TV

Doctor Who
33x05 The Angels Take Manhattan [mid-season finale]

Most of this episode was pretty great, in my estimation. New York looked wonderful, there were new and clever elements added to the mythology of the Angels (not least finally using the TARDIS to go back and retrieve someone dumped in the past, a waiting-to-be-used-as-a-major-plot-point part of their mythology if ever I saw one), some marvellously atmospheric and scary sequences, indeed great noir-ish direction throughout. Stuff like the book and the chapter headings were also clever.

Sadly, the ending -- the farewell to the Ponds -- didn't hold mustard for me. In a plot prone to holes as it was (and I'm sure there are even more if we stop to think about it), getting rid of the Doctor's beloved Ponds in a way that meant he could never see them again was surely #1 priority on the list of Things That Need To Make Absolute Sense. But no, it doesn't.

The Doctor can't travel back to New York in 1938 because of all the time paradoxes -- fair enough. Why not get them a few years later? Can the Doctor never ever go to New York ever again? Closes off that as a potential future location, but OK, it could be allowed. So why can't the Ponds leave New York? That's never established. Can the Doctor never visit anywhere else on planet Earth between 1938 and 2012? I doubt that. Can he not send them a letter? No one says why not. So why can't he send them a note to pop up the road, far enough away from all those TARDIS-bouncing paradoxes, and he'll go pick them up? If there's a reason why that can't be done, I missed it.

So for all the people crying about the Ponds' departure on twitter... I'm not one, because it doesn't hold up. And that's a shame, because "sent to the past by Angels to a place where the Doctor can't get them, but that's OK because they're happy together" is a nifty idea for an exit.

And still, everything up to that point was pretty good.

[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]



QI
10x02 Jam, Jelly and Juice (XL edition)

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Big changes are afoot this week, thanks to three new releases. There's The Raid and Masters of Cinema's Cleopatra making tweaks, but the big wave is caused by the Bond 50 box set. Not only does it contain all 22 official Bond films to date on Blu-ray, it also replaces 21 of my 22 individual editions (depends on the state of special features, and if I can bear to part with its lovely box, whether I sell the Casino Royale Deluxe Edition).

So while the total number of films barely moves, it's a big old shift for total titles, DVDs and discs (all 21 of those upgrades go from two DVDs to a single BD). Exciting times.

Number of titles in collection: 1,491 [down 18]
Of which DVDs: 1,142 [down 21]
Of which Blu-rays: 349 [up 3]

Number of discs in collection: 3,702 [down 16]
Number of films in collection: 1,507 [up 3]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 5,679 [no change]
Number of short films in collection: 365 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.