I think the Weeping Angels may be the greatest contribution made by Steven Moffat to Doctor Who. And that’s not nothing! I’ve made known many times my issues with his writing and showrunning on the series, but you can’t take away the fact he created the first new iconic monster for the show in thirty years. The Weeping Angels are a brilliant invention that will probably be with Doctor Who for as long as it runs, alongside the Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, and Autons as a classic nemesis for the Doctor. No other monster created during the revived run has equaled them for sheer impact. Neither Russell T. Davies nor Chris Chibnall ever managed to make a villain as potent, and even Moffat himself of course could never replicate the formula, as much as he tried.
Which is why I’m stunned that it’s been so long since we’ve seen the Angels. They haven’t been the featured threat of an episode since “The Angels Take Manhattan” nine years ago. The Twelfth Doctor never had to face them, which kind of seems wrong to me! Maybe it was out of respect or trepidation, considering all the Angel episodes previously had been written by Moffat, they were sort of his baby -I don’t know, but I’m glad they’re back and as frightful as ever.
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It allows us to finally revisit Claire, the woman who awkwardly introduced herself to the Doctor and Yaz back in “The Halloween Apocalypse” before being caught by an Angel. Initially I believed this would be her backstory explaining how she knew the Doctor in the first place, but no, it is in fact a sequel to “The Halloween Apocalypse”, following up on where she was sent by the Angel in Liverpool: a village called Medderton in Devon, 1965 -she’s been living in this decade for two years now, unable to get back to her own time. And as she later tells the Doctor, she knows that this village is not long for the world, that all its’ residents vanished mysteriously on November 21st, 1967 -not coincidentally the date that both the Doctor and Angels decide to show up again.
The Doctor doesn’t have much choice in the matter, the TARDIS having been hijacked by an Angel at the end of the last episode. She, Yaz, and Dan arrive on the scene in the little village amusingly just as someone is trying to use the police box to find help in locating a little girl who has disappeared. Once again though, the Doctor quickly splits from her companions as she follows bizarre readings in her sonic, and they join in the search party. I understand the plot requirements to keep splitting the party up, but at this point and with so few episodes this series, it accounts for a gaping hole. The Doctor has spent so little time with Yaz and Dan this series -she’s always been off on her own prerogative. She and Yaz still barely know Dan, and it leaves this series in the position of lacking a home dynamic between its’ leads -something which was never a problem when the Doctor had her “fam”. She needs to be able to interact with Yaz and Dan, to bounce off them, to be rooted by them. Pairing her rather with a series of guest characters while leaving her companions to their own devices creates a disconnect in what should be a core relationship of the series.
Instead, the relationship that does feel like it means something is the one carried over from last episode. And much like in the last episode it has almost nothing to do with the A-plot -to the point I wonder if it was put here simply due to there being no time for its’ inclusion later. The principal function of Bel’s sojourn on the planet Puzano is once again to establish a plot point that will likely have significance for the next two episodes. It’s another wasteland of a former civilized world where she runs into a fellow survivor, Namaca (Blake Harrison), who takes her to someone who has promised the remaining populace salvation -and it turns out to be Azure, who’s found something of a cult for herself among the desperate for her safety. To transport them away, she uses what’s called a Passenger Form (that looks like a cross between the Monolith from 2001 and Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still), which can atomize everyone within a particular radius. Bel knows that this device is actually a prison though and saves Namaca. It’s a curious glimpse of how hopelessness in times of crisis is exploited by the unscrupulous powerful; a neat short and excuse to showcase Flux’s best new character, but it also doesn’t fit -and the transitions to this storyline are very tonally abrupt.
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And speaking of abruptness, the Doctor is led pretty quickly to Claire, who in addition to being a woman out of time, is discovered to be a seer. It was a premonition in fact that led her to the Doctor in the first place. For this, she has been the subject of psychic tests by an otherwise kindly professor with the awesome name Eustacius Jericho, played by a superb Kevin McNally. At his home, it doesn’t take long for the Angels to start showing up, drawn suspiciously to Claire. And it is here that Chibnall and director Jamie Magnus Stone get to indulge in that horror that the Angels are great conduits for. From the local vicar being taken in the churchyard in front of the old local eccentric Mrs. Hayward (Penelope McGhie), to Jericho’s skepticism vanishing fast when one suddenly is at his doorstep. There’s a lot of eeriness in the Angels being suddenly at the windows peering in or standing alone on a moonlit hill. Forecast in the last episode, where Angels could appear out of video games and phones, the episode gets great suspense out of their abilities to emerge out of images or likenesses of themselves: a television set or even a drawing. I don’t recall that being part of Moffat’s mythology for them, but it’s a great addition.
Yaz and Dan run into the Angels while searching, and with the darkness of the night obscuring them, are promptly taken, despite their best efforts to keep them in view. They wind up in 1901, previously revealed by Claire as the other time the people of Medderton suddenly disappeared, and find nobody there except for the young girl Peggy (Poppy Polivnicki). And Dan is the one who raises the concern about them potentially being stuck there. With Claire, the two years she’s been trapped in the 1960s is glossed over somewhat, but in this moment the episode really conveys the weight of such a fate. And it’s emphasized further when as they explore and discover that this world is finite, they come across an impenetrable energy barrier to 1967 -on the other side of which is Mrs. Hayward, who reveals she is actually the grown-up Peggy, who never made it back to her time -not the protracted way at least. It’s daunting and dramatic, and I’m pleased the episode allowed it to be so. Also daunting and dramatic is what they find at the other end of this periphery: an open expanse of space that is encroaching upon the edge of their world. Later it’s clarified that Medderton at these two specific points in time has been extracted from Earth for the purposes of the Angels’ hunt. It’s there too in 1967, where Peggy’s rude neglectful uncle (Vincent Brimble) and comparably compassionate aunt (Jemma Churchill) come across the edge in their search, and are cornered by an angel. They too are thrust back to 1901, leading to by far the darkest moment of the episode where they catch up to Yaz, Dan, and Peggy just as an Angel is upon them -and refusing to listen and avoid the Angel are vividly disintegrated by it. In response to the sudden deaths of her guardians, Peggy states coldly that they were never nice to her anyway. Considering her aunt at least seemed perfectly decent, it’s strangely sociopathic of the little girl to react so indifferently. Maybe she deserves to be stuck out of time for sixty years.
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Her fellow non-consenting time traveller has even greater issues to deal with -envisioning herself with angel wings and at one point crying powder. It precipitates a fascinating twist where Claire reveals she IS an Angel -or rather there is one inside her. In the Angels abilities to conjure out of likenesses of themselves, an Angel made its’ way into Claire’s head through her premonition of them. And not just any Angel, but a cracked rogue Angel -the same one who steered the Doctor to Medderton. In an effort to evict it, the Doctor enters Clare’s mind apparently using a Vulcan mind meld, while Jericho keeps an eye on a TV in his basement where he can see the Angels infiltrating his house -an army of them by now. Claire’s mindscape is a touch clichéd (a pale sandbar), but it looks nice, and the Angel being positioned behind Claire as it communicates puppet-like through her is a pretty strongly composed image. The story goes that this Angel in Claire is who the other Angels are after, an Angel with too much knowledge of the Division -some sinister cosmic body to which the Angels belong to. It brought the Doctor here so she could protect it in exchange for information on her past -which the Angel implies has something to do with this Division. One can only guess that the Division is connected somehow to Swarm and Azure, or that old woman from last episode who might be pulling all the strings. Far more intriguing though is the idea of a rogue Angel and an alliance of convenience the Doctor must entertain with it.
The Doctor and Claire manage to make it out of the basement through a back passage in a sequence that again is thrilling, with flickering, fading torches as Angels close in on each side, their arms stretching Cocteau-like through the walls. It’s all very well done and I admire the creativity with which Jericho’s capitulation to the Angels is illustrated: through tracking on his face as he passes one, is blinded by dust, the Angels’ transformed visage appearing reflected in his eye, then panning out to reveal Jericho now in 1901 with the others. And then, the Doctor makes a break for it, but is stunned when the Angels don’t pursue her. She even blinks in their faces several times, but they’re immobile -and we know the reason before she does, as she had sent Claire ahead of her. The Angels had got her, and in the time that the Doctor took, they made a bargain, one the rogue Angel had presumably been counting on from the start.
Thus the episode ends with a borrowed cliffhanger from The Empire Strikes Back as before the eyes of her companions, witnessing from 1901, the Doctor is dramatically turned into a stone angel, “recalled” to the Division. She is firmly and powerlessly in their grasp, Yaz and Dan are stranded indefinitely in the past -the Angels have won!
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It’s certainly been some time since the Doctor has been neutralized like this -I think back to “The Sound of Drums”, but I’m sure it’s happened since. The Doctor being put out of commission is an effective device, not only because of the inherent drama of the series’ hero being defeated, which raises the stakes considerably, but because it leaves the onus of resolution on other, less powerful characters -which is an exciting prospect. Whatever becomes of the Doctor and the Division, there’s no indication in next episodes’ teaser this is going to be resolved swiftly -and in fact it looks like it may be a Doctor-light episode in the vein of something like “Turn Left”.
There’s a strange MCU-style mid-credits scene to this episode that checks up on the other story: Vinder arriving on Puzano and meeting Namaca, who gives him a message from Bel -that just seems to show that Vinder is catching up. It’s honestly completely superfluous and again seems put here because it didn’t fit anywhere else. It’s a weird bumper to an episode that was otherwise fairly good -a strong outing for the Angels, creepy and interesting and suitably tense, and as far as Flux is concerned, probably the least bogged down in overarching continuity (though the structure, especially concerning the other storyline is still haphazard). That may not be a great thing, I fear the last episode may be overloaded with resolutions and explanations, rendering it as messy as the first. But even as there are signs of that sort of thing in next week’s episode, I’m looking forward to a break from the Doctor, as other characters see a chance to shine and we get a more comprehensive look at what this enigmatic Flux has wrought.
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