“The Village of the Angels”. Fan favourites the Weeping Angels return with a bang in this week’s episode and despite some inconsistencies, it’s an episode peppered with nostalgic scares and menace.
CONTAINS SPOILERS
This series is like a greatest hit’s tour of Doctor Who villains, a bumpy ghost train, with classic and nuwho baddies around every corner. So, it’s not a huge surprise that Stephen Moffat’s pièce de résistance, the Weeping Angels, are the latest villain to now make an appearance, having been teased back in episode 1. A far cry from the original Angels we saw plucky Sally Sparrow battle and defeat in ‘Blink’, these angels have all the powers bestowed on them during Series 5’s ‘Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone’ and then some, leading us to questions if they can be defeated at all? It doesn’t appear so according to this episode which plonks the Tardis team into the very un-swinging sixties and makes me never want to think about quantum extraction again.
We open in a retro scientific environment, the broadcast date of November 21st being noted (exciting if you watched it on the date, pointless otherwise). Claire Brown (a great performance by Annabel Scholey, she’s companion material), previously spotted in episode 1 recognizing the Doctor and Yaz and promptly getting zapped by an Angel, being subjected to a lie detector by the dramatically named Professor Eustacious Jericho (played admirably by Kevin McNally). The machine must be broken because it claims she doesn’t believe that it’s 1967, or that she was born in 1935. She’s there because she’s having psychic seizures, although what Jericho thought he could do about it other than observe, we’re not sure. Meanwhile, a few folks are milling about outside in this dark English village looking for a missing child and a priest is left a rather ominous note to ‘Leave now’. It’s all very ‘A Ghost Story For Christmas’, but without the festive spirit.
‘Flux’s’ episode cliffhangers are now all following the same pattern – something terrible is happening, usually in the Tardis, so let’s panic briefly, quickly fix the situation and find out where we’ve landed. That’s exactly what happens here, as the Angel driving the Tardis is quickly dispatched and the team find themselves in 1967 (coat smelling to determine dates being a new skill the Doctor now possesses). The first people the team meet are the elderly couple seeking the missing child, named Peggy, who is trying to contact the police using the Tardis telephone, which was cute. These are the child’s rather begrudging guardians who are more peeved than worried. The Doctor is soon distracted by something she deems much more interesting and dashes off leaving Yaz to go into police mode and ask perfunctory questions to the aggravated couple. Nearby in a graveyard, our stock character English Vicar is telling off our stock character mysterious old woman (Mrs Hayward played by Penelope McGhie) for leaving him and the rest of the villager’s cryptic notes. She’s perturbed by the number of headstones in the graveyard but brushed off by the Vicar, she departs with the rather ominous “It’s happening again”. Why she can’t explain even a little of what she’s so worried about, I don’t know.
The Doctor barges into Jericho’s basement with her trusty sonic and start’s questioning the Professor, pausing only to praise the scrabble points score of the letters in his name (33 apparently – little insight into Chibnall’s character naming process there). She recognizes Claire from a few days back and sonic’s her, making her feel a bit queasy and when she recognizes one of her drawings of the Tardis and alarmingly a Weeping Angel, she rips it up and throws it in the unlit fire before unceremoniously departing. Jericho looks on with a cup of tea, while we get a nice slice of horror with Claire, who has departed for the bathroom recoils as a pair of Weeping Angel wings appear on her back. Is she slowly becoming an Angel? We’re largely unaware of how these Angels are made and what a terrifying concept it would be to slowly transform into a time-hungry statue before your own eyes (a concept briefly experienced by Amy Pond in ‘Flesh and Stone’) with no way of stopping it. Later she experiences a stream of dust from her eye, which is equally chilling and confirms she is transforming, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
Stock character vicar is counting headstones in the graveyard and comes face to face with a Weeping Angel so needless to say, he’s zapped, seemingly without the angel even having to move. Yaz isn’t getting anywhere with Peggy’s grumpy guardians and Dan offers scant help, he is majorly back seated throughout this episode. Deciding to keep searching by themselves, Yaz and Dan are confronted by an angel and do a truly rubbish job of keeping their eyes on it, not helped by the Angels new ability to effect torch batteries. They are zapped, which in days gone by would have been a fate worse than death, but here it happens mid-episode and is a minor inconvenience. It’s a shame that the Angel’s main power, moving people back in time and feeding of the time energy of their unlived lives, has been watered down to this extent.
Did you forget about pregnant crusader Bel who we met last week? The episode takes a jarring turn in to her story, a million (literally) miles away from our creepy English village and deep in the solar system on the planet Puzano (that’s a 17 point scrabble score), where she meets Neil from the ‘Inbetweeners’ (Blake Harrison with new teeth) – sorry, I know he plays a different character here but with no personality to speak of, other than to deliver exposition, I prefer to imagine Neil has been transported to space. Seriously, the floating diamonds from episode 2 had more character development. Anyway, he leads Bel to a large gathering of displaced Flux refugee’s who are awaiting safe passage to a universe unaffected by this destroying force (why there are survivors at all is an issue I’m just going to have to get over). Unfortunately for them, salvation comes in the form of Reaper Azure, who along with Passenger is effectively kidnapping the refugees as opposed to saving them. Bel seems to instinctively know this is a bad idea and grabs Neil out of the catchment ray, leaving them behind. Azure seems unconcerned, eerily telling them they can come next time and disappearing. It appears the Reapers are lying to vulnerable people and taking hostages for reason’s unknown. So far, so evil.
The Angels are such a great Doctor Who foe, and while their growing abilities make them largely unbeatable, their menace elevates a normal episode to gothic horror.
Yaz and Dan are back in 1901 and despite being removed from The Doctor and stuck there forever for all they know; they take it all in their stride. They locate the missing Peggy, who seems hungrier than distressed and she explains that all the villagers have fallen victim to the Angels, but they’ve left her behind as a witness, putting thoughts in her head including the words ‘quantum extraction’ which explains the bizarre edge of space visual slowly eating up the village. The village has been ‘quantum extracted’ by the Angels after crash landing there in a meteor. Peggy’s angry relations soon arrive in 1901 after a run-in with an Angel in 1967 and ignoring Yaz’s advice, touch an Angel who instead of zapping them further back in time, kills them stone dead. This isn’t what the Angels are known to do, and renders ‘The Angels Take Manhattan’ and Rory’s repeated torture void, but we’re going to care about this as much as Peggy cares about their demise, which is not at all. Perhaps these Angels have different motivations, so we know they now have the power to kill if they so choose.
Meanwhile back in 1967, the Angels are gathering around Jericho’s house ominously. The previously ripped up image of the Angel comes back together and becomes an actual Angel, before being set on fire resulting in an Angel made of fire, literally made of flames, which was one of the two epic moments in the episode. These events prompt Claire to confess her worries about housing an Angel and the Doctor to ask for her consent to go inside her mind to see what the flux is going on. With Jericho being taunted by the Angels in his own voice (another new power), the Doctor is in Claire’s mind (standing on a gorgeous grey moody beach, great location) having a chat with the Angel in her mind. She recognizes it as the one who hijacked her Tardis, which means it’s also the one in the time vortex from last week and the one that zapped Claire back to 1967 in episode 1 (it’s been busy), but how she tells it apart from the others is beyond me. This rogue Angel is different from the others, however – it’s on the run and asking for the Doctor’s help. It transpires that like the Doctor, it was part of the Division (or simply ‘Division’ as it’s referred to) and the Angels terrorizing the village are Division agents in pursuit. It informs the Doctor that it ran, just like she did, but it retains all the memories she lost.
The Doctor is endlessly intrigued by her past and this Angel is the key to unlocking it all, but is she going to do a deal with a Weeping Angel? We don’t find out, as Jericho breaks their connection given the Angels are in the basement and they have no means of escape. Turns out the Doctor knows this house better than its owner and smashes down a false wall, providing an escape tunnel, which is unfortunately full of buried Angels. It’s quite the visual with a dark tunnel full of outstretched arms, I wish we’d seen more of it. The three look like they have escaped intact, but the Doctor looks away from the Angels for just a moment and… is left alone. The Angels aren’t interested in zapping the Doctor, unlike Jericho on the other hand who is zapped to 1901 despite his best efforts.
Yaz, Dan and Peggy find some sort of temporal divide where they can see into but not enter 1967, or risk ending up disintegrated like the unfortunate stick Dan lobs in. Surely the Vicar would have been a more appropriate test subject? Mrs Hayward appears, rather predictably she’s Peggy all grown up and there’s a weak attempt at emotion when she tells young Peggy that she won’t make it back to 1967 any time soon. This sets a much more important scene for the Doctor’s showdown with the Angels, now all gathered with Claire as their mouthpiece. The rogue Angel has done a deal with its pursuers for a much bigger fish – The Doctor herself, who is now been recalled to the Division and turns, not even joking, into a Weeping Angel, hands over the eyes and everything for the episode’s second truly epic visual moment. This is unexpected, creepy and effective – well done Chibnall.
I spoke too soon. There’s a sappy, Marvel-style mid-credit scene, with Vinder tracking Bel to Pulzano but finding Neil, who seems to have now realized that Azure’s salvation wasn’t the best idea. Bel has moved on but left a video message where she professes her love for Vinder at length but runs out of time to tell him her journey coordinates. Groan.
Yes, there are inconsistencies. Yes, the writing is still not great. But my goodness, this episode is a step up from the last three episodes and the last two series. The Angels are such a great Doctor Who foe, and while their growing abilities make them largely unbeatable, their menace elevates a normal episode to gothic horror. I liked the concept of a rogue Angel hiding out in a human, able to materialize via the image of an Angel, even in the mind’s eye. I like that the Division has varied operatives, both heroes and villains, as it suggests an organization bigger than the concepts of good or evil – if we follow typical sci-fi constructs, its controlling nature will be its downfall. There’s just no way that the Doctor will remain an Angel for long, but next week’s preview doesn’t feature Jodie Whittaker and suggests Yaz and Dan have been in 1901 for longer than expected, so maybe we’ll have a Doctor-lite episode next week leading to a Doctor focused finale where there remains an awful lot of loose ends still to tie up.
The Good
- Angels! Angels everywhere!
- Claire could be a great future companion if RTD feels so inclined
- The Doctor is a Weeping Angel! This will go down in Who lore
The Bad
- Yaz and Dan wandering around, did the Doctor even know they’d gone?
- Angels can kill people. Angels can open locks. Angels control battery powered devices.
- Is it ‘the Division’ or ‘Division’ – there’s a difference, so I hope this isn’t just sloppy writing?
THE VILLAGE OF THE ANGELS IS AVAILABLE TO WATCH ON DEMAND ON BBC iPLAYER
CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO WATCH THE VILLAGE OF THE ANGELS
