From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho.moderated
From Address: jameskuyper@verizon.net
Subject: Re: Angels take Manhattan plot holes

On 10/22/2012 10:05 AM, Ken Arromdee wrote:
> I wrote this just after seeing the episode, and before reading any Usenet
> messages or other messages on the subject:
> 
> -- Exactly what do the Angels gain by sending someone to the past and keeping
> them locked up?  They gain energy by sending someone to the past.  Keeping
them
> locked up only does any good if they send them to the past again a second
time
> once they lived the decades back up to the present.

In terms of real-world science, there's no obvious reason why they
should be able to gain energy at all. It has to be accepted as
"sufficiently advanced science", i.e. "indistinguishable from magic".
The writers are free to choose to define that the angels can absorb
additional energy from every year that the prisoners spend in the wrong
time period - but only if they're held prisoner (possibly because they
must remain within a certain minimum distance of the angel in order for
that angel to absorb the energy). That's not inconsistent with anything
that's been said elsewhere - with one caveat. If it were a lot of
additional energy, farms like this one would be their normal mode of
existence, which would be (mildly) inconsistent with our previous
encounters with the Angels.

> -- You can't go back to 1938?  What?  First of all, you can always go back to
> 1937 and wait.  Second, the Doctor has clearly been able to go back to that
> general time period before without noticing there was a big section of 1938
> that was off limits.  Third, if you just can't go to 1938 Manhattan but can
go
> somewhere else, travel to England and take a boat.

That's the question I raised in my "ground transport" thread.

> -- Regeneration energy to fix River Song?  What?  Really, that was totally
out
> of left field (and raises the question of why the Doctor never did that to
> help anyone else, including people who were actually dying).

A) she's his wife. B) his entire current supply of regeneration energy
(which is apparently sufficient to support at least a couple of
additional regenerations) came from her; he was appalled that she gave
it to him, and is looking for excuses to give some of it back.

Still, I basically agree - the idea that he can do this makes him look
retroactively uncharacteristically selfish on every previous occasion
where he failed to do so, when there was sufficiently good reason for
doing so.

> -- Also, exactly why couldn't they break the Angel's wrist?  It was never
clear
> whether they weren't willing or weren't able, but I see no reason for either
> one; it was self-defense, and we've just established in the *same scene* that
> people can hurt Angels.

It's a fixed point in time - no matter what you attempt to do to change
things, something will normally happen to interfere. We've seen what
happens if you're unfortunate enough to be clever enough to find a way
to break a fixed point in time.

...
> -- The Statue of Liberty being an Angel makes no sense.  First of all,
everyone
> knows that it was built.  It's not like a random statue in the street whose
> history nobody knows.  Second, we were reminded *in the same episode* that
New
> York is the city which never sleeps--there's always going to be someone
looking
> at it.

That bothered me too.

> -- It wasn't clear whether the Doctor couldn't go back to get Amy and Rory
> because saving them would cause a paradox or because he can't even visit the
> time period.

We don't even know what time period they were sent to. There were no
dates on the tombstones.

> 1) If he can't even visit the time period, see previous remarks about 1938,
but
> worse.  Not being able to visit a decades-long period that begins in 1938
would
> even retroactively erase Totter's Lane in 1963.  (Did it retroactively
> erase The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe?  If not, go to England in
> Christmas 1938, and take a boat.)

That's another issue already raised in my "ground transport" thread.
-- 
James Kuyper

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