Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E04 The Time of Angels: Difference between revisions

{{quote| ''What if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if, one day, our dreams no longer needed us? When these things occur and are held to be true, the time will be upon us: [[Title Drop|the time of Angels]].''}}

In the 51st Century, [[Timey-Wimey Ball|Not-Yet-Professor]] [[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E8S30/E08 Silence in Thethe Library|River Song]] carves a message in Old High Gallifreyan onto the "home box" (like a black box) of a starliner, the ''Byzantium''. 12,000 years later, the Doctor and Amy come across the message while the Doctor’s [[Troll|trollingtroll]]ing a museum, "keeping score" by laughing at all the mistakes on the plaques and noting the bits he’s been involved in. It says [[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E8S30/E08 Silence in Thethe Library|"Hello, sweetie"]]. (Although Amy can't read the ancient Gallifreyan it's written in, which will be important later.) They run off with it, and after watching [[Timey-Wimey Ball|what's happening to River at this exact moment 12,000 years ago]], they travel back just in time to catch River as she [[Thrown Out the Airlock|ejects herself from the starliner via the airlock]]. She offers a warning that there’s something in the hold that will make sure the ship never reaches its destination.

Much to Amy’s curiosity and the Doctor’s resentment, River takes control of the TARDIS. She learned how to pilot it from the best pilot there is. The Doctor was sick that day. The team follows the Byzantium to where it has landed -- orlanded—or, more accurately, crashed. Specifically, on top of an ancient, abandoned temple built on Alfava Metraxis. Not long after they’ve arrived, River is joined by a team of ‘Clerics’, a [[Church Militant|military off-shoot of the Church]] led by a 'bishop', Father Octavian, who are hunting the creature that caused the ship to crash -- [[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S3 S29/E10 Blink|a Weeping Angel]]. River has promised the Doctor’s help in catching it, as it appears to have escaped into [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|'The Maze Of The Dead’]], the catacombs underneath the temple. Also, Amy quickly figures out that River has just ''got'' to be the Doctor's wife. The Doctor honestly doesn't know, and River delights in keeping the answer a secret.

As the clerics work on breaking into the temple, the Doctor and friends work on decoding the mystery of the Angels with a four-second clip of the Angel in the Byzantium and an old Alfava text -- whichtext—which, ominously, does not include any images of them. The Doctor and River eventually realize that the text is trying to tell them that any image of the Angels essentially ''becomes'' an Angel, and is imbued with the qualities that make them so dangerous -- somethingdangerous—something that Amy is well ahead of them in discovering, having become trapped in the room with the recording of the Angel, which is gradually coming out of the screen towards her. Amy manages to defeat it by stopping the looped recording at the exact point where the image of the Angel is not on-screen, but not before she looks into the Angel’s eyes despite the Doctor’s instructions.<ref>To be fair, she'd been looking into its eyes way before the Doctor realized that she shouldn't.</ref> As the clerics manage to access the temple, Amy complains of something in her eye...

As the party investigates deeper into the temple, the Doctor and River [[Fridge Horror|realize something terrible which has been staring them in the face all this time]] -- the—the Aplans were two-headed beings, whereas the statues in the Maze of the Dead are all one-headed. They’re ''all'' Angels, emaciated and weakened from centuries underground -- butunderground—but the radiation from the crashed ship is giving them strength and reviving them, exactly what the Angel on board had intended. The Doctor has led them all into a trap. At the same time, the voice of a dead cleric the Doctor had previously connected with appears on the radio to warn them; the Angels are hunting them down. As they escape, Amy reveals to the Doctor that she looked into the eyes of the Angel when her hand suddenly turns to stone, trapping her. Refusing to leave Amy despite her pleas, the Doctor convinces her that it’s just the Angel messing with her head... by biting her hand. She’s less than grateful.

Finding themselves directly under the hull of the Byzantium, the party’s torches are failing as the Angels continue to draw power and grow stronger. The Angels appear over the radio to taunt the Doctor for failing them all, hoping to make him angry. Unfortunately for them, it seems to work -- afterwork—after asking everyone whether they trust him, the Doctor grabs a gun from Octavian and aims it at the gravity well, warning the Angels that they’ve made a mistake, because there’s one thing that should never, ever be put in a trap:

To be continued in "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31 /E05 Flesh and Stone|Flesh and Stone]]".

=== Tropes ===

{{quote| "There's one thing you never put in a trap if you're smart. If you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow there's one thing you never ever put in a trap: '''''Me'''''." }}

** Subverted in that they're a very nice group of soldiers--nosoldiers—no [[Knight Templar]] behavior at all.

* [[Colonel Badass|Colonel ]][[Badass Preacher|Bishop Badass:]] Bishop Octavian, natch!

** It's the second time Graham Norton has turned up in ''[[Doctor Who]]'' when he's not wanted, the first time being some wire mix-up leaking sound from BBC3 during "[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S1 E1S27/E01 Rose|Rose]]".

* [[Continuity Nod]]: Amy's costume is almost identical to Emma's in the 1999 Comic Relief story "The Curse of Fatal Death" (which [[Steven Moffat]] also wrote). Both stories are set in ancient stone buildings built by now-extinct alien races with plot-relevant weird biology.

** In some Eighties serials (including "Battlefield" and the original cut of "The Five Doctors") when the TARDIS lands, all that is heard inside is a chime. In this episode, when River lands the TARDIS without using the brakes, there's a very similar chime.

{{quote| '''Karen''': The Doctor bites my arm, and I’m not really sure how we’re going to do that. Is he actually going to do it?<br />

''{{[[[Ironic Echo Cut]] cut to Matt Smith grinning broadly}}]''<br />

* [[Failed a Spot Check]]: The doctor and River fail to notice the discrepancies between the statues the Aplans supposedly left and the physical attributes of the Aplans until it's just a bit too late.

{{quote| '''Doctor:''' I mean what's all that about? But then that's the church for you! ... No offence ... bishop.<br />

** In the beginning of the episode, the Doctor makes an off-hand remark about the museum being the final resting place of the [[Doctor Who/Recap/S32 E7/E07 A Good Man Goes to War|Headless Monks]].

* [[Freeze-Frame Bonus]]: When the Doctor's keying in the coordinates, you can see that there's a red {{smallcaps| panic}} button on his keyboard.

* [[Metaphorgotten]]:

{{quote| '''River''': A needle in a haystack.<br />

* [[Most Wonderful Sound]]: the TARDIS' *rnnnnnt* or *vworp* is explained by River as the Doctor leaving the brakes on; normally, it lands silently. However, the Doctor keeps the brakes on specifically to hear it.

{{quote| '''Doctor''': Yeah, well, it's a brilliant noise. I love that noise.}}

{{quote| '''Doctor:''' Very relaxed, sort of cheerful. That's from having two heads. You're never short of a snog with an extra head. ''[...]'' Then they started having laws against self-marrying and what was that about? But that's the church for you. Uh, no offense, Bishop.''[...]''<br />

* [[Noodle Incident]]: It's implied that the Doctor and River have met a few more times between "[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E9S30/E09 Forest of the Dead|Forest of the Dead]]" and this episode.

{{quote| '''Doctor:''' Oh...<br />

'''Amy:''' What's wrong?<br />

'''River Song:''' Oh.<br />

'''Doctor:''' Exactly.<br />

** Also a [[Church Militant]] group in a sci-fi setting? Using dropships? With names like Octavian? Exterminating an amoral alien menace to humanity with extreme prejudice? After all it's the Fifty-First Century and the church has moved on. [[Warhammer 4000040,000|In the Fifty-First Century there is only war.]]

{{quote| '''River Song:''' How could we miss that?<br />

** {{spoiler|"[The Aplans have two heads] ''So why don't the statues?''"}}

[[Category:Doctor Who/Recap]]