No, they awaken in a graveyard, with New York now Angel-free and the time energy around the city so toxic that time travel there is pretty much impossible now. Nonetheless, a single Angel survives long enough to send Rory back in time just as everyone is celebrating.
Here's where it all broke down and an otherwise great episode was ruined. Amy insists on letting the Angel send her back too in order to be with Rory, and the Doctor and River both tearfully tell her that there is no coming back this time. It's a temporal ground zero in Manhattan now, and the Doctor can't just pick them up. Amy insists that all will be well since she'll have Rory, and with a blink she's gone.
No.
Seriously, just no.
Even for the fast and loose rules of canon that Doctor Who plays with this was a cop-out way to see off the longest-running companions in the modern series. Manhattan's horribly time-forked? Couldn't you just hop back to Jersey or Pennsylvania then take a train into the Big Apple to find them? The presence of the pulp novel, written by River and published by Amy in the past, proves that at least some method of communicating was available.
That's not even counting the fact that Manhattan can't be completely off the time travel grid. The Tenth Doctor is there in 1931 fighting Daleks, The First Doctor passes through their briefly in the '60s, as did the Eleventh Doctor himself when he saved River as she fled the Silence! All those incidents required extensive time travel, which is apparently impossible now that a paradox has blighted the time vortex around the city. Were those previous adventures erased?
Look, the Ponds are not my favorite companions. On my top ten list Rory ranked nine and Amy doesn't appear at all. Even I say this is not the ending they deserved. They should have gotten a Martha ending, growing up and moving on from Doctor, not being locked away simply because none of the three is mature enough to realize when a journey has to end. During the Slow Invasion, the Ponds were almost on the verge of that logical and appropriate conclusion.
Instead the life they built was pointlessly cut short in order to make them undocumented immigrants in a country that has only let women vote for about 20 years (Assuming they were taken back to 1937), full of social norms and information that will forever mark them as outsiders, eating food that is almost certainly going to poison them to death since it predates the health regulations they've enjoyed their whole lives, with World War II to look forward to. This was supposed to sell us on the idea that it was something of a happy ending.
I'm not sorry to see Amy and Rory go. Since Smith assumed the role of the Doctor his story has taken a backseat to that of Amy, making the whole thing a science fiction version of Drop Dead Fred. I'm looking forward to the return of Jenna Louise Coleman. I can also admit that the odds of never ever seeing the Ponds again are very very small, but until that day comes we're left with a most unfair farewell that brought rage instead of tears.
See you at Christmas!
