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Fridge / Doctor Who S33 E5 "The Angels Take Manhattan"

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WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!

Fridge Brilliance

  • River mentions that the Doctor has gone about erasing himself from every database and effectively all of history. So who was it who makes the Daleks quiver in fear, who holds the Cybermen in check, who ended the Time War, who did all of those terrifying foes of old band together to lock in the Pandorica? ". . . A goblin. Or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies."
  • A subtle yet rather dark fridge brilliance moment happens during the Doctor's breakdown when he is tearfully pleading with Amy not to allow herself to be killed by the Angel he starts screaming "NO NO!! STOP IT!! STOP IT!!", which was almost exactly what the Master was screaming in "The End of Time" when his latest scheme failed. Given one of the central themes of Series 7 is that the Doctor "should not travel alone", and this was also a major theme of the last Tenth Doctor stories where travelling alone led to him becoming more and more like the Master, this may well be another hint of him getting even darker in the episodes to come.
    • More subtly still, for all his pleading, there must be some part of the Doctor that knows he can't deny her this choice, as painful as the notion of losing Amy might be for him. Because there's no reason whatsoever why he couldn't just keep the Weeping Angel frozen himself by staring at it, while grabbing Amy and physically hauling her back inside. Torn by imminent grief though he is, he still respects Amy too much to force her to stay with him, rather than just persuade her to do so.
  • A sad bit of symbolism/Fridge Brilliance: there have been plenty of jokes made about the Doctor back in "The Eleventh Hour" not liking apples, since "an apple a day keeps the Doctor away". Then you remember that New York City's nickname is "the Big Apple", and suddenly it's not so funny anymore . . .
  • The angel that zapped Rory back into the past made a deal with Amy. Rory was already gone, Amy was left. The angel needed food and had no reason to send Amy to the same time period but did it anyways.
    • This is brilliant because the Angels know what it's like to be alone. "The lonely assassins, they used to call them" "the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely" as the Tenth Doctor says. If you totally ignore what happened in "Flesh and Stone", the Angels are practically pleasant, compassionate beings, just doing what they need to for food. No different than, say, a lion. The Angels sent Kathy Nightengale back to the 1920's where she had a daughter named Sally, and sent Billy Shipton to the 60's, where he met and married a Sally who resembled Kathy's daughter. They sent Kathy back to a point where she'd meet her perfect match immediately. The Angels know exactly what it's like to be completely alone, and fix it when they can. Alternate Character Interpretation at it's finest. The behaviour of the Angels in "Time of the Angels" and "Flesh and Stone", which were starving to the point of total emaciation, could be passed off as them either being a more violent sub-breed of Angel, or driven insane and murderous by their loneliness and hunger.
    • There's another interpretation. Back in "Blink", when Billy Shipton is sent back to 1969, he's met by the Doctor and Martha. The Doctor says, regarding the Angel that sent Billy back, "Same one, probably, since you ended up in the same year." It could just be a property of the specific Angel, especially considering that Rory and Amy were sent back within two minutes of each other.
  • Rory's fate in this episode foreshadows what the Doctor would say later in "The Name of the Doctor." The one place no time traveler should ever see is his own grave.
  • This episode re-frames the argument between the Doctor and Rory in "The Girl Who Waited", at the time The Doctor not consulting history books to avoid something like an outbreak is framed at him being irresponsible, this episode reveals that reading the Melody Malone book causes the events of the episode to be set in stone, as such a genuine historical record would just tell the Doctor about crisis's that, simply by reading about them, he is unable to intervene.

Fridge Horror

  • After the Angel zapped Rory and Amy back to the past, the Doctor... left. With that Angel still on the loose there in New York City. There to feed on anyone it wants.
    • Alternately, the Angel was dealt with. After all, the episode didn't show the Doctor and River going back into the TARDIS, it skips ahead to them already inside. Which could be Fridge Horror in and of itself — the Doctor has just lost two of his longest companions after getting his chain yanked, and River Song has just lost her parents/childhood best friends. Both of them have been shown to be terrifying when vengeful before, and now neither has someone to hold them back or plead mercy on behalf of the Angel. You can't kill stone, true, but who's to say a Fate Worse than Death didn't befall a certain Angel?
  • Anything that bears the image of an Angel becomes an Angel. Now, the Statue of Liberty is a confirmed Angel. Let that soak in for a moment. Sleep tight.
  • Amy proves here her greatest fear isn't a Weeping Angel, it's a life without Rory. Amy and Rory are the same age. The tombstone says she still outlives Rory by five years.
  • When Rory sees his own gravestone, it only has his name on it, with a very visible blank space underneath where Amy's name would appear after she's zapped back herself. This means, for a brief moment, there was a whole alternate timeline where Rory lived out the rest of his life alone, without Amy.

Fridge LogicAt Headscratchers


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