ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
The return of the Weeping Angels, so scary and effective in
Blink, was something that excited everyone at the time. We also meet, for the
second time, River Song who here is part of a military expedition.
Responding to a distress call from River, the Doctor and Amy
arrive on the planet Alfava Metraxis. Nearby is a crashed spaceship, the
Byzantium, that has a Weeping Angel on board. Via a videolink they see the
Angel in captivity and learn that the image of an Angel can become an actual
Angel. As the Doctor and River go off to investigate, Amy continues to watch
and accidentally gets an image of the Angel imprinted on her eye.
The Byzantium was deliberately crashed here by the Angel as
the whole planet is full of dormant Weeping Angels awaiting reanimation. The
Doctor realises that the Angel in Amy’s eye is controlling her and she has to
close her eyes to remain independent. The Angels on the planet plan to use the
fuel of the Byzantium to revive themselves.
As they flee from the Angels, the Doctor and company find
another crack like the one in Amelia’s bedroom which is leaking time energy. As
things get out of control the rest of River’s expedition are sucked into the
crack and out of history and then the same happens to the Angels, including the
one in Amy’s eye. The crack closes having absorbed masses of time energy from
the Angels.
River Song is taken back into custody and Amy asks the
Doctor to return her to Earth to go to her wedding. The Doctor realises that
the time explosion that caused the crack in time happened on the same date as
Amy’s wedding.
There’s so much going on in this story that the scariness
and eeriness of the Weeping Angels gets a bit lost. Having them able to talk somehow
diminishes their effect and having so many of them inside the Byzantium also
makes them less powerful than when there are just a few. Oddly enough when you
actually see one moving that too diminishes their overall scariness. An army of
Angels should be terrifying but it's no worse than an army of Cybermen might be.
The ongoing plot of the crack in time is given more time
here as it slowly becomes apparent that it is connected to Amy in some way.
Talking of Amy she is given a lot of time in this story to
do some real acting; when she is unable to open her eyes because of the Angel
in her eye. This should have been really effective and emotionally charged but
Karen Gillan seems unaffected by this ordeal, still making cheeky comments and
snappy remarks when she should have been terrified. For me it’s one of the
first times that the oddness of Amy as a character comes through and it feels
like one of the potentially key bits of drama in this story is lost.
The ever more intriguing River Song is back here once again,
and Alex Kingston is super in the part, clearly knowing the Doctor really well
although he is only meeting her for the second time. The interplay between
River and the Doctor marks almost all of the best bits of this story.
It’s an okay story a bit padded out to reach two episodes,
but the promise of a head on conflict between the Doctor and the Weeping Angels
feels like it hasn’t been fully met.
NEXT UP: THE VAMPIRES OF VENICE
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