Howling:The unexplained parts of "The Angels Take Manhattan"

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So far as I can remember, two massive parts of the episode went completely unexplained:

• How the Hell could Lady Liberty be an Angel when she's copper, pretty much hollow and was deconstructed in France then reconstructed in New York?
• What happened to the Angel in the graveyard? Surely the Doctor didn't leave it?

94.72.194.203^{talk to me} 19:55, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

Not sure about Liberty.

The Angel in the graveyard: What could the Doctor do? He can't kill it. He certainly can't take it anywhere in the TARDIS. "There's a world of time energy in there... The damage they could do could extinguish the sun." (The Doctor in Blink, possibly not word perfect but the meaning's accurate.) --89.241.77.184^{talk to me} 22:16, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

I read it that the angels were 'taking over' so were replacing regular angels with themselves so I figured thats why it kinda sorks (unsigned)

The Doctor could have at least contacted the Shadow Proclomation or something. I'm sure they'll have a prison for Angels. There's always a chance he could have done, of course, but didn't say. I doubt the Doctor would leave an Angel near an incredibly populated city. 94.72.194.203^{talk to me} 22:36, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

For Liberty, I think 94 is right; the Angels replaced the statues. As for her being made of copper, presumably they can replace statues made of other things besides stone, but they prefer stone ones for some reason. I can think of all kinds of reasons (the difference between ordinary stone and quantum-locked Angel is less noticeable than between copper and Angel; "taking over" a copper statue makes them weaker and less durable; stone just feels more natural, whatever), and it really doesn't matter which one is right, so there was no reason for the episode to explain it.

As for the Angel in the graveyard: Quoting the Doctor, "It's a survivor, very weak." It couldn't even zap Amy until she deliberately chose to go with it. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 22:53, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, that was (unsigned), not 94, about Liberty. But anyway, I agree. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 22:55, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

One more thing: This probably belongs at Forum:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/The Angels Take Manhattan. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 23:07, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

The episode certainly has its fair share of plotholes like any other Moffat episodes, but I genuinely don't believe these 2 are that farfetched compared to Moffat's other plotholes (2 at least): I certainly agree that the Doctor can't do much about 2 and the Doctor has never mentioned anything about taking care of Angels. Blink got Angels to stare at each other but that's pretty much it...there was really no mention of the Doctor taking care of the 4 Angels afterward...and I'm quite sure there's a reason behind it.

We do know that the Angels likely predates Timelords and are considered ancient by the Time War and the Doctor labelled them creatures of abstract (which has a slight suggestion that there is some sort of confusing/mystic/illogical aspect to their existence in the Time Lords' point of view). This does make them seem like a greater force of nature that is beyond what the Doctor could really have power over.

Moreover, is there a reason to take care of the Angels? Certainly, saving Amy and Rory is important to the Doctor, but Angels are natural predators of conscious beings and they weren't moved out of their natural habitat or doing unnatural things, neither were they taking over Earth; they were just there, doing their own things.

As for the Shadow Proclamation, we know they treat Time Lords as fairy tales and really had little power...so something that the Time Lords refer to as ancient and fear, they'll probably be helpless against them.

For 1, what was said above or Statue of Liberty was carved based on an image of an Angel (an image of an Angel becomes an Angel ;)) or some other reasons...I think there are bigger plotholes that are utter non-sense in this and many other Moffat's episodes than these.--222.166.181.197^{talk to me} 23:11, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

Also, how was the Statue of Liberty able to move if all these people are ALWAYS looking at it? 78.10.80.134^{talk to me} 00:32, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

The Weeping Angels are memes more than they're physical objects. The image of an Angel is an Angel. If a video of an Angel can be an Angel, then any statue can be an Angel if the Angels decide they want it to be. They're living ideas, and these ideas 'take over' existing statues, which can be any material. Probably the best way to think of them is as a species of anarchitect. -- Rowan Earthwood ☎ 00:43, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

The Statue of Liberty as an Angel is a great joke but not very credible. a) It's not public knowledge that there are things such as Weeping Angels - wouldn't New Yorkers notice the Statue of Liberty leaving her pedestal and walking around b) given the noise the Statue of Liberty makes stomping around wouldn't someone end up looking at the statue putting it in quantum lock pretty much constantly? 74.198.9.65^{talk to me} 01:14, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

River Song gave up her future regenerations by transferring her regenerative energy to the Doctor in order to save her life. In The Angels Take Manhattan we see the Doctor using a bit of regenerative energy to heal River - might this also be enough to allow River the ability to regenerate at least one more time and thus open the possibility that, unbeknownst to 10, she survived in Forest of the Dead by regenerating off screen? 74.198.9.65^{talk to me} 01:14, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

On the Doctor not being able to go back and rescue Rory (and Amy) because if he does New York will blow up. Can't he simply send them a message asking them to go to, say, a certain location in Boston at a specific time so he can fetch them? (If River can find them in order to send Amy her manuscript certainly the Doctor can too). Alternatively, if they've been sent back, say, to 1938 again can't he go and get them in 1943 or can he never go to New York at all while their alive? Or is the problem not one of geography but that meeting Amy and Rory anywhere at anytime would create a paradox? 74.198.9.65^{talk to me} 01:20, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

Rowan, interesting point connecting the Angels to the anarchitects. One more think Moffat has borrowed from Miles and turned into a completely different story element.

74: When River saved the Doctor's life, the healing used up her regenerative energy; the Doctor didn't get extra regenerations out of it. So when the Doctor healed River, why should that give her any extra regenerations?

For the other question, I think it's the latter: he can't ever meet them again, no matter where they go. He uses nearly those exact words to Amy. Seeing their tombstone is like reading ahead in the book—he can't change it now that he's read it. It would be like visiting the 7th Doctor and telling him to watch out for stray bullets in SF. (Of course the Doctor _has_ visited his past selves, and done just about everything else impossible; the writers can always invent some way out of anything. But when they do that, they usually aren't picking up threads from previous stories, just creating new stories from whole cloth.) --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 02:53, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

The New York where the Statue of Liberty moved is retconned by the paradox, so the whole New York could have been much more severely infested than what we and the Doctor saw...the population of the city could have been largely zapped continually into the past (remember how a group of Angels managed to destroy an entire race on a planet, let alone that of a city).

The problem should be why the Angels make actual sounds that the characters could hear since hearing is observing, so it genuinely makes no sense.

Moreover, zapping Rory and Amy when Amy/Doctor and River were looking also makes very little sense. Since they observed the Angels action of sending people back...that is an observation of their existence.

The Doctor also left his Tardis in a building with Angels which is stupid and non-sensical after what we have been though in Blink. We did see in Runaway Bride that the Tardis can travel in space alone, so there's really very little rationale behind what the Doctor did.

The Angel being too weak to send River back in time is a hopelessly stupid concept...that's like saying the Angel is too weak to feed and can just wait for his/her death, which makes Angels utterly unscary.

Rory, River, Doctor and Amy all four went into a building with a classic Weeping Angel standing right in front of the building is also stupid. Especially true for Rory, whose first instinct after being sent to another location is to walk into a suspicious unknown building with a Weeping Angel for no reason.

The Doctor also did mention in the Angel two parters that Angels only look like the weeping angel statues, and that's why he didn't suspect the worn down statues...which is a complete conflict to what we have been shown today.

It also makes one wonder how could the Angels be called lonely assassins when they almost always attack in group and has been shown in the last few appeareances to be in positions that would make them look at each other and yet has no quantum lock effect when the lights are off.

--222.166.181.122^{talk to me} 11:13, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

In reverse:

Theyre called the lone assasins because they cant communicate with each other or they will be quantum locked. They can move when in each others sights when the light is off because then they cant see each other. As to why they move in groups, they are united to a common goal. If you put a plate of jelly babies in a room of small children, would you be surprised if they all moved towards them hungrily?

The doctor didnt suspect the other statues because he had only ever seen and knew about the angel statues, however the end of blink made it clear that other shaped statues could also be angels.

There were plenty of statues around, and it wasnt like the statue was positioned on top of the door or anything. I fact, i thought it looked reasonably far away for them not to notice if not looking for it. And what else was rory meant to do after having the police come up and basically arrest him?

Well, if you were so starved you couldnt lift a hamburger (or any other food) to your mouth to eat, you would go hungry too. If the angel is too weak to create the time difference required to create the time energy it needs to feed, then it cant eat. I assume it would have had to wait until another angel created some time energy near by and feed off that.

The doctor couldnt just land anywhere. It needed to be near river because of the "landing lights". And time and space are the same thing, so if time is too messed up to move around in, space will be too.

Well, amy was looking in the oposite direction, so she wasnt looking. I assume the doctor was positioned so amy stood between him and the angel like the camera, and amy got zapped when river then blinked. I cant remember the exact circumstances for rorys transportation, but im assuming similar.

She stops when people hear her. Then, once the sound has disipated, she can move again. Although im still comfused as to why the entire population of new york wouldnt have been staring at her. Imamadmad ☎ 12:16, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

But that's not what we are seeing:

They are communicating with each other and forming functioning communities and systems, River even went so far as to say that the Angel was crying and others Angel could hear them. The baby angels were clearly looking at each other, the Angels in the hallway were also both looking at Doctor from opposite sides without covering up their eyes.

If I recalled correctly, the Doctor specifically said the Angels only look like angels in the two parters. This is also after he read the book River gave him.

The Angel was standing right next to the front door and looks like a classic weeping angel and even doing classic Weeping Angel poses, not just any statue, but the specific Weeping Angel look that the gang have encountered and came to fear. Even without the statue, Rory just walked into someone's building for non reason and this not an alien planet, this is Earth.

the hungry one is in a sense, logically acceptable, but as I said, I only found it stupid because it makes Angels unscary....

The Doctor and River mentioned that only time is screwed up...and by travelling in space as in Runaway Bride, I literally mean travelling, not transporting...neither did the Doctor even bother with anything like making the Tardis invisible as he has done in the past (can't remember it was ninth or tenth)

That is not the point, the point is that seeing someone being zapped right in front of your eyes by an Angel is already a direct observation of an Angel's action which already violated the concept of a quantum lock where the Angels only exist when they are not being observed, and are mere stones when being observed.

Again, the fact that she was heard violated the concept of quantum lock. This is like saying the Angels stop AFTER people have seen them moving, and continually being observed to be moving in small increments.--222.166.181.148^{talk to me} 13:03, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

You've clearly invented your own rules for how things work, and if Moffat violated those rules that you invented, that's your problem, not his.

For example, who says that hearing an Angel quantum locks it? Not the Doctor, or Moffat. Not anything we saw in a previous episode. It's not scientifically warranted (sound travels 6 orders of magnitude slower than light—that's usually enough to take you out of the quantum realm and into the macroscopic; sight involves perception of photons that reflected directly from the target, while sound involves disturbances of air molecules that are only indirectly connected to the target across a long chain of other air molecules; etc.). It's just something you assumed. Before this episode, it was certainly _plausible_ that sound would quantum-lock an Angel, but it was just as plausible that it wouldn't. Now we know.

You've also assumed that the TARDIS should have no trouble traveling in space even in the presence of time distortions. There's no evidence from any past episodes for that; if time distortions affect the scanner and other pieces of TARDIS equipment, why shouldn't they affect its ability to fly too?

And so on. When you make assumptions that aren't warranted by anything in- or out-of-universe, it's not a plot hole when an episode proves those assumptions wrong. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 14:00, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

The Doctor and River specifically said "observation" and "being observed", not sight. Hearing IS observing.

How would that affect the TARDIS ability to turn invisible as the Doctor previously had done?

What "[a]nd so on"? Are you saying that I assumed Rory, River, Amy and Doctor are sane individuals who can see or have the capacity to remember Weeping Angel which they have encountered multiple times and also just saw in a few hours at the most? Or that I assumed normal people wouldn't just randomly walk into others' building on Earth? Or that I assumed the statues I saw that the Doctor specifically said wouldn't be Weeping Angels (the ones that look different, the ones that look at each other, the ones whose actions are observed by other sentient beings) are Weeping Angels? --222.166.181.70^{talk to me} 16:46, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

222: One thing to bear in mind is that what the Doctor has said about the Angels might be either incomplete or mistaken. He knows a lot. He doesn't know everything. We saw Angels in situations we've not seen before. We saw "baby Angels". This was an established community of the things, with a plentiful food supply (until the Ponds did their stuff). We don't know everything the Doctor knows about the Angels & the Doctor probably doesn't know everything there is to know about the Angels, so why moan that they did something we didn't know in advance they could do?

A second thing to bear in mind is that the Doctor doesn't always express himself with extreme scientific precision (when he does do that, he tends to get blank looks and/or be told off for being baffling); he sometimes speaks colloquially. "Observed" is broader in meaning than "seen" -- if you're being strictly scientific. Maybe the Doctor & River weren't being strictly scientific. Maybe they were using "observed" as a synonym for "seen", as people often do.

By the way, the 11th Doctor, with a bit of help from River, made the TARDIS invisible in The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. It's not something he often does. The ending of The Invasion (2nd Doctor) may give a hint about why he doesn't often do it. A game of "hunt the invisible TARDIS" might be amusing for onlookers but probably isn't for those trying to get into the thing. --89.240.250.6^{talk to me} 17:58, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

222: If "Hearing IS observation" then "Touch IS observation", and yet obviously touch doesn't quantum-lock the Angels, or they couldn't, e.g., break Bob's neck. If it isn't specifically about sight, then what does all that stuff about "the image of an Angel" and looking into their eyes mean—you think listening into their ears would do the same thing?

For your "and so on", people have already answered your questions, so I didn't feel the need to go through point by point, but let me pick one more: "They are communicating with each other and forming functioning communities and systems". Here you're assuming that something is impossible on the basis of a nickname, even though we already saw them doing exactly that in the previous two-parter. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 19:50, September 30, 2012 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something did the Doctor not leave the TARDIS in Grayle's home where the only angels are ones in the basement and one that remained chained too far away to do any damage. He also did not know about the ones in the garden so he would have been a safe place to leave the TARDIS as far as he was conserned as long as it and the basement were locked. --82.11.60.181^{talk to me} 15:26, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

82: As far as I remember, you're right about Grayle's house looking like (& probably actually being) as safe a place as any to leave the TARDIS. Obvously, nowhere in that area was an ideal parking place. Also, we know from Blink that, without a key, Angels would have trouble getting into the TARDIS. (I'm usually 89 but I'm 2 just now.) --2.96.26.113^{talk to me} 15:33, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

but the point for the rest of the arguments are that these are ground rules about the angels that the show established and explicitly mentioned. It's of course always okay to say the Doctor is wrong, but it's a stupid concept to keep lifting limitations of the angels or saying they were never there times after times. It's extremely bad writing. After rewatching the episode, it is true that the baby angels were looking at each other. --222.167.191.105^{talk to me} 15:06, October 9, 2012 (UTC)

When the Cherubim saw each other, they stopped moving. When the lights came back on, they moved again. I don't see what your problem is. What's this extremely bad writing you're talking about? 87.102.0.157^{talk to me} 15:40, October 9, 2012 (UTC)

haha, that's a good one. Of course, presumably the angels can see/observe in the dark, otherwise they would be moving aimlessly whenever they can move and the Doctor's statement about "them being locked forever" would be so superficial that it only means the angels in blink would be locked until tomorrow night. --222.167.191.105^{talk to me} 19:33, October 9, 2012 (UTC)

The Angels in Blink were in a cellar, anyway. Day or night wouldn't make any difference. It would make excellent sense that they could see in what, to us, is darkness. Putting the lights out would give them a great advantage, allowing them to see their prey but not be seen by their prey. --89.242.76.246^{talk to me} 23:23, October 9, 2012 (UTC)

Thus it doesn't make any sense. Just read what you have written in your last two responses.--222.167.191.105^{talk to me} 23:36, October 9, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure why everyone's still arguing with this guy. He's obviously not watching the same show as the rest of us. He thinks there were lots of Angel stories before the Byzantium, he thinks there's solid evidence of things that have never even been hinted at, and any time anyone answers one of his points he ignores that and goes back and hammers one another one (that, half the time, has also already been answered farther up the page). He's determined not to be satisfied with the story, and that's his right. --70.36.140.233^{talk to me} 02:59, October 13, 2012 (UTC)

So 70, do you have an explanation as to why angels which can see in the dark can stare at each other now? Are you suggesting that we should just ignore the ground rules and say that weeping angels do their weeping pose for no apparent reason and can be observed with no ill effects...so basically just saying that they deliberately chose not to move and cover their faces. --222.167.191.105^{talk to me} 14:02, October 13, 2012 (UTC)