Just rewatching Blink, something occurs to me:

How did the Doctor and Martha end up back in 1969? Was it because of the Weeping Angels? If so:

If the Weeping Angels sent the pair of them back, does that mean that Martha technically got the same death as Amy and Rory did? If so, this then opens up other questions for me.

If they both got sent back and then, because of the ending with the Tardis the Doctor and Martha obviously return, does that mean the Doctor cheats Martha's death? If he could do it for her, why not for Amy and Rory?

Even half way the episode with the DI that got sent back through time, the Doctor even says something along the lines of "I would offer you a lift but someone stole my motor" indicating that he would have taken the detective back also but just didn't have his Tardis at the time.

On the whole scene when Shipton first appeared in 1969, Martha says something about the moon landings and how her and the Doctor had been 4 times. So, does this mean the Doctor has been to the moon landings several times. Would the Silence have been around then?

Technically the Angels don't kill, they only feed off temporal energy.

The difference in the scenario's of the two episodes was that in blink, it was a few angels hanging around a house, sending the odd person back, meaning that yes, if you had time travel, you could just go and fetch that person back.

In the angels take Manhattan however, just as the title suggests, the place was absolutely full of them (with even the statue of liberty being one), and that fact, along with the events of the episode, meant that the explanation given, was that New York was so damaged by the effects of time travel and paradoxes, that the doctor risking further time travel in New York to try and retrieve Amy and Rory could result in some sort of universe ending, time collapsing scenario.


I believe the doctor described it in Blink as something along the lines off, 'they zap you back in time, and let you live to death'

Because Moffat didn't want him to.

Moffat wanted to write Rory and Amy out of the series, permanently, no come-backs, but without actually killing them off. By sending them to the past, he could allow them to live out their natural lives, and yet be dead in the present; all that was then needed was a double-talk reason why the Doctor could not retrieve them, or even go and visit them. A temporal paradox that would break time and space and end the universe is always a good double-talk reason.

I find Angels Take Manhatan a really sad episode.
11 loses his best friends and River loses her mum and dad.

Think 11 was just a little bit angry with Amy when he sees her name on the tombstone.
Didn't think she would chose tom die with Rory rather then go back to the Tardis and live be with him.Even call each other by their nicknames "Pond" and "Raggedy Man".

The angels are stone cold killers too. Octavian had his neck snapped by an angel in flesh and stone.

Also worth noting that Martha hadn't actually died back in time, because well she didn't. Part of the paradox was that Amy and Rory's graves were there and had been seen, so the Doctor knew that they'd died. The whole episode was showing how messy and complicated time travel can be, and that at certain points you have to stop meddling and accept what has happened.

With Martha, she and the Doctor were back in 1969 waiting for the TARDIS to be sent back to them, which had to happen because the Doctor already had the transcript so Sally would have to live to give it to him so she'd have to send the TARDIS back to him. Martha didn't die in the past because the TARDIS went back to them, so her grave never appeared in the present and was never seen.

Wibbley-wobbley, timey-wimey...you get the picture.

And with Martha and Sally, their timelines were all crazy. Sally had lived the events, and told The Doctor how to survive, so the paradox would have been if they stayed in the past due to what happened in the future.

The episode revolved to a great extent around the book, written by River and published by Amy and Rory. To go and retrieve them would create a paradox in that the book would not have existed because the doctor would have had no need to tell river to write it and send it to her parents. Rory had already been zapped back and had died as an old man in front of them, paradox number 2, both names on the grave, paradox number three.

In blink, the doctor didn't have the Tardis, all his endeavours were specifically to retrieve the Tardis. The doctor kept a very low profile as did Martha, ie they deliberately didn't enact with the era outside their immediate predicament. The comment about not having his motor was a flippant joke he could afford to make because he didn't have the Tardis and didn't know for sure if he would retrieve it. His whole purpose was to get a message to sally sparrow, because she had already told him how to do it. So, not returning would have caused the paradox ie not being seen by sally in the street after the events for her.