Let’s be honest, this isn’t going to be a bad review, because there’s no way an episode that features a giant Statue of Liberty Weeping Angel isn’t going to be, at least a little bit, awesome. But in an episode which bids farewell to the longest running companions of the reboot, an avid fan requires more than awesome concepts, we want awesome characterisation, awesome villains, an awesome plot, and dammit we want to cry at the end, because companions don’t just fall out of the world of Doctor Who- they explode.

So did The Angels take Manhattan deliver? It certainly gets the villain right, the Weeping Angels are definitely the scariest, most well thought out monsters in Doctor Who, and it’s great to see them back to their original format, using time travel as a weapon. It really feels like we’re back in ‘Blink’ territory here, which is no bad thing. But this time, the Angels have been turned up to eleven. No longer are they “the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely” they’re now farming humans in their very own tower (block) of terror. And they smile…

If that wasn’t enough to make you scurry for the safety of the sofa, it turns out the Angels can be any statue, angelic or not. It’s a great touch and allows for baby angels, freaky fountains and of course, the Statue of Liberty herself.

But Weeping Angels aside, this episode lacks payoff. The Statue of Liberty is a special effect rather than a plot point, and the eventual solution seems to be reached rather easily, even if it does have devastating consequences.  You can tell that Moffat is writing a story which would have been served much better by a two-parter instead of cramming the twin storylines the Angel threat and the Pond’s impending departure into forty minutes.

The actors make the most of their time though, for the first episode in a while, the focus is on Amy and Rory rather than the Doctor. It’s refreshing, and Gillan particularly delivers, cutting your heart out with a rusty spoon in her final voiceover.

In any other series, this episode would have been excellent, but as a final farewell to the Ponds it fails to do them justice. Although, then again, it’s hard to imagine an episode that could.