The Angels Take Manhattan

Steven Moffat wrote:New York would still burn. The point being, he can’t interfere. Here’s the ‘fan answer’ – this is not what you’d ever put out on BBC One, because most people watch the show and just think, ‘well there’s a gravestone so obviously he can’t visit them again’. But the ‘fan answer’ is, in normal circumstances he might have gone back and said, ‘look we’ll just put a headstone up and we’ll just write the book’.

What definitively established that his future self hadn't already done that when he first glimpsed the chapter title and the gravestone? Both could still have meant any number of scenarios other than Amy and Rory being stranded in New York for the rest of their lives and never seeing the Doctor again. The gravestone could indeed be a fake, or it could mean that the Doctor reunited with them for many more adventures and dropped them off to eventually die in 20th century New York at a later point in their timelines. Why couldn't the "last farewell" in the chapter title simply be a lie or hyperbole on River's part?

Steven Moffat wrote:But there is so much scar tissue, and the number of paradoxes that have already been inflicted on that nexus of timelines, that it will rip apart if you try to do one more thing. He has to leave it alone. Normally he could perform some surgery, this time too much surgery has already been performed. But imagine saying that on BBC One!

The Doctor rescuing the Ponds would only be a paradox if something were witnessed which 100% eliminated that possibility. The gravestone and the chapter title don't do that, they simply need to exist because they've been witnessed; the reason for their existence was still up in the air when he saw them. The only sequence of events required to keep the timeline intact is one that leads to their creation. Precisely what form that sequence of events needs to take isn't set in stone. The plot just jumps to the conclusion that their existence proves Moffat's intended outcome because it's convenient.

Agreed. It's bollocks.

That episode is an absolute clusterfuck in scriptwriting, and Moffat’s comments here only further clarify as such. Having said that, I do enjoy it a lot from a subjective viewpoint.

I just get the feeling Moffat was bored and weary of the Ponds by this time and was just figuratively giving them the double flush to make them go away in the biggest, most fraught way possible. I think the logic of how was only considered in afterthought. It seemed like it was written more in frustration (reminiscent of Saward's nastiest excesses), than with heart or thought.

The logic of the Angels I think was starting to get really skewed at this point, and frankly it might've been better had Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone been their final swansong because I don't think anything good came from bringing them back on TV (although I did like how they were used in the book Touched By An Angel).

Amy and Rory's ideal exit is "The God Complex", pretend everything between that and "The Snowmen" didn't happen or occurred without them.

I think ideally Amy and Rory should've parted ways with the Doctor at the end of A Good Man Goes To War, with the Doctor riding solo in fruitless search of baby Melody for them, before the Ponds finally return again in Wedding of River Song and that could've been their final goodbye.