that's kept a god in slumber for millions of years is about to end...

When and Where: Tiaanamat, an asteroid within the Rings of Akhaten. For Clara, this is the morning after the Doctor left in The Bells of Saint John, making it still the autumn of 2013.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Did it?" / "Well, it's what they believe. It's a nice story."
• "Quite a big thing, locally. Like Pancake Tuesday."
• "We don't walk away."
• "I've seen bigger." / "Really?" / "Are you joking? It's massive."
• In Cold War, we'll be told exactly where and when we are from a message on the screen. The Rings of Akhaten does this was far more subtlety, playing Ghost Town by The Specials and showing us a 1981 issue of Beano. It's a far more creative and interesting way to telling us where we are. The classic series didn't broadcast the location and date at the beginning of the story, after all.
  
• Dave and Ellie's romance is a sweet story that not only shows us how ordinary and human Clara is (in terms of the "impossible girl" arc) but gives us a little insight into her. Her mother died eight years ago and she has the 101 Places to See book to remind her of her. Going travelling as she planned to before deciding to stay for the Maitlands was a way of honouring her mother. Probably.
• Although the Doctor travels with his companions so that they can see and experience new things, we haven't had a whole lot of them actually immerse themselves in a new world and enjoy their time there. The Doctor and Clara get to, looking around the marketplace and listening to Merry sing before the plot kicks into action. Exploring the world like this is something that was done in the classic series and in, say, The End of the World, another companion's first adventure.
• The CGI in this episode is flawless. The shots of the Rings of Akhaten and the Old God are all without fault and look absolutely marvellous. It's a shame the actual sets feel so small.
  
• The Vigil do end up in the section below, but they do have a good design. They're scary-looking and scarily-voiced.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Somewhere awesome."
• The plot is easily the weakest link in this episode. Simple plots can be effective if done right but the plot here is paper-thin and yet somehow manages to be confusing. For example, is Akhaten the Old God? Is it Grandfather as well, or is the mummy Grandfather? The plot seems to say that they both are. Does the mummy absorb the Queen of Years' soul? If so, does he somehow transfer it to Akhaten, or does he have some other purpose? What is it? Unfortunately the mummy fails to feel like much of a threat when it spends so long just banging against some glass, and Akhaten is defeated far too easily. 
• Steven Moffat hasn't created a character in Clara Oswald. She was generic in The Bells of Saint John, but that was forgivable under the assumption that she would develop and show different layers. However, it feels as though each writer for series 7b might be told to write in a generic companion. This could be Rose, Ace or Sarah and absolutely nothing would change. She comes across as bland despite us learning about her parents because we can't see what her parents' story has to do with hers. What does her mother's death mean for her? Why does she want to travel with the Doctor? What is she like as a person? She's bland and in need of being coloured in with a personality.
  
• Clara's parents almost never come up again. Her father appears briefly in The Time of the Doctor and their names are mentioned in Death in Heaven when Clara's giving details about her supposed fake identity to the Cybermen, but otherwise Clara never has any concern for them. In Dark Water/Death in Heaven, the dead become Cybermen to attack the living, but Clara doesn't have a moment to think about how her mother is now a Cyberwoman Cyberman or to worry for her father's wellbeing in this or any other earthbound crises. Bill had a dead mother whose absence affected her character. Rose had a dead father that was one of the reasons she joined the Doctor, so that she could save him, and her mother was a significant guest character. Martha's relationship with her mother was used by the Master in his plan against the Doctor, and Project Indigo took Martha where she wanted to be most in a crisis - at her mother's side. Do we not see much of Dave because he's still in Blackpool? Clara could at least spare him a thought. Her unnamed grandmother lived in London, so we could have at least seen her more than twice. More to the point, the story of the Oswalds' lives should have played more of a role with regards to Clara's characterisation in this story, otherwise it becomes mostly superfluous.
  
• There wasn't any real reason for the Vigil to be a part of this story. They appear briefly in order to introduce Merry (although their presence even then wasn't mandatory) and later materialise in the pyramid to serve Merry to the mummy. They don't do very much there and aren't even defeated - they vanish because the Old God is awake and they have no further purpose. The only thing they do is have a dull fight with the Doctor that's about as tense and necessary as his fight moments before with the door. They should have been excised or given something more to do.
• When characters are no longer of importance to what little plot there is, they literally vanish from the screen. Chorister Asbethix and the Vigil alike do it. It feels lazy and leaves unanswered questions that we know we're never going to get an answer to.
  
• The CG landscapes might be very good but the episode feels (and was) setbound. When you don't have a magnificent backdrop, the place feels very small. The place where Merry sings to the pyramid is probably the best example. This is a grand event that people have come from far away to witness, yet Merry is stood four feet from the door and we only get to see a few rows of spectators. It's all the more worse when you consider that this is the same series that gave us the planet of the Dalek Asylum in Asylum of the Daleks, the American West in A Town Called Mercy, the streets of London in The Power of Three and New York City in The Angels Take Manhattan. It can't stand up alongside the stories of series 7a.
• The sonic screwdriver was removed from the show in The Visitation because it had become too easy a way for writers to wrap up a story. Whilst that isn't really the case here, it is too prolific. There's the unnecessary door struggle and the fight with the Vigil (where the screwdriver's given powers we've never seen before), along with being pulled out of his coat pocket twice before. The Doctor shouldn't need a magic wand.
  
• The moped isn't very convincing and is probably the only example of duff special effects in the episode. Having the Doctor and Clara ride a motorbike again is a bit silly. Clara's going to think that's all there is to saving worlds.
• Keepsakes being used as currency is a nice idea but one that I find difficult to buy. 

I'll Explain Later:

• How did Ellie Oswald die? Is it a coincidence that it was on the night of the 2005 Auton attack?
• Why does the Doctor leave the door to the TARDIS wide open after landing on Tiaanamat? He said in the last episode that he never took the TARDIS into battle because of what could happen if the wrong people got their hands on it, yet now he's being so careless as to leave the door wide open in a marketplace. 
• When Clara and Merry get to the TARDIS, the door is closed. Does it lock itself?
• Why isn't the TARDIS translation circuit working for Clara in the marketplace?
• With Akhaten gone... what happens to Tiaanamat?
• The leaf that the Doctor took out of Clara's book in The Bells of Saint John was a maple leaf. The leaf Clara has here isn't. Was she smart and did she use a decoy leaf? How did the production make this mistake?
• The Doctor says he has nothing of sentimental value but his screwdriver. What about Amy's glasses that he was wearing just a moment before?
• Couldn't the Doctor have used the TARDIS to save Merry like he did River in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone and The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon?
• What happened to Chorister Asbethix?
  

This Reminds Me...:

• Rose and Amy's first trips in the TARDIS were to the future, both of which contained a lot of red imagery.
• The Doctor mentions Susan.
• The Doctor and Clara rode a bike together in the previous episode.
• The way that the Doctor attempts to defeat the Old God isn't entirely unlike how he defeats the villain in Phobos.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I find it difficult not to draw comparisons between this episode and The Beast Below, both of which are pretty much empty and serve as the first adventure for a poorly-defined new companion. Clara is a placeholder waiting for a real companion (perhaps Oswin Oswald) to leap into the script and inject a little personality into the role of the Doctor's assistant. The story is both thin and contrived - there's a song that keeps a mummy asleep and a girl must sacrifice her soul to it, but it's actually just the alarm clock for the real Old God - and, although the world is immersive enough, it fails to engage. Matt Smith does deliver a good speech, though. The Rings of Akhaten is atrocious, and that earns it an F.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Bells of Saint John  |  The Rings of Akhaten  |  Cold War

The Bells of Saint John review [Steven Moffat]

Miss Kizlet is a businesswoman working at the skyline-dominating Shard. She has a client, a client who lives in the WiFi. A client who's hungry.

Clara Oswald doesn't know anything about computers. She calls a helpline. A helpline to the year 1207, where the Mad Monk sits meditating on the girl he watched die twice.

When and Where: London (again) in autumn 2013. The year comes from the official synopsis on iPlayer.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Actually, he's about to go on holiday. Kill him when he gets back. Let's not be unreasonable."
• "Also, your dad phoned. Mainly about the government, he seems very cross with them. I've got a few pages on that. I said I'd look into it."
• "Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web. Stuck forever, crying out for help." / "Isn't that basically Twitter?"
• "Where are my mummy and daddy? They said they wouldn't be long. Are they coming back?"
• We were promised an urban thriller and, while we didn't really get it, we do get the very tense sequence where the lights around the Maitlands' house are all switched on whilst all others go out, telling a plane where to crash. It's an idea I haven't seen before and I really liked it.
  
  
• Richard E. Grant and Ian McKellen in the last episode and now Celia Imrie (and a Grant cameo). That's some stellar British talent we've got onboard. Miss Kizlet isn't the most memorable of villains - the script doesn't really allow her to be and we're never under the misconception that she's the one in charge here - but Imrie's performance is to be praised, as is Moffat for some of her lines. Her big moment, however, is her last, where she restores herself to how she was before the Great Intelligence involved itself in her life: a lost child. It's unexpected and heart-wrenching and could easily have been embarrassing and unconvincing in the hands of a weaker actress. If you trust The Doctor: His Lives and Times, then her parents left her at Russell Square station during the Intelligence's attack in The Web of Fear. 
• The Great Intelligence was Kizlet's client, wanting to increase his strength before The Name of the Doctor. It's good to see a recurring villain, especially one that isn't a big name like the Daleks, the Cybermen or the Master.
• Clara tracks down Kizlet by hacking her employees' webcams and finding their place of work through social media. It's an inspired idea.

 The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
  
• "Doctor who?" / "Do you know, I never realised how much I enjoy hearing that said out loud. Thank you."
• "Is it a snogging booth?"
• "Do you just crook your finger and people just jump in your snog box and fly away?"
• The episode is named after the ringing of the TARDIS phone, although I have no idea why. There are plenty of far better names that this episode could have been given relating to WiFi or the snatching of souls or something. The Bells of Saint John could apply to a number of episodes and is quite generic. The whole Cumbria 1207 thing is unnecessary anyway. In The Power of Three, the Doctor said that patience was for wimps and was completely unable to sit still in one place, as he was in Vincent and the Doctor. For some reason, though, he's chosen to sit in a 13th century monastery trying to "divine" the truth behind Clara. This is a proactive man who can't sit still - he should be out there looking rather than wasting time in a monk's robes achieving absolutely nothing.
• This is the third Oswald that we've met. We had the computer genius Oswin Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks, the governess-with-a-secret Miss Montague (AKA Clara Oswin Oswald) and here we meet a version in the modern day. As far as this episode goes, this Oswald is the most human. Oswin and Miss Montague were both fun and interesting characters but both were a little too perfect, Miss Montague in particular. Nothing really seemed to faze her too much and she took everything in her stride, although she had a great moment with the TARDIS key before she was pulled to her death. Oswin was better, having a wonderfully tear-jerking scene where she breaks down upon learning that she's a Dalek. Clara is somewhere inbetween, feeling more real than Miss Montague but failing to be as engaging as Oswin, nor does she feel like a real person like Rose, Martha, Donna or, to a lesser extent, Rory did.
  
• Series 7a went for big, blockbusting ideas whilst The Bells of Saint John is going for a genre, that genre being an urban thriller. Aside from the plane flying towards the Maitlands' street, I never got this vibe. There's some typing that goes on and the Doctor driving a motorbike up the Shard (which was silly) but it's pretty weak and definitely isn't James Bond as Moffat was going for.
• "Doctor who?" is a question that should never be answered. After Asylum of the Daleks, The Snowmen and now The Bells of Saint John, I'm thinking it should also never be asked. The scene is painful to watch, a waste of a good few seconds of screentime and isn't remotely clever or funny. It's indulgent.
• Kizlet uploads human souls into the WiFi where they're pulped and fed to the Great Intelligence. However, we've never been given any hint before that it fed on souls. In The Snowmen it wanted human form, in The Abominable Snowmen it wanted to spread across the world, in The Web of Fear it wanted the Doctor's body and in Downtime it again wanted physical form. Never has there been any implication that he feeds on human souls and nor is any reason given here for why he's suddenly on this diet. He says that it's made him become stronger, but that's all the explanation we get. 
• Clara trying to access the WiFi isn't cute or endearing. It's embarrassing and there's no way she's gotten to her age without knowing how to do it. Anyway, typing the wrong password does absolutely nothing unless you press enter and declaring the password to be wrong because she somehow managed to accidentally click the 4 instead of the 3 is stupid. It gives away the number of characters in the actual password. Why does she click on the evil WiFi anyway
• Keyboard battles are tricky to make tense and the Doctor and Alexei clickety-clacking away at their computers isn't very exciting. It looks like what it is: two people tapping keys whilst computery nonsense is typed across the screen.
• The Doctor doesn't take the TARDIS into battle? What a lie.
  

I'll Explain Later:

• Would everyone's response to being uploaded be to repeatedly say "I don't know where I am"? It wouldn't be mine.
• Why did the Doctor leave the TARDIS in a cave so far away from the monastery?
• Does the Doctor not care to find out who Miss Kizlet's client was?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Spoonheads are reminiscent of the Nodes in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.
• We saw the Tenth Doctor ride a motorbike in The Idiot's Lantern.
• The Doctor sent in a fake version of himself (in that case the Tesselecta) in The Wedding of River Song.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: A weak and insubstantial first half followed by a decent second half, The Bells of Saint John doesn't feel as though it's bringing anything new to the table and is definitely one of the weakest companion introductions. Clara is more human than Miss Montague, but is still rather closed-off and unknowable unlike Rose, Martha and Donna. This Clara and the Doctor have a chemistry that is (thankfully) lacking in the lust that we got in The Snowmen, although Moffat is still sexualising the Doctor, the TARDIS and the show at large. When the episode kicks in, it's rather good, with a great performance by Celia Imrie (even if her character was somewhat limited) and her creepy way of following the Doctor around by hacking people to speak through. The Bells of Saint John is okay and earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Snowmen  |  The Bells of Saint John  |  The Rings of Akhaten

The Snowmen review [Steven Moffat]

The Doctor has retired to a life of non-intervention in London 1892, assisted in his isolation by Vastra, Jenny and Strax. Then a new face approaches him, one that turns out not to be so new after all...

Snowmen are popping up around the city and inside a frozen pond grows an icy horror that the Great Intelligence has its designs on. 

When and Where: London, from the 23rd to the 25th December, 1892. A significant period has apparently passed for the Doctor since The Angels Take Manhattan. For Vastra, Jenny and Strax, it's been four years since A Good Man Goes to War. For the Great Intelligence, this is before The Abominable Snowmen.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Typical middle child of six million."
• "Is it one of your stories? Your definitely true ones?" / "Ha! All my stories are true." / "Like how you were born behind the clock face of Big Ben?" / "Accounting for my acute sense of time." / "And you invented fish." / "Because I dislike swimming alone." 
• "It's smaller on the outside."
• Moffat has chosen to make snowmen the monsters for this Christmas special, which is a gamble. If he can't justify them and explain them in an interesting way that makes sense in the Doctor Who universe then they're going to seem ridiculous. Fortunately, the explanation is one that makes sense. It's telepathic snow that can remember its previous forms and is being used by the Great Intelligence (a former-snowman who had the darkest of Dr Simeon's thoughts poured into it, granting it power and independence) to create an ice being that will give the Intelligence form and allow Dr Simeon to build an ice-army. 
  
• Clara being touched at being given a TARDIS key is a really sweet and emotional moment and has her showing more emotion in a few seconds than modern-day Clara will over the course of her run. It makes her shocking death all the more surprising and poignant, even if she isn't the first prospective companion to die. Speaking of: Moffat had the balls to kill a girl at Christmas. Davies did it with Astrid Peth, but she got a happy ending out of it and she wasn't nearly as endearing or engaging a character (nor was Kylie Minogue ever going to stay on for more than a Christmas special).
• The Great Intelligence is one of the more memorable villains from the black and white era, having appeared in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear (two decent stories) and Downtime. It's fitting that the 50th year of Doctor Who should feature an old enemy and it's far more interesting for it to be a lesser-known but formidable one rather than the Daleks or something else we've seen dozens of times before. The Intelligence was never explained or explored in the classic series, leaving it practically begging for the origin story that it finally gets here. Ian McKellen does a great job of bringing the Intelligence to life with his menacing voice.
• Dr Simeon is an intimidating villain who Richard E. Grant plays as stoic and scowling for almost the entirety of the episode, which works. It makes his moment of vulnerability where he learns that his snowman was actually just reflecting his own personality back at him that much more powerful, leaving me wanting for more vulnerability and insight on Simeon's relationship with his snowman. It's sort of a reverse of Amy and the Doctor: Amy loses her friend, waits for his return and becomes a better person whilst Simeon stays with his friend and becomes a worse person because of it reflecting back his darkest dreams and impulses.
• The Doctor has had companions that he's had to leave behind, companions that left him and companions that died. He's sad for a time but quickly moves on, because that's who he is. He understands better than anyone that these things happen. However, after Rose died he spent all series 3 mourning for her because of how special she was to him and, here, the Doctor has full-on retired because of the loss of Rory and Amy. I began writing this for the next section where I was going to discuss how indulgent it is of the showrunner to paint the companion that they created as being so much more important to the Doctor than any of his previous ones, but then I realised that, for the Doctor, this is 300 years after The Eleventh Hour. He's known them for three centuries, so mourning does make sense.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Over a thousand years of saving the universe, Strax, you know the one thing I learnt? The universe doesn't care." 
• "Spoken like a man!"
• Moffat seems to be incapable of writing a female companion who isn't obsessed with the Doctor and has unfounded faith in him. Clara's just met the man and gives chase after he leaves. Was it because of what he said about the snowman? She was a barmaid and has surely heard far more ludicrous things on the job than that. And just like Rose, Martha, Amy, River and Nefertiti, she has a thing for him, ogling him as he climbs the ladder. She gives him a snog and tells him that he likes her. The kiss adds nothing, means nothing and shouldn't be here. The Doctor can interact with females without it being so sexually-charged, Moffat.
• My only other complaint about Clara is that she's a little too perfect and wouldn't work as a long-term companion without some development. She takes things in her stride a little too easily.
• The universe doesn't care about the Doctor for his efforts? The Wedding of River Song said the exact opposite and we learnt in series 6 how famous the Doctor is (or was) across the universe. Since when has the Doctor ever asked for thanks, anyway? Didn't Martha say that he never asked to be thanked in Last of the Time Lords?
• So... the Great Intelligence was defeated because the mass of snow at the Latimers' was overpowered by the family's tears over Clara's death, meaning that the snow that the Great Intelligence existed as became tears. Why is the Intelligence so connected to the snow at the Latimers'? Why does it become tears? Why does this strip the Intelligence from Dr Simeon's body? The implication is that the snow is no longer mirroring Dr Simeon but the Latimers' tears, but hadn't the Intelligence become more than just a reflection of Dr Simeon by this time?
  
• Strax is funny but if the Sontarans are ever going to be a credible threat again he's made it very hard for the writer.
• The Sherlock Holmes thing isn't funny or clever.

I'll Explain Later:

• Why does the Doctor need a memory worm to erase Clara's memories? He managed to erase far more than an hour of Donna's memories without one.
• Did women give handshakes in 1892?
• What was the point of Dr Simeon's visit to Captain Latimer?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor met Oswin Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks.
• The Intelligence used snowmen of a different kind in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear.
• The Doctor has invited people to join him who've subsequently died before, like Lynda in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Doctor has known and travelled with Amy and Rory for two and a half seasons and now it's time for a fresh start. He's uncharacteristically moody and not much fun to watch until Clara reawakens his sense of adventure, after which the episode properly begins. His new companion is a breath of fresh air after Amy (although she's too squeaky-clean and perfect) and her death is shocking and heart-breaking. The Intelligence's origin is presented although its relationship with Dr Simeon could have been explored more and the gimmicky snowmen are sufficiently justified. This is a very good episode and deserves an A.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Angels Take Manhattan  |  The Snowmen  |  The Bells of Saint John

The Angels Take Manhattan review [Steven Moffat]

When Rory is sent back in time to New York 1938, the Doctor and Amy must overcome a mass of temporal-distortion to find him whilst he and Professor Song face the Weeping Angels. 

When and Where: New York in 2012 (for some reason - remember that Amy and Rory aren't from the year that this aired but from 2020 at the earliest) and 1938. For Amy and Rory, this must be after their ten-year anniversary visit to Cwmtaff in The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. For River, this is after The Diary of River Song: Series 3 and just before The Husbands of River Song.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "I'm only human." / "That's exactly what they're thinking."
• "It means, Mr Grayle, just you wait until my husband gets home."
• Amy's choice has been a recurring theme during her tenure on the show. She waited for the Doctor and left with him on the night of her wedding, apparently falling for him a little and later trying to have sex with him a few feet from her wedding gown. She was, frankly, a terrible person and I maintain that series 5 Amy is one of the worst of the Doctor's companions. In Amy's Choice she finally made her decision between the Doctor and Rory, finding that she couldn't live without Rory and killing herself knowing that she would either wake up and be with Rory or die forever. Amy makes this choice twice more, firstly by again risking killing herself and then condemning herself to a life in 20th century New York to be with him.
  
• For enemies to remain interesting they have to have something new whenever they appear, or it quickly gets stale. In The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, we saw Angels at full-strength, killing people, speaking with the voices of the dead, emerging from video footage, effectively turning Amy into one of them... In this episode, we get baby Angels in the form of giggling cherubs, reminding us that - when unobserved - they are biological creatures that only turn to stone as a defence mechanism. They have children who grow and become Angels. They're creepy and we get a sense of them moving in the dark from their footsteps scurrying about, which we never get from the Angels. Additionally, we've gone back to the Angels' original M.O. of sending people back in time rather than the more generic killing that they did in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. It's good that the thing that made them fresh hasn't been forgotten about and the idea of a farm where they send people further and further back to get more and more energy from them is a clever one, again giving us something new.
• River doesn't have a massive role to play and doesn't really need to be here, but her choosing to hide her broken wrist from the Doctor to protect him is awfully sweet. It's easy to forget that River is a woman who loves the Doctor. Not who lusts after him or flirts with him like most companions and female guest stars these days, but who genuinely has a deep affection for him. This attempt to cheer him up and protect him from the harsh reality if only for a time is a rare reminder that there's more to their relationship than double entendres and snogging.
  
• Is Sting's "Englishman in New York" a moment of perfection or is it too on the nose? I'm going to be nice and put it in this section.

The Valeyard's Case:

• The Statue of Liberty being an Angel is a ridiculous idea. Even worse, she's superfluous and the episode would have been no different without her. The great hulking Lady Liberty couldn't possibly get off her plinth and stomp around the city to Winter Quay without being seen. This is the city that never sleeps, after all - there are always eyes. It's a "wouldn't that be cool?" idea that should have been nixed from the script for its stupidness and irrelevance.
• It's strange that after getting so much closer to Amy and Rory this series that they feel so distant in their last appearance. Since series 5 (God, Amy was terrible), the pair have become living, breathing characters that we care for and feel a sense of closeness to, particularly after The Power of Three, but where are Amy's worries for Rory after he's sent back in time the first time? Why do they seem to care so little for River? The jump is a highlight but the two feel so far removed this episode.
  
• I spoke about it extensively in my review of The Power of Three, but this isn't the natural end to Amy and Rory's arc this season. They've struggled to choose between the Doctor and their lives on Earth and have grown increasingly attached to the latter. What was the point in all that if it comes to nothing? Their departure here is entirely unrelated to their journey in series 7a, which suggested that they would eventually choose to leave the Doctor to live on Earth rather than the Weeping Angels forcing their hand. This way is more shocking, of course, but it's not good storytelling. Rose's departure was satisfying because she had become so attached to the Tenth Doctor and was suddenly ripped away from him. Martha loved the Doctor and came to realise that she deserved better than to be the Doctor's rebound companion living in Rose's shadow. Donna spent series 4 becoming a better, more well-rounded person and this was snatched away from her when the Doctor was forced to remove her memories and cause her to lose who she had become. Amy and Rory were realising that they wanted to live ordinary lives with friends and jobs and this ending doesn't honour that at all.
• River was in this episode, of course, because it's Amy and Rory's departure and Moffat wanted to have her be there. The problem is that River and her parents have absolutely no relationship. River grew up with them as Mels, met them out of order so had to keep the fact that she was their daughter to herself, and as such this was the only episode where the three Ponds were together all aware of their relationship. There was the reveal at the end of A Good Man Goes to War and a brief scene of them in Amy and Rory's back-garden in The Wedding of River Song, but this is the first and last real time for us to see them together as a family. And there's nothing there. No chemistry, no relationship. Nothing. If somebody tuned in without having seen series 6, they would have had no idea that River and the Ponds were anything more than casual acquaintances without River them Dad and Mother. My solution to this would have been The Power of Three (yes, I do seem unable to stop bringing that episode up. I apologise). They could have had River drop by and choose to stay for the Long Invasion, giving us the time to see not only River and the Doctor living together in our everyday world but also letting us see River spending time developing a relationship with her parents. The Angels Take Manhattan did absolutely nothing for them and was more about River and her husband than River and her parents. A big mistake given that they're leaving and never returning.
  
• Amy and Rory get two endings in this episode. Firstly, Rory makes the brave and selfless decision to kill himself to wipe out the Angels and save New York, with Amy choosing to jump with him so that, whatever happened, they were in it together. This was the far more effective and emotional ending. They survive and arrive in the 2012 graveyard, where Rory gets sent back in time and Amy joins him. Both times, Amy is making her choice and choosing her husband but the second time has none of the poignancy that the first did. Perhaps Amy and Rory jumping and their status being ambiguous would have been a better ending since the graveyard scene added little more.
• The Doctor not being able to get Amy and Rory back has been criticised at length, so I won't focus too much on how little sense it makes. Here's a quote from Moffat explaining why the Doctor can't collect them:  "[...] in normal circumstances he might have gone back and said, ‘look we’ll just put a headstone up and we’ll just write the book’. But there is so much scar tissue, and the number of paradoxes that have already been inflicted on that nexus of timelines, that it will rip apart if you try to do one more thing. He has to leave it alone. Normally he could perform some surgery, this time too much surgery has already been performed." (Source) It's a rubbish explanation given that the Angel situation has been resolved and never happened. The Twelfth Doctor later returns to New York to "calm down" the time-distortions but... it's all sorted. Even if there is scar tissue around New York, the Doctor could just land in the next state over, hail a taxi and find them in no time. Or use a vortex manipulator. There's no real reason he could never see Amy and Rory again.
• River advises Amy not to let the Doctor see her age because he doesn't like endings. What a load of rubbish. 
  
• River slaps the Doctor. A wife should never slap her husband. Imagine the uproar there would have been if the Doctor slapped River. Spousal-slapping shouldn't be seen as something funny or acceptable and if the sexes were reversed it would be seen as abuse.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Williams grave lists Rory as "Rory Arthur Williams". Why isn't Amy listed as "Amelia Jessica Williams"? We learnt her middle name in The Beast Below.
• Why exactly won't River travel with the Doctor full-time? "One psychopath per TARDIS" isn't an answer.
• "That which holds the image of an Angel itself becomes an Angel." Surely the Angels should have overrun the country at the very least given the amount of photos and postcards featuring the Statue of Liberty.
• How come River and the Doctor both referred to the Angel in Mr Grayle's office as a she? 

This Reminds Me...:

• This is the second episode this series to begin with an American narrator.
• Mr Grayle's house is the same set as the Tyler house in Pete's world (Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel).
• Rory dies and comes back again. We've seen him die and return (or were led to believe that he was dead) in Amy's Choice, The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, The Curse of the Black Spot and The Doctor's Wife.
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I have a number of problems with Amy and Rory's swan song, the main one being that this isn't an organic end to their story. If I let that go, there's still the issue of the characters not being at their best in this episode and that they have absolutely no connection to their daughter, who's here not because the plot demands it but because her parents are leaving and she should be there. There are some nice ideas and the Amy/Rory suicide is a deeply touching sequence that could pull any heart-string. The Angels are well-handled and the noir-feel of the episode is immersive and consistent. Ignoring Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, series 7a has been a great half-series with three stellar (or near-stellar) episodes. It's unfortunate that it should end on a somewhat disappointing note. Still, The Angels Take Manhattan is a good story and earns itself a B.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Power of Three  |  The Angels Take Manhattan  |  The Snowmen