When the news broke that the Weeping Angels would put in a return visit for the current season of “Doctor Who,” my initial reaction was “They were a great one-time monster, but will they work in a recurring role?”
This attitude completely overlooks that at one time or another all the monsters on “Doctor Who” were brought on as one time foes for the Doctor to face, going back all the way to 1963 and the introduction of the Daleks. (Just watch the first Dalek story and you’ll see they were pretty much intended as a one-time thing.) It also went in the face of one of my bigger criticism of the modern series–that it hadn’t created any really memorable monsters that could play a prominent, recurring role.
And so it was that I approached “The Time of Angels” with equal parts caution and optimism. I was optimistic because the Weeping Angels were a creepy, effective monster in their first appearance (unlike the Slitheen) and equally cautious because I wasn’t sure that Steven Moffat could necessarily live up the the huge expectations fans had for the Angels based on “Blink.”
As if that weren’t enough, the script also threw in our second meeting with River Song. Song, who we met in series four, has a long standing relationship with the Doctor, though the two keep meeting out of order. She apparently knows something about his future but she won’t tell for fear of giving away too much and changing things. Or is there something more to it?
The script certainly seems to hint at that pretty broadly. If there’s one drawback to the Moffat era so far, it’s that the foreshadowing is pretty obvious. We’ve seen it with the crack following the Doctor and Amy through time and we get it again this week with exposition moment in which we find out that there may be more to River’s relationship with the Doctor than meets the eye. And I get a feeling that she may not exactly be telling the Doctor the entire truth of things.
Lack of subtle foreshadowing aside, the episode itself works fairly well and while it doesn’t quite fully recapture the edge-of-your-seat thrills and terror that powered “Blink,” it still does a good job of keeping things fully atmospheric and tension filled. Seeing the Doctor slowly realize what the Angels do and that they’ve walked into a trap is nicely done. Once again, Matt Smith continues to impress in the role of the Doctor, bringing a nice blend of youth and ancient wisdom to the role. Seeing the Doctor disconcerted by River’s presence was nicely realized throughout the script and it was nice to see Smith all the right notes there.
As with all two-part stories, it’s hard to really say much about the story itself until we see part two. For now, it’s a solid start and hopefully this new era will buck the trend of two-part stories for the new “Doctor Who” and deliver a second installment that’s as good or better than the set-up.
Am I the only person not flying BT? Or is there some other way to watch these concurrent to when they come out?
Great story.
Great acting.
Grate special effects.
The best bit was at the end when the Doctor picked up his sonic screwdriver and said don’t blink.
But I blinked and saw some cartoon about Graham Norton over some rainbow.
I’m sure a few people have told the beeb how happy they are.
Please don’t ruin a good program with advert breaks.
PS Please also remove the BBC3 dog (Digital On-screen Graphics) on the repeats.
The eps may be on YouTube.
I liked it as well, but something about the cinematography, and camera work is bugging me. I’m not sure what it is, but this whole season has seemed a little off, visually.
Yeah, I watched “on-demand”, and the BBC logo was prominently featured on the upper left corner. Very distracting.
@Mike – – – YouTube? Wouldn’t that be a copyright violation? I had a quick look-see, and nothing but trailers and interviews. Then again I might not be searching correctly.
No matter, I’ll wait.
Between the strengths of this Doctor, this Companion, this story, the villains, the secondary characters, the writing and direction and music… I know we’ve gotta wait for next week’s ep before calling it, but in all honesty, I could see this story slotting right in there next to “Genesis of the Daleks” and “Curse of Fenric” and one of Doctor Who’s all-time greatest.
I loved the cinematography, the bit at the beginning, and River all James-Bond like, blowing out of the hatch was so fun. And the Byzantium crashing, everything. The entire script is amazing. Very clever, very funny. This is one of the best episodes ever. I really hope the second part lives up to the first, it should. Matt Smith is amazing as the Doctor. I think things just get better from here…
ejdalise…. the best place to go to stream the episodes in good high quality is here:
http://www.sidereel.com/Doctor_Who
choose the episode you want and click the word “more” next to it. when you see the new page appear, click on the link that says “Get more links for this episode”.
a long list of links will appear. the good high quality ones are through megavideo, and they’re usually the first ones at the top of the list. click one of them, then wait for the video page to open. click the red “play icon” triangle in the center, and close any popups that appear. the red play icon will turn green. click in one more time, and the episode starts to play. if you mouse over the screen, several controls will appear including a toggle to full screen.
@maluba . . . thanks . . . Not sure I will use it, but it’s always good to know. As a rule I don’t watch episodes of anything (or movies) on my PC.
I’m renting all the old ones in sequence, and I’ll just wait for the new ones to appear on-demand . . . complete with annoying graphic.
I loved the first Matt Smith ep, but since then I’ve been a bit iffy – I like this doctor in terms of personality, but he seems a bit…stupid? In most of the episodes he doesn’t actually help much, he just runs saying things are weird. This 2 parter was a bit better, hopefully he’ll get his game back soon :^)
This is the first time since the Eccleston series that I am already geared up to buy the DVDs when they come out. What a great start to the season. Smith has been on the mark from day one (anyone else picking up on a bit of Two and Five in his performance?) and Amy is the first companion to crack my old school top ten. I was on board after episode one, but this two parter really solidified it for me. Witty, scary, and gorgeous despite the budget cuts this season. And more River please. She is fun in a Romana kind of way. I had been missing that dynamic.