From Doctor Who and the Tardis by Craig Hurle:
Pretty indisputable…
(If you stumble across a cool Doctor Who thing, feel free to email me with a link.)
Doctor Who thing of the day: why the ending of “The Angels Take Manhattan” makes no sense
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River: “It might not be that literal.”
So HA!!!! ;)
It’s not so much that he can’t get them from Manhattan but that, if the Doctor meets up with them again and by so doing in any way alters their destiny of living out their lives and ending up in those graves–if, for example, they end up dying in ancient Rome or on a far away planet with him, or if him being there simply attracts alines to the area who kill them in the wrong time–then, it will be one paradox too many.
That’s not what the Doctor deploys as his reason for why he can’t go get them. Not even close.
Actually, yes he does. In the crisis of the moment, with an Angel staring them down, he simplifies, but the plot has been leading up to that moment. The driving theme of the episode is that an “event” to the Doctor isn’t just a time and a place, but the people involved and (possibly) the choices they make. This actually goes all the way back to “Father’s Day”. When the Reavers arrive to “sterilize the wound in time” they don’t just make sure that Rose’s dad dies, they try to kill everyone who would have witnessed the event.
The upshot of it all is that, because of the spatial/temporal cluster-fuck the Angels are dropping Amy and Rory into, and because all three of them saw those gravestones, not only can he not go back to pick them up, he can’t ever get involved in their time line again without causing a serious paradox, and possibly crossing his own timeline. My hope is that, between this and the weirdness of Clara Oswald, we might get more explanation of why crossing one’s timeline is bad.
That ending did bug me. We don’t know who/when/why Rory or anybody else with that name possibly did or didn’t end up in that grave. All they have is a headstone with a name. Even if we accept it in the story, I still think the writers could have tried harder.
It’s like you’ve said before Maryann, Moffat’s biggest problem as a show runner is that he has a big idea and runs with it, but he doesn’t think them through all the way. His imagination writes checks he can’t cash, I think is how you put it and that’s exactly right.
Under Davies the show was not as slick. It was downright cheesy at times. But Davies knew how to wrap things up. He understood how satisfying conclusions work (I’m not saying he was always perfect, just that he more often was) and he understood how relationships work a lot better too. When Ten’s run was ending and he goes around saying goodbye I was sobbing. Moffat’s never done that to me.
That’s an illustration as well of how Davies built a universe full of characters and didn’t just forget them. I’m still very bothered by how Moffat has almost purged the show of any mention of anything that came before his tenure.
I think Moffat had to put his own stamp on it, as Matt Smith had to, in his role. I think Moffat is put under tremendous pressure by the BBC, who, let’s face it, have never really understood the show. I mean – up against Corrie – c’mon now! I think scripts are just unfinished or hurriedly written.
But yeah, Tennant had me at Sarah Jane Smith.
The thing about these points (and they’re all fair) is that they can be very neatly flipped around Davies –> Moffat depending on what it is you focus on. Davies was indeed brilliant at having big ideas and running with them (his The Writer’s Tale is a fascinating read in terms of how he puts them together). But “His imagination writes checks he can’t cash” can equally well describe Davies’s stuff like towing the Earth — for people who find that a problem (and personally, I still have much more problem with that than I have with the Ponds being sent back irretrievably).
I loved many things about Davies’s big ideas — I’m probably in a minority in considering the “Everybody becomes the Master” bit of End of Time the best thing about it — but for me it was always his wrap up of those big ideas that was the weakest element. Early on, he blatantly admitted his reliance on the deus ex machina (what was Rose in Parting of the Ways if she wasn’t a god emerging from a machine?), and you’re then left with what is essentially a problem of “faith” in terms of how satisfying that is.
There’s a similar sort of faith at work in that ending to End of Time. It was mainly written by Davies for himself, and for Tennant. But also for those like you who had faith in the situation and characters he had created. But the problem with it was that it was so cheesy for those who had less faith, that it really soured the episode for many.
I can see that a reverse process is happening with Moffat. Those who have faith in him (and in my case it’s far from absolute) are likely to find the End of Ponds more satisfying than the End of Time. On the other hand Moffat’s little quirks and annoyances are going to prove too much for many who enjoyed Davies’s big cheesy bear hug.
Finally, I think you’re wrong about Moffat purging the show of any mention of anything that came before his tenure. He has plenty. He just doesn’t limit those mentions to the Davies tenure.
I haven’t seen a recent Who denouement that did make sense. It’s panto.
What happens in any given show seems to be not what might logically flow from situation and character but whatever gives the most emotional and/or nifty cool moments. It feels to me like children arguing about whose super cosmic power is more super and cosmic.
I’m sorry but that second sentence just does not strike me as a legit thing to bring to the conversation on this site: it’s a variation on “if you don’t like it, why don’t you just stop watching the show” and it cuts off all conversation in its tracks.
This episode did not satisfy a number of people and they want to discuss it, and to compare their discussion to children arguing about something silly is insulting.
One of the problems with many shows is the love of “that one awesome/nifty/cool” moment”, wherein the writers get their dramatic moment yet do not then realize that it has repercussions for the entire rest of the series that they must deal with. Chris Carter was infamous for many nifty cool dramatic moments that made no sense to the point where the X-Files drowned in it. His entire show, full of moments of sound and fury signifying nothing, ceased to have any coherent meaning.
Nifty moments are nifty. Dramatic moments are dramatic. But in proper story-telling, they have to make sense and they have to be something that a long-running series can live with, and if they don’t and it doesn’t, it can rankle with people who are paying attention. And when those people want to talk about it, it’s not the nattering of children, it’s a discussion about story, which is why we’re here. Personally, the thing I have the most problem with in this particular script is the Statue of Liberty nifty cool visual moment (that happens twice?!) that made no sense whatsoever. But, yeah, it was all kinds of nifty cool and dramatic. Go, team.
One of the challenges of a time travel show is that it opens up too many possibilities. And at the heart of those is this: “What is preventing the hero’s from going back and repeating the story until they get everything right?” In Doctor Who, the answer has always been “The Doctor can’t/won’t cross his own timeline.” As an audience, we have to accept that reasoning, or we’re never going to be engaged in the story. (On the other hand, if we don’t accept that reasoning, we really have no one to blame but ourselves.)
In most Doctor Who stories, this reasoning is plenty. We don’t usually go around in circles over why the Doctor couldn’t go get Madame Pompadour. In this particular story, however, the usual “crossing his timeline” rule has some legitimate problems associated with it. Mostly, the Doctor himself didn’t put the Ponds in the past. Moffat’s solution was that, because they have information on how it all plays out, then going back for them creates too much paradox. He sweetened the deal by having the actions of the Angels make that particular set of events even more turbulent and difficult. And he did this all in the context of the action of the story, rather than burying us in exposition dumps.
Really, Steven Moffat did his job here*. He made these events make about as much sense as any time travel story is ever going to, given the constraints of the medium. Whether it makes sense isn’t the problem. The problem is whether the story is emotionally engaging. That’s one of the reasons why “The Girl in the Fireplace” usually gets a pass. Not everyone found “The Angels Take Manhattan” to be emotionally engaging. I think the coda was a little over-wrought, and that’s where he lost people. But some people, a lot of people, did find the story engaging. I know I did.
*There are some small WTF moments as well, yes, such as the Statue of Liberty. But these are ancillary for the most part.
Since The Doctor has no proof of the fate of the Ponds (Williamses?) outside of those tombstones and the book, which could easily be faked, there is no real paradox involved here.
A similar situation is posited in Jack McDevitt’s novel “Time Travellers Never Die” and that situation is quite neatly resolved (read the book for how, I’m not going to spoil it here).
So there isn’t really a good answer given by Moffat of why The Doctor can’t save Rory and Amy. This may or may not be on purpose (may in the sense that this is a fake-out by Moffat and R&A will come back in the future, maybe even connected to the Clara Oswin Oswald mystery, or may not in the sense that Moffat really didn’t know how to “dump” the Ponds/Williamses in any decent way not involving killing them!).
I guess only time will tell if this plotline will ever be resolved in a more satisfactory way.
those tombstones and the book, which could easily be faked
But there’s no reason to suspect, let alone know for certain, that they are faked. If the Doctor takes the risk, and he’s wrong, he creates a paradox in his own timeline. And he also risks killing the Ponds, himself, and anywhere from thousands to countless billions more.
I may not have been clear. My feeling is that the show, not the discussion here, has too often descended to the level of “I have a super weapon” “well, I have a super weapon shield” “well, my super weapon has a shield bypass”.
You may well disagree with me on that, and you may well be right. :-)
Did you write Curse of Fatal Death?!?!?!?
Yeah, that’s pretty much the problem. The Ponds could have written a note like the end of Blink stating that they lived happily ever after, but aside from it being a rip off of Blink, it raises the question of how long the Ponds put off their new life waiting for the Doctor.
Sure, with Rory around, Amy wouldn’t go all ‘Girl Who Waited’ on anyone, but it’s still a pretty raw deal that makes little sense in context.
Is the show worth discussing any more if it’s just panto…?
I had an argument with a fella on twitter about this (why not catch a train to New Jersey?) and he went but it’s romance and poetry and I was like but it’s not logical!! It’s like all those Voyager episodes where they go do the babbledegook to the left gobbledegook and hey presto we’re saved?
If it’s just a series of nifty cool moments, should we just enjoy them or do they mean something (actually you could go made with that in Dr Who fandom – Madame Vastra has human hands = she must be half human! when it really is just an error by the continuity department. Maybe there just aren’t any ducks in the duck pond.)
Actually you answer your own question: “Is it worth discussing if it’s panto?” suggests that panto isn’t worth discussing. But as the article in the current issue of Doctor Who magazine makes clear, panto is worth discussing. It’s a very distinctive, culturally British form of entertainment, deriving from sources such as the commedia dell’arte and what logic it possesses is certainly not the logic of hard science fiction. It is mocked and derided by many who wish to position themselves as culturally superior (ie higher class) because they prefer less demotic entertainment. But it is possible to discuss panto in quite serious terms. Indeed, if you’re into Bakhtin and the carnivalesque, panto is a rewarding field of study.
Those who are irritated by the likes of me finding the ending of The Stolen Earth frustrating (along with every other “moved planets” episode Davies wrote) should reflect that there is an almost symmetrical relationship here.
Your fella on Twitter was clearly right. For him it is romance and poetry (and who is to say that romance and poetry make no sense as a result of being illogical?). There isn’t a binary opposition here between Enjoyment vs Meaning. Meaning derives from the viewer’s engagement with the programme. Moffat fails at engaging many people with the story and characters, because of his “Look at me, aren’t I clever?” habits, among other reasons. But to therefore dismiss the whole show as nothing more than nifty cool moments is a discussion-killer akin to the one teenygozer complained of earlier.
The fella on twitter is a writer by trade so he knows his stuff!!
I was really just explaining why I didn’t like it. Too often, Moffatt
uses the babbledegook explanation. He has said himself that there is no
continuity with Dr Who and because he’s a timelord, there are no laws
of time, which is fine. So if there are no laws of time why can’t he go
back – he’s a time lord?!?! For me, it was a surprise that it wasn’t
written better. He wrote himself into a hole and couldn’t write out of
it. I couldn’t connect with it emotionally either because it seemed a
bit pointless. When I heard they were leaving with in an episode with
the Angels, I, like the rest of the universe, guessed that’s how they
would leave but I figured there were be some kind of twist, which they
didn’t really do anything with. Nobody watches Dr Who for hard
science. I find it hard to enjoy because I don’t believe in what’s
happening on screen. For me to enjoy it means that I would be letting go of the idea that it has to make sense, y’know?
I
didn’t mind the end of The Stolen Earth actually as it has that
fabulous 4th wall break with Martha looking down the lens, inviting you
in really, and shown the Tardis flying as it should be flown!Yeah
I was looking at Roger’s comments and following on from them. I see
(just now!) he has added to them again and I completely agree with his
poking at the thin spots comments. I would also agree with
teenygozer’s comments that the X files ended up drowning in pointless
moments too.
Moffat wrote himself into a hole and then did write himself out of it. You are just objecting to the way in which he did so. And this is where the varying mileage comes in. Moffat has a particular way of doing so, and Davies had a particular way of doing so, and it’s no use arguing that one or the other is intrinsically superior. They’re different ways of doing so, and they convince (or not) different types of people, because different viewers hang their engagement in the narrative on different aspects of the way the narrative unfolds. Davies’s deus ex machinae were unsatisfying to those who wanted cleverer solutions, but worked fine for those who saw them as good resolutions to the emotional arcs of the stories. Moffat’s trickery is unsatisfying for those who feel it undermines the characters, but it works for those who view the text as unfolding simultaneously on diegetic and meta levels.
…to offer but a narrow sampling of different ways of viewing the two approaches.
I wouldn’t argue that one is intrinsically superior as such, it’s all a matter of taste, really. I would have had my problems with RTD’s stuff oh yeah Rose’s dad just appears from nowhere to save her from the vortex???? wtf? That doesn’t make sense either! But I was carried along by the strength of the performances, etc. I didn’t want Rose to go to hell. I would have preferred Moffat’s stuff – Blink, GITF, etc, at the time but I feel that he had plenty of time to write those episodes and, as showrunner, he doesn’t have that luxury now. Much has been written about the terrible pressure the BBC puts him under though. No wonder he left twitter!
He does seem a bit overstretched, doesn’t he? This is perhaps a problem with the current post-Buffy model of this kind of show — they have to have a “showrunner”. I’m a lot less convinced of the merits of the “single authorial vision” than many. In particular, I don’T think it really suits Doctor Who especially well.
I wonder whether this is in part a problem of the American television system bring translated badly to the British one – an American show-runner writes one script in maybe 24, and is working on the show for pretty much the whole year. Whoever’s running Doctor Who is writing one or two scripts out of 12, and spending half the year doing something else (in this case Sherlock)…
I think, in the classic show, the answer tended to be “if he can fix things infinitely, there’s no tension and no story – so stop poking at the thin spots in the setup, and let’s get on with the adventure”. To me, one of the flaws of the new show (and one of the signs of the showrunners being people who grew up as fans) is that it’s all too ready to poke at the thin spots, and to come up with new answers, many of which are frankly unconvincing.
That’s certainly fair. Though I think it also has to do with the increased sophistication of the audience, who themselves will poke at the thin spots. It’s not like the fans of the new show have been forgiving of handwaves in favor of story, either.
“Handwave” was exactly the word that popped into my mind reading Roger’s post. I mean, is it really a sign of the superiority of the old show that it generally gave a wide berth to one of the fundamental implications of its own concept?
Actually, if we consider the most fondly remembered stories of the old series, many of them were about poking at these problems. For example, Genesis of the Daleks is a mess, viewed as a time-travel story, and it set up all sorts of continuity problems for those who care about such things. But it was a great story.
Well, if exploring the concept in detail breaks the narrative, isn’t it better to avoid it? That’s what my argument boils down to, really: if you try to get into exactly what is and isn’t possible in the imaginary realm, not only do you pin down continuity (something that the show has rarely attempted, and it’s usually gone badly), but you end up arguing about the specifics of something that’s been made up to serve narrative purposes anyway. That’s fine for a chat in the bar at a convention, or in a fanzine; not so fine when you’re meant to be creating primary material. The more you push the handwaving away by going into detail, the more the naked bones show through the flesh and the whole artifice looks like an artifice.
Certainly the early years of Who v.1 used time travel purely as a setup: it’s how you get to where the adventure is happening, and occasionally (The Ark, The Chase) from place to place within the adventure. When did it first actually explore the implications of what one might call “tactical” time travel? Surely not until well into the Pertwee years, at least? Day of the Daleks, perhaps. The Time Monster?
I agree with you that tying stuff down limits the narrative, and goes against the whole point of the show. And if this is all that the use of time travel is doing, then that’s certainly a bad thing. I’m not sure that’s what’s happening at the moment. I see more of a ‘big concept’ approach, especially with the relationship between time and memory, most explicitly explored with the Silence.
The old series didn’t really play with time travel until the Tardis got fixed, although both the Aztecs and the Meddling Monk did make it important to the narrative, and introduced their own massive problems, in suggesting that history for the viewers was unchangeable in a way that the future for the viewers wasn’t. I’d say this latter problem is at least as big as anything that has been thrown up recently.
It occurred to me after seeing this, weren’t the Doctor and Martha angel victims in Blink?
Even if it wasn’t easy, wasn’t it entirely possible to get them back if someone on the other end was helping? Hence the entire plot?
I guess maybe it would be an attempt to explain why her best friend and the police officer were left as they were. But if the only rule was Just Don’t Write a Letter, why didn’t River know that?
From a Timelord’s point of view, being zapped back into the past isn’t a calamity, it’s just moving somewhere else. Amy and Rory don’t need rescuing from a terrible fate, they’re just somewhere that’s difficult (but not impossible) to get to.
So it’s only me who thinks that the pseudo-mechanics of time travel aren’t the reason that the Doctor doesn’t go back; its their relationship not their temporal displacement that is the issue. The Doctor has been trying to separate from Amy and Rory for quite some time; he’s been trying to make them more independent while staying close. On occasions.
But now Amy has really really clearly chosen to be somewhere else with Rory rather than here with the Doctor, and the Doctor chasing after them becomes more stalking than rescuing. The ‘mixed up time streams’ become a sufficient barrier to stop him swooping in and interfering.
Goodbye raggedy man! (This is when we talked. And now, even that has come to an end.)