Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E05 Flesh and Stone



"If you open your eyes now for even a second, you will die."

- The Doctor

There's no way back, no way up and no way out. Trapped among an army of Weeping Angels, the Doctor and his friends must try to escape through the wreckage of a crashed space liner.

The episode begins with the humans upside and standing on the ceiling - or rather the bottom of the crashed ship - while the Angels are stuck on the floor below. By shooting the gravity globe it gave them an updraft powerful enough to pull them into range of the ship's artificial gravity. Mission accomplished; they're out of the trap! Now they just have to get inside the ship and through another airlock door, without getting caught by the Angels again. The first part they manage; the latter is a bit tricky since it means that they'll have to turn the lights out in the corridor for a few seconds in order to get a strong enough surge of power - but as we all know, a few seconds are all the Angels need.

Nevertheless they make it, namely by shooting at the Angels so that they can see them enough to slow them down. Now ensconced in a control room (with comfy chairs) they try to stop the Angels breaking in not too successfully, and it really doesn't help that Amy has started to count backwards from ten for no apparent reason, without even noticing it. However, it turns out the ship has an onboard cybernetic forest to harvest air from (as you do on a long flight), thus providing a possible escape route.

But hold the phone! Angel Bob is on the line again! He/it informs them that the Angels are growing in power and will soon be able to devour the whole universe, to which the Doctor counters with the fact that they have comfy chairs. Did I mention that? Moving onto the subject of Amy, according to Bob she has something rather nasty in her eye. And she's still counting down. Not good. And apparently there's a much bigger source of power here than the humans had anticipated. Really not good. And the Angels have started "laughing" (which frankly sounds more like screaming). Really, really not good.

And... there's a crack in the wall. A rather big, glowing familiar looking one. Extremely very not good.

The party make a run for it into the forest. All except the Doctor; he's a bit occupied, first with taking samples from the great big crack, and then getting nabbed by the coat collar as the Angels swarm in. Fortunately they are a bit occupied with absorbing energy from the crack - which turns out to be the end of the universe - to think about killing him, so he's able to slip his tweedy bonds and make his own escape. The Angels are not happy.

Amy, meanwhile, has reached four and is not doing well. While River and Octavian have a little argument about waiting for the Doctor, the man himself shows up, just in time to see Amy begin to decline. Not just decline, in fact; she's dying, which everyone is quickly made aware of because the Doctor doesn't believe in beating about the bush. He also doesn't have a very good bedside manner as he tries to figure out what's wrong with her. It turns out that, having looked the Angel in the eyes, there's an Angel growing in her mind, or more specifically the vision centres of her brain. When Bob is asked why the Angels are making her count, it turns out that it's not for anything important, it's simply to make her afraid and... For the Evulz. The Doctor is not happy.

With only seconds until the growing Angel 'switches off' Amy, River and the Doctor decide that in order to starve it of visual input Amy must do what you should never, never do when it comes to the Weeping Angels - close her eyes. And she does.

And it seems to work; she certainly isn't dying anymore. But if she opens her eyes again, for more than a second...

...Well! They're just going to have to stop the Angels all the quicker, then! The Doctor prepares to set off, taking River and Octavian - who doesn't want to let River out of his sight, although not for romantic reasons, hell no - and leaving the Clerics to guard Amy. This is going to end well, isn't it? The Doctor reassures Amy not very well and heads off, leaving Amy feeling rather jilted... and then he comes back,wearing his jacket... that he lost back in the console room? This will be important much later. He tries a bit harder to comfort her, and also tells her to remember what he said when she was seven. Unable to recall, Amy asks him what it was, but he refuses to answer -- that's not "the point". She has to remember.

Then he heads off again, leaving poor Amy feeling slightly less jilted, but very confused.

As the Doctor, River and Octavian pick their way through the forest, he teases her about Octavian because of his 'wherever she goes, I go' schtick. Hearing this, the bishop meanly decides to break his promise to River and reveals that she's a prisoner under his jurisdiction, and that he's responsible for her until she's earned her pardon. Well, that's slightly awkward. No time for it, though, as the Doctor's calculated the date the explosion that caused the crack began, which is 26/06/2010. Amy's era. The air date of this series' finale in real life.

Back with Amy and the Clerics, it appears that the Angels are using the old reliable method of turning off the lights, namely by ripping the tree borgs apart. And they're wearing their grumpy faces, which means they mean business. Back with the Doctor, River and Octavian, they've reached a service hatch to the primary flight deck, but the Doctor is more intrigued by something that River says... time is running out. What if, he muses, it actually could?

Back again with Amy and the Clerics, just as it seems the Angels are about to attack, a sudden bright glow in the distance scares them off. And that's good, is it? Please tell me that's a good thing. Clerics Philip and Crispin are sent to investigate the bright light, and Amy's just too damn curious not to look. She opens her eyes for that crucial second to confirm that yes, that glowing curtain of energy is the crack, and it looks just the same as it did before on her bedroom wall. It's following her...not that we didn't already know that. Then Cleric Pedro decides to get a closer look at the light. Umm, why not just wait for the other two to get back?

What other two?

...Oh. Oh dear.

Marco's adamant that there never was a Philip or a Crispin on the mission. Amy is just as adamant that there were. And during the conversation he manages to forget Pedro as well. Amy, now understandably freaked out, tries to persuade Marco to please not go and investigate the crack, as it doesn't seem to be good for the health at all. Does he listen to her? What do you think?

Guess what; he doesn't: "Two minutes." But he does leave her a spare communicater to talk with him, so she can hear perfectly clearly when his voice suddenly fades away into crackles and silence. Amy's left all alone. Well, alone except for those Angels.

Octavian is trying to get a preoccupied Doctor to leave, as the Angels are coming. The Doctor waves this off, turning around just in time to stop one going just that little bit further with the headlock it's got Octavian in.

Oh, snap. Wait, don't snap, don't snap!!!

The Doctor attempts to tell the Angel to let Octavian go, which Octavian points out as hopeless since a) the Doctor must take his eyes off the Angel for that to happen and b) the moment a) happens the Angel will break Octavian's neck. Octavian tells the Doctor to leave him, which the Doctor really doesn't want to do. In the end, he has no choice, and tells Octavian that he wished he knew him better. Octavian replies that the Doctor knew him at his best, which is all that matters. The Doctor reluctantly leaves Octavian to his fate.

On the flight deck River's trying to get the teleport to work, but the Doctor says there's no point, since it's as dead as Octavian. He manages to contact Amy and tells her that she has to come to them, since it's dangerous to stay where she is for more than one reason. The Angels will kill her, but if the time energy catches up with her it will erase every moment of her existence. Food for thought, better start moving, eh? Oh, the essentially walking blind factor? Just follow the sound of the sonic screwdriver on the communicator. And just to help the Doctor uploads a proximity detector to the device; it'll beep so that Amy can maneuver around things.

Such as, for example, all those Angels in front of her.

Not to worry (for the moment); the Angels are frightened and acting on their instincts, freezing because they assume she can see them. In order not to dispel that illusion, Amy has to walk as if she can see them. Let's see how that goes.

Meanwhile River's wondering how they stop the time energy eating everything. The obvious answer is to feed it a big complicated space time event, which will satisfy it -- for the moment. What big complicated space time event were you thinking of, Doctor?... You know, you really have something of a loud martyr complex, has anyone ever told you that?

The Doctor's plan actually seems to work, as with a bit of coaxing Amy manages to thread her way through a big group of Angels apparently without giving the game away. Of course, Murphy's Law dictates that when she's nearly clear of the Angels she promptly trips over a root, falls flat on her face and drops the communicator. And as she fails to find it again, the jig is up as the Angels begin to move in for the kill... And we get to see them move on-screen for the first time.

But River beams Amy to the flight deck. Guess there was a point in trying to fix that teleport after all, huh, Doctor? So now they're sa - oh wait, tell a lie, no they're not. The Angels are draining the last of the ship's power; the doors to the forest vault open, and there are the Angels on the other side. Along with Angel Bob, hurrah, who is once again their spokesperson. They've had the same idea as the Doctor; if he throws himself into the rupture in time, the rupture will close and they will be saved. The Doctor isn't too impressed with the idea when presented this way. Why should he do such a thing? Oh, yeah, Amy and River will be saved too. Well, there is that.

Understandably River pipes up, saying that she fits the criteria of sealing the rupture as well, but it turns out she's nowhere near the level of the Angels and only all together are they on his level, so get a grip. No, really, get a grip. River gets the message and prepares herself and Amy accordingly, while the Doctor points out to the Angels that they happen to have drained all the power out of a ship that, without artificial means, they by all rights shouldn't be standing upright in. By means of a not quite Incredibly Lame Pun, he points out that the artificial gravity is failing, and the real thing is about to kick in with a vengeance. And guess what's waiting down below?

"Night night."

And so to the dulcet strains of a certain theme tune that still hasn't gotten old, the three dangle off handrails as the Angels plummet to the cessation of their existence. (Doesn't quite have the same ring as 'doom', does it?)

Later, back on the surface, the Doctor reassures Amy that the Angel inside her head is gone, since with the deletion of the Angels the memory never existed at all. Of course, she still remembers it (and all those poor Clerics) because she's a time traveller now. Welcome to the club. The crack, meanwhile, is gone for now, but there's still the explosion that caused it, out there, somewhere. River gets beamed back to her ship after a few cryptic words about her and the Doctor’s future and Amy decides to go back home. No, not like that. There’s something she wants to show the Doctor.

Back in her bedroom, Amy shows the Doctor her wedding dress and engagement ring and confesses that she’s getting married in the morning. After the Doctor misses a few anvil sized hints that she’s interested in one last bachelorette fling, Amy simply tries to jump him and he scrambles off her bed as quickly as possible. Not to be deterred that easily, she pushes him up against the TARDIS door and manages to get in a few kisses while he explains that she's engaged and she's human and he's 907 years old and could she just stop it. She instead lies back on her bed, hoping for a good shag, and that's when the Doctor realises that something very wrong is going on. Whatever it is, it’s focused on Amy and he has to fix it right now...

-

Meanwhile In The TARDIS: Second Episode

A DVD-only scene. The Doctor has pushed Amy back into the TARDIS, and after a few failed attempts at kissing him again, it slowly dawns on her that he's really not going to shag her. She calls him out on being the absolute Master of the Mixed Message, and realizes that she's not the first pretty girl he ever took into space. She tricks the TARDIS into showing her pictures of all previous companions and smugly notes that yep, that's a whole lot of pretty young human girls. One of which is wearing a leather bikini. The Doctor is miffed at the TARDIS for not including the tin dog.

Tropes
"River: You'll see me again, soon. When the Pandorica opens.
 * Accidental Innuendo: "Let's get you sorted out, Amy!"
 * Anyone Can Die: The Clerics.
 * Apologetic Attacker: Angel Bob.
 * Arbitrary Skepticism:

Doctor: (laughs) That's a fairy tale.

River: Aren't we all?"

"Doctor: Time is running out."
 * Arc Words: The "Pandorica" is mentioned again.
 * Also the second incidence of "The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know/get it."
 * Artificial Gravity: This causes plenty of wacky fun throughout the episode.
 * Badass: Just as the Doctor claims that there are worse things than Angels on the ship, Father Octavian gets caught in a headlock by one that he knows is going to break his neck sooner or later. His response? "I beg to differ, sir."
 * Berserk Button: The Doctor threatens the soldiers that if anything happens to Amy while he's away, "I will hold each of you personally responsible. Twice." Later behaviour as he realized leaving Amy behind was a mistake perhaps crosses into Papa Wolf or Big Brother Instinct territory.
 * Boxed Crook: River. She seems more comfortable with the idea than Octavian, her jailer.
 * Call Back: Angel Bob calls the Doctor "The Doctor in the TARDIS" and River mentions the Pandorica opening, both like Prisoner Zero.
 * The Atraxi Eye that appeared on monitors all over the world appeared on the computer monitor very briefly just before the final confrontation between The Doctor and the Angels.
 * Call Forward: To "Forest of the Dead":
 * Skylos Hellenika / You Fail Linguistics Forever: Like a few other people, writer Steven Moffat's kids have noticed that the term treeborgs is technically inaccurate. Moffat was not pleased...
 * Fridge Brilliance: They're branded as "tree borgs" cause "cyber-anything" is extremely unpopular in the Whoniverse.
 * Cessation of Existence: What happens to you if you're consumed by a crack in time. But worse than just not existing, the cracks make sure that you never existed to begin with.
 * Chekhov's Gun: At the beginning of the episode The Doctor spends some time talking about how they escaped using the gravity and that if the gravity was switched off, they'd fall to their deaths.. It seems unnecessarily explanatory at the time.
 * Continuity Nod: This isn't the first time a companion has been rendered Temporarily Blind.
 * This also isn't the first time where an army of pure, unadulterated evil is sucked into a bright white spacetime anomaly, never to return, while the Doctor and everyone else hold on.
 * Cosmic Retcon: Thanks to the crack in time, "The Next Doctor" (at the very least) never happened. The Daleks, as pointed out in "Victory of the Daleks" also have vanished from Amy's time.

"Father Octavian: River Song, I’ve lost good clerics today. You trust this man?
 * Dark and Troubled Past:
 * Deus Ex Machina: Interesting variation with the Crack showing up. Even though it made the situation worse, surviving the Angels would probably have been impossible without it.
 * Distressed Damsel: Amy, although she's got a good reason for it.
 * Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: The Doctor makes a couple of snide remarks about the fact that the Angels killed Bob in order to speak through him while the Angels are right behind him.
 * Evil Laugh: Of the Nightmare Fuel variety. Considering that it's the same noise that the freaking RINGWRAITHS make... yeah.
 * Eyes Always Shut: Amy for most of the episode; justified in that she actually has a reason for keeping them shut.
 * False Reassurance:
 * Regarding the section of the Byzantium everyone is stuck in--the Doctor has thought about what to do when the power and artificial gravity fail--well, they'll plunge to their deaths, of course. See, he did think about it!
 * Regarding the Doctor.

River Song: I absolutely trust him.

Father Octavian: He’s not some kind of madman then?

River Song: I absolutely trust him."

"The Doctor: I wish I had known you better.
 * Played with, in that Octavian is savvy enough to clock immediately what's she's doing and is not impressed.
 * Face Death With Dignity/It Has Been an Honour: Father Octavian may have redefined the former trope.

Father Octavian: I think, sir, you know me at my best."

"The Doctor: River Song, I could bloody kiss you.
 * For the Evulz: Why are the Weeping Angels making Just to scare her!
 * Foreshadowing: This little exchange:

River Song: Ah, well, maybe when you're older."

"Doctor: I'm 907 years old!! Do you understand what that means?!
 * The Doctor coming back for Amy briefly, with his jacket.
 * Friends With Benefits: Amy wants this. The Doctor, it appears, does not.

Amy: It's been a while?

Doctor: Ye-No, no, no!"

"Bishop Octavian: Do you trust this man?
 * Although it's not clear how much of his resistance was just due to her getting married in the morning.
 * Gory Discretion Shot: One for Octavian.
 * Hailfire Peaks: It's a forest in a ship in a maze in a cave!
 * Held Gaze: The Doctor shares one earlier on with River and then again at the end of the episode when he is trying to reassure Amy that she's safe.
 * Hoist By Their Own Petard: The Angels tried to draw energy from the crack in time to build themselves up to be a universe-consuming army of death. It backfired on them.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: Father Octavian is content.
 * Holodeck Malfunction: The Angels start to turn off the lights (yes, again) by way of the trees.
 * Implausible Deniability
 * Implausible Deniability

River Song: I absolutely trust him.

Bishop Octavian: He's not some kind of madman, then?

River Song: I absolutely trust him."

"Doctor: "...and anyway, that's not the plan"
 * Indy Ploy: Lampshaded:

River Song: "There is a plan?"

Doctor: "I don't know yet, I haven't finished talking.""


 * It Got Worse
 * Leaning On the Fourth Wall: Just in case you forget when the series finale will be on.
 * Let's Split Up Gang: At first it seems the Clerics are doing this even though Amy (and the audience) begs them not to, but then it turns out
 * Light Is Not Good: That bright white light coming out of that crack? The light that makes you feel weird and sick when you look at it? Turns out it will
 * The Angels themselves. "Physically", they are beautiful statues of angels, beings associated with light and purity. Mentally, they're evil on a level only rivaled by the Daleks and the 456.
 * Literal Metaphor: "Get a grip."
 * Muzzle Flashlight
 * Neck Snap
 * Near Villain Victory: Holy shit!
 * No Gravity for You: Though in this case, this wasn't really a plan so much as the Angels accidentally hoisting themselves by their own petard.
 * Pre Mortem One Liner:
 * Plot Hole: So, suddenly the Angels can move even if they see each other? At least, they don't seem to care that the lights are on, they're facing each other and well, they move...
 * As well, they can move on screen now, which they couldn't before.
 * This is, in fact, an example of The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You. The angels were moving between the frames.
 * Their touch no longer sends people back in time for some reason, even though it drove the plot of their whole first appearance.
 * This may be justified, it's noted that the Weeping Angels in Blink were starving while these were feeding off the Ships Energy, and instead just EXTREMELY SADISTIC after not having to feed for energy they're pretty much killing for the fun of it. The Angels seeing each other maybe isn't as justified, perhaps they can tone down their survival reflex the same way that it increases later in the episodes, though seeing them move removed some of the terror that Blink provided, for me at least.


 * Redemption Quest:  is on one of, as it seems, many.
 * Red Shirt: Alas, poor Clerics.
 * Ret Gone: The cracks do this.
 * Right Behind Me: River, on the Doctor: "If he's dead back there, I'll never forgive myself. And if he's alive, I'll never forgive him... And Doctor, you're standing Right Behind Me, aren't you?"
 * Ripple Effect Proof Memory: Apparently this is a side effect of being a time traveler.
 * Rule of Scary: See Plot Hole above.
 * Save the Villain: The Angels ask the Doctor to do this for them.

"Doctor: And I tell you something else-- starts running Never let me talk!"
 * Shout Out: Amongst others, the ship is a "Galaxy Class" (Star Trek, particularly Star Trek the Next Generation); and when River is doing the medic thing for Amy, which is a shout-out to Alex Kingston's role in ER.
 * Ahem, what about the comfy chairs?
 * We have no need for comfy chairs.
 * Talking Your Way Out

"The Doctor: Can I trust you, River Song?
 * Temporary Blindness: Amy's inability to open her eyes results in this.
 * This Is Sparta: LIKE! ME! FOR! INSTANCE!!!
 * What else! Have you got?! River! Tell me!
 * Actually, about half the Doctor's lines in this episode are like this. Especially when he's worrying about Amy in the forest.
 * Timey Wimey Ball: Taken to a horrific extreme when Altogether fitting considering the Trope Namer for Timey Wimey Ball was the Weeping Angel's first appearance, Blink.
 * Too Dumb To Have Ever Existed:
 * What Cliffhanger: He just needed to shoot the gravity thing? That's it? It seems like the writers were just looking for a justification for making the Doctor act like Clint Eastwood in the trailer.
 * Where's the Fun In That:

River Song: If you like. But where's the fun in that?"


 * Your Cheating Heart: