Doctor Who XXXIII(7).5: The Angels Take Manhattan

Where, I wondered, was all this going; and it was going to a small, emotional moment between the Doctor and his best friend. Small was the word - the Big Apple became almost the scene of a chamber piece, literally given the Angels' battery farming at Winter Quay. Sentimental fellow that I am, I appreciated the Doctor not being left alone and distraught at the end; and it was that dawn materialisation of the TARDIS from 'The Eleventh Hour' which was the loose end to tidy up, suggesting that it Amy had a degree of foreknowledge all along.

So much for not blinking; there seemed to be moments when the Angels were inactive despite nobody looking at them, not even the viewing audience. I'd imagined that the farewell would be much as we saw it, thanks to reading of filming reports, and so it transpired.

Presumably the Doctor's transfer of regenerative abilities will have consequences; and are there still books with his name in in the Library? If not, then...?

Matt Hills, in his review of the episode, was left cold by the 'frenetic to-ing and fro-ing', which I found to be a chillingly inevitable circularity. He does express more clearly than I did the oddness of an episode about the establishment of fixed points in time when so much of what has gone before has been unwritten. If there is a chain of causality relative to the Doctor, which is consistent from the point of view of his experience - the remnant, perhaps, of the 'Gallifreyan Mean Time' which meant that encounters with the Master, the Rani and the Time Lords in general were always in sequence - what does this mean for other characters whose lives are bound up with the Doctor? Amy has had several different pasts; and if River must die in the Library, are/were/will there (be) any books there for the Vashta Nerada to read to learn of the Doctor's power? (Runs to shelves to check Target books haven't dematerialised.)

The Doctor's farewell to Amy, reminding her that he would never be able to see her again, was phrased and performed in such a way to support the impression that the Doctor was substantially expressing his own dependence on the Ponds. He exists, in the sense that he functions as the ageless god with the face (not necessarily a physical one) of a twelve-year-old, because there is someone looking at him who believes in him in this way. Like the Eternals in Enlightenment, without human company (or, allowing for Romana, company which allows him to demonstrate his humanity), he loses definition.

Onwards to the Dalektable (groan) Ms Coleman.

Also posted at http://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/544659.html.