Time Of The Angels/Flesh and Stone: Ranking - 182

 Time Of The Angels/Flesh and Stone

(Series 5, Dr 11 with Amy and River Song, 4 with Leela, 24/4/2010-1/5/2010, showrunner: Steven Moffat, writer: Steven Moffat, director: Adam Smith) 

Rank: 182

'Ooh I've been zapped by the Weeping Angels and sent back in time to the point when I started writing this website. What do you mean I have to sit through 'The Timeless Child' 'Orphan 55' and 'Time and The Rani' all over again?!?'

 

 This one is a case of decent (if slightly drawn-out) story, let down just a little by how inexperienced everyone is on a story that demands everyone do an awful lot of heavy lifting in one go (this story was filmed first in Matt Smith’s run, though broadcast third). In 2010 there was real doubt, not least from inside the BBC themselves, that DW would ever outlast both Russell T Davies and David Tennant. Obviously they could and everyone soon shook off the doubt as soon as they saw the rushes back for this story, but there’s a nervous tension in the air to it too that comes from more than just the invasion of Weeping Angels. The Angels are a great invention, perhaps the best monster of Modern Who (give or take the ‘Ood’), a simple idea of a being that kills you not by eating you but by feeding off the years you should have lived and with the twist of sending you back into the past to start a new life for yourself all over again. The fact they resemble something as everyday as gargoyles children can see in any proper (i.e. old) town in Europe gives them an extra chill factor (the one thing we haven’t had with the Weeping Angels yet is a story set in a church or a cathedral, oddly, surely their natural habitat). In some ways it’s a safe story to start with: Moffat’s biggest success story in DW so far were clearly the gangly gargoyles, but after the Doctor-lite episode ‘Blink’ fans were crying out to give the quantam time-locked statues a proper showdown with the Doctor. And what could be better than one episode but two? The script was so obvious a one to write that we’d have been annoyed if Moffat had done anything else and he takes everything that made them so scary the last time round and ups the ante for a DW story that’s as close as any individual story to a Who horror movie with more jump-scares than a shivering Tigger. On the other hand, though, this is a story where the enemy can’t talk and are literally stock-still statues for most of the screen time, which leaves an awful lot of the 100 minutes to fill with other things. Some of them are pretty awful minutes too to be honest: the soldiers in this story are no UNIT and quickly wear out their welcome, while the scenes of Amy alone with her eyes shut and abandoned again feel like an eternity for us every bit as much as they do for her. There are some great variations on the ‘Blink’ plot too though: the Angels now have the ability to infect people’s eyes when they look away from them so even staring them out isn’t safe any more (what a missed opportunity Donna never met them – that stare would have come in handy!), they can transport themselves through images as well as being seen in real life and the moment where the soldiers have all been brainwashed into walking off to their doom abandoning Amy who can’t see what’s going on at all is proper hiding behind the sofa stuff. Amy being ‘Blind’ is the logical sequel to ‘Blink’, a cure that’s almost as bad as the disease (personally I’d much rather be sent back in time than lose my sight – not least if its an era when I can see the missing DW episodes that don’t exist any more). They can also take over people and talk through them, which makes them a little like every other monster but the messages they give are properly chilling. The way that ‘Blink’ was written the Angels were taking people out of time because that’s how they fed, that it was a food chain sort of thing and the lives lived by Humans were a tasty snack (though I’ve no idea on why they pick on one of the shortest-lived species in the solar system; go track down the eternals or something!) This story makes it clear though how much glee they take from snuffing other people’s lives out. Poor Amy really does through it this story, realising how little she knows the Doctor when River Song turns up and acts as if they’re a married couple though he’s only met her once and never mentioned her at all, something that’s really tough on poor Alex Kingston who at this point has as little idea of what River’s past is as we did the first time round, but still has to act as if she’s known the Doctor for decades with a stranger. Somehow the cast get by but you can tell, if you go back and watch these episodes out of sequence, that their characters aren’t quite set yet: the Doctor’s a bit too manic, River Song’s a bit too weird and Amy’s a bit too wet without the subtlety Karen Gillan will bring to the part with time. Ha time, ironic really that the one thing that stops this story hitting classic status is exactly what’s at stake in this story if the angels get hold of their prey. The result is a story that’s popular with fans for making the Angels even more of a threat, but for me it’s a little one-note, with a nervy cast and even nervier writing, without as much of the usual saving grace of humour or lightness of touch that are Moffat’s hallmarks as much as the heavy emotion and horror we get here (‘Blink’ is more satisfying rounded and the stakes are higher in ‘Time Of The Angels’). Still, one story has to be the first made under a new regime and the wonder is more that a story with so many firsts hits the ground running, even with a monster that mostly stands perfectly still.

+ Moffat’s first cliffhanger as showrunner is a great, great cliffhanger, right up there with anything in the history of DW. The Doctor and co are trapped in a cavern, surrounded by thousands of Weeping Angels. The guard who were meant to be all too literal ‘lookouts’ have just been murdered. The Angels have suddenly and alarmingly found their voice, using the dead Humans to talk through and tell the Doctor all the awful things they’re about to do to everyone there. Amy doesn’t know it yet, but she’s busy turning into an angel herself with sand pouring out of her eye and blinding her. We know everyone is in a cave so there’s no way out and nowhere to run. It all looks properly hopeless. How are they going to get out of that one then?! I won’t spoil it but unlike some two-parters the solution is no cop out either but a logical way out based on a tiny bit of continuity mentioned a good 40 minutes earlier that everyone watching forgot long ago if they noticed it at all. That’s properly good writing right there, you don’t get that in super hero films, soap operas or fantasy quests about jewellery and orcs. No wonder I love this show!

- A lot of fans like the scene where the Doctor leaves Amy, then returns wearing a different costume, something that’s not solved for many many more episodes and only really makes sense in retrospect, in the season finale. For me it gets in the way of the story and is the start of Moffat being too clever by half, leaving clues that you only see after multiple watchings and which for me get in the way of the drama (I mean, it’s hard to care when Rory is brought back from the dead so many times and that concept of messing around with the timelines so nothing is quite what we think it is starts now – the story would have a lot more emotional impact if Amy really was abandoned and alone, her biggest phobia after what happened to her in her first DW story).