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FROM ANDROMEDA AND BACK RADIO: SKIES THAT DO NOT FADE

I remember being in Chicago back in the day, listening to an FM rock station. After a bevy of alternative rock, the DJ suddenly put on the Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. At the art store where I worked, one of the young hipsters immediately yelled, "Tchaikovsky!" and began conducting with her hands. I'll never forget that moment. We had gone from, say, Throwing Muses to Tchaikovsky, and I remember thinking: How cool was that? Here was music making its own case. It didn't plead. It didn't demand. In its own way, it rocked. And then, after that glorious interlude, it was back to alternative rock. The funny thing was that the classical piece had not seemed out of place. It held its own. It brought to the table its own heft, its own weight. It wasn't preachy. It wasn't better than. It was simply another fiber in the fabric of the day. And maybe that's the way great music should be heard. Not fenced off by genre. Not placed behind glass. Not approa...
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TERRA FIRMA WATCHING THE MASTERS: DOCTOR WHO'S SEASON 7, EPISODE 5, "THE ANGELS TAKE MANHATTAN"


There are many Doctor Who classics in the reboot era, but if "The Angels Take Manhattan" isn't among them, I'm not sure what is.

Here, Matt Smith delivers one of the finest episodes of his Doctor Who tenure. Wildly erratic, slightly goofy, endlessly brilliant, and consistently funny—but here is where he has an edge over his peers: he is always moving.

Not simply physically, although Smith's Doctor is a whirlwind of restless energy. He is emotionally in motion as well, forever searching, forever connecting, forever finding his way back to the heart of the story.

No matter how chaotic the Doctor's adventures become, Smith somehow finds the emotional center of the episode. He anchors the story even as Amy (Karen Gillan), Rory (Arthur Darvill), and River Song (the always extraordinary Alex Kingston) race through the madness around him. His Doctor never loses his footing. He always finds a way to hold everything together.

The terrifying Weeping Angels are back—and even the Statue of Liberty is...well, you'll see. They land with tremendous impact. As I say in parts of Terra Firma, they get home.

That idea—that no matter how far you've traveled, you can still find your way home—is the very thing I wanted to capture in my own work.

I have drawn a great deal of inspiration from the reboot era of Doctor Who, and Steven Moffat, the showrunner and writer of this episode, has delivered a genuinely brilliant piece of storytelling.

I once told someone that what I admired most about the revived series was its fearlessness. The creative team simply went for it. Anything was possible, and they trusted the Doctor—whether played by Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, or Peter Capaldi—to make it believable.

More often than not, they did.

That was something I tried to do in Terra Firma. I wanted to embrace the biggest ideas imaginable while keeping the story grounded in character, because even the wildest Doctor Who adventures succeed or fail on the strength of the people at their center.

Whether I accomplished that is for others to judge.

As for me...

"The Angels Take Manhattan" is flat-out brilliant and, by itself, worth the price of an AMC+ subscription.

More Terra Firma Watching Masters: Casablanca

I'd love to hear your thoughts, so speak your mind. Leave me a comment or feel free to hit me up at: fromandromedaandback@gmail.com. And thank you!

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