Hallucinogenic lipstick, clerics in camouflage and a maze ball. The Weeping Angels must be back!
Behold the conclusion to the Weeping Angel double-feature that by its own internal logic should never have occurred in the first place.
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Everything’s turned upside-down as the good guys now venture into the tree-borg forest aboard the Byzantium.
The baddies are in hot pursuit; one by one, the ecclesiastic soldiers are being unmade; and an angel is slowly crawling out of Amy’s mind-hole.
There’s more power on the ship than the Doc understands, though. Something Amy might recognise, were she only able to open her eyes.
You mentioned that Flesh and Stone ran short. The blu-ray edition contains a rather lengthy deleted scene in the Tardis, in which a flirtatious Amy discovers the visual record of all the Doctor’s female companions (“Is that a leather bikini?”) and the Doctor compares himself to Gandalf (“I’m a Space-Gandalf.”) and Yoda. :)
Grunts vs Angels descends into attack of the time crack. As if fighting Angels wasn’t horrible enough, now the poor soldiers are being wiped from existence. Crispin and Philip should definitely have chosen the Lava Snake mission. This is one tense, dark episode. I felt for each soldier as they met their demise. Octavian’s death is particularly upsetting.
Minor nitpicks: is the crack showing up and defeating the Angels a cop-out? Without it, the Doctor and company would have been Angel pie (the 7th Doctor would have found a way to defeat the Angels without the crack!). If all the weeping Angels now never existed, why would River receive a pardon? Who would remember what her original mission was, and why would she even have embarked on it in the first place? Are all the weeping Angels now gone (assuming future Angel appearances take place prior to this story’s timeline?).
Major nitpicks: Amy’s ‘walk like you can see’ moment makes the Angels look really really dumb. Surely they aren’t that stupid. Also, longest ‘second’ EVER. Boooo!
Things I learned from this episode: Bullets are less than useless against Angels : next time bring sledgehammers.
Stripping the cerebral cortex of a victim to make a freaky reanimated puppet is also done in the Bafta worthy classic Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988). A homage perhaps?
3.7 ‘seconds’
I’m Tracey. Have a mini:
Our intrepid heroes make a narrow escape from the angels using gravity. But! Every bit of ground they gain is immediately lost as they continue to be in constant peril. This sense of urgency and danger calls to mind the first season of classic Who, when they were always on the move and no place was safe.
Amy is confused:
Amy is counting. That’s weird. Everyone should definitely ignore that for a while. Why is she counting down and more importantly, is this bothering Drew?
Trivia from Tracey-From-America’s-Husband:
At 12.25 The Doctor loses his brown coat to an angel. At 17.45 he has it back for one scene. This is not a goof- Brown Coat Doctor has traveled from a future episode this season, explained below.
Wow, really big bombshell at the end there:
Amy is getting married! Or is she? She’s certainly throwing herself at Doc with gusto. Rather than reciprocate as we came to expect with Doc ten, eleven gets silly and shy. Is he uninterested or has it just dawned on him that the crack in Amy’s wall is this season’s bad wolf?
My final note is regarding the name Who. There are two audience nods. Amy says she’s thought about *Who* she wants before basically jumping on the Doctor. And there’s another nod too (explained below) that is a huge spoiler if you know what you’re looking for but quite subtle otherwise.
Rating: shhh, spoilers
Secrets/Spoilers for readers:
Brown Coat Doctor is from the season finale. He is being erased from time as a consequence of the universe crack. As his existence flashes before his eyes, he steps into several moments from his time with Amy and asks her to remember him. It’s also important that Amy has her eyes closed because she doesn’t seem able to see the Brown Coat / Erasing Doctor, just hear him. He wants Amy to remember him because he’s hoping she can bring him back Neverending Story style.
Now regarding nods to the audience about Doctor Who as a name, Father Octavian has warned the Doctor that River is dangerous. In fact she is in prison for killing a man. The Doc asks River to verify this. She says “yes I did.” Then he says “Who” which is a question. But also, you know, kinda his own name.
Holy Exploding Glowing Jizz-balls, Batman!
Following the upside down cliff hang, The Doctor et al begin to clamber their way through the Wreck of the Byzantium in an attempt to escape the now fully-formed Angels. Amy has difficulty seeing the Forest for the Treeborgs, while River runs through it, saucy quips in tow, and we get even more brilliant delivery from Iain Glen, who outshines the entire cast.
For myself, the bottom kind of falls out of this episode when the gravity of the “crashed and stationary” ship fails in a convenient hand-wavey way, however, the Timey-Wimey Vacuu-Suck System removes any unnecessary supporting cast and unruly complex time/space events in a jiff.
Nice touch with Future Doc popping in to give a reassuring peck on Amys forehead. (He has his jacket on and sleeves pushed up)
Points to Pond-er:
• Nice of the Angels to close the hatch behind them
• Subtle count down is subtle
• Rock/Papal/Fissures. Rock beats Papal. Fissures beat Rock.
• We have no need of comfy chairs. But we need oxygen. Apparently.
• Something (always) in the corner of your eye. This times its sand. I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
• The Secondary Flight Deck is Cracked. The Ponds Eyes will open. Gravity Fails.
• Amy’s reaction at the end does not make her a slut, slag or anything less than a human trying to process a traumatic experience. End of.
3.7/5 For a bit of hand-waving and use of the “ooh I’ve tripped and dropped the Thing – zap! saved at the last minute” trope.