From MadCap's Couch - Doctor Who: "The Time of Angels"

Why did you get the Angel's Big Brother audition tape?

Alright, we come to it at last. Moffat's re-introduction of the character of River Song and, for good and ill, all that would mean through most of the Matt Smith era and a bit of a denouement near the end of Peter Capaldi's run. River is a character that I have complicated, but mostly positive feelings about. I'll get into the specifics of why when we hit A Good Man Goes To War, which I feel is where the conversation is best slated for given the content of said episode. For now, let's get into Time of the Angels, part one of our first two-parter in Series 5.

We begin in a sunny field where a stunned man stands with a lipstick kiss on his mouth. A trio of men approach and we learn that they aren't on a sunny field, but on a spaceship. The lead man insists that "she" is here. Intercut with the glow of a woman's skirt and the clack of heels on metal and some sort of flare gun being used to burn a message into a metal cube, we see the Doctor and Amy some 12,000 years later at a museum called the Delirium Archive, where they find the aforementioned cube - a black box for a spaceship. The Doctor recognizes the script as Old High Gallifreyan, the ancient language of the Time Lords. A language of such a magnitude of power that it could once burn out stars, raise up empires, and topple gods.

The words? "Hello, sweetie".

...it loses something in the translation, clearly.

The Doctor and Amy abscond with the box while none other than River Song finds herself trapped at an airlock and held at gunpoint. She tells the men that this ship is not going to reach its destination due to what's inside of it. She then recites some coordinates and asks for an air corridor... the Doctor having hooked up the black box and seen the footage where she asked for it. River falls into the TARDIS on top of the Doctor, River requesting that he follow the escaping ship.

"Okay, River, fine. This is a lovely billboard, I'll admit."

After the title sequence, the TARDIS lands and we get a scene that I think is supposed to be River trying to B.S. the Doctor. Amy is amazed that someone besides the Doctor can fly the TARDIS, River bragging about landing without the dematerialization noise. When questioned by the Doctor, River claims the noise the TARDIS makes is because the Doctor "leaves the brakes on". If taken as fact, this means that every Time Lord in the then-47 year history of the show has done the exact same thing with their TARDISes. Now, obviously, that makes no sense whatsoever if taken at face value. Taken in the context of a bit later in the scene when River claims to have "learned from the very best" about flying the TARDIS, but states that it wasn't the Doctor who taught her (we later find out that, yes, it was), I have to assume that she's just screwing with the Doctor, it's really the only way that this makes sense and doesn't make River look like a pompous idiot.

After doing environment checks, River heads out, but the Doctor attempts to leave without getting involved. He's still clearly having some issues from their last meeting (that we saw, at least - the Doctor's words sort of imply they've met since, again in the wrong order). Amy convinces him to pop out and check around, and they get pulled into events. The Doctor explains to Amy, upon her seeing River's diary, the dynamic of the pair - namely that they keep meeting in the wrong order (which implies that they've met at some point since the Library - from the Doctor's perspective, at least). Members of the Church pop in, led by a Father Octavian, and River explains the situation - there's a Weeping Angel in the remains of the Byzantium.

It seems the ship crashed into a massive mausoleum, one full of dark corners and plenty of memorial statues, the perfect place for it to hide.

As the Doctor begins to formulate a plan to do something about the angel, Amy rightfully starts questioning him about the situation - River in particular, point-blank against the Doctor if River is his wife, given how she's talking to him and the like, which he skillfully avoids answering and River provides a distraction in the form of footage of the Weeping Angel that was aboard the Byzantium. The Doctor mentions having dealt with the Angels before, but this time it's very different given the circumstances. It also gives them a chance to explain the lore of the Weeping Angels to Amy.

With the radiation coming from the ship, the longer they wait to go in, the more time the Angel will have to feast on it and grow stronger. The Doctor tells Father Octavian to lock and load, heading off with River to go over some new lore while Amy remains in the cabin with the footage... and notices that the Angel in the image has moved. River has found the literal diary of a madman (which the Doctor speedreads). As she looks away and looks back, Amy realizes that it has indeed moved and keeps doing so any time she looks away, much to her confusion. After all, it's just the image of an angel... right?

Outside, River mentions having pictures of all of the Doctor's faces and this sparks a question from the Doctor - why does the diary have no pictures of the Angels? A bit of the book comes up - "That which holds the image of an angel becomes itself an angel."

Back in the cabin, Amy keeps trying to turn off the recording, but fails. She even finds herself unable to unplug the monitor as the Angel gets ever closer every time she looks away. She also finds the door is sealed and starts calling for the Doctor. The Doctor and River rush to try and rescue Amy, who ends up locking eyes with the Angel before managing to trap it within a blip in the recording, allowing the Doctor and River in. It's actually a really good, tense moment as River tries to break in with her laser cutter and can't even get the metal warm and the Doctor finds more and more deadlock seals hindering his progress.

"Okay, but if we leave, there's no plot."
"Fine! But I'm gonna complain the whole time!"

As I said, though, Amy manages to stop it, but not before she looked it in the eyes in spite of the Doctor's warning. The Doctor explains that the projection was indeed just a projection, but the Angel now knows that they're there and it's preparing. The priestie boys blow open way into the Apland's "Maze of the Dead" and Amy brushes... something... from her eye.

Inside, they find the mausoleum is extensive, multiple layers with literally dozens if not hundreds of statues on each one. The perfect hiding spot for a Weeping Angel. As they move out, Octavian pulls River aside and tells her to make sure that the Doctor doesn't figure out who she really is, or he won't help them. River tells him that she has no intention of going back to prison.

Three redshirt clerics get sent off to give the episode a body count, because it's a Moffat episode where everyone doesn't live.

Amy brushes some more definitely not stone out of her eye and River inoculates her against radiation poisoning from the ship. Amy questions River about the Doctor, which River much more skillfully avoids answering than the Doctor did, only admitting that Amy's guess about her being the Doctor's wife is "good".

The Redshirt clerics start getting bumped off, surprising no one. Nor is anyone surprised by the dead clerics calling up the live ones and vaguely telling them to "come and see". Definitely not ominous at all. The Doctor takes some time to give a pep talk to an accidentally trigger-happy cleric named Bob before we continue on. The Doctor and River talk about the Aplans, the original inhabitants of the planet, all of whom apparently had two heads. As they journey deeper in, the Doctor and River begin to realize that something is up: namely, the statues all have one head. They're all Weeping Angels! To demonstrate this, the Doctor shuts off their lights long enough for them to see the Angels move. The army is waking up, feeding off the radiation from the ship that wasn't brought here by accident, but for a rescue mission!

The group attempts to make their into the Byzantium proper, but soon find themselves stuck between their options. Bob calls the group up, telling them that he's on his way up and that he definitely isn't an Angel except that he totally is. The other clerics are dead and Bob's consciousness was reanimated by the Angels to speak for them, seeing as they have no voice of their own. The group heads for the ship, but Amy is stalled as - from her perspective - her hand has turned to stone! The Doctor insists otherwise, having worked out that Amy did look into the eyes of the Angel and that it's now messing with her mind.

Before the weakened Angels can get them, the Doctor apologies and then bites Amy's hand, breaking the illusion - as he puts it, despite her protests, she's alive.

Surrounded now and with their torches and a gravity globe flickering in and out, the Doctor puts a cunning plan into action. Angel Bob calls the Doctor up again, telling the Doctor that he died in fear. In pain and alone. Amy wonders why they are telling the Doctor this, River realizing that they're trying to make him angry.

They succeed.

I'm surprised they got he Rock to cameo. He did rather well.

Why they thought this was a good idea is a question the episode doesn't bother to answer. I would assume radiation poisoning.

The Doctor gets affirmation from Amy, River, and Father Octavian before taking the latter's gun and demonstrating to the Angels why he is the one thing you never, ever put in a trap by blasting the gravity globe.

Time of the Angels has some very good set up all on its own. It's honestly a really pretty decent episode all by itself. Minor issues with River bandying about her nonsense to tease the Doctor aside, it does bring some neat additions to the lore particular with the titular Weeping Angels in their second appearance in the series thus far. Ironically, the formula for their first two appearances runs in parallel to one of my favorite duo of movies - Alien and Aliens.

As I don't think I've reviewed Alien yet, a brief summary - a group of space truckers get stuck aboard their ship with an incredibly dangerous, very predatory alien that begins picking them off one by one. They have no weapons, they have no reinforcements, and they have no real means of escape.

Conversely, Aliens is about a group of highly trained Marines who get sent into an area with scores of the same alien as in the first one and, despite superior firepower, are hopelessly, hilariously outnumbered.

That's how I view Blink and Time of the Angels, respectively. The Church comes in to deal with the alien in question, only to discover that it's much, much bigger than any of them thought.

Also, the Angels are still following the rule of Blink, meaning that they don't move when they're onscreen. This means that one of the people they have to be unseen by in order to move is you, which definitely adds to the creep factor. Granted, this gets ruined in the next episode, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Their power is also extensively increased from Blink, adding the "image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel" ability as well as apparently being able to kill and reanimate the consciousness of their victims as they did with Bob. They are also apparently able to deadlock seal things that don't have deadlock seals as well as manipulating electrical equipment (which they could do to an extent before, but not on this scale). These things aren't bad, necessarily, and do add flavor while enhancing the threat, so kudos there.

Uh bup bup! Russell! No sneaking back in!

Also, if you're not fond of the 51st century as a setting, then I encourage you to buckle up, because you'll be in for a bumpy ride. I feel like many people feel about the 51st century in the Moffat era the way I feel about the Victorian Era in the Moffat era - it's used way too much and to very little effect. We'll have more time to get into that as we go on.

Next time, we'll see if the Doctor's plan worked (of course it did) and see what the Angels are really up to! Next time, it's a time of Flesh and Stone!

Be there!