Doctor Who‘s 2012 finale, “The Angels Take Manhattan”, just finished airing in the U.K. It was the farewell episode for Amy and Rory. *SPOILERS LIE AHEAD*
The episode started out with a scene in 1938 in New York City narrated by an initially unnamed man, Mr. S. Garner. He is hired by a gangster, Mr. Grayle. Grayle hires Garner, an apparent detective, to investigate a place called Winter Quay where supposedly “statues move in the dark.” Winter Quay is a housing area in lower Manhattan near Battery Park. When he enters the building, he ends up at a room with his name on the door. He meets and older version of himself that apparently the angels have kept trapped there.
We soon come to realize that actually what has been happening is that the Doctor is reading aloud from a mystery novel written by a Melody Malone. The Doctor, Rory, and Amy are in New York City’s Central Park in 2012. As the Doctor continues to read aloud, Rory goes off for coffee. The Doctor and Amy continue to read and walk around the park, but the Doctor at one points rips out the last page because he claims he always does that so then the story doesn’t have to end.
Rory, while walking under the Bethesda fountain underpass, is zapped back in time to 1938. He is instantly met by River Song, who is at that point in time thanks to a wrist-operated, vortex manipulator similar to the one Captain Jack used to wear. River is also going by the name Melody Merlot. Apparently the the novel the Doctor was reading is actually a true account because River and Rory are taken by Grayle’s henchmen to Grayle’s home where he has both locked out and imprisoned the weeping angels.
Rory is thrown in the basement where he is at the mercy of the baby angels locked in there. River verbally spars with Grayle, who apparently wants to harness the angels’ power for reasons unknown, and he believes he is going to force River into divulging all the angels’ secrets to him. She ends up — in the blink of an eye — with an angel gripping her wrist.
Meanwhile, back in 2012, Amy continues to read the book and is puzzled why she and the Doctor are in it. She reads out loud a part about the Doctor breaking something, and the Doctor rips the book from her hands stating that if she continues to read, she causes a fixed point in time and whatever she has read will have to happen. Because she has read something breaking, it’s now going to happen.
Despite the fact that 1938 is surrounded by time energy that makes getting there nearly impossible, and reading just enough to know where and when to send the TARDIS, thanks to some manipulation with Qin Dynasty china and River Song, the TARDIS lands inside Grayle’s home, knocking him out cold.
Using only chapter titles as clues, the Doctor sends Amy to the basement to get Rory while he talks to River. Unfortunately, the Doctor also notices that the chapter titles include a farewell from Amelia. Shortly, the Doctor comes to realize that what would have been broken is River or the statue’s wrist. In order to rewrite time, thus saving Amy from what he read, he orders River to get her wrist out without breaking it. He meets Amy in the basement where Rory is no place to be found. The two rush back to the lobby as the Doctor realizes that angels have gotten Rory.
River meets them in the lobby near the TARDIS, having gotten out. Unfortunately, she broke her wrist to do it so time is not yet rewritten. Of note, we discover that River is free on parole because no one knows who she killed since the Doctor, thanks to Oswin, has written himself out of all of future history. We also know that she is now a professor. Amy, who has been using a combination of River’s vortex manipulator and the Doctor’s technology, realizes that Rory has only been transported in space and not time. He is at a nearby building called Winter Quay.
Rory, suddenly now at Winter Quay, enters the building. He unknowingly enters a room with his name on the door where Amy, the Doctor, and River catch up with him. Before the Doctor can stop it, Amy meets an older Rory who dies holding her hand. The Doctor explains that the Angels kidnapped Rory to this building. It’s a bit of an energy breeding farm for them where they continuously zap people back in time within the confines of the building until they die of old age. Since Rory and Amy actually witnessed Rory’s death, it is now a fixed point in time unless they can create a paradox to stop it.
They decide the only way to create such a paradox is if Rory escapes the unescapable building and runs from the angels for the rest of his life. In quick order, Amy and Rory end up on the roof with the largest angel of all, the Statue of Liberty, glaring at them. Rory and Amy jump off the building, dying together rather than living apart. Their hope was that Rory’s death would create the needed paradox, and if not they would at least die together.
The paradox works and the Doctor, River, Rory, and Amy, along with the TARDIS, end up back in 2012 near a graveyard where the TARDIS was initially parked. Unfortunately, Rory spies a tombstone with his name on it. Out of nowhere an angel appears and zaps him back in time. Amy, despite the pleas of the Doctor, says goodbye to him and River and turns her sight from the angel, hoping it sends her to the same place Rory is so that they can live out their remaining years together. Amy is then transported away and immediately her name appears on the tombstone next to Rory’s.
In a final scene in the TARDIS, River explains (and we may be a little hazy here, we need a re-watch) she now has to write the novel that they have been using, but that she’ll get Amy to write an afterward to the Doctor. The Doctor then goes back to Central Park and reads the ripped out page where Amy asks him to visit her younger self and tell her of all the marvelous thing that will one day happen to her.
Questions:
- When exactly were Amy and Rory born?
- Are Amy and Rory actually in their 30s in 2012?
- What exactly is Amy and Rory’s timeline?
- Did the Doctor know about what happens to the Ponds back during the Pond Life episodes and visits them before their demise to spend more time with them without giving away what happens in 2012?
- Did the Doctor know the demise of Amy and Rory, so technically he didn’t lie to Brian when he said they didn’t die?
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