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{{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 (TV)/NS/Recap/S4 E8 Silence in The 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|trolling]] 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 (TV)/NS/Recap/S4 E8 Silence in The 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 -- 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 (TV)/NS/Recap/S3 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.
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* [[Aerith and Bob|Angelo And Bob]]
* [[Affably Evil]]: Angel {{spoiler|Bob}} is unfailingly polite.
* [[Are We There Yet?]]
* [[Badass Boast]]: The Doctor does it so well:
{{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'''''." }}
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* [[Black Dude Dies First]]: Played twice as straight. {{spoiler|The Angel's first kills are two black clerics.}}
* [[Body Horror]]: {{spoiler|Amy has stone pour out of her eye, imagines her arm is stone, and may well be turning into one of the Angels.}}
* [[Buffy -Speak]]: "They're blue... boring-ers!"
* [[Call Back]]: Moffat does a bunch of nods to his previous episodes; besides the obvious Angels and River, there's people's voices being recorded and played back by the thing that killed them a la the Vashta Nerada.
** The Bishop appears to refer specifically to the devices in the latter episode that preserve a part of a person's consciousness, suggesting the dead troops can still be 'rescued' by that means.
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** Their armbands, white cross on maroon field, mark them as the Knights of Malta.
* [[Colonel Badass|Colonel ]][[Badass Preacher|Bishop Badass:]] Bishop Octavian, natch!
* [[Commercial Pop -Up]]: Those fans watching on [[BBC 1]] in many regions were [[Sarcasm Mode|uniformly delighted]] to be presented with [[Mood Whiplash|a brightly-coloured animated banner complete with a caricature of Graham Norton]] for yet another talent show. ''During the cliffhanger.'' They might as well "[[Charlie Brooker|just wipe s*** all over the screen during the final scene of Dr. Who next week]]".
** It's the second time Graham Norton has turned up in ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]'' when he's not wanted, the first time being some wire mix-up leaking sound from BBC3 during "[[Doctor Who (TV)/NS/Recap/S1 E1 Rose|Rose]]".
** [[The BBC]] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8643684.stm reported] the incident (which attracted ''thousands'' of complaints) as "Doctor Who fans want Graham Norton Ex-ter-min-ate-d!"
** Norton [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnpZS_54uoA later engaged] in some [[Self -Deprecation]] for the incident.
* [[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.
** The gravity globe is reused from The Satan Pit.
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* [[Everybody Lives]]: Subverted; this is an episode where you don't expect someone to die on screen (the Angels just send you back in time, not kill you), especially as it's a Steven Moffat episode. Explicit body count? Seven: Alistair and the three known ''Byzantium'' crew in the crash; and Bob, Angelo, and Christian, of a quick snap of the neck. And that's to say nothing of the people who were retroactively erased from existence.
** The neck-snaps are horrifying in their own way: obviously, you'd never be able to ''show'' something like that in ''Doctor Who'''s time-slot, but you get a fleeting shot of a Weeping Angel that [[Gory Discretion Shot|cuts to black]] [[Sound Only Death|and a snapping noise]]
* [[EverythingsEverything's Better With Bob]]: ''Sacred'' Bob, no less.
* [[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.
* [[Fantastic Aesop]]: The Church's opposition to the Aplans' "same-person marriage" would appear to be one about gay marriage, but this is then subverted/played for laughs when Amy points out that they do have a point - the divorces would be ''messy''.
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** Or couldn't she just tell them that the angel image had moved?
*** The eye thing may be possibly justified, however, as the angel in her mind has some influence over her mind. In the second part of the episode, ''Flesh and Stone'' the angel makes her not want to shut her eyes, and she has to fight its influence, so it's entirely possible that the angel influences her to just ignore or forget the stuff coming out of her mind.
* [[Pre -Mortem One -Liner]]: "Hold this!" says Amy, right before the [[Overly Narrow Superlative|television record for most epic use of a pause button.]]
* [[Post -Kiss Catatonia]]: The episode begins with a guard suffering from this, albeit enhanced by the hallucinogenic lipstick.
* [[Rushed Inverted Reading]]: Amy and River discuss the Doctor, while he scans the room with an electronic gadget. River accuses the Doctor of eavesdropping, he protests his innocence, and she points out that he's holding the gadget upside down.
* [[Scenery Gorn]]: The shot of the ''Byzantium'' crashed into the temple is rather spectacular.
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* [[Television Portal]]: "Any image of an Angel is itself an Angel."
* [[Title Drop]]: Right in the trailer.
* [[Timey -Wimey Ball]]: Once again, River Song has this effect on the Doctor's life.
* [[Throw It In]]: In the spaceship, the Doctor is fiddling with a strap and it comes off in his hand. The first time that happened, it was an accident (Smith kept on going, but Gillan and Kingston [[Corpsing|corpsed]]), but the production crew decided to keep it and had him do it again in subsequent takes. (Even in the scene that made it into the episode, you can see Karen flinch.)
* [[Thrown Out the Airlock]]: River airlocks herself to escape the ''Byzantium''... right into the TARDIS.
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